Wally didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Thanks.”
He picked up a guidebook. And when he woke up, they were in Rome.
Headquarters of Silver Helix
London, England
Noel sat on the floor of the file room, sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop (part of the leftover Halloween candy stash, another peculiar American custom) and reading through the agency’s files on the Nshombos. He had quit the Silver Helix last year, and he and the organization had a fragile peace.
Noel’s statements to the Hague had led to the arrest of John Bruckner, aka the Highwayman, and Brigadier Kenneth Foxworthy, aka Captain Flint, for war crimes. A year ago, Flint and Bruckner had broken into his parents’ house, killed the ace “kids” Noel had sired with Niobe, and kidnapped an American boy whose uncontrolled nuclear power had governments all over the world trying to kill him or control him. Bruckner had delivered Drake to Nigeria, to stop the advance of the PPA army into that oil-rich nation. Thousands had died in the detonation, and ultimately Nigeria had fallen to the PPA anyway.
Foxworthy and Bruckner were now in custody in Holland. Bruckner was gobbling about how he was “just following orders,” but Flint had fallen on his sword for crown and country by taking all the blame. The Silver Helix knew that Noel had a huge file about the assassinations he had undertaken on behalf of the British government just waiting to be released if they made any move against him. Noel didn’t see why the “MAD” agreement couldn’t be extended to making use of the resources of the Silver Helix.
He scanned quickly through the pages, searching for something he could use to discredit the brother and sister. The brother was an abstemious man-no mistresses, no drugs, no alcohol. The sister was more sybaritic-she overindulged in food and sex. It was believed she slept with most of the men recruited into her Leopard Society. But she wasn’t the head of the state-exposing her excesses would do little.
Noel flipped up another page. The heading on the one below read assets. The Nshombos had three Swiss bank accounts-one guess who had two and who had one-but the numbers were unknown. In addition to the palace in Kongoville there was an apartment in Paris and a home on the Dalmatian coast. There was a yacht. A line caught his eye. The national treasury appears to consist of a mixture of gold bullion, platinum bars, and uncut diamonds held in the Central Bank of the Congo.
Suddenly the door opened.
Noel cursed himself for being so focused on his reading that he had missed the approaching footsteps. He glanced at his watch: 4:42 p.m. Outside, the winter sun was dropping into the fogs and fumes of Old London Town. But it wasn’t full night yet, and Noel was trapped in his real body and unable to teleport. The headshrinkers with the Silver Helix had never been able to help him overcome his psychological glitch so Noel himself could teleport like his avatars.
He reached under his jacket for his pistol. He really didn’t want to shoot one of his former comrades, so he just rested his hand on the butt.
“Noel, what the hell are you doing here, man?”
It was Devlin Pear, aka Ha’Penny. Since Noel was seated on the floor they were actually nose to nose. Dev was a midget. He could get smaller, a lot smaller.
Noel held up the file. “Just a bit of intel.”
“You can’t do this. Lady Margaret’s on the desk tonight. She’d have your balls if she knew you were here.”
And that was most certainly true. Lady Margaret, aka Titania, had nursed a desperate crush on the former head of the Silver Helix for years. Now Captain Flint was awaiting his war crimes trial, and Noel had put him there. “Well then, don’t tell her.”
“I’ve got to. You can’t just pop in here-”
Noel laid a hand on the file. “Look, I’m doing God’s work. Or at least England’s, which is almost the same thing.” He gave Dev a smile, but the little ace continued to look worried. “I’m looking for a way to remove the Nshombos that won’t have Western fingerprints on it. That can only help British interests in the area, right?”
“Why would you do that? You left the service.”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn about the Silver Helix, but I’m still an Englishman. I just wanted some information.”
“That’s really all you want?”
“I swear.”
“All right, but don’t do this again.” The little ace hesitated. “Call me instead.”
They shook hands, Noel put away the files, stood, and checked his watch. It was still three minutes until full night.
“Wish you hadn’t left us,” Devlin said.
