George Chesbro - Two Songs This Archangel Sings

"I'm coming down now, Frederickson," the man said evenly.

"You do that."

Gripping the strut with both hands, the big man swung down to the floor, landing easily on the balls of his feet just in front of the corpses of his two dead companions. Now he was all business, without a trace of the effeminacy he had displayed on the plane. Even standing still, and despite his formidable size, he gave the impression of someone with grace of movement, unexpected speed, and great strength. His face with its broad forehead was impassive, the pale eyes revealing nothing. If he was worried about what I was going to do to him, he didn't show it-and that worried me.

The big man gestured disdainfully with his thumb at the bodies behind him. "I told them that what they wanted to do wasn't such a good idea. You're pretty clever, Frederickson. I believe I've underestimated you. I won't do it again."

"I don't give a shit what you do, pal, as long as you're doing it hopping on one leg," I said as I aimed my Beretta at his right kneecap and fired. It was an accurate shot; the problem was that the big man didn't stay where he was supposed to, and the bullet smashed into a computer console behind him.

With quickness matched in my experience only by Veil Kendry, at the moment I had pulled the trigger the man had grabbed the strut above his head, swung up and out of the bullet's path. As I started to turn the gun on him for a second shot, I saw him release his right hand from the strut and flick his wrist. I knew enough to duck, and the star-shaped shuriken whistled through the air just above my head, slashing open my parka across the shoulder blades. I came up ready to fire, then had to fall to the ground as pieces of electronic equipment came hurtling out of the mouth of the van and crashed all around me. Something sharp and heavy hit my right shoulder, sending a spasm of pain up into my neck. I pushed the tape recorder off me and jumped to my feet, firing blindly into the mouth of the van. When I'd emptied the Beretta, I crouched, dropped it into my pocket, and whipped the Seecamp out of my ankle holster. Then I slowly straightened up, peered around the edge of one of the doors into the van.

The big man was gone.

I spun around, gun shoved out in front of me, and looked for footprints leading away from the van. There weren't any. I suddenly realized where he was and started to turn back, but it was too late. There was a soft thud just behind me as the man leaped down from the top of the van. I was halfway around when steel-hard knuckles hit me squarely on the spine, at the base of my neck. All strength and feeling abruptly vanished from my body, and I toppled forward on my face into the snow.

With that single blow the man had snapped my spine, I thought, too much in shock to release the scream that was building in me. The only sensation I had was the cold of the snow on my cheek and in my mouth; in an instant I had become nothing more than a head on a useless body. I didn't know if I had the courage to spend the rest of my life strapped in a wheelchair, and I hoped the man would finish the job and kill me.

"It's true what they say about you, Frederickson," the big man said casually. "You're a real pain in the ass."

I tracked him with my eyes as he walked to the front of the van, climbed up into the cab. The van started up, rumbled forward and over the rocks that served as a border around the parking area. It kept going through a snow fence, across the park toward the edge of the cliffs. The van never slowed as it crashed through the last barrier separating it from a three-hundred-foot drop and disappeared from sight.

The gunfire might have been muffled by the snow and trees, but the sight of a van toppling off the Palisades into the Hudson River was certainly going to attract attention, and probably cause a monumental traffic jam, on the George Washington Bridge, just below. I wondered how long it was going to be before a squadron of police cars came screaming into the park.

For a few moments I thought the big man had missed his timing and fallen into the ice-choked river along with the van. I had not seen him jump out, but after a few seconds his imposing figure rose from the ground. Casually brushing snow from his coat, he started to walk back toward me.

The big man was quite a magician, I thought. One of his tricks that I particularly appreciated was the one in which he apparently hadn't crushed my spine after all, but only struck some particularly sensitive nerve cluster to paralyze me temporarily. I still wasn't ready to do any polkas, but a blessed chill was beginning to creep along my fingertips and palms, and emanate up into my groin. Also, like oases in a desert of numbness, there were patches of what felt like prickly heat over the rest of my body.

The butt end of the Seecamp poked out of the snow a few inches from the fingertips of my left hand; if feeling continued to return, I was going to have a trick or two of my own to show the magician.

The big man walked up to me, crouched down, casually resting his forearms on his knees, so that I could see his face. He seemed totally unconcerned about the gun, although it was closer to me than to him. "Where the hell is Kendry?" he said distantly, looking around him as if he half expected Veil suddenly to materialize from the snow or surrounding trees-a prospect I found most inviting, if improbable.

"You're asking me?"

"It was a rhetorical question."

"Who are you?"

"Ah, I don't think I want to tell you that, Frederickson. Knowing my name would only distract you and your brother from your primary job. In fact, I've already become an unfortunate distraction to you, and I regret that. I want you to find Veil Kendry for me, and after that matters will take care of themselves. You can forget about me now, because you probably won't ever see me again; as I said, I won't repeat the mistake of underestimating you."

"I may not see you, but you'll be around."

"Of course-but there'll be nothing you can do about it. I'm not a threat to you and your brother, unless you again choose to make me so. My only interest is in flushing Kendry, and I believe you have the best chance of doing that. He seems to be leading you along a trail, at the end of which he-through you-will have accomplished whatever it is he wants to accomplish. The sooner you reach the end of that trail, the sooner he'll come out of hiding."

I could feel cold in both arms now, but the rest of me was lagging behind. I knew I wouldn't have more than one chance to get the gun, and I wasn't ready to take it yet. "Why did you have to kill those people in Seattle?"

"I didn't. I was on the plane with you, remember?"

"You ordered it done. It's the same thing."

"I didn't order it done. The fee for my performing that sort of service is far too high to warrant using me for that kind of relatively simple operation. In fact, I didn't even know about the killings until I overheard your conversation with the florist. Those killings were performed by someone else."

"But you reported on where I'd been, and the people I'd talked to."

"Yes. That I did."

Now I could feel cold spreading along my belly and up into my shoulders. I grabbed for the Seecamp. With the speed of a striking snake, the big man's hand shot out and snatched the gun out of the snow a fraction of a second before my hand got there. He ejected the clip, removed the round from the chamber, then flipped the gun back to me. "Here," he said quietly. "Put that in your pocket with the Beretta. I certainly don't want you to be defenseless."

"Fuck you," I said, struggling to work myself up into a sitting position. "If you're so anxious to get to Veil Kendry, and you're using me to do it, maybe I'll just stop looking."

"That would be a mistake, Frederickson, because then you would be pitting yourself against me instead of doing your job." His voice, a soft, almost soothing baritone, suddenly took on sharp edge. "The chances that you and your brother will eventually survive this business are, in my opinion, nil. However, the only chance you do have to survive is to keep going. There are others who want to kill you now, so in a very real sense you and your brother are on a rapidly spinning treadmill; try to stop, and you'll be broken. You already know far too much to suit these people, and the only reason you're alive right now is because I've been able to convince them of your usefulness. But I didn't say you were the only way to find Kendry. Still, you're obviously the key player in a game Kendry's chosen to play. Therefore, I want you to keep playing. If I decide that you're only going through the motions, or are taking steps to protect Kendry from me, then I will retaliate by killing your brother as quickly and easily as I killed Colonel Po."