Mansard
The Day of National Reconciliation arrived in a shroud of yellow, pollution-heavy, morning fog. The Statue of Liberty stood aloof and silent, torch high, head and shoulders above the ground mist that obscured the island and hid the water clear out to where the ocean started. The fog brought with it an intense Sunday-morning silence that was broken only by the moaning of the horns on the Staten Island ferry and the desolate cry of seabirds above the hypnotic lapping of the waves. There was no rumble of traffic and no sound of human voices. In the mist, time seemed to be suspended, and it was possible to imagine sea-change ghosts lingering in ancient mariner loneliness.
Charlie Mansard shivered. He was up early. He had spent the night on the yacht that they had rented as a location headquarters for the production, but he had slept very little – partly because of the motion, and partly because he had Lynette with him, but mainly because of the preshow nerves that were now building to their final peak. Charlie sat in the welldeck behind the wheel-house, wrapped in a yellow slicker and nursing a cup of hot, black coffee and a large brandy. Lynette, wearing a thick, navy-blue fisherman's sweater thrown on over her skimpy black bikini, was up by the bow, leaning on the rail and staring into the mist.
"It's like the whole city just went away."
Mansard grunted. "I wish to hell it would."
Lynette grinned. "And leave you all alone to play with your toys? Come on, Charlie, you know you love an audience."
Charlie scowled. "Sure, I love them to death."
"Are you going to behave like a bastard right up until showtime?"
"Probably."
"You want to go back to bed?"
Somewhere in the mist there was the slap of a helicopter. Mansard looked up. "It's too late now."
"That's not what you said last night."
Despite himself, Mansard grinned. "Last night was okay, wasn't it?"
"You always do get it up the night before a production."
By midday, the fog had thinned out to a dirty gray haze. On Liberty Island, the last preparations were in full swing. Cargo helicopters came and went in constant rotation, and gunships circled overhead. TV crews laid cable and positioned cameras while deacons, some with bomb sniffers, prowled the area. Caterers had started laying out the aftershow buffet for the president and his guests. The musicians were about to begin the sound check, and the two-hundred-piece live choir would start being ferried in by chopper. The whole process was being conducted under the hard, watchful eyes of soldiers toting M-25s and demanding passes from everyone who moved.
Charlie Mansard was greatly relieved that his part of the event was off the island and onto the water. The projector banks were installed on the four big bridging rafts, each of which was quite capable of carrying a tank. They were moored some two hundred yards out from Liberty Island, bobbing on a gentle swell as the riggers crawled over them making last-minute connections. The tugs that were going to tow the rafts to the starting point would arrive at two-thirty. In the hours between dawn and noon, the yacht had been transformed from Mansard's love nest to his flagship. The decks were full of his people, and there was a constant shuttle of small boats between it and the rafts.
Compared to the show they had put on inside the Garden for Aden Proverb, the four skywalkers that would go up the Hudson were fairly simple in terms of hands-on control. They were big, but they were in no way as complex as, for instance, the red mist and multiple apparitions that had been done for Proverb. Like the original Four Horsemen, the new figures were preprogrammed and, once started, pretty much ran themselves. Human intervention would be necessary only in the case of serious malfunction. That took a major weight off the teams who normally ran the manual and DNI controls, and the atmosphere on the boat was close to that of a party. Champagne was being served, and a number of the men had brought their girlfriends. Mansard had taken a very liberal attitude toward the project's government expense account. Nobody had complained about the receipts he was turning in by the truckload, so he just went on spending. "We may never pass this way again, so let's get as much as we can," he said.
Mansard had managed to exclude from the boat anyone who was not part of his own team. There were no military personnel and no one from the White House. That arrangement did even more than the champagne to enhance the sense of it being a day out. There was even some barely covert drug use. By the early afternoon, it was warm enough to sunbathe. Nobody was too particular about the size and modesty of their swimwear, and at one point a deacon gunship had hovered overhead, complaining by radio about the naked and near-naked people on the deck of the yacht. Mansard had instructed the communications operator to ignore it.
"What are they going to do? Blow us out of the water? They can't deprive Faithful of his show."
At around two-fifteen, Jimmy Gadd, who had not joined in the party but remained on the raft to supervise the checks and last-minute adjustments, called over.
"We've got the tugs on the radar. You should be able to see them in a couple of minutes."
Mansard moved to the rail and peered into the haze. He could not see the tugs, but it was good to know they were out there and on time. He turned his attention to the rafts. There was very little movement. Things were practically ready. The party noise behind him was forgotten. As soon as the sun went down, his crowning creation would blaze into life. He slowly rubbed his hands together.
"Just you wait, New York. Just wait until dark."
Carlisle
Carlisle stepped out of the car and looked around. The fog still clung between the buildings. It was so heavy and sluggish that he did not want to think about what it was made of. Reeves and Donahue were waiting for him, but he hesitated before walking into the building. Whatever happened, this was the last day. When he walked out again, the world would be different – if, indeed, he walked out at all. By the end of that day he could well be dead or a prisoner in the sub-basement. There might be a new regime, or he could end up in the middle of some uniquely weird product of Dreisler's warped imagination.
A gunship rattled overhead and Carlisle looked up, watching until it vanished beyond the skyline to the west. Vultures gathering? During his drive down to Astor Place, the city had looked as if it were in a state of siege. The streets were empty, even for Sunday morning. It was as if the people of New York, at least, put no trust in Larry Faithful's Day of National Reconciliation and its promise of sweetness and light. New Yorkers expected trouble, and they could not have been reassured by the massive show of official strength. NYPD, deacons, and the army were all out in force. Pharaohs and Patton vehicles rumbled through the echoing streets. Police cruisers and the deacons' Continentals sped across intersections with their sirens screaming, ignoring the stop lights. Large knots of riot police were gathered at strategic points, like Columbus Circle and Herald and Union Squares. With so much manpower on the streets, only a skeleton crew could have been left at Astor Place.
Harry Carlisle squared his shoulders and walked into the main entrance of the CCC complex. Reeves and Donahue fell into step beside him. At least the day would see the end of that particular nonsense. For the last week, they had been guarding him as if he were a celebrity or a politician. As the three of them walked in, Reeves carefully scanned the interior of the entrance hall. There were only the routine guards and receptionists.
"So this is the day?"
Carlisle nodded. "That's what they told me."
"What do you expect to happen?"
"Anything could happen. Just remember one thing: Be ready to duck. Don't get so far into anything that you won't be able to duck back out again."
"We'll be looking to you."
"That's the part I love."
Carlisle had been held incommunicado by Dreisler for another four days, supposedly for his own protection, but Harry Carlisle had given up trying to guess what Dreisler was up to. On the fifth day he had made a carefully choreographed return to work. From that point on, he had been guarded night and day in case the deacons took another crack at him. He had even been stashed in an Upper West Side apartment. He thought it unlikely that the Magicians would try again so quickly after their last failure, but it seemed as if not much was working according to logic anymore.
The situation between Carlisle and the deacons was a strange standoff. Probably every deacon in the city knew unofficially about the attempt to disappear him and the resulting deaths of Spencer and the others. Officially, however, the incident had never happened. Winters, the only survivor, could not file any kind of report without violating the Magicians' damn-fool blood oaths. Deacons shot him murderous looks when they passed him in the corridors of justice, but looks could not kill. They were enough, though, to make him glad of his bodyguard and to ensure that he spent most of his time in parts of the building that were solid PD turf.
When Carlisle, Reeves, and Donahue reached Carlisle's office, the two detectives faced their lieutenant, standing in front of his desk like men who wanted answers. For their own protection, he had told them nothing about Dreisler's plans. All they knew was that they were to assemble a clandestine force of trusted PD men and have them at Astor Place on that particular Sunday afternoon.
Before they could say anything, Carlisle held up a hand. "All in good time."
He had been carrying a brand-new, gray Samsonite briefcase. He placed it on the desk, keyed in the lock combination, and opened it. The case had an up-to-date and fully comprehensive set of bugblockers built into it. When Reeves and Donahue saw it, their eyebrows shot up. He touched all of a row of six red buttons. A galaxy of LEDs came on as all the blocking systems activated. If the deacons had his office bugged, as they undoubtedly did, they would no longer be able to hear a thing. They would know that he was using some kind of jamming device, but their only real option was to come down and bust into his office. He was counting on the fact that they would be too busy with Day of National Reconciliation business to bother.