“I had to. I didn’t like what I’d become.”
Ha’Penny considered Noel’s role in the Silver Helix-assassin-and nodded slowly. “I can see that.”
It was time. Noel made the transition to Lilith. “The PPA’s the danger, Dev,” she said. “I just want to help.” And she teleported away.
5
Monday,
November 30
Paraguacu River
Bahia State, Brazil
His eyes snapped open to darkness.
The humid air remained hot long after midnight. Sweat rolled ticklingly into armpits that felt at once familiar and utterly alien. Insects buzzed like power-saw choirs. Poison-arrow frogs trilled to advertise their killer beauty. The river sighed and gurgled through the mangrove roots. The smell of the water, like strong tea and death, overwhelmed even the smell of sweat-soaked bedding.
Starlight through the open window confirmed his memory, still vague with transition, that the blur beside him was the sleeping face of Sun Hei-lian. Details of her incredibly fine features resolved slowly as his mind and vision focused. The lines that living left in her face somehow made her even more beautiful to Mark Meadows’s eyes.
Good thing she’s close, he thought. He’d always been nearsighted. And for the last fourteen years he had seen through eagle-perfect eyes.
It took him three breaths to dare to try to move his eyeballs. There was little left to see: the bed, the rough room with its few and deliberately raw furnishings of wood and coarse rope, the Coleman lantern they’d brought from Salvador, now dark. And the rest of the woman herself, pale and slender and exquisite.
That was a favor, anyway. If as much torment as pleasure. He knew that body’s every contour. Yet she had never known his touch. Only the touch of this body he inhabited. Isn’t that just my luck? he thought. I fall in love with a lethal lady Chinese spy. And she falls in love with the evil alter ego who’s taken over my body. Perfect.
It wasn’t the first time he’d made himself a fool for love. His obsession with his first love, Sunflower, had led him into the obsessive quest that resulted in his body being usurped by the Radical. Long after the love he’d felt for her had ended in divorce, acrimony, and Sprout.
Sprout -it was Hei-lian’s treatment of Mark’s daughter that made him fall in love with her. She had begun with coldness, almost loathing. Now she showed every sign of loving her. It was as if Sprout had awakened a capacity for kindness in a woman who had lived virtually her entire life professionally coldhearted.
Hei-lian possessed a razor-keen intellect and a will so fierce it had forced her hide bound bosses to acknowledge her excellence. Years of witnessing-and yes, no doubt working-brutality had never crushed her spirit. Yet it was her unexpected capacity for warmth that won him.
I love you, he wanted to tell her. I know the Radical’s seductive power. Far too well. And it’s a lie.
He ached to warn her. Warn the world. The man you think you love is changing into something that isn’t human. If he isn’t stopped he’ll destroy everything. He-
Mark felt himself swirl away from the world, down into old accustomed darkness. He uttered a vast and desolate cry that his throat could never voice.
“Aaaahh!”
The scream snapped Tom awake and upright. Sweat soaked his hair and face and body as if a tropical downpour had busted loose inside the cabin. The rough canvas covering of the bed under his butt was a mess, more
sodden than the relentless heat could account for.
Fingers trailed down his arm. “Are you all right?” Hei-lian asked, sitting up beside him.
He drew in a huge breath and palmed hair back from his forehead so it would stop stinging his eyes with sweat.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Just a nightmare.”
Ellen Allworth’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
It was still dark outside when Bugsy woke up. The alarm clock blazed 6:22 in numbers of fire. He groaned and rolled to his side, pulling the covers with him. The woman beside him made an impatient sound and pulled the blankets back. He sat up, watching her sleep in the dim light filtering in from the window.
She was beautiful, especially when she was asleep and wasn’t Ellen or Aliyah. Her naked body was familiar now. Known territory, and still fascinating. The way her small breasts rose and fell with her breath. The nameless fold where her thigh stopped being thigh and turned into body. The mole on her spine. When she wasn’t anyone and her face went slack like that, she looked young. She looked his age. He sighed.
