Two Songs This Archangel Sings

by George C. Chesbro

  Chicken, indeed.

  Assuming that the flickering light from the flames would be playing havoc with Kitten’s night-vision goggles, I heaved the upper half of my body into the loft and used both hands to sweep my Beretta back and forth in front of me, ready to fire a fusillade of bullets into anything that moved that didn’t have shoulder-length, gray-streaked yellow hair.

  “All right, Frederickson!” It was the familiar, rich baritone of Henry Kitten, somewhere off to my left. I immediately swung my gun in that direction. He coughed, and then there was a thud as something heavy hit the floor. “That was my gun! Now I’m going over by the window!”

  “No! Step out into the firelight where I can see you! I want to see your hands flat on top of your head, fingers laced together!”

  A few moments later the looming figure of Henry Kitten, thick smoke swirling around his waist, appeared at the edge of the spreading circle of light from the flames. A pair of bulky night-vision goggles hung from a strap around his neck, and his hands were dutifully clasped on top of his head. Coughing, squinting against the acrid smoke, he slowly turned toward me.

  “May I suggest you put out the fire, Frederickson?” the big man with the pale eyes said laconically. “It’s getting a little close in here.”

  “I’ve got it, Mongo,” Veil said easily as he suddenly appeared behind and to the right of Kitten, walking quickly through the firelight and smoke.

  Whatever had happened before I’d arrived on the scene, Veil had obviously managed to get to his equipment box; nunchaku were draped around his neck, and he had two throwing knives stuck in the waistband of his jeans. His clothes, his face, and his hair were speckled with paint, which meant he’d done some rolling around on the floor, probably an instant or two after the lights had gone out. He disappeared behind the partition, emerged a few seconds later with a fire extinguisher braced under his right arm in its paint-stained sling. He pushed a lever on the extinguisher, aimed the nozzle with his free hand, and began pumping foam over the spreading flames. In less than a minute the flames were out, the swirling smoke caught in drafts and mercifully being sucked out of the loft through three open panels in the bank of windows. Throughout, I remained flat on my belly, gun aimed at the center of Kitten’s barrel chest.

  “Now back up to the window,” I said as I got to my feet. “Take slow, easy steps. If I see anything but your feet moving, I’ll put a bullet in your heart.”

  “Like I said up in Fort Lee, you can be a real pain in the ass, Frederickson.” There was just the slightest trace of a smile on Henry Kitten’s face as he slowly backed toward the ceiling-high bank of windows. “How the hell could you know I’d be here tonight?”

  “I didn’t; I just knew you’d show up eventually, despite what happened to your employer. You made that clear to me, remember?”

  “Obviously I talked too much.”

  “I was coming down to talk to Veil about you. We seem to have arrived at about the same time.”

  “You showed up at a most inopportune time.”

  “I couldn’t disagree more,” Veil said dryly from somewhere behind me and off to my left. There was a faint click, and the beam of a powerful flashlight cut through the smoky air and moonlight, spotlighting the assassin’s broad torso and head. Eddies of smoke still whirled around Kitten as he stood in front of the window, feet braced slightly apart. I might have been in hell, talking to the devil himself, and when I had to cough I made certain my right hand remained steady and I didn’t blink. Kitten’s moves, like Veil’s, could be measured in milliseconds.

  Veil propped the flashlight on a stiff fold of tarpaulin, then came over to stand beside me. “Thanks, Mongo,” Veil continued as he studied the man caught in the beam of the flashlight. “I was in a bit of a spot there.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Obviously, this is the guy you kept trying to warn me about.”

  “That’s him,” I replied tersely, backing away slowly while I kept my eyes on Kitten’s face, which seemed remarkably impassive in the bright light. When I bumped up against a wall, I slid down it until I was sitting on the floor. I brought my knees up and rested my forearms on them so as to be able to keep a steady aim on Kitten’s chest while making myself as small a target as possible. Even with my gun trained on him while he stood with his hands clasped on his head, I didn’t intend to lose my concentration for a second.

