Филип Керр - The Second Angel

Following several attempts on his life by Christian and Jewish fundamentalists, Elstein disappeared into the Black Hole and thereafter devoted himself, with one eye on the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to becoming, like Professor Moriarty, the ‘Napoleon of Crime.’

Cregeen was the third member of the unholy trinity, this ‘three-headed dog’ that lurked in the depths of the city’s underworld. He was the darkest, the most shadowy figure of the three, about whom very little was known. Was his name really Cregeen? Probably not. Could anyone say anything about his appearance? No. Rumor enveloped him like a poisonous miasma from some ancient sewer. It was said that Cregeen was the brains behind the Great Aerocarrier Robbery of 2039, when the P&O dirigible [81] The dimensions of the airship are as follows: one kilometer wide and five hundred meters high. was boarded in midair and relieved of its multimillion-dollar cargo, a Virgin communications satellite weighing twenty-five thousand pounds. Reportedly Cregeen had also masterminded the extortion of one billion dollars from the West African state of New Congo when he threatened to explode a small atomic weapon close to a natural nuclear fission reactor located deep underground in the jungle that had formed five hundred million years ago when large deposits of uranium began a chain reaction lasting hundreds of thousands of years. [82] The resulting explosion would have rendered the whole country, an area of over a million square miles, uninhabitable for an estimated fifty thousand years.

These three men formed a triumvirate that was behind most of the city’s organized crime. Sometimes it was thought that they were one man, so closely did they operate with one another; at other times, their reach was so extensive and their influence so omnipresent that it seemed they must be many more than just three. Naturally they had their accomplices, faces and names such as Galloway, Orff, Jondrette, Connor, Pike, Allum, Opie, Harris, Ford, and Reinbek, that were more familiar to the rank and file of the city’s criminal fraternity, among which, prior to his period of hard labor on the Moon, had numbered Rameses Gates.

It was to a light-industrial building close to the elevated section of a disused highway that Gates now led the way. This was Reinbek’s base of operations.

Reinbek was the close associate, not to say the instrument of Kaplan, and all of the faces who acted under his orders owed the same higher allegiance. Reinbek himself was a doctor and an ex-soldier. For many years after leaving the army he had been attached to the Criminal Intelligence Service in an interrogative capacity, which was a euphemistic way of saying that he had been a torturer. No one knows more about how much pain may safely be inflicted on the body of a valuable suspect in the search for information than a doctor. For, after all, what is surgery but the strictly controlled wounding — sometimes grievously — by one person on another? Some men are fascinated by the stars, others with fine porcelain, but whatever wonder the world contained for Reinbek was confined to the workings of the human body, and despite his trade, he was a skilled doctor — his victims were always in excellent hands. But as sometimes happens, one particular victim, finding himself restored to political favor, made it his mission to bring Reinbek to justice, or at least what he perceived to be justice. In reality, law and justice, always uncomfortable bedfellows, had long since parted company; law needs only to be applied to a set of facts, whereas justice requires that those facts be explained to the accused’s best advantage; in short, justice requires a concern for individual rights that was no longer anywhere in evidence. And so it was that pursued by the very system he had served so faithfully, Reinbek was obliged to disappear, and Kaplan, judging the former CIS man too valuable to kill, had given him a job instead.

Like most of those who lived in the Black Hole, Reinbek and his gang were nocturnal, taking counsel together, carrying out their criminal activities, even sometimes partying, during the many long hours of winter darkness. In daytime, fatigued by the events of the night, they found the darkest places to hang their hammocks and slept, like clusters of bats after a successful evening’s excursion in search of nourishment.

It was close to daybreak when Gates and the other three reached the former factory. Many of the nameless who had used the darkness to cloak their various pursuits were arriving back there, as if in flight from the rare sound of cockcrow — a rare sound indeed since outbreaks of Campylobacter jejeuni and Campylobacter coli [83] Enteric bacteria strains resistant to antibiotics that killed several thousand Spanish citizens during the late 2050s. had made it strictly illegal to keep any variety of domestic fowl inside the city limits. A few of the ‘Black Holers,’ as they were known, remembered Gates and greeted him warmly. Others regarded his more affluent-looking companions with an almost demonic hunger, for affluence was the most obvious outward manifestation of good blood. It is written in the Talmud that ‘Man’s Soul has a loathing for blood.’ [84] See Makkoth 23b; attributed to Rabbi Shimon ben Yehuda ha-Nasi. But among these particular men and women, the sight of so much healthy blood walking around in their midst was no more loathsome to their souls, assuming they had such a thing, than several gallons of pure alcohol might have looked to a sprawl of thirsty drunkards.

‘Better keep close to me,’ Gates instructed Dallas and Ronica, as several well-armed men led the quartet of arrivals up a couple of flights of escape stairs to the arrowhead-shaped glass room at the top of the building where Reinbek had his quarters. ‘Just in case someone tries to take a bite out of either of you.’

‘It is kind of tempting,’ admitted Lenina, bringing up the rear, her eyes on Ronica’s back, inhaling her expensive perfume. ‘Might be worth it to have a coat like that.’

‘If someone were to bite me, they’d probably fall asleep,’ yawned Dallas. ‘I could sleep for a hundred years.’

‘A hundred years is nothing to a man like Reinbek,’ said Gates. ‘You want to sleep for all eternity, he could fix it. That kind of sedative, the permanent kind, is something he gives people all the time. So be careful what you say, that is, in case you forget to keep your mouths shut and let me do all the talking. Because I know how to handle him. Reinbek’s mood can oscillate like the atoms of a hot metal pendulum. On account of the fact that he has a bipolar disorder. And I don’t mean he doesn’t like Antarctica.’

‘He’s a manic-depressive?’ frowned Dallas.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a comforting thought,’ observed Ronica. ‘I sure hope he’s taking his medication.’

‘Reinbek doesn’t believe in it,’ said Gates. ‘He says drugs interfere with his general intellect and limit his creativity and perceptual range.’

‘Creativity? Who does he think he is? Some kind of artist?’

‘Vincent van Gogh. Schumann. Tennyson. Who the fuck knows?’ growled Gates.

‘He sounds like just the kind of person you’d turn to in a crisis,’ remarked Dallas.

‘Yeah,’ echoed Ronica. ‘Why on earth bring us here?’

‘I brought you here for the simple reason that there’s nowhere else to go,’ said Gates. ‘And because only a crazy person would try and follow us here.’

‘Why don’t I find your explanation reassuring?’ Ronica asked Gates.

‘Will you listen to her?’ Lenina said scornfully. ‘The Queen of Sheba talking. Honey? Safety, hope, security, trust, confidence, and faith — none of those words mean shit down here. You left them all behind with your health care and your lip gloss when you drove your silky smooth black ass out of the Zone. The only expectation that means anything to bad bloods like me and Rameses is the prospect of an early death. You want reassurance, beautiful, then you’d better get yourself a rabbit’s foot.’