Two Songs This Archangel Sings

by George C. Chesbro

  “What I read on the plane was a brief overview of the Archangel plan, and its objectives. There were no names, no dates. The actual records are classified. As I’m sure you’re aware, you can’t cite classified records for reasons to subpoena classified records. You must have other evidence which the classified material may amplify.”

  “Find a man by the name of Lester Bean. He was a lieutenant general in the war, and he was Veil’s C.O. He’ll testify to the link between Orville Madison and Veil Kendry.”

  “Bean’s name was mentioned in Kendry’s statement. I made some inquiries before I came here to see you. Bean is in retirement, and nobody seems to know where he is.”

  Which might or might not be the truth. It didn’t make any difference; the clear message was that we were not going to get any help from the administration. Dealing with Burton Andrews was growing tiresome and depressing.

  “Veil Kendry was the Archangel plan, Andrews.”

  “Proof, Frederickson.”

  “What does Madison have to say about all this?”

  Andrews shrugged. “What would you expect him to say? He claims to vaguely remember a plan for a minor public relations project that was eventually aborted, but that’s all. He denies knowing anybody by the name of Veil Kendry, and says he was never involved in anything called Operation Archangel.”

  “You believe that?”

  “What you and your brother, the president or I, believe—or even know to be true—is irrelevant. Bear in mind that Mr. Madison has occupied the highest echelons of power for a very long time and has had almost unlimited access to the files you keep talking about. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if all those files have been tampered with, altered; otherwise, he would have made up some kind of a cover story instead of simply denying everything.”

  “Your point is well taken,” I said quietly.

  “You said you had proof of these allegations, but it’s become obvious to me that you’re bluffing. Still, proof or no proof, we’re left with a most serious problem which must be dealt with. It’s why I’ve given you the assurance that Orville Madison will soon be resigning as secretary of state. Considering our position, that may be the most we can hope for. It’s going to be a very delicate thing—the almost immediate resignation of a newly appointed secretary of state—to handle with the news media, and we would like your assurance that neither of you will be feeding the media sensational stories that could have serious repercussions on everything from the value of the dollar to our relations with our allies—not to mention the morale of our citizens. Will I be able to give the president that assurance, gentlemen?”

  “Forcing Madison out of office isn’t enough, Andrews,” I said, wearily shaking my head. “Not nearly enough.”

  “Personally, the president and I might well agree with you. But even if it were in everybody’s interests to do so, you couldn’t go into a court of law with what you have—which is nothing.”

  “It won’t be nearly enough for Veil Kendry, Andrews.”

  “But he’s not here, is he?”

  “He’s out there someplace, very close by, waiting to see what happens. If he doesn’t like what he sees, I’m sure he’ll kill Orville Madison himself.”

  “So be it,” Andrews said with a kind of verbal shrug. “But if and when this Veil Kendry ever shows his face, he’s going to have plenty of his own problems to deal with. The statement he sent to the president amounts to a signed confession to murder. The man’s a self-confessed multiple murderer—and a barbaric one, at that. He admits to killing two men in New York City, three in Seattle, and six up in the mountains.”

  “Veil killed the killers Madison sent. Madison is responsible for the deaths of five people in New York, and six in Seattle.”

  “But Mr. Madison hasn’t submitted a signed confession, has he? I’d say Mr. Kendry is finished.”

  Andrews was probably right, I thought; Veil would be destroyed. Even if Veil killed him, Orville Madison would still have defeated Veil Kendry. And the Frederickson brothers. I’d been beaten, burned, and jerked around a lot, but as things now stood it would all have been for nothing; Veil could have gone after Madison from day one, without involving me. I wasn’t earning my ten thousand dollars.

  Andrews nervously cleared his throat, continued: “We both agree that you can’t negotiate for Veil Kendry, Dr. Frederickson. What about negotiating for yourselves?”

  “Meaning what, Andrews?”

