They rode the elevator to the ground floor, passing the hotel restaurants in unspoken accord. They didn’t want to go sit down at a table, wait for a waiter to show up and take their drink order, come back and take their food order, go turn it into the kitchen, and then wait for the kitchen to cook it, wait for the waiter to go pick it up and bring it to their table, and after all that get only a miserly little plate of food and they were all pretty sure that a plate of rolls or a small loaf of wheat bread wouldn’t hold them in check while they waited.
They hit the street with hunger rumbling in their stomachs and anticipation roiling in their brains. Their eyes focused on the building before them. LOAVES AND FISHES!!! Steaks! Chops! Seafood! Salad! Deserts! All You Can Eat! They looked at each other and nodded, even Sascha. They had found their Mecca.
They descended on the restaurant like a swarm of locusts, and after paying their fourteen ninety five apiece at the door (Ray covered for Mushroom Daddy with his personal credit card, bitching that Angel still had Barnett’s.) they tore through the buffet line and salad bar, leaving devastation in their wake like a force five hurricane.
Ray got himself a steak, a couple of pork chops, and a roast chicken, whole. He decided to leave the carving station—turkey, ham, and lamb—for later. He piled on some mashed potatoes, french fries, buttered noodles, and corn on the cob. Dessert was tempting, but he had no more room on his tray. He took a large ice tea, unsweetened, at the drink station. He was pretty thirsty.
He joined Daddy, Sascha, and Creighton at the table where they were already plowing through their food. Sascha had taken the sweet route, going for all the desserts he could grab, including an entire Black Forest cake. Creighton had cleaned out the carving station, and had a couple of made to order omelets, while Mushroom Daddy, apparently a vegetarian, had about half the salad bar in front of him, as well as a selection of hot vegetables.
“This isn’t bad,” he said around a mouthful of potato salad, “but mine is better.”
“Green Thumb,” Sascha said.
No one laughed. Somehow it wasn’t as funny as before. Maybe they weren’t as stoned, or maybe they were all just concentrating on the food.
“Mmmm,” Creighton said, at least acknowledging Daddy’s remark.
Ray just kept on eating. The food was indescribably good. Ray wasn’t sure why. Sure, he was stoned and Daddy’s pot was potent. Powerful yet with a curious mellowing effect, it heightened Ray’s senses, intensifying his sense of smell, taste, and touch. He smiled as he popped a piece of steak in his mouth and chewed slowly and thoughtfully. Too bad Angel wasn’t here, he thought. He’d like to see her smoke a joint of Daddy’s weed. It would really loosen her up.
That was it. He felt really, totally, one hundred per cent relaxed for the first time in weeks. Probably months. He was back in Branson with few prospects, except a return bout with Butcher Dagon and an unknown number of henchmen with unguessable powers and abilities, but that was okay. That was in the future. He would handle it as it came, like he always did. Tonight he was just a guy enjoying a meal. If he wasn’t with friends, he was with comrades, and that was just about as good. He never had many friends in his life, but he’d had comrades plenty and he’d never let them down. He hadn’t won every fight he’d ever been in and over the years he’d lost some of the steadfast men who’d stood at his side. But that was life. At least he knew that he always did the best that he could and he never ran from a fight.
He tore off a chicken leg, and looked around as he bit a chunk out of it. Mushroom Daddy had just said something, he’d missed exactly what, that had set both Creighton and Sascha laughing. Daddy joined them and then he did, too. He laughed aloud at nothing, though apparently, if you believed Barnett, Armageddon was just around the corner and the fate of the world was hanging in the balance.
“Let it hang,” Ray said aloud. The others all looked at him.
“What?” Creighton asked.
Ray shook his head. “Nothing.” He looked around the table at the three, shaking his head. “You are three crazy sons of bitches.” He picked up his ice tea glass and tipped it in their directions. “I salute you all.”