Reeves and Donahue exchanged glances, as if each was waiting for the other to start. Finally Reeves took the initiative.
"So what's the story, Lieutenant?"
"You mean, if I ask you to put a small secret army together for me, you want to know why?" Carlisle asked, sitting down. The levity was a crock – but he did not want to communicate his fear to the others. He was scared enough for all three of them.
Reeves shrugged. "It's human nature."
"So, do I have my army?"
Donahue nodded. "They're coming, just like you said, one at a time and in small groups. They'll all be in the building and ready for orders by three."
The two detectives waited. Carlisle leaned forward.
"Okay, here's the story. We've received information that a group of disgruntled, middle-echelon deacons is going to use today's extravaganza as cover to stage a coup."
Carlisle did not like lying to his men, but it was the only way to protect them. If everything came unraveled and they were all arrested, or if Dreisler pulled something unexpected, they would at least be able to say that they were only following orders. There was one other consideration. He may have reluctantly thrown in his lot with Dreisler, but he was in no position to explain the complex conspiracy to anyone else. He did not know it all himself. He really was walking point.
"They are going to use the expected disturbances after today's telecast as an excuse to arrest Faithful and declare a deacon junta. Only the PD, a handful of deacons, and some sections of the military can stop the deacons from seizing power."
"Where do we figure in all this?"
"If the deacons have control of this complex, they essentially control the city. We have to stop that. Now, it's in our favor that there's hardly anyone on duty in the building. On a prearranged signal, we will seal the entrances, take over the communication center, and arrest any deacons who want to make trouble. We have one other advantage in this apart from the fact that almost everybody is on the street. You may have noticed that Dreisler's people have arrested a large number of senior deacons in the last few weeks. Their chain of command is screwed, and the ones who are left will be without too much high-level direction."
"Is Dreisler involved in all this?"
Carlisle shook his head. "We have to assume that Dreisler's on our side."
The two detectives looked dubious. "You're not telling us everything."
Carlisle looked down at his hands. "No, I'm not. I don't know everything. I couldn't tell you if I wanted to."
Donahue was thoughtful. "Where does the brass stand in all this?"
Carlisle paused before answering. "They'll be one hundred percent if everything comes up roses. If it doesn't, it'll almost certainly be every man for himself."
That was actually very close to the truth. Even before Dreisler had let him go, he had been permitted to talk to Parnell. During a very stilted conversation, Parnell had intimated that the higher-ups in the PD knew of Dreisler's plan and would do nothing to stop or hinder them. They would throw in with his Committee of National Reconstruction if he was successful, but if he failed, they would put so much distance between him and themselves that it would seem as if he had the plague.
Reeves and Donahue looked at each other.
"So it's all down to us?" Reeves said. "If we win, we're heroes, and if we lose, we're dogmeat."
Carlisle nodded. "Dogmeat would look good in comparison." He leaned back in his chair. "You can bail out now."
There was a long silence. In the end, it was Reeves who again spoke for both of them. "What the hell, we'll go for it. If something isn't done about the deacons, they'll get us all soon enough."
Carlisle placed four diskettes on the desk. "These are the detailed orders for the individual squad leaders. On a more general level there are three things to remember. Make sure that the roof helipad is kept open and is under our control. That's vital. You should ignore the computers. There will be all manner of weird stuff coming up. The whole system will be virused to hell by the end of today. Don't trust the computers, and don't trust anyone you don't know."
"What levels of force do we use?" Reeves asked.
Carlisle looked him straight in the eye. "Whatever it takes."
Both Reeves and Donahue nodded. "Is that all?"
"I wish I had some encouraging speech to make. I don't. All I can tell you is that, one way or the other, it will all be over in a matter of hours. I pray that things will be better."
The two men seemed to sense his doubts. "Don't worry, Lieutenant, we're with you."
After they left, he sat for a long time in silence. Somewhere over the last few days he had lost some kind of innocence – or maybe it was his integrity. The last of it had finally banished during the conversation with Reeves and Donahue. He had deceived his own men, and he could no longer shelter behind the spotless shield of the honest cop. He was a conspirator just like the rest of them. Maybe not as tainted as Dreisler, but it was only a matter of degree.
He sighed and picked up the phone.
"Code 8971A Dragonfly," he said.
It had started.
Winters
Winters had never felt so alone. All his life he had been part of a team – in school, at college, and now in the service. There had always been people around him, comradeship and shared ambition. Since he had survived the attack of the Lefthand Path, he had become an outcast. Nobody spoke to him except in the course of duty, and his duties had dwindled to routine data shuffling. There was no point in telling the others that it was not his fault that he had been knocked unconscious instead of killed outright. They already knew that it was only his vows to the Magicians that kept him from reporting the incident, and they suspected that Carlisle was associated with the terrorists, but none of that seemed to make any difference. He had returned neither victorious nor on his shield. That was enough to make him a pariah. His recent hopes, encouraged by his summons to the Magicians and the implication that he was going to be asked to join their numbers, had been cruelly dashed. He could not see how he would ever recover from the disgrace. He had thought about trying to redeem himself by killing Carlisle, but the lieutenant seemed to be constantly guarded, ever since his mysterious return.
The only individual who showed any sign of being aware of Winters' situation was Senior Deacon Dreisler, and even he had not come through with the orders that he had talked about in the hospital. All he had heard from Dreisler was a cryptic message that he should be present at the Astor Place complex that Sunday and ready for any orders. Now it was Sunday, and he sat at his workstation, staring at a blank screen and waiting for a silent phone to ring. It occurred to him that it was probably just as well that he was not publicly linked with Dreisler. The senior deacon might well be the kiss of death to any plans Winters may have had to reinstate himself with his comrades. The purges that Dreisler had been conducting had made him the most feared and hated man in the service. Anyone connected with him and his department was looked on as an informer and a traitor.
The junior deacons' squad room was all but deserted. Almost everybody was on the streets. A few deacons came and went, but they had the air of men passing through on more important business. There were no greetings or reports of what was going on outside. They treated him as if he were invisible. At one point, Thomas had come in, looking as if he were about to speak; but then his face had stiffened and he walked out without a word.
The hours dragged by. One o'clock, two o'clock. His monitors remained strangely blank. He ran a function check, which told him that everything was working normally. There was just no data being fed in. Was there some sort of security blanket that no one had bothered to tell him about? When, at about three-thirty, the primary screen suddenly flashed into life, he almost started in his seat. There were just two words on the screen.
Winters leaned forward eagerly. The words remained on the screen for thirty seconds, and then they were replaced by a specific instruction.
He keyed in the code. The screen disintegrated into colored moire patterns for about fifteen seconds and then it cleared.
REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO THE BASEMENT ARMORY.
Winters' heart leapt. They did have a job for him after all. Perhaps he was not a total outcast. He was on his feet, buttoning his jacket.
As he was waiting for the elevator, live men in windbreakers and blue jeans turned into the corridor. They had machine pistols slung over their shoulders and they looked like PD detectives. What the hell were armed cops doing up here?
One of them called out to him. "Hey, you! Where do you think you're going? "
Winters looked around angrily. Who did they think they were? "Who wants to know?"
At that moment, the elevator door slid open. The PD men, if that was indeed what they were, quickened their pace. He swiftly stepped into the elevator car and thumbed the 'door close' button. The doors hissed shut and began to descend.
When he arrived at the armory, there were some twenty junior deacons assembled there, surly and more than a little confused. Winters received a few hostile glances, but nobody said anything. Thomas appeared to have taken charge.
"I've called you all down here because there seem to be some strange things going on in this building."
There were murmurs of agreement.
"Something is disrupting internal communication, and a number of channels to the outside are not responding. In addition to that, some of the surveillance cameras are down, but the ones that are left are showing armed groups of PD detectives patrolling the building, and there's no record of any authorization for this. Being of a curious disposition, I ran a check on the office of our friend Lieutenant Carlisle."
The name was greeted with catcalls.
"There's a bugscrambler being used down there."
The catcalls turned to angry muttering.
Thomas ignored the noise. "Accordingly, I suggest that we draw heavy weapons, divide into small groups, and conduct a systematic reconnaissance of the building."
