by Jeff Pearce
“Anything beats that,” groaned Tim sympathetically.
Miller downed the last of his wine. “I didn’t like you very much at first,” he said to Tim.
“Yeah, I picked up on that.”
“And you didn’t give a shit.”
Tim smiled. “Nope.”
Miller turned to Crystal. “Hey, I liked you!”
“Yes, you made that very clear,” she answered, smiling.
Miller shook his head sorrowfully. “Jesus, you guys are good at this. I can see that. I don’t even know what this is—part crime investigation, part séance shit. But you got to solve it.”
Tim and Crystal both sat still, looking to each other, neither one able to summon a reassuring response.
“We screwed this up,” Miller went on, nervously chewing a cuticle. “Gary, me, the team. We did this, so the answer’s not going to come from us. I’m not going to take us off the hook anymore with any rationalization bullshit. I’m done. I don’t care if Braithewaite gave these Booths out. It’s on us! But you guys… Sorry, but you got to think of something.”
There was another long moment filled only with the whispered chatter of other people in the restaurant and the clinking of silverware.
“Limonov’s going through Booth victims,” said Crystal at last. “He picked the most vulnerable, Gudrun Merkel, and then he went after others. If he hasn’t got what he needs yet, we might still have a chance. Maybe if we knew who he’ll finish with.”
“But how do we determine that?” asked Tim.
She sighed. She didn’t know. None of them knew.
She reached for her cell phone, and her thumb clicked down a series of text messages from London. She held up the display for him to see. “You’ve heard about this, too, right?”
“Schlosser sent me details, thanks.”
Miller was in the dark. “What is it?”
Tim and Crystal both explained about the strange living death of Emmett Nickelbaum, found shriveled and catatonic in a slum apartment in Brindisi, Italy. Between the Italian authorities’ interview with Maria Gigliotti and what Gary Weintraub and others back in White Plains could put together, Mary Ash was what happened to Nickelbaum. She had somehow appeared, helped free Maria Gigliotti, and then she was gone.
Tim had already arranged through Schlosser and Weintraub to speak to Geoff Shackleton via a secure Skype connection that afternoon. The resurrected schoolteacher was fine, living under witness protection conditions in New Mexico. He had been downright cheerful when Tim had reached him.
“No, I can’t do that crazy stuff anymore, Mr. Cale. It’s gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone?”
“That girl needed it. You know her—she explained everything. How you folks are over there in France, trying to stop this nasty Russian character. Truth be told, Mr. Cale, I’m glad to give her the ability. I feel like I’m done with all that Booth stuff now.”
“But… But Geoff, how did she find you? No, strike that—I have a pretty good idea how she found you, but how did she tell you all this?”
And Shackleton had looked at him as if he were simple, one of his slower students in class. “We’re all connected, Mr. Cale. That poor German girl, the African fella, all of us…I can’t rightly explain it for you, but she sort of knocked on my door, so to speak, and she needed to see me.”
And so he had brought the girl to him.
And Mary Ash had taken his ability away to use for Maria Gigliotti.
Tim brought Crystal and Miller up to speed now on his conversation with Shackleton. No, there was no one who knew where Mary Ash was currently. Not the Italian authorities, certainly not the scientists back in New York or the FBI.
Tim was still thinking of the schoolteacher in New Mexico. Shackleton had wished Tim the best of luck in hunting down Viktor Limonov and again, he had seemed the most normal of all the resurrected victims. Even more so with the weight of his strange powers lifted, taken away by Mary Ash. He had defied the pattern of the other ones, changed and then trapped in a world they were no longer suited for.
It occurred to Tim that Limonov would have no reason to try to go after Shackleton now. Maybe Mary Ash also knew that.
“Why didn’t Limonov go after her?” asked Miller.
“What?” asked Tim.
Miller leaned forward. “He’s ticking them off, and let’s say he’s, like, going from weakest to strongest. That’s our working theory for now, right? Gudrun Merkel and so on. Why ignore Mary Ash?”