They laughed, grabbed their glasses and returned the toast, and Ray laughed with them, the hardest of all.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Somewhere in Kentucky
It was the carburetor. Fortunately there was a small town at the bottom of the mountain with a service station. It didn’t have the right type of carburetor in stock, though the guy knew a guy with a junkyard that probably had a couple of old hippie vans laying around it somewhere. The Angel told them they were in a rush. She flashed the platinum card and the service station attendant managed to take his eyes off her (he barely seemed to notice that John Fortune was glowing) and he took off to find the part. The Angel checked themselves into the town’s single decrepit motel, figuring that some sleep on a real bed would do them some good. She’d told the mechanic where they’d be, and to come and get them as soon as he was finished.
“You know,” John Fortune said, after they’d checked in, “I’ve never shared a motel room with a girl before.”
The Angel forestalled a grimace. This, she didn’t need. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I have to take a shower.”
John Fortune nodded, his eyes wide as if he were considering the possibilities. “Sure,” he finally said. “I’ll just wait for you here.”
The Angel went into the bathroom and quietly locked the door. Maybe, she thought, if she drew this out as long as she could, John Fortune would get distracted by the TV or something. It didn’t seem likely.
The water came out of the showerhead at a trickle. She took as long as she could, but the mildew and fungus stains on the stall wall did not incline her to linger. The towels were paper-thin and didn’t really dry her body as much as blot it kind of fruitlessly. She wrapped a paper-thin towel around her form and stuck her head out of the bathroom, but John Fortune was lying on the room’s single bed, sound asleep, a bright aura shining all around him.
The Angel sighed in relief. He’d been very tired, she supposed. She watched him for a few minutes. His face was angelic, if not exactly God-like. He looked like everybody’s favorite son.
She dried herself as best she could and shrugged into her jumpsuit again. It was tough to put on while she was still damp. She wished that she’d thought to bring her duffel bag along so she could change into one of her spare suits, but it was still sitting in the Escalade back in New Hampton. She hoped that Ray had remembered to return the SUV to the rental agency before the late charges started to pile up. He probably hadn’t, though. He didn’t seem particularly dependable, even if he did seem to have some uses.
She tiptoed into the tine room and sat carefully in the creaky chair next to the bed. Something nagging at the back of her brain made her feel jumpy. It was a sensation that something was breathing on her. Snuffling about her in the dark. She put it down to nervousness about the Allumbrados somehow striking their trail. When someone knocked on their door in the middle of the night, she jumped.
It turned out to be the mechanic. He was finished with the van.
The Angel awoke John Fortune. He seemed groggy and at first was disinclined to get up. She felt his forehead in concern. He was hot, of course. She wondered if he was running a temperature, or if it was his ace metabolism acting up. She knew that it could take some getting used to. When her card had turned ten years ago it took months before she’d gotten used to hers. Her mother never had. She never believed her when she said she was hungry. That she was starving. She just called her a glutton, and said it was a miracle that she wasn’t a fat pig because of all the food she ate. It was hard to be hungry all the time.
She finally got John Fortune up. It was about three o’clock in the morning by her watch. She overpaid the mechanic enormously. She felt guilty about it, but as Ray had said, Barnett could afford it and after all she was doing God’s work.
T
hey hit the road again in the dark. The Angel, even though she knew it would add a couple of hours to their trip, was more determined than ever to take the detour she’d been considering. Something was driving her. Calling her, really. She wondered if it was old ghosts.
Whatever the source, it could not be denied.
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
It was dark by the time Nighthawk and his group arrived at the Peaceable Kingdom. A limo had been waiting for them at the airport and taken them to the suite reserved for them at The Angels’ Bower. The hotel was quite crowded.
They went up to their suite. Nighthawk thought it was a little kitschy, but kept quiet because Magda was quite taken with it and Nighthawk saw no need to stir up trouble. Usher was satisfied because it was comfortable. That was all he needed. Nighthawk checked in, and they waited. They didn’t have to wait for long.