A deacon called Erhardt raised his hand. "What do we do if we come across one of these groups of PD? "
"We order them to return to their own areas pending a full investigation."
"And if they refuse?"
"That's why we're drawing heavy weapons."
Mansard
"Will you look at that? It's like something out of an old news-tape of Vietnam or Honduras. They ought to be playing 'Ride of the Valkyries.' "
The presidential aerocade was coming down the river, led by a pair of King David light attack helicopters, flicking from side to side across the width of the Hudson, close to the water, like giant mosquitoes. Behind them there were four old, solid Hueys, running straight ahead, line abreast. The president's big Nehemiah – Air Force Four – came next, flanked by a pair of Herod gunships. Four more Hueys brought up the rear. The official formation was also surrounded and followed by a dozen or more police helicopters and news choppers, which stood off at a respectful distance. The slap of their massed rotors was like the low rumble of distant thunder.
"Behold, the Lord cometh."
"Old Larry sure does like to make an entrance."
Charlie Mansard looked at his watch. It was four fifty-live. "Old Larry's ten minutes late."
Mansard was very conscious of time. The show was due to start at six. There was an hour of intro filler, the choir, the massed flagwavers and baton twirlers, the dancers, and the celebrity walk-ons. Faithful himself went on at seven. He would do an hour, and at exactly seven fifty, just as he was running up to the final climax, Mansard's people would light up the four-sky walkers, and the tugs would slowly move the barges upriver.
"Let's hope they haven't started screwing up the schedule."
Carlisle
Carlisle looked from the phone to the digital clock on his desk. It was two minutes before four. He had been doing the same thing for the last thirteen minutes. The signal should have come already. There was a icy liquid feeling in his stomach, and his shoulder muscles were threatening to cramp with tension. Was the whole thing going bad before it had even started? He was all too well aware that he did not stand a chance if Dreisler failed. He was doing his best to keep his imagination tamped down. The reverb helmet was all too vivid and recent in his memory.
"Come on, damn it."
The phone warbled, and he grabbed for it like a starving man grabbing fora crust. "Carlisle."
There was a synthivoice at the other end, only barely cutting through the hiss created by multiple scrambling. "The Vulture has landed."
That was it. The signal was clear. Larry Faithful was down on Liberty Island. The Dreisler plot was going ahead, and from that moment on there was absolutely no turning back. It was win – or lose everything. He broke the connection and keyed in a fresh code. The phone on the other end rang only once.
"Reeves." The detective sounded tense. He clearly had a good idea how far out on a limb they were, even if he did not know the real reasons.
"It's me, Carlisle. I just received the signal that I've been waiting for. It's time to go. Are you still in a position to seal all the entrances to the building?"
"Shield controls are right in front of me."
"So seal us in."
Still cradling the phone under his chin, Carlisle tapped a code into his computer. An image of the exterior of the main entrance came up on the primary screen while the smaller ones showed split screens of the other entrances. The two deacon guards outside the main doors spun around in amazement as the heavy steel shutters started to roll down. One of them drew his pistol. Carlisle wondered what the man intended to do. The shutters could stop a rocket attack. Neither of the men seemed to have the presence of mind to duck back inside before the shutters closed completely.
"Damn fools," Carlisle grunted.
Reeves was back on the line. "The shop's shut, Lieutenant."
"Okay. So send the one squad up to the roof and the other to the communications center. We need to secure them both as quickly as possible."
"Where will you be?"
"I'm coming down to communications with you. Meet me at the elevators."
Kline
It was four o'clock – time for Cynthia to load the final stage of the program. After that, her work would be done. Her instructions were to leave the building as quickly as possible and go to the Eastside Heliport where she would be contacted and, presumably, taken either to a safe house or out of the country altogether. She fed in the diskette. The primary screen flickered and a message appeared.
THIS PROGRAM HAS TO BE FED INTO THE MAIN ACCESS GRID IN SECTION C70. GO THERE IMMEDIATELY.
THE SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS ARE DOWN SO YOU WILL NOT BE DETECTED.
She thought about the gun in her handbag. Nobody had told her to come armed, but there had been such a strange atmosphere around the CCC complex for the last few days that she had decided to bring a token of personal insurance. She had felt a little trepidation about bringing the little palm gun through the weapon detectors in the lobby, but if anything was going to get past, it was the lightweight, plastic Browning. If she had really reached the end of her assignment, she had to be extremely careful. Since she had been kept so much in the dark, she had no way of telling what might be coming to a head in some other part of the operation. There was also the chance that one of her superiors had decided that she was expendable. It had happened before and would certainly happen again. When she had first volunteered for service in the United States, she had known that there was a chance she might be killed. If nothing else, the suicide cap in one of her back molars was a constant reminder. She did not intend to go without a struggle, however. As far as she was concerned, there were not many fates worse than death, and passive acceptance was a betrayal of the principles for which she was fighting.
She stood up and slipped the diskette into her pocket. There was only one other person in the section: Toni, who had also pulled duty for that crucial Sunday, was watching soap opera reruns on her primary screen. Most of the girls had wangled invitations to see the president. A number had also been transferred out to God knew where after their deacon boyfriends had been arrested by Internal Affairs. Cynthia concealed the Browning in the palm of her hand. In training camp, they had called it the princess pistol.
"I'm going to the little girls' room," she announced.
Toni did not even bother to look up from Tender Time. Cynthia left the work area and hurried down the corridor in the direction of the seventy section where the unfiltered landline link to Virginia Beach was housed. She wondered if Harry Carlisle was in the building. He had been acting so strange since he had come back from his week-long disappearance. They had talked on the phone, but he had been so tense and distant that she had become half convinced that he knew what she was.
She reached the entrance to C70. The empty corridors were very spooky. The complex was sinister enough when the corridors were bustling with the business of God and justice. Now, without the hurrying people, an aura of dread pervaded, as if something evil and threatening was lurking around every brightly lit corner.
C70 was a closed white door. As she walked up to it, a synthivoice made clear just how closed it was.
"This is a class A security area. Identify yourself and produce authority for access."
That seemed to be the end of her mission. Somebody somewhere had screwed up. There was no way that she could get into C70. She turned to go. The synthivoice stopped her dead.
"Your authority is accepted. Proceed."
The door slid open. Cynthia walked in. She had expected it to close behind her, but it did not. Feeling a little uncomfortable, she surveyed the room. It was large and white, bare except for the terminal against the far wall. Only twice in her life had she seen anything quite so complex. It had three tiers of keyboards, eight monitors, and even provision for DNI leads. Large letters were flashing on the central monitor.
She sat down in the workstation's large white leather chair, wondering who routinely used the thing. It had certainly not been designed for underlings. She fed in the disk. The screens all lit up. A large cartoon vulture appeared on the primary screen. It lazily flapped it wings.
The vulture flapped its wings once more, and then the screen cleared.
THE PROGRAM IS LOADED – THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUBMISSION.
She removed the diskette. It was time to get the hell out of there. She looked up from the monitor and, to her horror, saw Deacon Winters standing in the open doorway with a big Moss-berg pointed at her. The expression on his face was an unpleasant leer.
"So what do you think you're doing in here?"
Winters
Winters had been paired with a deacon called Gresler – John Wayne Gresler. He was a hard, pious, and, Winters suspected, brutal man. Promotion had passed him by, and he seemed content to remain a solid foot soldier in the battle against the forces of evil. Closed and silent, he had a face as yielding as a granite mountainside. Along with Winters, he had been assigned to C section. Everyone expected it to be a milk run. Although the surveillance cameras were out, a number of deacons had reported that there was only a handful of women up there. Winters and Gresler were to go up there and, as fast as possible, make certain that such was still the case, then use the override channel to get fresh orders. No one saw any reason to send a backup with them.
When they reached the floor, the two of them split up to check through the numbered work sections. It hardly seemed worth bothering. As predicted, the place was like a high-tech morgue. Winters was working his way down through the high seventies when he spotted something that was not quite as it should have been. The class A, ID only, security door to area C70 was jammed in the open position, and a red warning light was flashing on the wall above it. A class A door never remained open.