“But he didn’t,” argued Crystal. “Nickelbaum was in the States to kill the boy for Limonov, so maybe he was supposed to go after Mary Ash next.”
“But hey, that’s kind of my point,” said Miller. “She’s like, across the country, up in New York. Instead of heading there, Nickelbaum hops on a plane to get the hell out of there and lie low in Italy. He picks up this Maria Italian chick to satisfy his own sick urges, right? Why didn’t Nickelbaum go after the girl first or after? Why hasn’t Limonov tried himself? And it can’t be just because US security is so shit-hot.”
“It’s a good argument,” said Tim absently.
Crystal turned to him. “What is it? What’s on your mind?”
“I’m still thinking about ‘weakest to strongest.’ If Limonov needs the abilities of the victims to camouflage himself or whatever before he sneaks through the Booth then maybe we do know who his final target is.”
Miller and Crystal stared at him, neither of them able to guess.
“Don’t you see?” prompted Tim. “It’s so simple and obvious that even his target doesn’t get it! The strongest person with abilities is Emily Derosier. She called herself a resurrected victim. She told us that she’s still very human in ways, but she certainly fits how Andrew’s defining them: ‘human plus.’ And she came back through a Karma Booth of her own free will—she wasn’t yanked back like the others. She came to warn us, but Limonov will use her to do the very thing she’s trying to prevent!”
“Jesus,” whispered Miller.
“But if you’re right,” said Crystal, “we got to find her all over again. She’s got to stop this bloody mysterious act and help us!”
“I know, I know.” He sat bolt upright in his chair. “Oh, God, I’m a damn fool.”
“Why?” asked Crystal.
Miller was anxious as well. “Dude, come on, give! What is it?”
Tim put a hand on Crystal’s arm as he said, “Wait here for me, will you?”
Then he was off, heading for the elevator and back up to his room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
He used his key card and flipped on the lights, moving in front of the easel with the hypnotic, otherworldly painting Emily Derosier had left for him. Since they had met in Au Dauphin, he had purchased two more of her original compositions from the small gallery, the ones that hinted at her knowledge back in the 1920s of life beyond their own plane of existence. But this painting, this one—with its vivid reds and blues, its shimmering sad nude and its Cubist musicians—held the key. He was sure of it.
“Miller said chromatophores,” Tim mumbled aloud. And as the validity of the idea grew in his mind, he was certain he was no longer talking only to himself. “That means organic, and that means you’re alive, whatever you are.”
He slid two fingers along the faded gilt of the frame, as if touch could bring this alien stranger to waking consciousness. He was startled for a second as there was, indeed, a reaction. He thought for a moment it was a trick of his mind but the colors definitely shifted and the texture thickened. But it was still the same scene, the café with its nude and street musicians.
“Artists paint what they see or what they dream,” he said with renewed confidence. “I don’t recognize this café but I know she imbued something of herself in you. So you tell me. A dog will find its way home. Even a plant can turn itself towards the sun. So come on! You tell me. Because she didn’t just leave you here for me to admire, did she?”
The texture thicke
ned. The colors shimmered. They rolled into each other, and Tim was reminded of the cascades in a wave machine. It didn’t happen all at once but by subtle, slow degrees so that when he had his answer and had pulled himself away, he saw that half an hour had passed. The picture now had an almost digital clarity, as sharp as a photograph or a 1930s movie still with its Technicolor hues. And he should know this place. He should know it…
There was a knock at his door. Insistent. Another knock. He hadn’t heard it the first time. He yanked the door open, and of course, it was Crystal on his doorstep, her mouth open and about to complain when he announced feverishly, “I know where she is.”
She looked past him to the painting. It didn’t make sense to her, but that didn’t surprise him, because he had studied the life of Emily Derosier intensely in the last couple of weeks.
“We should hurry,” said Tim. “If Zorich could find her once, Limonov must be smart enough to find her again.”
Montmartre. Emily Derosier had painted an ethereal Futurist scene based on a narrow little street in Montmartre.