The doorbell rang within half an hour and Usher answered it. A bellhop and a luggage cart piled high with massive trunks stood in the corridor outside. “Mr. Nighthawk?” the brightly scrubbed young man asked brightly.
“Inside,” Usher said, stepping back.
“Special freight delivery,” the bellboy said, wheeling the cart into the room.
Nighthawk nodded. He gave the boy a twenty. He knew what it was like to be in his position.
“Thanks,” the bellhop said. “Want me to unload the cart?”
“No thanks,” Nighthawk said. “We’ll handle it.”
“Have a nice stay at the Peaceable Kingdom,” the boy said at the door. Usher smiled at him, nodded, and closed and locked it.
“Our agent came through,” Usher said, taking a heavy trunk off the cart as Nighthawk watched.
“Of course,” Nighthawk said. He watched Usher and Magda unload and assemble their equipment for awhile, then suddenly stood and stretched. “I’m going to go for a walk. I want to get the feel of this place.”
“What are you sensing, John?” Usher asked. Magda looked up from assembling an automatic shotgun.
Nighthawk shook his head. “I don’t know, yet.” He nodded at the weapons they were unshipping from their padded trunks. “But we’ll need those before it’s all over.”
Magda grunted wordlessly and went back to assembling weaponry. There was something of satisfaction on her face. If it was in her, Nighthawk thought, she’d be whistling right now.
“Go find some food when you’re done,” Nighthawk said. “Needless to say, room service would not be a good idea.”
Usher shook his head sadly. “Grubbs always loved room service.”
Magda grunted wordlessly again as Nighthawk went out into the corridor and took the elevator to the lobby below.
It wasn’t that late, but the lobby was already quiet. Outside, the night was pleasantly cool. Nighthawk walked around the grounds. He didn’t have much company. The patrons of the Peaceable Kingdom seemed to be part of the early to bed, early to rise crowd, even when on vacation.
He passed by a couple of night walkers like himself, once a knot of two score or so women wearing name tags that proclaimed themselves to be members of MAGOG, whatever that was, probably on the way back to their hotel from some function or another that had just ended. They were chatting animatedly, clearly enjoying themselves.
The Peaceable Kingdom was, Nighthawk admitted, a nice, well-groomed place, sanitary and unthreatening where those who liked their fun safe and predictable could have a good time.
And why not? These people worked hard for their money. If they wanted someplace to come that was a little mysterious, a little exotic, yet catered to what they believed, upheld their view of the world and affirmed their place in it, that was fine by him. One thing that his long life had taught him was that people needed different things from life. The Peaceable Kingdom served the needs of its patrons admirably.
He was a little worried, though, about what might happen here in the next couple of days. Nighthawk hoped that the Cardinal and his team would stop the Angel long before she reached the Peaceable Kingdom with her charge. In Nighthawk’s experience high-powered weaponry and tourists didn’t mix very well.
He could have skipped all this. He could have faded off into the night or taken the train out of town with Cameo. But two things had held him back, one practical, one theoretical. Practically, he didn’t want to cut and run, leaving a pissed off Cardinal wondering what had happened to him. Contarini didn’t take desertion lightly, and Nighthawk didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of what still might be a rather long life. Theoretically, his vision to the contrary, what if the Cardinal was right and the boy was the Anti-Christ? Revelations were extraordinarily difficult to interpret, and stranger things had happened in this world. Granted, not many. But the Cardinal, for all his demagoguery, was an educated man. He knew things that Nighthawk could not even begin to guess at. What if he were right, and the boy was the Anti-Christ, or, at least some kind of tool of the Devil. Nighthawk couldn’t walk away from this until he was sure, one way or the other. And his gut told him that it was all coming together. Soon. That all the forces for good and evil were gathering in once place. And that place was not called, this time, the Plains of Meggido, but rather Branson, Missouri, and that it was his fate to be among their number.