Winters got a good grip of his Mossberg. Thomas had handed out the heaviest weapons in the armory; he seemed to be taking the strange behavior of the electronics and the unusual prowling of the PD very seriously. Winters was not quite as convinced. What could the PD do to them? Without calling out to Gresler, he moved almost cockily toward the door, sure that there could be nothing life-threatening beyond it. It was probably another symptom of the electronic chaos that seemed to be breaking out all over. Raising the Mossberg to the ready position was little more than bravado.
He turned into the open doorway. To his surprise, he saw that there was a woman sitting in the control seat of the room's single terminal. She suddenly turned and faced him, as if she had sensed him standing there. His eyebrows lifted in surprise. It was Cynthia Kline, the whore who had been sleeping with the traitor Carlisle. Something unpleasant uncurled in his mind. He had a fleeting vision of Kline and himself, alone in one of the chambers in the sub-basement. She was naked and strapped down to a vaulting horse frame. Her expression was one of pure, silent-scream terror. As the vision faded, his own face twisted into an unpleasant grin.
"So what do you think you're doing in here?"
Kline
She fired without thinking. The plastic Browning was in front of her on the terminal. She scooped it up in one smooth movement and aimed by instinct. The Browning made a series of quiet pops. The flat, lozenge-shaped slugs were tiny when they left the gun's rectangular barrel, but on impact they sprang open to form ripping, tearing stars of hardened plastic. The first took Winters in the chest. The second hit him in the throat. The third and fourth were close together in his forehead. Her instructors would have been proud of her. For a few seconds Winters stood absolutely still, blood flowing down his face and neck and staining his shirt. He looked surprised. Then his eyes rolled up, and he toppled and fell. His blood spread in a widening pool, across the white tiles of the floor. Cynthia let out a harsh bark of grim laughter.
"That'll teach you to go up against a professional. Think you were taking on a bimbo, did you?"
There was a shout from somewhere nearby.
"Winters? What's happening?"
Cynthia screamed loudly and knelt down by Winters' body. The Browning was concealed in her palm. She heard the sound of running feet. A second deacon, also carrying a Mossberg, swung through the open doorway to C70. He took in the scene in one stony glance and formed the understandable conclusion that Cynthia was nothing more than an innocent bystander.
"What happened?"
Cynthia had no trouble with sounding choked by terror. "PDs – they shot him."
"Where did they go?"
"Down the corridor."
As he turned his back on her to look out of the door, she calmly shot him. He staggered, and she fired again. Some spasm caused his fingers to close around the trigger of his weapon. The gun went off with a deafening roar, the blast chewing a large bite out of the door frame. Cynthia knew that she had to get out of there right away, before anyone else showed up. She could not turn the same trick twice. She was on her feet and moving. She stepped over the body of the second deacon, ran through the door, and hurried down the corridor, making for the elevators. Just as she turned the corner that led to the elevator banks, the doors were opening. She was in luck. She was about to step into the car when figures suddenly appeared around a corner on the opposite side of the elevator banks. They were running men in windbreakers and blue jeans. From the way that they brandished machine pistols and riot guns, they had to be plainclothes PD.
"Hold it right there, lady!"
There were too many of them, and they had too much firepower. If she simply jumped into the elevator, they could easily blast through the doors. She let the Browning drop into her shoulder bag, hoping that they were too far away to notice the move. They would not expect a woman to be armed. She raised her hands.
"Don't shoot!"
They were all around her barking questions. There were five of them, young and tightly wrapped.
"We heard shots."
Cynthia nodded. "There are two deacons back in C70. They're dead. They've been shot."
One of the five detached himself; a second followed.
"We'll go take a look."
They hurried back the way Cynthia had come.
"Did you see who shot them?"
"It was me. I shot them."
The remaining three looked at her disbelievingly as she took the Browning from her bag and held it out to them.
"You shot them?"
"What did you do that for?"
Cynthia had always had the gift of instant tears on demand. She began to cry. "They were going to kill me. It was some kind of revenge on Harry."
"Harry?"
One of the others looked at the speaker impatiently. "Don't you recognize her, dummy? It's Kline. It's the lieutenant's girlfriend."
"Of course it is."
The other two were coming back. The one who had recognized her first called out to them. "We got Carlisle's girl, and she says she shot them."
"We definitely got two stiffs back there, with expander slugs in them, bleeding all over the place. One of them is that little prick Winters."
Cynthia made her play before they could ask too many more questions. "Can you take me to Harry? Do you know where he is?"
The PDs looked at each other.
"So what do you think? Do we take her down to the lieutenant or what?"
The agreement was fast.
"Yeah, take her to him. Then it's out of our hands."
Carlisle
The clatter of gunfire was amplified over the communications center audio system. The audio override on their tracys was the only contact they could trust. Everything else was going crazy as the multiple and constantly mutating viruses took over.
"They've got us pinned down in the entrance to the roof." Donahue sounded desperate. "There's a bunch of them. All got Mossbergs. We're safe in the stairwell for the moment but we need help up here."
Carlisle spoke in the bead mike of his headset. "I'll get more people up there."
"We need a grenade launcher or a couple of small AP missiles."
Carlisle looked around. "Can we get anything like that?"
"Not while the deacons are holding the arsenal."
A detective called Murphy spoke up. "There's a Cucaracha locked up in evidence. We took it off those greasers, the ones that were calling themselves the Screaming Fist. It hasn't gone to weapons disposal yet."
"Get it and go."
Another man pushed his way through to the front. "I got a Parsons and a clip of grenades in my locker."
Carlisle looked at him in amazement. "You keep a grenade launcher in your locker?"
The man shrugged. "You never know when it might come in handy. I got it back when – "
Carlisle cut off the explanation. "I don't give a damn right now. Just get it and get up there. I want the helipad secured."
He spoke into the bead mike. "Donahue, did you hear all that?"
"I heard it. Just tell them to hurry."
Taking the communications center had been easy. Running it was a great deal more difficult. When Carlisle and his men had stormed in there, the deacon operators had already been confused by the increasingly erratic behavior of their equipment. Only two had tried to put up a fight, and they had been shot out of hand. At the sight of the bodies bleeding on the floor, the others had become immediately cooperative – not that there was much with which they could cooperate. The communications center was the brain of the CCC complex, and that brain seemed to be going into some electronic grand mal seizure as the final wave of Dreisler's viruses took hold. In normal times the com center was, for all practical purposes, the Astor Place war room, the mission control for all law enforcement in the city of New York. Banks of monitors displayed the ongoing status of various operations and investigations; they showed manpower figures and deployment reports. The computers answered, channeled, filed, and recorded the thousands of calls that came into the complex during each twenty-four-hour period. They coordinated vehicle dispatch and all the mobile message systems available to the officers. They oversaw the massive electronic eavesdropping network, maintained the links with Virginia Beach, and even integrated the internal surveillance system.
The centerpiece of the large, circular, and dimly lit room was the complex situation board that gave visual breakdowns of what was happening in various parts of the area. On any other day its cold electronic glow, moving lights, and the mathematical tracery of its grids were the products of a cold logic. A signal was sent, a car was dispatched, and every detail appeared on the situation board. A visitor could easily be convinced that it was the graphic representation of the implacable majesty of the law in action.
On that day, however, it would have been hard to convince a visitor that the entire communications center was anything but an extension of some insane pinball machine that was about to hit tilt. Some monitors simply rolled and strobed, while others exploded into riots of color. Whole banks remained stubbornly down, their screens blank, like dead, catatonic eyes. Every now and then, a cartoon vulture would appear at random on a monitor and flap its wings. Carlisle knew that the vulture had to be a product of Dreisler's warped sense of humor. The situation board itself danced with lights like a hyperkinetic Christmas tree. Even the sections that appeared to be responding normally could not be trusted. Much of the displayed data that, at first glance seemed plausible and organized, turned out, on closer examination, to be total nonsense. Even when logic was theoretically holding up, there was no guarantee that the information bore any relationship to reality. The deacon operators, under the watchful eyes of armed PD officers, sat and stared dumbly at the induced lunacy. They had the look of men in the grip of a nightmare.