Every night in his hotel room, Tim had stared at the picture for a few minutes before turning in, and now he realized his mistake. He had presumed all this time that Emily Derosier must have been painting a scene of a street in the Latin Quarter, near where she lived. Or Montparnasse—likely Montparnasse because it was the hot district for artists, writers, composers and dancers after the Great War. But no, he had superimposed his assumptions over the image, and hadn’t she talked in Au Dauphin about prosopagnosia? Face blindness. He had looked, but he hadn’t seen.
The pale moon in the composition was a hovering, upside-down tulip, but when Tim addressed the painting, it gradually showed him it was the dome of the Sacré Coeur basilica.
“Here, make a right here!” Tim urged Crystal, who was driving.
She yanked the steering wheel and grumbled, “We’re going to have to get out of the car sooner or later, Tim. I can barely turn down these streets.”
“Yeah, okay.”
She turned into the relatively wide, cobbled thoroughfare of Rue Gabrielle and parked in front of a set of closed shops, their windows dark or covered by aluminum shutters. The temperature had dipped, and they could see trails of their breath in the chill night air. Crystal looked up and down the street, which was eerie with its emptiness.
“Where now?” she asked him.
Tim wasn’t sure. He was trying to conjure the view the painting had given him, but it was difficult. He had to push out the fairytale images of Emily Derosier’s composition and see ahead of the 1920s buildings to how the avenue looked today—and how it looked in this light. It was so different. This was tourist-trap central during the day, but at this late hour, the artists making spare money with their portrait easels and the street vendors with their knick-knack stalls had long packed up and taken commuter trains home.
“I… I don’t know,” he said to Crystal, suddenly feeling like a fool.
“This way,” she said confidently.
As he wondered how she could be so sure, she explained, “You used the basilica as your reference point, didn’t you? But you can’t see it at the painting’s angle from here. The best possibility is this way. Come on!”
As she broke into a run, he saw she was thumbing the keypad on her phone. He was lucky for her presence of mind in quickly taking a digital snap of the living canvas before they left. Now she used her phone’s GPS.
Then as they jogged up the street, a voice called out to them. “Oh, please, let me save you some time!”
The voice had a mild accent, and it was loud, being projected from above their heads. Tim looked to Crystal, and they both guessed the reason. They ran back towards the end of the street where the Rue Foyatier began its multiple sets of steps leading up to Sacré Coeur.
Viktor Limonov had his head out a window, looking out over the false wrought-iron balcony to jeer at them.
“Yes, yes, yes!” he shouted down. “You’re soooo clever. She’s been hiding in an apartment here for weeks. Here you go! Congratulations!”
There was a shatter of glass that sounded incredibly loud. The noise bounced on every stone and cement surface of the staircase street—
Emily Derosier’s limp body fell six feet onto one of the flights of steps.
“Emily!”
Crystal, shouting her name.
She and Tim rushed up the steps, taking three at a time. The young woman from almost a century ago was still, her body wrapped in a dark navy silk dress, her feet barefoot, as if she’d been about to go out for a night on the town. Interrupted again, the way someone had once cruelly interrupted her decades ago, in another life.
Dead? No. She rolled, moaning, and then she gazed up at Tim and Crystal heading towards her.
Limonov jumped out the window and landed not far away. Then he, too, was rushing up steps.
“Limonov!” yelled Tim.
“You all right?” Crystal called to Emily, close enough now to offer her arm for support.
“Yessss… Yes, I think so…”
“It’s a wonder he didn’t crack your skull,” said Crystal, pulling out her weapon.
“Don’t,” said Emily, meaning the gun.
She stood, swaying a bit as she recovered from the fall, and then she took a step, her strength seeming to return. Her eyes narrowed as she followed the running Limonov, and it was as if her presence projected itself in a blast of sound. But there was no sound. Except the one coming from the Russian, who let out a guttural yell, stumbling, knocked over by… what?
“Bitch!” he roared back, gathering himself up.