  “It’s my understanding that the two of you now have some legal difficulties of your own. Even if you manage to get these problems behind you, it’s quite possible that your careers could suffer irreparable damage. On the other hand, if you and the lieutenant could be counted on to continue to exercise the caution and discretion you have so admirably displayed up to this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if ways could be found to extricate you from this situation without penalty so that you can get on with your careers and your lives.”

  A curious offer, spoken, combined with a clear threat, unspoken, of lots and lots of additional problems if we didn’t go along quietly. I had a serious urge to get up, walk around the desk, and punch the other man. Instead, I said: “I wasn’t bluffing before, Andrews. I can prove a solid, very personal connection between Orville Madison and Veil Kendry.”

  “Oh, really? And how will you do that?”

  I pressed the call button on the captain’s desk intercom.

  “What is it, Frederickson?” It was McGarvey himself, and he sounded a bit bemused. His trooper had obviously told him that I was sitting at his desk.

  “Captain, would you be kind enough to bring in my backpack? It’s the smaller, brown one.”

  “I know which one it is, Frederickson.” Suddenly the captain’s voice sounded strained, unnatural.

  The three of us sat in silence, waiting. Five minutes later, McGarvey entered the office carrying my backpack. The burly trooper captain looked decidedly uncomfortable; his face was set in a kind of stiff mask as he walked across the room and set the backpack down on the desk in front of me. “Here you are, Frederickson,” he said in a flat voice, and immediately turned away.

  “Stay, if you will, Captain,” I said as I repositioned the pack and snapped open the top. “I’d like you to witness this.”

  I dug my hand into the pack, pushed it down through dirty clothes into the middle of my bedroll, where I had stuffed the yellow oilskin packet. “Captain,” I continued, “I have something here that I want you and Mr. Andrews to see. It’s something that Veil Kendry had a friend bury for him up in the mountains a lot of years ago; a good forensic chemist will be able to tell us exactly how many. It will prove a link between Kendry and Madison that goes back to the war. Andrews, at the very least it will prove that Madison is lying through his teeth when he denies knowing Veil.”

  Wriggling my fingers, I continued to search for the feel of the oilskin, but found nothing where I thought I had put it. Fighting a growing sense of panic, I upended the pack and spread the contents out over the surface of the desk. I sifted through the dirty clothes, unrolled the sleeping bag. The packet was not there.

  “There was a small package sealed in yellow oilskin inside this backpack,” I said to McGarvey as I walked around the desk to stand directly in front of him. “I know it was there when you brought us in. What the hell did you do with it?”

  McGarvey said nothing, but he did not avert his eyes. There was a curious expression on his face, a mixture of sympathy, embarrassment, and not a little anger. He was a man of integrity and honor, his eyes and expression said, but there was only so much he could do for us. He’d already bent far under heavy pressure once, but he was afraid he would be broken if he tried to do it this time; he could not buck the wishes—or actions—of an official presidential emissary, especially when, as had almost certainly happened, the spectral issue of national security had been raised.

  Burton Andrews had been allowed to search our belongings. He had found the packet, opened it, and examined i
ts contents. Whatever had been in the packet must have proved all I’d said it would, because the presidential aide had felt compelled to steal it.

  “Dirty pool, Andrews,” I said, turning to the baby-faced man with the large brown eyes who was sitting stiffly in his chair, steadfastly staring out the window. His hands were clenched tightly together on top of his briefcase. “Tough bargaining is one thing, but stealing and concealing crucial evidence in a series of crimes including murder is something else again. Now, you get your skinny ass out to the car and bring that packet back in here so that Captain McGarvey can see what’s in it.”

  Andrews didn’t move. Garth did. Deliberately, with disarming casualness, my brother rose from his chair and walked over to where the presidential aide was sitting. Sensing Garth’s presence, Andrews turned his head back just in time to catch the full force of Garth’s fist smashing into his face. Andrews’ head snapped back as a crimson geyser of blood spewed from his shattered nose. Andrews and his chair flipped over backwards, while his attaché case and the papers it contained went flying through the air.