The room still smelled like sex and liquor. His head hurt a little, but not enough to bother with. The soft buzz of a few stray wasps made a white noise that seemed like silence. Still, he gathered them up, folding the insects back into himself. She slept better when it was quiet.
He rose, showered, nuked some scrambled eggs and coffee. The apartment was like a really high-class junk shop or a really cheap museum. All around him were artifacts of other people’s lives. The cameo that Ellen wore and sometimes channeled her mother with. The pen that brought back a dead investment banker that she used when she was planning out her budget. A pair of scissors. A pair of glasses. A hundred dead people, all of them there for Ellen when and if she needed them. He was dating a republic.
When he snuck back into the bedroom to get some real clothes, her eyes were open. Until she moved, he didn’t know which one she was.
“Aliyah,” he said. “You sleep okay?”
She nodded gently.
“Ellen?”
“Still asleep,” Aliyah said, touching the earring gently. “It’s kind of weird, not having her back there. I guess I’m really used to it now, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“It means I’m real, though,” Aliyah said. “I mean if I can be here when she’s not, that means I’m really me and not just… I don’t know. An echo. I’m not just her wild card if I’m awake and she’s asleep. I’m not just a dream.”
“That’s what it means,” he agreed, because it was what she needed to hear.
She lay back with an exhalation, watching the ceiling go from black to grey, grey to blue, blue to white. On his way back toward the kitchen, he caught himself humming something. Louis Armstrong was in his head. Say nighty-night and kiss me
Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me
While I’m alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me
He stopped humming.
The FedEx guy came while Ellen and Aliyah were in the shower. Bugsy signed for the box and dropped it on the counter, then picked it up and checked the return address. New Orleans. Jerusha Carter, his old teammate from Team Hearts. Somehow invoking hearts seemed like an omen, but he couldn’t say whether it was good or bad. Probably it was just the hangover talking.
Ellen walked in from the back, still toweling off her short hair. “Who was it?” she asked.
“Christmas in November,” he said, nodding to the package. Ellen picked it up, turned it over, then got a steak knife out of the drawer and slit the tape. Something in bubble wrap, and a note. “What is it?” Bugsy asked.
“Another hat,” Ellen said with a sigh that meant another lottery ticket. Another chance that maybe this was the one she’d lost. Nick. Will-o’-Wisp. Her lost love, carried away by the wild winds of New Orleans. In the year since she’d lost him, they’d gotten hundreds, and not just fedoras. Baseball caps. Kangols. Two leather ten-gallon cowboy hats. A straw porkpie.
Ellen tore the bubble wrap open with her fingers, the popping sound like distant gunfire. The thing nestled in its center was a nasty green-brown, smelled of rot and river water, and had once been a fedora. “Hey,” Bugsy said. “That one even looks kind of like-”
She had already scooped the hat up, cramming it over her still wet hair. Her body went still. Bugsy held his breath, and Nick opened her eyes for her.
Well, Bugsy thought, fuck me sideways. Things just got more complicated again.
“What happened?” Nick asked.
“You blew off in a hurricane. Ellen’ll fill you in on the details,” Bugsy said. “I’d hang out, but I’ve got a thing I’ve got to get to. Anyway, you two lovebirds probably want to catch up, right?”
Nick looked stunned, his attention focused inward, where Ellen was probably talking with him. Another dead guy in the house. When Bugsy slipped out the front door, there were tears in her eyes, and he couldn’t tell if they were Nick’s or Ellen’s.
His three-way was a foursome again. Being in love with dead people was probably the only thing he and Ellen really had in common. Nick was going to be some hard explaining come Christmas dinner with the Tipton-Clarkes.
The offices of Aces magazine were open when he got there. He waited in the lobby drinking stale coffee from a paper cup until Digger Downs came out, shook his hand, and led him to the back office. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Digger said. “We’re just about to put this issue to bed. You still doing any writing?”