He had already traveled far on this holy road, and had learned much. He had to walk the final few miles and see what waited for him at the end of it, no matter how rocky or dangerous the way.
As it turned out, Barnett was more than happy to see Fortunato and Digger. Fortunato was in fact surprised at how eager he was to see them, as he invited them up to his headquarters after a simple phone call on Digger’s part. Barnett’s penthouse office was located at the top of the Angels’ Bower, at the end of a short corridor guarded by two men in suits and dark glasses. Fortunato didn’t need special power to tell him that they were cops. He’d seen plenty of their type before he’d left the world. Since Barnett was an ex-President, that meant Secret Service. He scanned their minds as Downs gave them their names. They were nats. Competent enough, but nothing more. They knew nothing other than the fact that Barnett was expecting them. Good to know, Fortunato thought, that we aren’t walking into a trap of some kind.
He was still surprised, and a little suspicious, at Barnett’s eagerness to meet with them.
The antechamber to Barnett’s office was like that of many other business offices. The decor lacked the faux Middle East crap that infested the other parts of the Peaceable Kingdom Fortunato had seen. A very decorative blonde sat at the receptionist’s desk. She looked at Fortunato with almost predatory interest and flashed an inviting smile.
“Mr. Fortunato. President Barnett is waiting for you in his office. Please go right in.”
“Fortunato is fine,” he told her. “For future reference.”
“Fortunato.” Her voice caressed his name. Her look promised more.
“Great,” Digger said. “Let’s go.”
The blonde took on an expression of professional regret. “I’m afraid that President Barnett would like to have a few words with Fortunato in private. I’m sure you understand.”
Digger frowned. “Well. Not really. But if I must wait to see the great man, then I must wait.” He perched casually on the corner of the receptionist’s desk. “Have you ever considered a career in modeling?” he asked as Fortunato knocked on the office door.
Fortunato glanced back to see the blonde regard Digger with polite distaste as Barnett called out, “Come in.”
Fortunato entered his office, closing the door behind him. He took a few steps, then stopped, looking all around.
Is everything fake in this place? He was standing in a replica of the White House’s Oval Office, down to the insignia woven into the carpet, the desk, and the draped flags behind it. Sitting at the desk was a handsome, well-preserved man, perhaps in his fifties. Fortunato recognized Barnett, though he had been out of the country during both terms of his presidency. Before his
career had turned to politics, Barnett had been a popular conservative evangelical preacher. Fortunato had never been politically active, though he knew that Barnett’s attitude towards wild carders wasn’t exactly benevolent. He could extrapolate further how Barnett felt about mixed-race wild carders who had once pimped women and dealt drugs and were now Buddhist monks.
In the old days Fortunato would have read his mind without a second thought. Now, after the years in the monastery had leeched him of his arrogance and taught him something about humility, he thought about it first, then jumped into his mind anyway. His son’s life was on the line. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Barnett was involved some way in the attempted kidnapping, and this was a sure way to find out. What he read there, though, surprised him.
“Fortunato!” Barnett said, rising from behind his desk and extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure, a real pleasure, to finally meet you.”
Fortunato came forward and guardedly took Barnett’s hand. His handshake was firm and strong. His smile was sincere, as were his words of greeting. Barnett was genuinely glad to see him. “Sit down,” he said.
Fortunato did.
“Drink?” he indicated the cut glass container in easy reach on his desk. “Oh. Can Buddhist monks drink alcohol?”
“Some more than most men,” Fortunato said. “I don’t, however.”
“Fine, fine.” Barnett sat in his own chair and beamed across the desk. “Well. Glad to see that you’ve turned your life around and become a brother of the cloth. So to speak.”
“Forgive me if I seem impatient,” Fortunato said. “But there are some questions I’d like answered.”
“No doubt,” Barnett smiled back. “But couldn’t you read my mind to get your answers?”
I could, Fortunato thought, and I already did, at least partially. “You know that I turned my back on my powers when I left this country.”