Forests of the Night

  Stephie and Angel looked at each other. Stephie cocked her head and motioned with the palm of her hand, Angel first. "Right, Kit, we go to the Hertz counter at the airport—"

  "Hopkins."

  "Lady above, I know that. There's a prepaid '51, ah-"

  "Maduro, it's a black, General Motors Maduro sports coupe."

  Stephie gave him a critical look and Nohar reined himself in.

  Angel rolled her eyes so the whites could be seen. "Lemme finish the rundown, Kit. Paid for with Pink— Stephie's—new name." The little scar pulled into a smile at Stephie's expense. Stephie didn't seem to mind. The name was Bobby's doing. He had programmed a shell identity over Stephie's card. It wouldn't fool a real close scrutiny. However, it would run up false data trail on any casual ID scan. It was a total software construct—Bobby didn't even need to see the card. The software would self-delete when its usefulness was expired.

  "—then we blow to the other end of the country, and shack up together across the line in Georgia—she drives so pink law don't stop us. Woodstar Motel is in Chesterland, off highway 322."

  "Good enough. I'll get word down as soon as the shit clears."

  Nohar smiled at the rabbit, and, to his surprise, he got a full smile back.

  He piled them into the Tory and paid Ruby. The cabby must have been getting used to moreys. She didn't even comment on Angel, who was buried in one of Nohar's old concert T-shirts.

  Stephie mouthed, "I'll miss you," out the window as Nohar shut the door.

  The cab drove west, toward the airport. Nohar was left alone in front of Manny's house. He kept looking down the road long after the Tory had passed from view.

  He yawned, walked back into the house, and planted himself next to the comm. The chair still smelled of his blood.

  Tonight was the meeting with Smith. He'd pretty much decided he was going to tell that blob of flesh to go straight to hell if he didn't get the full story on MLI. Things were too dangerous now to cater to his client's sense of secrecy. Smith's lockjaw might have already cost a few hundred people their lives. He stretched and tried to make sense out of it all. Johnson's death had an air of precision and forethought about it.

  Starting with the 4th, the deaths in the Binder campaign were loud, messy, and seemed to fit into a nationwide spree of violence by the Zipheads. Violence that seemed engineered to resonate with the riots of eleven years ago. Up to and including starting the violence on the generally accepted anniversary date, August 4th. It was a coordinated effort by the Zips to scare the pinks shitless.

  Nohar raked his claws across the armrest of the chair. The upholstery ripped.

  The Zips weren't making sense. The Zipperheads were drug dealers, not terrorists. What kind of profit would there be in encouraging the pinks to clamp down? If there's a new wave of morey riots, nobody wins.

  Somehow, it also seemed MLI was involved with the Zips. That made little sense either. It was also hard to deny. The rats'd kept showing up, ever since he'd discovered Hassan. He wouldn't be surprised if MLI was using those green remote vans to smuggle the rats back and forth. Especially after he saw that van shooting out of Thomson's building. There was also no denying that there was some higher authority than the Zips, represented by Hassan. From Angel it sounded like Terin was under somebody's thumb—her supplier?

  Was it MLI?

  And, even embedded in a wave of rodent terrorism, the deaths were going to focus everyone's attention on the Binder campaign. If there was some information buried in the campaign they—Young's nebulous them— were trying to cover up, this would be counterproductive—wouldn't it?

  Nohar fell asleep feeling like he had forgotten something.

  Manny woke Nohar up. He was home early.

  "Where are the girls?"

  Nohar yawned and sat up. "I sent them to a motel out of town, out of harm's way—"

  "As opposed to you . . . and me."

  Nohar was stung by that. "I’ve been trying to keep you out of this. That's why I sent them—"

  Manny sighed and sat down on the couch, across from him. Manny formed his engineered surgeon's hands into a peak before the tip of his nose. "Has it ever occurred to you that I don't want to be left out?"

  Nohar didn't respond.

  "Why do you think I told you you could come here if things got rough? Why do you think I help you with all those missing persons investigations? Why do you think I took that slug out of your hip?'' Manny shook his head. "When you left home and disappeared with that gang, I knew there was no way I would ever talk sense to you. But I have the right to know what you get mixed-up in. I promised Orai I'd keep an eye on you."