  Veil moved a few steps to his left, then leaned casually against a support column as he continued to study Henry Kitten. “Why did you come up here?” he asked easily as he hooked his left thumb into a pocket of his jeans. “You certainly don’t look stupid, and Mongo tells me you’re actually quite clever. It must have occurred to you that there were easier ways to try to kill me. Why didn’t you just blow up the place, or pick me off out in the street?”

  Henry Kitten’s response was a shrug of his broad shoulders—a slight movement that almost cost him his life, since I was ready to pull the trigger at the least provocation. I’d seen the ninja assassin in action, and wasn’t taking any chances; in my opinion, Veil still wasn’t treating the other man with sufficient respect and seriousness.

  “I’m afraid I underestimated you, Kendry, not to mention the prescience of your friend over there. I thought this was the easy way.”

  “Are all the lights in the neighborhood out?” Veil asked as he glanced over in my direction.

  “Just this block.”

  Veil grunted. “A time-delayed charge, in just the right spot. Interesting. In addition to his other talents, Mr. Kitten here appears to be a master electrician.”

  “Yeah. How’d he get in?”

  “Up the fire stairs. He managed to pick the locks on both doors downstairs without my being aware of it, but I’d already seen the needle on the security system monitor fall, indicating that the entire system, including the battery-powered emergency backup, was out. I was just getting ready to check out my batteries when the lights went out. It seemed a bit too much of a coincidence for my alarm system to go out at the same time as the power failed, and I hit the floor about a second before Jumbo here came crashing through the upstairs door. I managed to get over to the equipment box and take out some weapons without getting shot, and I just stayed there. He couldn’t move over these stiff tarpaulins without my hearing him, and he obviously didn’t want to test my skills with a throwing knife. It was a standoff until you showed up.”

  Henry Kitten, who had been following our conversation with mild interest, now smiled, his lips parting to reveal even, white teeth. “I saw in the morning papers that the man who hired me is dead. Somehow, I strongly doubt that he shot himself in a hunting accident; Orville Madison never took vacations, and people were the only prey he was ever interested in hunting. Somehow, you managed to find out who he was and get to him, didn’t you, Frederickson? The profile I gave you in the park led you to him. That was a nice piece of work. You did a hell of a lot better job of flushing out Madison than I did with Kendry here.”

  “Which just goes to show that you have to pay attention to quality in choosing your clients,” I said.

  “I’ll remember that in the future.”

  “You don’t have a future,” I replied curtly. I was in no mood for—and had no intention of being lulled into—light chitchat with Henry Kitten.

  “So, Mongo,” Veil said easily, “what are we going to do with our visitor?”

  It seemed an excellent question, one for which I didn’t have a ready answer. Perfunctorily gunning down in cold blood a man who had spared my life—albeit for his own good reasons—didn’t really appeal to me, and turning him over to the police would pose any number of serious dilemmas, any one of which could tear apart a carefully constructed and necessary tissue of lies. An enormous amount of political power had very recently been brought to bear to conceal the fact that the dead secretary of state had been a murderous psychopath responsible for the brutal murders of a lot of innocent people, and that it had been my brother who’d
killed him. The way things had worked out seemed best for all. But with the world’s most wanted assassin sitting in jail awaiting trial, the whole thing could start to unravel virtually overnight. Captured, with what I presumed were death sentences hanging over him in two dozen different countries, Henry Kitten would have no reason whatsoever to keep quiet about his own long association with Orville Madison, and the events of the past few months. People would start asking questions, and reporters would begin comparing notes. Neither Garth, Veil, Mr. Lippitt, President Kevin Shannon, nor I needed the attention Henry Kitten’s tales would bring us.

  “Do I detect a note of indecision?” Henry Kitten asked in a mild tone. “Why not just turn me over to the police? They can book me for breaking and entering.”

  I said, “They’ll book you for a whole hell of a lot more than that, Kitten.”

  “Will they? Somehow, I get the impression that you’re keeping things from me. Exactly what did you and your brother discuss with President Shannon, Frederickson?”

  “You know about that?” Kitten only had it half right; I was the only one who’d actually talked to Shannon. But Kitten’s intelligence was still impressive.