Even amid the chaos, there was hard data still coming in. The TV satellite feeds still came through, apparently intact, and it was clear from the pictures that large crowds were massing all along the Hudson from Fourteenth Street on down. It was also obvious that the computers themselves were still running the operations on the street according to some diseased, corrupted master plan. The deacon in charge of operations in the Times Square area had suddenly appeared on what had previously been a blank screen and requested permission to shuttle a party of prisoners down to the Astor Place lockups. A synthivoice calmly diverted him to an uptown precinct. Nothing, though, was telling Carlisle what he really wanted to know. He had no idea what was going on on Liberty Island. Had Faithful been arrested, or had the plot collapsed? He half expected deacon reinforcements to come through the door shooting, bent on retaking the com center. Each time the door opened he had to stop himself from twitching for the Uzi that was slung over his shoulder.
There was so much to do that Cynthia Kline was the very last person on his mind. When the group of detectives brought her into the center, his heart sank. Not now. He did not need it. He had enough to worry about. Ever since he had found out that she was a Canadian agent, he had tried to blank out all thoughts of the woman. Unfortunately she seemed bent on talking to him.
"Harry, I need to talk to you."
He tried to duck her. "I'm really busy."
"I've shot two deacons. What's going to happened to me?"
Harry Carlisle groaned inwardly. He looked at the detectives who had brought her in. "Is this true?"
"There's two stiffs up in C section."
"Christ." He faced Cynthia. He could hardly believe that only a couple of weeks ago they had laughed in each other's arms. "I don't have time for this right now."
"But…"
"I don't know what you've been up to, but I know what you are. By some weird set of circumstances, we're on the same side for the moment. You can stay down here, but keep quiet and don't get in the way. Okay?"
"Listen, Harry…"
"Either you keep quiet, or I have one of my men take you out and shoot you. Things are that bad, so you better make up your mind fast. Okay?"
Cynthia was very pale, but she went silently to a empty seat and sat down. Carlisle glanced at one of the men who had brought her in. "Keep an eye on her."
Donahue's voice was on the audio again. "We've secured the roof."
"Casualties?"
"It was rough, but it's done."
"So hold on to it until you hear from me."
Kline
How in hell did he know what she was, and what did he mean they were on the same side? Questions rampaged through her brain, fueled by the adrenaline of fear, but she knew she was not going to get any answers. She did her best to remain calm and sit quietly, but it was not easy. The communications center seemed to have gone crazy. She could only suppose that the program she had loaded was partly responsible. The only consolation was that everybody else seemed to be waiting for something, too. She had never seen Harry look so tense. Part of her wanted to go and do something to comfort him, but another, much colder part told her to sit where she was and shut up. When he had said that he would have her shot, she had known instantly that it was no empty threat. She had seen the bodies covered by plastic sheets and the guns pointed at the heads of the deacon operators. Carlisle had apparently hijacked the communications center, and she wished she knew why. A war had obviously broken out between the deacons and the police department. Things were coming to a head.
The clock, if the clock could be trusted, crawled toward six. The bank of satellite feed monitors, the only ones that consistently did the same thing, was showing the opening credits of the presidential special; a tattered Old Glory, with the superimposed cross of the Christian United States, fluttered bravely against a storm-cloud sky, and then an aerial shot zoomed across the sunset city and closed on the Statue of Liberty. They were not getting the audio in the com center, but she guessed that the show was being accompanied by suitably patriotic music. The credits gave way to a pause where the affiliates could jack in their own commercials. On the screens, the choir was moving into position in preparation to going on the air with the opening. They were arranged on a huge apron stage at the base of the statue, in front of giant twin pictures of Larry Faithful and Jesus Christ. As far as Cynthia was concerned, it was the same old predictable – but still dangerous – hokum, and it was a mercy that no one had to listen to the audio. A digital countdown was displayed in the corners of the screens. The moment it hit zero, the choir's heavenly smiles glowed and their mouths started moving.
One monitor showed a different scene: a corridor and the door of what had to be Faithful's dressing room. Deacons and soldiers stood around, and technicians in nylon crew jackets walked back and forth. The camera, probably a robot, was feeding but not in use. It was there to catch a fast cutaway of Faithful coming out of his dressing room. Suddenly something weird happened over at the side of the screen. Two deacons seemed to be scuffling. Guns were out. Technicians also seemed to be involved. It was hard to see exactly what was happening. The robot, without programming, did not pan to the action. Rushing bodies obscured its field of vision. The fact that there was no sound did not help. A machine pistol silently spurted smoke and muzzle flash. Every eye in the com center was fixed on the one small screen. The confusion continued for some thirty seconds. Then a yellow censor blanket washed over it.
"Can you get rid of that thing?" Carlisle snapped at the deacon operator.
"In theory. The way things are, who knows?"
"Will you try?"
The PD man behind that particular operator leaned forward with his machine pistol. The operator shrugged.
"That's all I can do."
"So do it."
The operator entered a ten-figure code. The yellow rolled back, but it was too late. The corridor was empty. The camera had been moved to show a different angle, straight up the corridor, where three bodies were sprawled on the ground. At the same moment, all the other TV pictures were suddenly blocked by a feed interrupt sign.
"What in hell is going on out there?" someone asked.
Some of the PD men were on their feet as if expecting a physical attack. What came next was almost as bad. A talking head of Matthew Dreisler appeared on all the TV feed monitors.
"This is to all units," Dreisler announced. "The vulture has been caged."
Kline looked around in bewilderment. Everyone in the room was equally confused – all except Harry Carlisle. He simply looked bleakly alone. He held up his hands for quiet.
"I think it's time that I explained what's really going on here. The signal that was just received indicates that the president has been arrested and forces favorable to restoration of democracy have taken over key government installations all across the country."
Cynthia Kline could not believe her ears. Was that really Harry Carlisle she was hearing? While she had been kept in the dark, a mere cog loading programs and keeping her questions to herself, he had been right at the heart of the conspiracy?
"I haven't been able to give you the real picture up until now in case everything went wrong, but it looks as if the Faithful administration is at an end, and maybe this country has a chance to get back its national sanity. If anyone has a problem with this, I suggest that he speak now."
His words left a stunned silence. Carlisle gave them very little time to digest what they had heard before he went on.
"The situation as it applies to us is that we of the police department are currently in control of this complex. The president is being brought here by helicopter."
Reeves was one of the first to recover. "Who arrested him? Who's bringing him here?"
"Deacon Dreisler and some of his IA people."
Reeves face was a picture of contempt. "Dreisler. Dreisler and his headhunters."
Carlisle looked really unhappy. "There are some strange alliances in this business."
"So it would seem."
It took Murphy to voice the question that was in every PD man's mind. "Why couldn't we be told about this from the start, Carlisle?"
"I wanted to give you men the excuse that you were only following my orders."
Murphy's face was reddening. "So you took it on yourself?"
"That's my job."
"Men have died today without knowing what they were dying for."
Carlisle's face was harder than Cynthia had ever seen it. "That's nothing new."
"I'm not sure I like the way you do things, Lieutenant."
One of the deacons was on his feet. He looked around at the other men and waved a fist at Carlisle. "This is treason. The man's a traitor. We should simply arrest him."
He started moving toward Carlisle, but Murphy felled him with a gun butt. The man crumpled, and Murphy stood over him. The other PDs had their guns trained on the remaining deacons.
Murphy stared at Carlisle. "We're with you, Lieutenant, but we still think you should have let us make our own decisions."
Carlisle's shoulders sagged a little, but he quickly recovered and turned to Reeves. "I'm going to the roof. I want you to hold the fort here."
Reeves nodded stiffly.
Carlisle glanced at Cynthia. "Keep an eye on her."
Mansard
"The TV feed's down!"
"What?"
"There's nothing coming through, just a malfunction signal."
Mansard jerked away from what he was doing. "What are those idiots playing at?"
"There's no one responding from the island."
"How can that be? There's a half-dozen TV units on that island, plus deacons and the army."
"Don't ask me. It's like they were all blanked out, just like that."
"Are our people still on the line?"
The PA at the radio nodded. "Loud and clear. It's just the island that's communications dead."
"That's ridiculous."
Someone was shouting from the stern of the yacht. "There are choppers coming up from the island. One of them's the president's."
Two paces took Charlie Mansard to the rail. It was true – there were three helicopters rising from the island. One was Air Force Four; the other two were Herods from the escort. What he was seeing was insane. Was the president leaving in the middle of the show, before he had done his act? Mansard shuddered to think what power might be dragging Faithful away from the TV cameras. Maybe the country was at war.