When he turned, he was different. Tim and Crystal both recoiled as Limonov bared his teeth in a feral expression of white-hot loathing. But it was the thing that was on his arm that made them stop in place, the revolting scrotal mass that gnawed on his arm and then vomited up tendons and flesh. And the other slug-like organism that appeared to be pushing itself into a gash in the Russian’s skull. Limonov’s hair was suddenly blond, his eyes a glacial blue. Tim was overcome by a wave of nausea. Music, he tasted—
“Bitch!”
Another concussive blast of invisible, indecipherable power that staggered Limonov, that sent him reeling backward until he reverted to his old self. Tim felt the nausea pass. She was doing it. Emily. Keeping Limonov from attacking them.
Limonov deliberated for all of a moment. He bestowed another smug grin on Tim and Crystal running rapidly up the steps, and then turned once more to flee. Tim gave chase, but he no longer heard Crystal’s steps alongside his as he kept after the Russian. Had she fallen back to protect Emily? He didn’t know.
Can’t let Limonov get away.
Stupid to shout as he ran, but he did anyway. “What’s the matter? She give you a bigger fight than you expected?”
“You are so funny, Cale!” came the reply from the shadows above him.
“Wonderful. I know you, and you know me.”
Tim could just make out Limonov in the darkness above, scratching his chin with the backs of his knuckles. “Benson kept very good notes. He was quite impressed with you.”
“Yes, we know about your little IT piggy-back maneuver. You didn’t answer my question, Limonov. Was she too tough for you? Or was it you couldn’t find what you need and get across town quick enough?”
In the dimness over the staircase street, Limonov stood motionless.
“Le Santé Prison,” said Tim, slowing down, moving more carefully now. “The French keep their Booth there. It’s where you want to go right afterwards, isn’t it? It’s the closest, most logical exit for you.”
“It’s not as if I’m really a Russian,” replied Limonov, looming two flights above him. “I presume she has told you, yes?”
“You do speak better English than Zorich.”
Limonov chuckled in the darkness. “I’m a citizen of the world. Just not this one.”
“You brought Nickelbaum back, didn’t you? Or showed him the wa
y back.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Oh, murder loves company.”
“Like Zorich and Ana Tvardovsky?”
“They were not my kind.”
“But you got them to work for you just the same,” replied Tim. “Because you offered them insight into their true nature. Like Nickelbaum. And oh, yeah, let’s not forget your bullshit promise about setting them free.”
“I don’t make empty promises, Cale. You will see that soon enough.”
Tim took two more steps. “And Emily? How did you track her down for your goons?”
Limonov laughed again. “Whoever said it was me who put them on her trail?”
Tim didn’t get it. The bastard was still laughing, thoroughly enjoying himself, denying responsibility, and why is he still laughing? All of a sudden, he felt dizzy, disoriented, and neither of them stood anymore on the steps of Rue Foyatier. They were back on Rue Gabrielle, a few yards away from where Crystal had parked the car…
In the distance, he could hear frantic footsteps on stone, two pairs. Crystal was calling his name. What had the bastard done? But Limonov was turning his head, spinning around and on his guard, and Tim knew it wasn’t the Russian who had done this.
Then he saw the monks.
But they weren’t dressed as monks, not this time. They walked in their patient, shambling way in the same manner they once did years ago in their cheap flip-flops on Indian mud, only now there were no robes—instead, they wore street clothes and suits, neglected dress shoes needing polish and ratty, torn windbreakers. Nondescript clothes. But it was still them. Had to be. Here was a leathery-faced elder, and there, an androgynous young woman with a shaved head, and another teenage boy with alert, brown eyes. And others. There had to be about a dozen of them or so, approaching with that familiar and ominous practiced humility.
Tim realized that if he stared at one individual, the face defied categorization of ethnicity. Blink, and the almond eyes were round; check again, and a tone of skin lightened or grew darker. Perhaps their Asian color more than a decade ago had been another deceit of convenience.