George Chesbro - Two Songs This Archangel Sings

I grunted. "Three murals to piece together."

"There are still the slides belonging to the art dealer," Andrews said. "You have nothing to lose by holding off just a little longer. Will you come with me? There's a plane waiting for us at Albany Airport."

"Where are we going?"

"Washington. The president of the United States would very much like to speak to the two of you."

"How the hell did you know what was in that packet?" Garth asked me when, hours later, we were finally alone.

"What else could it have been?" I replied as I stretched out on a monster bed in a monster suite in the most monstrously expensive hotel in Washington. In the bedroom there was a spectacular view through a huge picture window out over the Ellipse. In the distance, the sun was going down behind the Washington Monument; the last, blood-red rays were split and scattered by the tip of the spire, making it appear as if the concrete spear had pierced the ball of fire in its heart. There were two Secret Service agents in the hallway outside the suite-whether to guard us or keep us from leaving, we weren't sure, but at the moment it didn't seem to make much difference.

"Whatever was in the packet almost certainly had to relate to the Archangel business," I continued. "Otherwise, Veil wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to make sure it was in a safe place, with Gary Worde in the mountains; a safe deposit box was no good, because Madison could have gained access to that. He put the record into a kind of time capsule without knowing if, or how, he would ever use it. But what kind of record? Veil certainly didn't walk out of any army stockade with secret documents in his pocket, and he would have had no access to any kind of documentation after he was out. So whatever was in the packet had to have been created by him. When I realized that, everything else fell into place. Vivid reds, browns, and greens combined with flesh tones are the colors he used when he first began to paint. Those are also the colors he'd used in the painting he left for me in the secret compartment in his loft, the colors of men, blood, and jungle."

"Kendry could have gone up there and gotten the slides himself, at the beginning," Garth said, unrelieved bitterness in his voice. "Instead, he let you and me roam around on a Goddamn scavenger hunt."

"It's arguable whether he could have gone himself, Garth. Remember that he'd been under constant surveillance from the time he'd been kicked out of the army. Madison must have known about his visits to Worde, and after the botched assassination attempt Madison's men were almost certainly watching those mountains; they could have been waiting for him to try to go to Worde long before we ever went up there. We provided the necessary distraction for Madison's forces. It's also arguable whether he could have done anything with the slides himself even if he had been able to get them out without being ambushed. Without someone else to bear witness to the truth, he would have been just a discredited man peddling a bizarre slide show while constantly having to look over his shoulder."

"So now we're the ones who constantly have to look over our shoulders."

"He couldn't have done it alone, Garth. He needed us."

It was obvious from the expression on Garth's face that he didn't agree, but he let it go. "A hell of a piece of quick thinking under pressure, brother," Garth said, putting a huge hand affectionately on my shoulder.

Garth sat down on the edge of the bed, and we remained silent for some time, staring out the window as the wounded sun continued to sink down behind the monument.

"I should have killed that fuck, Andrews," Garth continued at last in a matter-of-fact tone that startled me and sent a little chill up my spine.

I eased myself up into a sitting position, next to Garth, and looked into his face in the gathering darkness. What I saw, I didn't like. "I'm glad you didn't, brother. I don't think we could have gotten clear of that, and I like happy endings."

"We're never going to get clear of this, Mongo. Madison's been trying to kill us with bullets; these guys are trying to do the same thing, in a different way. There isn't going to be any happy ending."

"Why not? You said the same thing when we were caught up in Valhalla, and we were in one hell of a lot worse shape then. I think we're in a pretty good position right now."

"I just wish I'd killed him when I had the chance," Garth said distantly, after a long pause.

I couldn't think of anything to say, and we again lapsed into silence. After a few minutes I stood up and groped my way around the suite until I found a light switch.

We had been asked to be patient and wait. We were patient, and we waited. At six thirty there was a knock at the door. It was one of the Secret Service agents asking if it was a convenient time for us to be taken to dinner. It was a most convenient time, and if our attire-jeans, denim shirts, and hiking boots-did not seem quite appropriate for going out to dinner in Washington, nothing in the demeanor of the agent indicated that he thought so, or that there would be any problem.

There wasn't. We were taken to one of Washington's better restaurants. Arrangements had obviously been made beforehand, for the maitre d' nodded to the two agents as we entered, and we were ushered through a velvet-roped gate, past a number of startled diners, to a candle-lit table in a private booth at the rear of the main dining room.

"Shannon's laying it on a bit thick, isn't he?" Garth said to one of the agents sitting across from us.

"The captain has been asked to order for us, Lieutenant," the stern-faced man replied evenly. "I hope you approve. You won't be disappointed."

We weren't. An hour and a half later, stuffed with French cuisine and fine wine, Garth and I followed the agents out of the restaurant to the waiting limousine that had brought us.

Followed by a second car with four Secret Service agents in it, we rode slowly through the night streets of Washington. I had assumed we were going to be driven to the White House, but that wasn't the direction in which we were headed. Finally the car pulled up to the entrance of a park, and I knew where we were. Up and down the street, spaced twenty yards or so apart, were police cars, with their lights off. The officers standing on the sidewalk were alert and watchful.

"The president will meet you at the war memorial," one of the agents said as he opened the car door for us. "Just follow the sidewalk."

Garth and I ducked under the wooden barricade that had been placed across the entrance and headed down the sidewalk into the park. There were lights over the walk, but they had been dimmed to the point where they were not much brighter than the dappled moonlight. We walked in silence, for there seemed nothing left to say to each other. We had "come in from the cold" only to end in an even colder place, and now we were on our way to meet the supreme commander of what was beginning to look like just one more enemy army.

We came around a bend in the path and suddenly found ourselves confronted by the startling sight of the Viet Nam War Memorial, its long slab of polished black stone faintly glowing in the moonlight like a sacred obelisk left behind by some ancient, extinct tribe of warriors.

Suddenly a man with a walkie-talkie stepped out from behind a clump of bushes to our left. "The lieutenant has to say here," the Secret Service agent said, blocking Garth's path.

"Bullshit!" I snapped, moving closer to Garth. "My brother and I go down there together, or we don't go at all."

"Then you don't go at all," the agent said evenly, looking directly at me. "You won't get around us on this one. We didn't approve of meeting here in the first place. We lost the battle on choosing the meeting site, but we won't budge on choosing who goes down there. We're responsible for the safety of the president. The lieutenant is dangerous; he attacked a presidential aide."