  “I guessed. I tracked the two of you to Washington, and I saw you heading into the park toward the Viet Nam War Memorial. Considering the large numbers of police and Secret Service agents hanging about, I figured it had to be the president you were going to see. At that point, I decided that it was a waste of time to keep tracking the two of you in an attempt to find Kendry, because Madison was finished—how finished he was I didn’t fully appreciate until I saw the papers this morning. Anyway, with Madison destroyed, I naturally assumed that it wouldn’t be long before Mr. Kendry would come out of hiding and be … available to me.”

  “You should have gone home yourself, Kitten.”

  “That’s not my real name, you know.”

  “You say.”

  “I’m impressed that you came up with a name at all, but that’s not the right one.”

  “Who cares? They can bury you under ‘John Doe.’”

  “Oh?”

  “What is your real name?”

  “Did the president personally issue the order for Madison to be killed, Frederickson? Is that why you can’t quite decide what to do with me?”

  “Veil?” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Kitten,” Veil said to the huge figure standing before the window, “I know you spared Mongo’s life. Would you consider getting out of here and forgetting about killing me?”

  “You’d accept my word?”

  “I would. I believe you act on your own strong code of honor, which is the real reason you chose to attack me the way you did. Even if you’re forced to take a sizable cut in future earnings, it’s still better to lose some of your reputation and fees than all of your life. Remember that I don’t owe you anything, and I might just break your neck now and be done with it if I think you’re going to be a headache in the future.”

  “Do you really think you could do that, Kendry?” Henry Kitten asked in a low, even voice. “Do you think you could do it even with the use of both your arms?”

  “With the friend that you mentioned and his gun over there, Kitten, I’m not obliged to give you lessons. As I said, I take you to be a man of honor and great pride. Will you promise that I won’t see or hear of you again if Mongo and I let you walk out of here?”

  “It’s certainly a tempting offer,” Henry Kitten said, and shrugged his shoulders again.

  That was one ninja shrug too many, and I pulled the trigger on the Beretta. As the gun roared, his left arm—which had shot out from the top of his head with the speed of a striking snake—jerked back. He spun around and grabbed for his left shoulder at the same time as what felt like a white hot branding iron sliced across my forehead, just above my eyes. I pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession, firing blindly now as a thick, warm curtain of blood flowed into my eyes. I heard glass shatter.

  Stunned, I fell over on my side and frantically swiped at my blood-filled eyes with my free hand as I heard the thud-thud-thud of bodies colliding and blows landing. I felt nauseated and light-headed, and knew that I was close to fainting.

  My left hand found a paint rag. I used it to wipe away the blood from my eyes, then pressed it tightly against the shuriken-split flesh of my forehead. I struggled to my feet, swaying, then leaned back against the wall and squinted at the blurred tableau in a pool of moonlight almost perfectly bisected by the powerful beam of the flashlight.

  What I saw was two ninjas doing battle, dancing on the balls of their feet as they spun and charged, firing side and high kicks at one another’s body. I noted with some satisfaction that I’d managed to even the odds a little, since Henry Kitten’s left arm flopped uselessly at his side, and blood seeped from the bullet hole I’d put in his shoulder. Like Veil, the assassin was now forced to rely primarily on kicks, while taking care to protect his injury.

  Incredibly, at least to me, Veil had chosen to toss aside his deadly nunchaku sticks, along with the two knives he’d had in his waistband; it seemed he intended to give Henry Kitten a few lessons after all.

