George Chesbro: Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

"I certainly can, Mongo," Margaret said in a firm voice. Her pale violet eyes glittered with excitement.

Veil said, "I'll ride shotgun for Margaret every time she goes out. Jack and Moira will stay here on guard."

I nodded. "Once each hour, Veil will take you, Sharon, up to the area around the tree. You'll act like lovers; he'll keep his arm around you so that you can hide your face against his coat and just kind of glance around every once in a while. If you see any of your people, don't approach them. Come back here, and Margaret will go contact them. Okay?"

"Okay," the psychiatrist replied.

"We'll collect as many as come in until ten, and then we'll walk together to the University Medical Center over on the East Side. Maybe I can arrange for a patrol car to escort us. There's a team of medical specialists waiting for us at the hospital. With luck, we'll have everybody at the hospital long before ten. On the other hand, we have to be realistic about no-shows. Considering the importance of this rendezvous, I think it's safe to assume that anybody who doesn't show up by ten o'clock is. . isn't coming. How does that sound to you folks?"

Sharon Stephens, Margaret, and Emily glanced around the table at each other, and it was the psychiatrist who finally said, "It sounds like a good plan to us."

"Good," I said, leaning back in my chair so that I could see around Veil, toward the front of the coffee shop and out at the great, golden giant on his pedestal across the rink. "Now let's see who shows up."

"There!" Sharon Stephens said excitedly. "It's Phyllis!"

I grabbed the psychiatrist's arm, pulled it back down to the table. "Don't point; just describe."

"She's at about two o'clock, on the promenade almost directly above the head of the statue. She's at the railing looking down at the skaters. She's wearing a gray hat and coat. There's a young couple standing to her right."

I glanced around Veil, spotted the woman the psychiatrist had described, turned to Margaret. "You see her?"

"I see her," Margaret said determinedly, rising from the table as Veil pulled her chair out for her and took her arm.

"Remember; don't hang around up there. Just deliver the message while you point to the skaters, and then get back down here. Don't walk back with her."

"I understand, Mongo."

"Go. Be careful."

I watched as Margaret, with Veil a few steps behind her, walked out of the coffee shop and disappeared to the left as she headed for the stone stairs leading up to the promenade. They reappeared in my line of sight, up on the promenade above Prometheus, a minute or two later. Veil was still walking behind Margaret, and he stopped to the patient's left and leaned on the railing as Margaret walked up to the woman and began speaking-all the while pointing down at the rink as I had told her. The woman suddenly slumped and would have fallen if Veil had not quickly grabbed her arm. He led the woman back to the left, while Margaret continued walking on in the opposite direction. They arrived back at our table, by their separate routes, at almost the same time.

There was a tearful reunion between the patient named Phyllis and the other women-a celebration cut short at my insistence because I didn't want to attract any more attention than we already had.

I rose to get the new arrival some food, and the rest of us another round of coffee and hot chocolate. I was already feeling exhausted from tension and anxiety, and the evening's activities were just beginning.

By eight-thirty we had gathered in all but three of the lost flock, not counting the woman Before and After said had been captured, and whom I assumed was dead. I would have allowed myself to begin feeling some measure of elation, or at least satisfaction, were it not for the fact that gathering the survivors was only the beginning; there was still a long and perilous journey to take if this was not to be the last Christmas for these men and women, and there was precious little time in which to take it.

Veil and I kept buying food-a lot of food; all of the patients were half starved, and some were dressed in thin rags that were hanging off them, but at least they were alive. Sharon Stephens had done an excellent job in equitably dividing up the capsules; the people we had gathered in had made it this far, but nobody had more than two capsules left, two people had only one, and I didn't consider the few ounces of nameless powder I had left in my pocket to be any kind of a real buffer. Everything would depend on what the doctors could do, and how fast they could do it, once we reached the hospital.

By nine-fifteen, two more emaciated but excited patients, both men, had been gathered in, and there was only one left to find-one of two middle-aged women. At nine-thirty Veil and Sharon Stephens left for their periodic tour of the area around the Christmas tree. They had been gone less than a minute when Emily grabbed my shoulder and pointed excitedly in the direction of the rink outside.

"That's Alexandra!" Emily said in her small, breathless voice. "She's the woman sitting on the bench on the other side of the rink! She's wearing a blue coat!"

I looked in the direction where Emily was pointing, but my view was momentarily obstructed by a cluster of skaters-all of them new faces, except for the athletic, seemingly indefatigable Santa with his lumpy sack-gliding past. Then there was a gap in the moving bodies, and I could see a black-haired woman who appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties sitting stiffly on one of the wooden benches that had been set up on the walkway surrounding the rink. She had a blank expression on her face as she stared straight ahead of her. All of the other patients had remembered to go to the tree, and I couldn't understand what this one was doing sitting on a bench on the lower level. It didn't feel quite right to me, and I felt my stomach muscles tighten.

"I'll go get her," Margaret said, rising from the table.

I reached out and grabbed for the woman's coat. "Hold on, Margaret. Wait for Veil. He should be back in a couple of minutes."

"Don't be silly, Mongo," Margaret said, pulling out of my grasp. "She's right over there, and I'll just walk around and get her. Nobody knows who I am, but somebody might recognize her, and she's sticking out there like a sore thumb."

"That's the point, Margaret! There's something wrong with-!"

But she had already left the table. As she exited from the restaurant and turned right to walk around the rink, I motioned for the young guard named Jack to follow her. Jack nodded, then quickly walked away. I did not want to leave the second guard, Moira, alone to watch over so many people, but I walked to the glass wall at the front of the coffee shop, where I had a clear view of the entire skating rink. I absently touched the Beretta under my parka, but I knew that the gun was virtually useless in such a crowded area; if any shooting started, a lot of innocent people would surely die.

Presumably only one member of the lost flock was left to gather in, and she was sitting directly across from me, separated by only a few dozen feet of ice. So near, and yet so far. I didn't like the situation, or the look on the woman's face, at all.

I watched tensely as Margaret threaded her way through the people who were standing on the walk on her way toward the woman named Alexandra. Jack was about ten paces behind her. She stopped by the bench where the woman was sitting and began talking to her. Suddenly a man in a gray overcoat who had been standing at the steel railing a few feet away swung around and grabbed both women by the arm. I glanced toward Jack just in time to see a man in a bomber jacket step into his path. The next moment the young man, taken completely by surprise, doubled over, and I knew he had taken a knife in the gut.