  Manny stopped talking. The only sounds now were the faint buzz of a fluorescent and Nohar's own breathing.

  "I've already involved you in enough to lose your job—"

  Manny cast a glance out the window, toward the driveway where the van was parked. "I was trained to save lives. Today, we had an emergency, the 747. So damn many bodies to identify. We needed all the help we could get. They dismissed me from the scene because there weren't any morey dead. You think I really care about conflict of interest?"

  Manny deserved to know.

  Nohar told him everything, including the money, the frank, Hassan—everything. Manny didn't interrupt, didn't ask for elaboration. He just sat and listened. Nodded a few times. Fidgeted a little with his hands. Otherwise he let Nohar explain the last week—

  By the time Nohar was done, the sky outside had turned blood red.

  Manny seemed to weigh his response before he said anything. When he spoke, it was in the even tones of his professional voice, as if he was describing a corpse he had dissected. "You're right. Your frank is not from South Africa. All their franks have been cataloged since the coup d'etat in Pretoria. What you describe isn't anything they came up with, and it doesn't sound Israeli or Japanese. On the other hand, the way you describe Isham, it's pretty clear she's a Mossad assassin strain, something they co-opted after the invasion of Jordan. Hassan's Afghani, a strain they abandoned after the war, likes killing too much—"

  Manny put his hand to his forehead and stopped talking. "I knew this would be bad. You should have seen that 747—"

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'll be fine, it's nine-thirty, you better read your messages if you want to meet your client on time. I'll drive you to Lakeview.''

  Nohar had forgotten about the messages he'd had the cabbie fetch for him. So much had happened since—

  He turned on the comm and got the ramcard out of his wallet. He put it in the card-reader. He called up the messages. There was a predictable—and out of date—message from Harsk about how, if he turned himself in, things would go easier for him. In retrospect, Harsk wasn't lying. Then there was a message from the late Desmond Thomson, the press secretary.

  Thomson's face was sunken. The skin looked hollowed out and the vid anchorman's voice had turned into the voice of a jazz musician who smoked too much. "I have no idea what your interest in this is. Whatever you've uncovered, I am supposed to request that you refrain from making it public until Congressman Binder's press conference tomorrow."

  Damn, if Term copied this message some time Tuesday night, when they wrecked his home comm . . .

  He played the next message. It was John Smith, the frank, in the same unidentifiable location.

  Light was glistening off the frank's pale polyethylene skin. The glassy eyes stared straight ahead. A pale, mittened hand adjusted the comm. Manny stared at the screen, fascinated by the figure of Smith.

  “It is worse than I think before. We meet in Lake-view and we must go public. I discover it is not one individual responsible. The whole company is involved and condones the violence. I cannot let them do this, the organization is not supposed to physically intervene. MLI is corrupted and we must make it known who they are and what they do here. I bring all the evidence I can carry to the meeting tomorrow."

  Nohar sat back. It looked like he didn't have
to threaten the guy to get the full story.

  Manny was looking at him now. "Didn't you say these Zipperheads had probably copied your messages off your home comm?”

  Oh shit, Terin had that message! They knew the meeting was at Lakeview, today. They blew a 747 to get Binder. They'd certainly be willing to ambush the frank—if MLI hadn't dealt with him already.

  "Manny, we got to get to Lakeview now!"

  The green Medical Examiner's van sped down the Midtown Corridor. Manny drove.

  Manny had wanted in. He was in, and God help him—Nohar caught the thought and told himself what he had told Stephie, figure of speech.

  He almost missed telling Manny where to take the turn. It was the opposite side of Lakeview that he was used to using. Nohar yelled, and Manny skidded the van into the driveway of the Corridor gate. There was an immediate problem in that this was the Pink entrance, so the gate was closed and chained shut. Nohar's normal entrance was the gate on the Jewish section, which was rusted open.

  It was ten-fifteen. They didn't have time to circle around East Cleveland to get to the right gate.