  “My brother almost died getting that package,” Garth said to the fallen man in a voice that was all the more chilling for its lack of passion, its cool, measured tone. “Maybe you should die for taking it away from him.”

  McGarvey and I reached Garth at about the same time, and while the trooper wrapped his arm around Garth’s neck in a choke hold I went for my brother’s legs, trying to trip him up. But an aroused Garth is something—or not something—to see. My brother swatted me to one side and, with McGarvey lifted off the floor and hanging on his back, bent over and cocked his fist in preparation for another blow that would really put Andrews’ lights out, and possibly even kill him. I wished McGarvey would hit Garth over the head with his gun butt, but it was very obvious where the trooper’s sympathies lay, and it was too late for that anyway.

  “Garth, stop it!” I screamed as I pulled at my brother’s belt. “Don’t hit him again! You’ll kill him! It doesn’t make any difference that he took the packet! I know what’s in it! Nothing is lost!”

  Garth’s fist stopped in midair, and his arm dropped back to his side. McGarvey took his arm away from Garth’s throat, stepped back and—like my brother—stared at me quizzically.

  “You do?” Garth asked softly.

  I looked down at Andrews. The presidential aide was holding both hands cupped over his broken nose, but in his eyes, plainer than either shock or pain, was the same question.

  “I do,” I said defiantly, staring hard at Andrews. “After the Operation Archangel abort and Veil’s banishment from the army by Madison, he eventually learned to control his madness through painting. From the beginning, Veil’s style and technique had been to compose massive, realistic murals comprised of smaller, surrealistic canvases that appeared abstract when viewed singly. I’ve seen many of those murals myself—surreal landscapes, peaceful, and without people. But I realize now that his work wasn’t always like that. When he first started, his style—but not his technique—was different.

  “When I spoke to Viktor Raskolnikov, Veil’s dealer, he told me that Veil’s style had been different when he first started to paint; the colors were richer, more vivid, and many of the shapes in the individual canvases more pronounced. Those first shapes were fragments of portraits of people, and the subject of his first mural, or murals, was the story of what had happened to him—his assignment in Laos, his conflicts with Orville Madison, his replacement by Colonel Po, the Archangel plan, the incident with the pimp in Saigon, his defection, and, finally, his banishment and the sentence of death imposed by his ex-C.I.A. controller. All of it was included in his first work, in fine detail. You can bet that Orville Madison’s face is all over the place, along with Colonel Po’s, and Veil’s.

  “What had happened to him had to have been eating up Veil inside, but he couldn’t talk about it to anyone. What he did was to paint it, after almost self-destructing, and that got it out of his system. Eventually he began to sell his work, but before he sold any painting he would photograph it, number the photograph, and probably record the name of the person or institution that had purchased the painting. The packet contained a photographic record—probably slides—of all the Archangel paintings, along with a number key for putting all the individual canvases back into their original sequence to form the larger mural. There would also be a list of people and museums that had the paintings. In fact, I had number one, the very first painting in the first sequence. I had it hanging on my bedroom wall, but it was lost in the fire that Madison’s men started when they tried to kill me. But the rest of the paintings still exist, scattered all over the country.” I paused, smiled thinly at Andrews. “How am I doing, you amoral son-of-a-bitch?”

  Andrews, dripping blood all over the front of his shirt and vest, rolled over on his side, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and pressed it to his nose. “How could you know?” he said, defeat in his voice as well as his body. “The package was sealed.”

  McGarvey’s breath came out of him in a small explosion, and the big trooper reached over and gripped my shoulder. “Goddamn,” he said, a huge grin on his face.

  “I’m tired of you, sleazeball,” I said, leaning over Andrews and fairly spitting the words at him. “I’m also tired of your sleazeball boss, the president of the United States. I can’t believe I voted for the bastard. Damn, you’re small men.”