The PA was beckoning. "There's this weird message coming in. They want us to power down and go back to the island."
Mansard held out his hand for the headset. "Give me that." He held it to his ear. "Who is this?"
A synthivoice was repeating the message. Mansard angrily shook his head. "No fucking robot is going to tell me to cancel the show. Get me Jimmy."
Jimmy Gadd was in the headphones. "What's going on, chief? Are we really calling it off?"
"The hell we are. Power up. People have come for a show, and we're going to proceed as normal."
"Are you sure?"
"Do it! We go right now!" A thought struck him. "Forget about the figure of Christ. We'll go with the other three. We'll give them the monsters. The world seems to be going nuts, so let's go with it." He suddenly laughed. "Maybe we can help it along."
Carlisle
He could still feel their eyes on him as he rode up in the elevator. He knew that he had lost a certain absolute trust, a trust that he would never get back. The men were following him out of pragmatism. He was no longer one of them, just another manipulating leader. The elevator stopped at the top floor, and Carlisle climbed the flight of concrete and steel steps that led to the roof. The wall around the door that opened on the helipad was chewed up by gunfire, and the door had been blown off its hinges. The body of one of his men, a rookie called Kaufman, was half buried in a pile of rubble. He stepped over more rubble to get to the outside. The sun was well below the horizon, and the sky was almost dark. The helipad was a mess. A third of the landing lights had been shot out, but the ones that were left were more than enough to show the other bodies and the debris on the flat landing apron and the way the concentric yellow rings that marked the pad were blackened by grenade bursts.
Donahue was waiting with his squad. They had the covers off the batteries of small Slingshot surface-to-air missiles that were mounted at the four corners of the roof. From the distrust and disappointment on their faces, they had clearly heard from the com center.
"So the president's coming, is he?"
Carlisle nodded. "They should be here any minute."
"And it's going to be a brand-new day is it, Lieutenant?"
Carlisle sighed. He did not know if he could handle an infinity of being treated like Judas. "I sure hope so."
"So do we."
The slap of rotors came from the southwest, and navigation lights twinkled by the black silhouettes of the Trade Center. The lights of the downtown towers had been extinguished for the skywalkers.
"I think this is them now."
The chopper sound came closer, and the men on the roof peered into the darkness. Soon it was possible to see that there were three of them, one large aircraft and two smaller ones – the presidential helicopter and a pair of escort gunships. The pitch of their engines indicated that they were coming fast, then, as they hit the final approach, they slowed. Whoever was in command, presumably Dreisler, was being ultracautious. They hovered a way off from the pad, and sunguns flared in the noses of the escort ships, sweeping the pad with blinding white light. Carlisle shaded his eyes with his hand, thinking that it looked as if UFOs were coming in for a landing. Finally they seemed satisfied and came on in. Only Air Force Four descended to the pad, whipping up a vortex of dust and light debris. The gunships stayed protectively overhead.
Before the big ship with the presidential seal on the side even touched, four men swung down from the open passenger door. They wore protective helmets and body armor over dark conservative business suits. Their weapons were at the ready. They had to be Dreisler's crack team. Next out was a cameraman, hair blowing in the prop wash – the event was being recorded for posterity. The helicopter settled on its landing gear, and more deacons clambered from the door. Some of Donahue's men were looking nervous. Maybe it was a Trojan horse? The deacons formed a protective semicircle. Larry Faithful stepped down, with Dreisler right behind him. They walked quickly to where Carlisle was standing. The cameraman was working overtime. This was the stuff of history: the landing pad on the top of the high tower, the long black shadows cast by the lights of the helicopter, the slowly turning rotors. This was the Fall of Larry Faithful.
Dreisler shouted over the roar of the engines. "You did a good job, Carlisle."
Carlisle did not want Dreisler's commendation. He nodded and mumbled, "Thank you."
"Lieutenant Carlisle, I want you to meet President Faithful."
Even at a moment of such gravity, Dreisler could still muster the sardonic smile. After the magazine pictures, the posters and billboards, the thousands of television hours, the president looked like an alien. Nothing about him seemed real. The features – the prissy rosebud mouth, the phony compassion around his eyes – were all parodies of the image. He was small, not more than five foot three, a bantam rooster who walked on the balls of his feet. His face was covered in thick television makeup that was streaked by rivulets of sweat. The flesh beneath it had the inhuman regularity of expensive plastic surgery. How was it possible for someone who looked so fabricated to have caused so much trouble?
Carlisle inclined his head slightly. What could one say to a president whom one had just deposed? Faithful's eyes gleamed briefly and locked on Carlisle's. The lines were still there, but the compassion had vanished. His voice was too soft to hear, but even by lip reading, the power of the venom was obvious. It was a flash of black ice anger.
"May you rot in hell, Lieutenant."
Carlisle was still blinking when the shouts came. One of Dreisler's men was quickly beside him.
"Sir, you'd better take a look at this."
Dreisler stabbed a finger at Faithful. "Guard him with your lives."
Carlisle hurried after Dreisler as the deacon strode to the edge of the roof. Out on the water, well beyond the tip of Manhattan, three huge figures of pure light, basking in their massive vapor columns, were advancing out of the night, bearing down on the city. Dreisler looked at the nearest aide.
"I thought we'd canceled Mansard's show."
"He seems to have uncanceled himself, sir. We could send in helicopters to break up the images."
"And we'd look ridiculous. It'd be a remake of King Kong. No, let him run. Arrest him when he's finished. If Charlie Mansard wants to put on the Day of Judgment, let him."
Mansard
Charlie Mansard gazed in awe at his own creation. The new projectors were a quantum advance on the ones they had used at the Garden. The image density was magnificent. His towering figures were no longer ghostly; the light seemed almost solid. He stood brace-legged on the yacht's gently rocking deck, hands clasped behind his back. The yacht was steering a course some distance out from the barges, so Charlie could see the full effect. All around him the party had stopped. An anxious silence had settled. Nobody seemed to want to stand next to him. Even Lynette was keeping her distance. He held his breath for a long time. Finally he let it out with a sigh.
"Yes, I think these are pretty much okay."
The relief among the crew was like a lifted weight. Charlie had given his seal of approval. They gathered around, slapping his back, hugging him, and pumping his hand. Champagne corks popped.
The Beast came first. It was a roughly humanoid demon with hunched shoulders and spindly, angular, almost insectlike legs – a cross between man and mantis. Mansard had borrowed heavily from mid-twentieth-century monster movies for that one. It stalked up river with a menacing shamble. The scales on its body were a deep bottle green and they gleamed with highlights of midnight blue and acid yellow. Its eyes were upswept emerald slits that glared balefully as it swung its head from side to side as if seeking its prey. Mansard had chuckled the first time he had seen the animated motion.
"Checking out who's been naughty or nice?"
Two spiky projections that could have been either antlers or antennae rose from the top of its elongated skull. Steaming saliva dripped from its fanged mouth, and its talons constantly flexed. Every few paces it halted, and its nostrils flared as if it were sniffing the air. The finishing touch was the numerals '666', the number of the beast, which pulsed hellfire red on the scales between the towering horns that were the approximation of a forehead.
The second figure also had its roots in the pop culture of the twentieth century. Mansard had used the movie goddess Elizabeth Taylor as the basis for the Whore of Babylon. She reclined on a shell-like litter that was born on the back of a roiling, multiheaded, serpentine thing. Mansard would never have admitted it, but when they came to the dragon they had been a little short on memory for the complex image and had been forced to disguise the fact by making it look as if it were half underwater. Although the thing that carried the shell was something of a half measure, every care had been taken in creating the figure that was riding in it. Mansard had not spared a byte in lovingly fashioning the Whore exactly as he had imagined her. She lolled in her litter, lascivious, leering, and drunk. Her gaping peignoir was the same scarlet and gold as the scales of the thing, and it shimmered with its own internal light. Her hair was a cloud of curls, black as the void, that seemed to ripple with a life of their own. Her lips were dancing flames begging the moths to come to them, while Cleopatra eyes made sultry promises, a menu of original sins. She raised a huge gold goblet, encrusted with evilly glowing gems, in a toast to the city that was still called Babylon on the Hudson. Wine, the color of dark blood, splashed over her all but totally exposed breasts. What did the Bible say the wine represented? The 'abominations and filthiness of her fornications'. In his newest creations, Mansard had pushed the moral envelope as hard as he could. From the start, he had roared at his design team.