  In a pinch, Manny's van could double as a rescue vehicle—a half-assed rescue vehicle, but a rescue vehicle—so, it had its share of equipment to deal with these situations. Nohar pulled a pair of bolt cutters and got out of the van. He walked up to the wrought iron gate and looked through.

  No pinks, no security, nothing but darkness, graves, and the surreal image of a tarnished-green bronze statue of a natural buck deer. It stared at the Corridor gate. Nohar cut the chain. They had twelve minutes to beat the frank. He pushed the gate open and waved Manny into the cemetery. The headlights targeted the statue, and for a moment it looked like luminescent jade.

  Nohar jumped into the passenger seat—pain shot through his right leg—and started yelling directions at Manny.

  Lakeview was a large place, and it was a good thing Nohar knew its layout by heart. They were racing through at the maximum safe speed, and it felt to Nohar as if they were crawling up the hill that formed Lakeview's geography. When they crested the bluff where President James A. Garfield resided in his cylindrical medieval tomb, it was ten-twenty.

  They rounded the turn on the other side of the concrete barrier on the Mayfield-Kenelworth gate, and Nohar saw a familiar green van in the distance. The bastard was early.

  Chapter 22

  Smith's remote was pulling up to Eliza's marker, and the damn headlights were fucking with Nohar's night-vision.

  "Manny—kill the lights."

  There were still the lights on the remote, but they were pointed away from them. Nohar could start making things out in the gloom, like the pneumatic doors opening on the frank's van. The frank stepped out carrying a briefcase. Almost immediately, the remote drove away.

  "Stop here." Nohar had a slight hope, maybe they'd be lucky and there wouldn't be an ambush. "Radio the cops."

  Nohar got out and limped up to the frank.

  Smith stood alone, clutching a briefcase to his flabby chest. Now that Nohar saw him standing upright, Nohar realized he was looking at a creature that wasn't designed for bipedal motion. The frank's mass seemed to slide downward, reinforcing the basic pear shape. He still smelled like raw sewage, but in the open air, Nohar could make an effort to ignore it.

  Nohar stared into the frank's blank, glassy eyes. "If I'm going to help you, Smith, you have to tell me everything, now."

  "Please, let us move. We tell everything to media. We must—"

  Nohar put his hand on the frank's shoulder. Even under the jacket, a jacket much too heavy for the weather, Nohar could feel his hand sink in and the flesh ripple underneath. "You're going to tell me first. You've been using me, withholding information—if you'd told me abut MLI up front, that 747 might not have been shot down."

  Smith said something that must have been in his native language. It was low, liquid, and sounded like a dirge. Then he went on. "Do not say that!" There was the first real trace of emotion in the frank's voice, even if it didn't register on his face or in his odor. "They do not let me know what they do. You must understand, violence is anathema. Murder is unforgivable. They do this without me—"

  Nohar shook his head. "What are they doing, and why are you out of the loop?"

  "We must go—"

  "Look, the cops will be here any minute. So calm down and tell me why you set me up in this mess."

  "No, I do not intend, you do not understand—" More words in that odd sounding language. "When authorities find out what goes on, they will not let us go public. You must make this public." Smith handed Nohar the briefcase. "It is mostly in there. I tell you what is not."

  Smith loosened his tie, and the roll of fat around his neck flowed downward. The frank was trembling, as if he was in pain. "You know our purpose is to support politicians. We do so fifteen years for the benefit of our homeland. I am not just an accountant, I am—" The frank let out a word that sounded like a harsh belch. "Perhaps the right term is political officer. I enforce our laws not to physically intervene. We do not engage in violent acts. To do so will prelude a war."

  The frank sounded despairing. "Fifteen years in a foreign land is too long to do such work. Laws from so far away become less binding. I am supposed to prevent this. I fail. An operation has left its controls. They try to isolate me and accelerate things beyond safe limits."

  The frank pulled a letter out of his pocket and handed it to Nohar. "This is the proof I find when I search our files. It is a filing mistake. I am supposed to handle the letters, but they cannot let me see this. The files are not their job and they make an error filing this paper too early. I do not know what other mistakes they make by keeping this from me—"

  It was a letter from Wilson Scott, dated August tenth. The same letter Angel had found at Young's. Only, this copy was intact. It went on mentioning moreys offing pinks, moreys taking hostages, morey air terrorism. It was dated August tenth—

  This year.