“Not much,” Bugsy said, with a little twinge of longing. A phantom itch on an amputated career. “Saving it up for the memoir, I guess.”
Digger chuckled, gestured to a chair, and leaned against his desk, arms folded. He looked older, up close. More wrinkles around the eyes, more white in the hair.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I’m doing some background work on the Radical. When he first came on the scene. Who his friends are.”
“Should any of them still be alive,” Downs said.
“That’s the guy I’m talking about,” Bugsy said. “I have him first showing up in China in 1993, but he’s clearly a westerner since-”
“Sixty-nine.”
Bugsy tilted his head.
“Nineteen sixty-nine,” Downs said. “San Francisco. Right after they shot those kids at Kent State. The Radical was in the People’s Park riot when the Lizard King fought Hardhat.”
“Ah. Was T. T. even alive in the sixties?” Bugsy said.
“Who?”
“Todd Taszycki. Hardhat.”
“No no no,” Digger Downs said. “Not that one. There was another guy who used that name back then. Very blue-collar. Didn’t have much use for the hippies.”
“So when you say the Lizard King,” Bugsy said, “you mean Thomas Marion Douglas? Lead singer for Destiny?”
“I sure do,” Downs said. “The Holy Trinity. Jimi, Janis, and the Lizard King. He was… he was amazing. I saw him in concert once. When he died, we really lost someone. That was a little before your time, though.”
“ Ninety-four was before my time,” Bugsy said. “Sixty-nine was the end of the Napoleonic wars. What was Weathers doing in San Francisco in the sixties? And where was he for those twenty-five years in the middle?”
“Got me,” Digger said.
Jackson Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
“And how do you feel today, Miss Pond?”
Michelle opened one eye. A middle-aged woman wearing hospital scrubs was standing over her. “Like someone I don’t know just woke me up.” Her voice was still rough. And she was thirsty. Really thirsty. “Can you get me something to drink?”
“I imagine so. I’m Mary. I’m supposed to check your vitals.”
“I’m not dead.”
“That’s pretty clear.” The woman moved out of her line of sight. Michelle wanted to crank her head around, but the fat made it impossible. When Mary wa
lked back into Michelle’s sight, she had an Aquafina bottle in her hand. The water was sweet and cold, and Michelle drank almost the full bottle before gasping for breath.
Then Michelle became aware of a noise. It sounded like a flock of birds, but she’d never seen big flocks of birds in Jackson Square. “What’s making that sound?”
“That? Oh, that’s the faithful talking, honey.”
“The faithful?”
As she pulled a stethoscope from her bag, Mary nodded. “They’re the bunch of folks who’ve been bringing you these flowers, praying over you, making you the focus of their lives.”
Michelle tried to move her leg, but couldn’t. It pissed her off to no end. “That’s insane.”
Mary shrugged and stuck the stethoscope in her ears. “Honey, you’d be amazed. And, just to be fair, you did prevent a lot of them from dying horribly.”
“I was trying to save my friends.”
Mary put her hand on Michelle’s wrist and popped the business end of the stethoscope onto Michelle’s chest. “Doesn’t matter why you did it. Just matters that you did. Now be quiet for a minute.”
Michelle ignored Mary as she poked around. There wouldn’t be any blood drawn. Needles broke when they came in contact with her skin. That had been happening ever since her card had turned.
“Everything sounds good,” Mary said. “Same as it has for the last year.”
Michelle wasn’t listening to her. Her attention was focused on the TV. The volume was still turned off, but there were images of herself flashing behind the blond anchor. One showed her at the height of her modeling career. Then there were publicity shots from American Hero. And finally there were pictures of her lying in Jackson Square after
… after.
Michelle had grown to love her fat. It was power and control, and it meant nothing could hurt her. But seeing herself… Bile rose in her throat. The whole world had seen her like that.
Her body was a distorted mass. Rolls and rolls of fat rippled across each other. The cement under her had shattered. Most of her body was naked. Her pale flesh mortified by the summer sun. And everyone had seen it. Hot tears stung in her eyes.
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