"Go for it! There's no point in covering up her tits. The bitch is supposed to be bad, goddamn it! As bad as it gets!"
He did not want to think that the final group of figures, his original Four Horsemen, were in any way eclipsed by the new ones. They had been greatly improved since the Garden. In addition to the greater density and realism, improved computer capacity had given them a more comprehensive range of movement and gesture. The horses reared and pranced, and their riders looked from side to side as if surveying their domain. War pointed with his lance, and Death swung his scythe out over the river as if taking in all of New York in a single sweep. The sleeves of the robe of Pestilence flapped like giant wings as he broadcast his contagion, while the new levels of contrast made the black hollows of Famine's eyes look like the pits of hell.
Mansard noticed that there was a strange sound coming from across the water. It was not cheering; it was more like the confused shouting of a mob.
A PA moved up beside him, holding out a radio headset. "It's Jimmy, chief. He wants to speak to you."
Mansard held it to his ear.
Jimmy sounded jubilant. "Looking good, huh?"
"Not too bad."
"Can you hear that weird sound?"
Mansard nodded. "Yeah, what is it?"
"I think it's the sound of thousands of people going nuts. Maybe we touched a nerve."
1346408 Stone
All through the day, things had become progressively more strange. The usual mind-numbing routine of a Sunday in the camp first slowed and then ground to an inexplicable halt. In a place like Joshua, the first reaction was always one of fear. Any unexpected glitch in the normal discipline was viewed as a possible harbinger of some awful event. First, breakfast was more than two hours late, and when they were finally marched to the mess hall, the bosses were oddly quiet and preoccupied. There was none of the usual abuse and victimization. The billyclubs were still, and the hectoring voices were impossibly subdued. If anything, the guards seemed worried, almost frightened. Something was happening, but the prisoners had no idea what it was. One of the earliest theories was that there had been a breakout in some other section of the camp, but considering the wholly atypical behavior of the bosses, that idea hardly held up. After previous breakouts, the guards had actually stepped up the brutality. When the escapees had eventually been recaptured, the guards had taken a positive delight in parading their charges past the gibbet where the hanged and beaten bodies were put on display as a deterrent to the others.
The kitchens were the camp's clearing house for rumors and tidbits of information. They were one of the few places where inmates from different sections intermixed and, under cover of the steam and the clatter, were able to exchange furtive, muttered sentences. The first story to come out of the kitchens was attributed to a group on the women's side who had a clandestine radio. Supposedly, there were reports coming out of Canada that there was about to be major shakeup in the Faithful administration. Another, from G block, claimed that black deacon cars had been going in and out of the camp all through the night. There were also the usual doomsayers, who muttered that there were mass executions coming as the authorities intended to drastically reduce the size of the camp population.
In the middle of breakfast, there was an announcement over the PA. All religious services were canceled. That was unprecedented. Even the TV was shut down. The inmates spent the rest of the afternoon locked up in their barracks rooms quietly speculating what might happen next. At six, the TV came on again. The inmates were expected to watch the presidential special. They sat in silence through the opening filler, through the choir and the celebrities' pleas for peace and harmony. There were a few wry smiles among the inmates as soap opera star Charity Masterpiece exhorted the viewing audience to work together in Jesus. Then, to everyone's slack-jawed amazement, just before Faithful was due to begin his address, the transmission started to come unglued. There was a fleeting shot of running soldiers, then an interruption sign came on, only to be replaced ten minutes later by an equally confusing shot from the set of the Faithful special, showing performers and people who looked like deacons milling aimlessly about. Obviously something had completely disrupted the show. There was a kind of guarded excitement in the barracks – something was really radically wrong in the outside world. The TV signal went off again, in a flash of snow and horizontal lines.
The next TV picture was the most bizarre of all. Three enormous sky walkers were moving up a river. The Manhattan skyline identified the river as the Hudson.
1334680 Montague let out a low whistle. "The Beasts of Revelations. " Montague had been a Rastafarian in the real world.
1346809 Pitlik looked at him in surprise. "They're just big holograms."
"Armageddon time. Jah know." His eyes had taken on a glaze and the whites had turned yellow. "Armageddon time. Jah know."
"He's flipped."
Montague kept repeating his words over and over like a mantra. "Armageddon time. Jah know."
Later they would come for him with a straitjacket.
The first pictures of the monsters came from circling helicopters, but in a few minutes there was one from ground level, somewhere on the lower Manhattan waterfront. The camera crew was being jostled and buffeted by a crowd of struggling people; the roar of mass hysteria poured from the speakers. Near the mike, someone was babbling about the end of the world. Hands were clutching at the lens. The world had gone insane. From within the brutal order of the camp, it was a vision of the impossible. More than one inmate of D block wondered if 1334680 Montague was right. The cameraman must have staggered forward. After a series of lurches, the vantage point was directly over the river. People were actually jumping into the water.
"Armageddon time."
The picture died completely. There was no power. The bosses had pulled the plug. There was a deathly silence, broken only by 1334680 Montague droning on. "Armageddon time. Jah know."
The PA cut in. "All prisoners will remain in their barracks blocks until further notice. Food will be brought."
In an hour, food was brought and Montague was taken away. The food was slopped out by two kapos from A block. It was an unpleasant soup. A scrap of paper was attached to the bottom of one of the pails. There was a message on it: "Faithful has been arrested! There's going to be a new government!"
It might have been a cruel joke, but if it was true, what would a new government mean? One that opened the camps, or one that would set up gas ovens? The note was passed from one man to the next in aching silence. They scarcely dared to hope. Freedom? Maybe even revenge? It was almost inconceivable.
Carlisle
"You know what this is? This is like that Orson Welles Martian freakout back in the radio days."
"Except that it's to the hundredth power."
"I don't understand this. It's mass mania."
"Do they really believe it's the Apocalypse?"
"It's like these figures of Mansard's have hit some nerve and flipped everyone out."
Carlisle looked coldly at the man who had spoken. "If you're already half out of your mind on propaganda, poverty, and A-waves, flipping all the way might not look like so bad a deal."
That brought him some sharp looks. He glanced back at Dreisler. "This is the revolution, isn't it? We've got free speech now, right?"
Dreisler was sitting behind everyone, apparently watching their reactions; he seemed almost languid. The only sign that he might also be feeling the strain was the way he chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes, holding them between thumb and forefinger, FDR style.
"As long as you're breathing, Harry, your mouth will keep flapping."
Carlisle's mouth did indeed keep flapping. The day's events were building a reckless go-for-broke anger inside him. "You don't seem very surprised by all this. Were you expecting it? Maybe like the Proverb shooting?"
Dreisler's eyes flashed cold. "Watch it, Harry."
Carlisle ignored the warning. "Seriously, what do you think is going on out there?"
Dreisler's expression was impossible to read. "I think Johansen's right. Mansard has hit a nerve. He may even have lanced a large boil on the national psyche. Maybe it's the emotional end of the Faithful era. America wants one last, massive psychodelusion."
Carlisle slumped down in an empty operator's chair. "People are getting hurt out there."
Dreisler dragged on his cigarette. "People always get hurt. Omelets and eggs, remember?"
Carlisle thought of the dead cop on the stairs to the roof.
In the Astor Place com center they were watching the chaos growing outside. As soon as Faithful had been secured in the basement lockup under heavy guard, Dreisler, with the swagger of a magician, had produced a living, breathing Japanese cowboy called Hama who had jacked into the acres of corrupted software and laced in a temporary vaccine program. That, at least, had provided a narrow logic path through the virus-filled, psychedelic, random jungles that had once been the CCC base software. Dreisler had immediately used it to consolidate his position and start infiltrating his men into places that might be potential contra strongholds.
"As with revolution," he said, "the best time to fight counterrevolution is before it gets started."
It was not too long, though, before he was hampered in his efforts by the growing madness in the outside world and the reports of it that began to choke every communication channel.