  "Oh, shit."

  "English is a difficult language for us. We compose letters months in advance. But I am the one who is to deal with the outside world. I conduct the business. I handle the money. Without me it becomes easy for them to make mistakes of sending letters too early."

  "They are telling the Zips what to do?"

  "Yes. They do not pay in money, to avoid me."

  Flush. Nohar shook his head. "But why?"

  "They are impatient. They feel control progresses too slowly. They want our men in the Senate, and they can't wait—"

  Nohar could see now. "They want to panic the pinks so anti-morey candidates like Binder get elect—"

  He shifted the briefcase and the letter to his left hand. He had heard something moving out in the darkness. He started drawing the Vind. "Smith, there's a van right behind me. Get to it."

  "But I have to tell you where—"

  "Move!" Nohar could smell canine musk in the air now. Something was approaching, fast. Smith started running. The poor frank bastard seemed to have trouble moving. He was wobbling on rubbery legs. Why the hell would someone engineer something like that?

  The bulk of the frank was moving toward the van when Nohar heard the rustle of some leaves above them.

  It was no louder than the crickets or the gravel crunching under his feet, Nohar could smell a rank canine odor now—a wave of musk that overwhelmed the frank's sewer smell. The canine was riding a wave of excitement sexual in its intensity.

  The smell hit Nohar too late, because the canine, Hassan, was already in the air, falling out of a tree and on to the frank.

  Hassan landed on the frank. Nohar whipped around, aiming the Vind at the canine, but his knee and bad hip fought him. Smith hit the ground, his flesh rippling. The canine sank his right knee into the frank's chest and he was jabbing a rodlike weapon deep into the folds of flesh where the frank's neck should be.

  Nohar fired. A hole appeared in the chest of Hassan's jacket. The slug carried the canine over a monument—Eliz
a's monument—to collapse behind it. Nohar ran up to the marker. The air near it was now ripe with the odor of burnt flesh as well as the frank's sewer smell. Nohar glanced at Smith, who lay on Eliza's grave, unmoving, eyes staring upward. There was a circular purple discoloration on the frank's neck.

  Nohar rounded the monument, and Hassan wasn't there. He whipped around, dropping the briefcase to brace the Vind with both hands, and a foot came out of nowhere and hit his right hand. The Vind tumbled out into the darkness. Nohar kept turning to face Hassan. Hassan's jacket hung open now. He was wearing a kevlar vest. The dumdum had only knocked the dog over.

  Nohar dived at the canine. Hassan spun sideways, letting Nohar pass over and slam into the ground. Nohar's right knee hit a low-lying monument and spasmed with an excruciating wave of pain, blurring his vision. He could hear and smell the canine approach. He dodged blind.

  He went through a line of hedges and started to roll down a steep hill. He caught himself before he rolled all the way down.

  Hassan was hunched low, tongue lolling. He leapt over the hedge and started bounding over the monuments that dotted the hillside. Nohar knew he couldn't move that fast, even with a good leg. He braced himself defensively to receive the canine's charge. Hassan didn't seem to have a gun. Hand to hand, he had a chance to take the assassin.

  Nohar felt his heartbeat accelerating. The adrenaline was kicking in.

  Hassan passed him and Nohar tried to pivot to follow him. Nohar wasn't quick enough. He felt a kick slam into his lower back, above the base of his tail. He tried to roll with it, but the blow still sent him to his knees.

  The Beast was roaring—

  "Time for death, cat." A shaggy canine arm hooked around his neck, and there was a fiery tingle under his left armpit. He smelled his own fur burning.

  He could feel the rush as The Beast was triggered. But he couldn't move. Hassan was using a stun rod— Nohar was paralyzed. When Hassan pivoted Nohar's body around on his bad knee, pain fogged his sight again. When he could see again, he was propped in front of an open grave. The canine arm began to choke him.