  Veil was nothing if not creative in his practice of the martial arts. He had mastered the kata of a dozen different systems, but used no system exclusively; indeed, he had devised what he laughingly called a no-system, which was all his own and which he considered superior to any of the many systems that were traditionally taught. Strict and sterile adherence to any one school’s kata could be a deadly trap, he had warned me on more than one occasion, inasmuch as it could telegraph your next moves to a knowledgeable opponent and provide him with a killing suki, or opportunity. Consequently, much of my training with Veil had consisted of my trying to unlearn the formal system of karate kata I had dutifully mastered in order to earn my black belt. Therefore, it was with some surprise that I watched Veil initially set up and move in a taijutsu mode, kata emphasizing distorted body angles, as if to protect his injured arm. Even Kitten, his triangular face briefly illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, seemed startled by what he must have assumed was his good fortune; and then the white ninja proceeded to execute a series of koppojutsu moves designed to penetrate Veil’s defensive maneuvers, to smash bone. His mistake. At the last moment, a microsecond, Veil spun out and away from a side kick, wheeled back in, and delivered an elbow strike to Kitten’s jaw that shattered teeth as it whipped the assassin’s head back.

  First round, first blood, to Veil. Not too trashy, I thought. In the future, which was looking brighter all the time, I vowed to pay even closer attention to the things my teacher had to say.

  But Kitten had his own ideas about the future. Seemingly oblivious to shock and what had to be considerable pain, he leaped high in the air, twisted, fired a high kick that would have broken Veil’s neck if it had landed. Veil leaned back, letting the foot fly past his head, then drove his left fist into the inside of Kitten’s heavily muscled thigh, just above the knee. Kitten grunted with pain and surprise. He landed on his other leg—awkwardly—and just managed to duck under one of Veil’s kicks that would have crushed his temple.

  I raised my gun with a badly trembling hand, trying to track Kitten, but did not pull the trigger. Both men were constantly spinning and circling, darting in and out of the smoky light, and I would have had a hard time telling which was which even if my vision hadn’t been constantly slipping in and out of focus. Also, blood had soaked through the rag I held over my forehead and was once again seeping into my eyes. I wiped away blood with the back of my gun hand, then sidled along the wall, angling closer to the two figures, looking for one clean shot. Limping slightly, Henry Kitten stepped back and began slowly to circle Veil, who had stopped moving and was now standing calmly in the center of the patch of moonlight, the flashlight beam highlighting his head and shoulders. Suddenly Kitten attacked with what was to me blinding speed, faking a side kick with his left leg, then spinning counterclockwise and launching a flying high
kick at Veil’s damaged right arm. Veil spun the other way, inside the kick, and drove the point of his left elbow deep into Kitten’s momentarily unprotected groin. Kitten cried out and doubled over while he was still in the air. He landed on his side, immediately sensed the danger and managed to scramble to his feet, although he was still clutching at his groin, inhaling and exhaling with great whooping sounds. He tried to back away, but he wasn’t fast enough. Veil’s fist shot out and landed squarely on the other man’s bullet-damaged shoulder. Kitten screamed, took one hand from his groin to clutch at his shoulder. For a moment I thought he would go down, but he managed to keep his balance while he spun around and began to stagger toward one side of the loft. Veil facilitated Henry Kitten’s attempt at walking by stepping up behind the man and grabbing his belt, lifting him up on his toes. In what seemed to me an astonishingly brief time, Veil had achieved zanshin—total physical and mental domination of his opponent. He steered the other man around and marched him toward the end of the loft. When they were a few feet from the bank of windows, Veil flexed his knees, and with a mighty pull and shove hurled Kitten through the air. The ninja assassin disappeared into the night in an explosion of glass. Henry Kitten didn’t scream; amid the tinkling of glass came the sound of his body landing in the mounds of jagged junk and mushy, rotting garbage in the narrow alleyway four stories below. When Veil turned away from the window and came toward me, he didn’t even seem to be breathing hard.

  “Not bad for a painter,” I managed to say before the gun slipped from my fingers and I slumped unconscious to the floor.

  2.

  I awoke to find myself lying on Veil’s bed, with Veil bending over me applying the finishing touches to taping a thick bandage in place on my forehead. The smell of turpentine was strong in my nostrils, and I suspected it was coming off me. The lights were back on, and I could hear the thrumming of the two giant exhaust fans in the work area as they carried away the last traces of the acrid smoke from the fire I had started. A teakettle was whistling in the kitchen behind the thin partition beside the bed. I started to sit up, but Veil put his hand on my chest and gently but firmly pushed me back down on the bed.