Later it would be called the Armageddon Crazy, and it would go into the textbooks as one of the most extreme cases of riptide mass hysteria in a supposedly developed country. The appearance of Mansard's skywalkers had convinced vast numbers of people that Judgment Day was really at hand, and those vast numbers of people began to act accordingly. They went nuts. Initially it was confined to the crowds lining the Manhattan and Jersey sides of the river. People hurled themselves into the river in ever growing numbers. There were points during the night, even after the skywalkers were long gone, when the margins of the Hudson looked like a lemming fest, with bobbing heads and the thrashings of non-swimmers who had decided that they did not want to die after all. Unfortunately, the mania did not stay confined to the river for long. It rapidly spread across the city. By midnight, it was estimated that over two million people were raging through New York City, weeping, wailing, talking in tongues, and doing their best to damage themselves. At first the police had attempted to employ normal crowd-control measures, but after a while they were forced to admit defeat and simply step aside. The Armageddon Crazy was too highly charged to be kept in check. Also peace officers were not necessarily immune. The entire crew of a Pharaoh flipped out together and ran their armored carrier off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Many of those affected took it into their heads to go to graveyards and search for resurrected relatives. The hysteria was compounded by hundreds of people stumbling around among the headstones.
It was quickly discovered that the insanity could be transmitted electronically. With the TV censorship system burned out by virus, the images from New York – the giant skywalkers and the madness they had caused – went out unchecked, all over the country. As soon as the footage hit the screens in another city the same thing happened. Chicago, St. Louis, and Atlanta were infected immediately. New Orleans, Baltimore, and Detroit lasted an hour. Los Angeles held out for almost four hours, but when the Crazy got going, that city suffered one of the most spectacular outbreaks in the country. Hymn-singing arsonists burned huge tracts of the bone-dry Hollywood Hills, and naked millionaires ran down Rodeo Drive trying to give away their money. The gay underground took it as the signal to rise. Armed drag queens battled deacons to a standstill in a firelight that ran for twenty blocks down Santa Monica Boulevard.
The original plan had intended that Arlen Proverb go on TV the moment Faithful was in custody and pitch the idea of a brave new world to the country. That crucial move quickly fell victim to the Crazy. Dreisler had Proverb stashed in a safe house on the Upper East Side. When the signal was given, Proverb was supposed to get to a small basement studio and give his address, to those who still thought there might be a tomorrow, through a remote feed. The signal was sent, but nothing came back. It was discovered that the landline from the uptown studio had been put out of commission by an over-zealous virus. The backup plan called for Proverb to go across the park to another studio located at Seventy-ninth and Amsterdam. According to a garbled phone message, Proverb had set off with an escort but had not been heard from since. There were reports that thousands had gathered in Central Park to pray for the end. It was all too possible that the sight of a white limo trying to bull its way through might have driven them into a kill frenzy.
In the com center, a single screen was flashing regular blue and yellow pulses. An operator pointed to it. "That could be someone trying to get a visual signal in and it's being blocked."
Dreisler glanced at Hama. "Can you jack in and create a channel for it to get through?"
The Japanese bowed. "Of course."
He quickly connected his DNI leads. Under flaps of skin that resembled gills, the cowboy had rows of receptors on each side of his head that ran from ear to collarbone. There was nothing remotely like him anywhere in the U.S.A. If America decided to rejoin the rest of the world, they might find it an alien place.
Within seconds, an image of Proverb replaced the blue and yellow pulsing. His hair was messed and mere was a cut over his left eye, but otherwise he seemed okay. At first, he was mouthing soundlessly, like a fish in an aquarium, but then the audio cut in with an amplified crackle.
"… hear me? Is there anybody out there?"
Dreisler was on his feet. "Proverb, can you hear me?"
Proverb nodded. "I can hear you, but I can't see you."
Dreisler turned to Hama again. "Can we patch him to the satellite send?"
"No problem."
"Okay, Alien, can you go on the air?"
Proverb pushed his hair back out of his eyes. "Now?"
"Right now."
"I'm a bit of a mess, but I guess so."
Dreisler looked around the room. "Get ready to transmit this on all available channels. I don't want any mistakes." His attention switched to Proverb. "Are you ready, Alien?"
Carlisle supposed that Dreisler was what had once been called a natural leader. He had his doubts about where the deacon might be leading them, though.
Proverb nodded. The professional communicator was coming through. "On your cue."
"I'll give you a ten-second count."
Proverb had appeared on all the TV monitor screens. A digital display counted off the time. Cynthia Kline slipped into the seat next to Harry Carlisle. She quickly squeezed his arm.
"Is it going to be possible for us to be friends when all this is over?" she asked quietly.
Carlisle raised a helpless hand. "Let's find out when all this is all over."
"Are we through? Are you that angry with me?"
Carlisle shook his head. "Not angry. It's just hard dealing with the idea that all the time we were sleeping together, we were actually on opposite sides."
"I couldn't tell you who I really was. You must realize that."
"I realize it all on a logical level. It's the emotional acceptance that I'm having trouble with. Hell, it was my job to catch you people and put you in jail, maybe see you hang. It's not an easy turnaround."
"We're on the same side now."
Carlisle sighed. "That is true."
Cynthia looked at him anxiously. "So?"
He took hold of her hand and squeezed it. "So let's see this thing through and then have a long talk about what we're going to do next."
Over on the other side of the room, Dreisler gestured with a flourish. "On the air."
A synthivoice provided the program interrupt. "We are taking you to New York City for a message from the Provisional Government of National Reconstruction."
Proverb betrayed one flash of uncertainty, and then the pro was in business. He had the expression of a man who had seen some hard times but knew he was going to win out in the end. Carlisle realized that another piece of history was being made.
"My friends, there's some of you out there who know me and some who don't. For those of you who don't, my name is Arlen Proverb. This morning I was a preacher and pretty sure of myself. Tonight, after everything that has happened, I'm just an American, and there's only one thing that I'm still certain about. I want to see this country regain its self-respect."
Speedboat
"… I want to see this country regain its self-respect. It seems that some of us have forgotten that when you come down to it, that's all any of us are – just Americans."
Speedboat reached for his beer. "What are they high on down there?"
He lay flat on his chest on the bed in the beat-up Buffalo motel room. For once he was glued to the TV instead of using it to merely ease the interminable waiting. It came and it went. It was yanked off the air and then restored minutes later. For a while, Canadian programming had leaked through the jamming, but that had abruptly stopped. Regular programs would start only to be interrupted by wild, insane footage of the monsters attacking New York and the population going into screaming panic. Even he could see that the monsters were holograms, but the panic was absolutely real. New York had gone crazy, and the rest of the country appeared to be following suit.
Aden Proverb was going on about a country divided and a country reborn. Speedboat switched channels to see if he could get any more live coverage of the craziness. To his dismay he found that Alien Proverb was on every channel. He abruptly killed the volume. Then he thought he heard noises outside the room. He heard them again. He rolled over.
"That sounds like…"
He sat bolt upright.
"That sounds like gunfire."
There was sweat on his palms as he got off the bed and moved cautiously toward the window. He separated the slats of the dusty blind. Some large vehicle with red lights flashing on top of it sat in the parking lot. One word sprang into his mind. Raid! He looked around the room. There was no back way out. He heard more gunfire, but it was some distance away. There were voices in the parking lot. He caught a snatch of conversation.
"… so I told him, eh, fuck with me again and I'll be taking your fucking blood pressure the hard way."
A loudhailer barked.
"You in the motel, come out of there! Everybody outside in the parking lot! Right now!"
Speedboat stood in the middle of the room. His stomach knotted as he fought off panic. There was no way that he was going to avoid the camp. He went slowly to the door and opened it. He looked out and could not believe his eyes. A massive, dark-green, amphibious tank was parked in the motel parking lot. A tank? Why the hell would the deacons be using a tank? None of the miserable refugees sheltering in the motel was that dangerous. The tank did not even look right. It had the heavy, slab-sided look that was the hallmark of the Russians, or, at least, something based on a Russian design. It was then that he saw the large, red, Canadian maple leaf on the side of the turret. Speedboat could not believe his eyes. The Canadians had crossed the border. One of the tank crew was walking toward him. The collar of his tank suit was unfastened, and his visor was pushed back. He was grinning.
"Don't look so goddamn miserable, pal. You're getting liberated."