George Chesbro - Two Songs This Archangel Sings

Kevin Shannon said nothing. He stood staring at me for some time, the expression on his face stony and unreadable, almost blank. Then he deliberately reached down, picked up the silver flask with the emblazoned presidential seal, and slipped it back into the pocket of his cardigan sweater. He walked past me without a glance, went up the ramp, and disappeared from sight. Instantly, walkie-talkies crackled, and disembodied, electronic voices could be heard all over the park.

Feeling exhausted and lost, I slowly followed after him, trudged up the ramp. I felt light-headed, and there was a sour, bitter taste at the back of my throat, as if I had been breathing poison air. I started back the way I had come, through a park that was already empty. After about twenty steps I turned off into some bushes, bent over, and was sick.

As advertised, an invitation to present our testimony to a closed joint House-Senate committee was waiting for us when we got back to our hotel. There was also an ominous message for me to the effect that I should call the head of my department as soon as possible-ominous because I couldn't understand how anyone at the university had known where to reach me. The invitation and the message had been placed on top of our backpacks, which had been set outside the locked doors of our hotel suite. We moved into a YMCA a few blocks away.

When I called the university the next morning to touch base with the head of my department, I learned that I had been summarily suspended from all teaching duties, without pay. The university couldn't fire me outright, because I had tenure, and so there would be a hearing at some indeterminate time in the future. However, it was strongly hinted that I might consider resigning, since the charges of incompetence, unprofessionalism, and moral turpitude could prove to be very embarrassing to me.

When Garth called his precinct, he found that he too had been suspended without pay. Although he had been specifically assigned to the arson and murder cases connected with the burning of my apartment building, and had been authorized to accompany me to Albany as part of his investigation, he was now told that he had greatly exceeded his authority when he had accompanied me into the mountains to search for Gary Worde. Also, an NYPD investigation was under way to determine whether he might have aided and abetted me in certain criminal acts by suppressing evidence.

Kevin Shannon had wasted no time in displaying for us his own brand of "ruthless efficiency."

The committee hearing was three days off, and it turned out to be a very long three days; the hammer blows of raw political power continued to fall.

My P.I. license, along with my carry permits, was lifted pending investigation of my "moral character and commission of certain criminal acts." I declined the invitation to turn my handguns in to the nearest police station.

Also, Viktor Raskolnikov and his gallery had suddenly become the target of an I.R.S. investigation; all of his files, including slides of paintings that had been sold and a list of their owners, had been seized. Now we had nothing but the knots in our lives Kevin Shannon had promised us, nothing left to do but play out a string that had already unraveled.

It was all very depressing.

"First, I would like to thank the committee for allowing this statement to be read into the record," I intoned in a flat, dry voice, reading from the paper in front of me. "Regardless of the outcome of your deliberations, I believe this statement will bring into sharper focus certain events of mutual interest which have happened in the past, are happening now, and which may happen in the future."

Beside me, Garth sat very straight, stiff and still, hands folded on the bare, warped wooden surface of the ancient witness table at which we sat. The expression on his face was blank, and he seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, a long way away. Wherever he was, I thought, it would have been just as well if I were with him. I felt like a lonely blackjack player in a near-empty casino waiting for a dealer to show up. Except that this game had been rigged before we'd ever sat down at the table in the well of a cavernous, dusty meeting hall in an otherwise unused section of the Old Senate Office Building. The choice of setting was at once meant to be intimidating, while at the same time underscoring the futility of our appearance there. It was a perfect example of overkill.

"It is important for you to know that I love the United States of America-not because it is the country where I was born and grew up, but because it is the country it is. Indeed, it is only within the past fifteen years that I have come to feel at home here, and to appreciate how much I owe to it. Before that, I had no love of anything; I did not know what the word 'love' meant. I had only drives and needs. The institutions and traditions of this society literally saved my life, allowing me to discover talents and strengths within myself in a way I would never have thought possible."

I estimated that the hall could hold upwards of five or six hundred people. There was even an overhanging balcony, but it was cloaked in darkness now, like the entire rear of the hall which spread out beneath it. In fact, the "hearing" could just as well have been held in a cloakroom. There was a stenographer in the well with us, situated between the table and a long, raised dais where five senators, all men in their late fifties or early sixties, sat behind a table covered with green felt. Senator Kathleen Wyndham, head of the committee charged with investigating Orville Madison in the first place, was conspicuous by her absence.

Orville Madison also sat up on the dais itself, albeit apart from the senators, near one end of the table. He was flanked by two black-suited aides who sat stiffly in their chairs, felt-tipped pens poised over white legal pads, glaring at Garth and me. Madison had a microphone placed in front of him, and it appeared that he would be given the opportunity to ask questions or make a statement if he so chose.

In person, Orville Madison was a rather unimposing figure-probably a good part of the reason he had been so successful in his career as a master spy. He had thinning gray hair and a head that seemed slightly too large for the rest of his body. His black suit, although obviously expensive and well cut, did not fit well, and I suspected he might have lost a lot of weight recently; the collar of his white shirt was loose around his neck, and his tie was crooked. His face was puffy, and there were angry red, broken veins in his nose. He had not glanced at us once, preferring to stare straight ahead of him out into the darkness beneath the balcony. His dark eyes seemed curiously lifeless, like buttons sewn into the face of a rag doll. There was no sign of guilt, regret, or any other emotion registered on the doughy features.

The burly, armed marshal standing next to the side door a few feet in front of Madison looked bored.

I continued: "During the time frame covering incidents in the past that are the basis of this investigation, it would be fair to say that I was quite mad."

"Dr. Frederickson?"

"What is it, Senator?" I asked, looking up from the paper I'd been reading.

John Lefferton, the senior senator from Oklahoma and the man who appeared to be chairing the hearing, peered down at me through his thick bifocals. "I'm not sure I understand what's happening here. You said that you wanted to read a statement."

"I am reading a statement."

"You're telling us that you are, or have been, mentally ill?"

"A lot of people who know me think that, but I never admit to it. No, that's not what I'm telling you."

"But your statement-?"

"I said I wanted to read a statement; I didn't say it was my statement. This was written by Veil Kendry."