  “Frederickson, listen—”

  “Shut up. I’ve already listened to everything I want to hear from you, or anybody else in this administration. All the people Madison has killed and the lives he’s destroyed … and you treat us like criminals. You didn’t think that Garth and I were concerned over the impact this information might have?! You didn’t think Veil was concerned?! Yet, you would have destroyed Veil Kendry and us, and sent Madison into a cushy retirement someplace, just so that your administration wouldn’t be embarrassed. You helped to save our lives, and we appreciate that, but it’s not enough; nothing you seem able to do or propose is enough. Too many other people have died at the hands of your secretary of state. All we ever wanted and want, all Veil wants, is justice. You knew what we’d been through, and still you couldn’t come here and deal with us in good faith.” I paused, sucked in a deep breath to try to tamp down my rage, turned to McGarvey. “Are Garth and I free to go, Captain?”

  “You certainly are, Frederickson. The sergeant out at the front desk has your guns. Tell me where you want to go; one of my men will drive you, or we’ll get you plane tickets—courtesy of New York State, of course.”

  Garth walked over to me, put his arm around my shoulders, and gave me an appreciative pat. “Is it the Times or the Post, brother?”

  “Let’s start with the New York Times. Captain, may we use your telephone?”

  “Certainly,” McGarvey said, picking up the telephone on his desk and moving it to the edge closest to me.

  “I know a few reporters on the Times, Andrews, and I’m going to begin by talking to one on the phone; that’s just in case something happens to us after we leave here. Once the story gets going, our deaths won’t make a difference; the reporters will have Veil’s paintings to look for and piece together to verify that story. You may have the sequence key and catalog of owners, but that’s fine. Keep them. Even if you’ve destroyed them it won’t make a difference. Viktor Raskolnikov has slides of every painting Veil has ever sold; with his eye, sorting out the early slides and piecing them together into the Archangel mural or murals shouldn’t be too great a trick. Raskolnikov also has a list of the original owners, so reporters across the country will not only know what to look for, but where to look. It won’t prove Madison’s a murderer, but it will make a great story, and it will reveal what kind of a man Madison really is. That may be all we can hope for. Then, when Veil kills him, at least people will know why. It will be a great media event—an entire nation, through newspapers and television, putting together one huge jigsaw puzzle with themes of
treachery, betrayal, and death by Kevin Shannon’s secretary of state. Every time another piece of that puzzle is found, a big, bloody chunk of this administration goes down the toilet. And, who knows? Maybe, as the process goes on, something will be found to prove that Madison’s a murderer, and Veil won’t have to do your dirty work for you. It’s certainly going to be interesting, don’t you think?”

  Andrews looked up at me, fear in his eyes. “If you do this, Frederickson, you’ll be a traitor,” he said hoarsely. “The damage you’ll do to this country will be unimaginable.”

  “Bullshit. The damage we’ll do to the Shannon administration will be unimaginable, but you’re the one, acting on orders from Shannon, who decided he wanted to play what you politicians love to call hardball. People like you and your boss are the ones who do unimaginable damage to this country when you lie, and when you use your power to twist or circumvent laws for your own convenience. You have no soul. This country doesn’t need sleazeballs like you in power. The bad taste this story leaves in people’s mouths will be more than offset by the tale of one unbelievably courageous man, a fierce patriot and the greatest soldier this country has ever produced, fighting against impossible odds, not only with his combat skills, but with his art. And he wins when the truth finally comes out. The image Veil projects will be what Americans are attracted to, and what they will identify with. Your whole sleazy crew will soon be forgotten, but not Archangel. Maybe Veil will give Americans new respect for themselves, and help us finally to get the Viet Nam war behind us once and for all. In fact, I think it might be jolly good fun if we dubbed this whole process Operation Son of Archangel. You like that idea, Mr. Andrews?”

  Garth smiled crookedly, said: “I like it, Mongo.”

  McGarvey said: “I don’t understand half of what the hell you’re talking about, but I like it too.”

  Andrews said: “Captain, I need to use your phone.”