Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Bilmer . Shango remembered the way McKay had kept his cell phone beside him that morning, the way he’d sat tense on the exercycle seat, conscious of it, listening for it. Recalled, too, McKay talking to Bilmer at that garden party last month, just before Bilmer went on vacation.

“When was her flight due in?” asked Czernas, and McKay’s face seemed to settle a little in the wavering candlelight.

“9:20,” he said.

The glance that went around was almost audible. Oh, fuck .

“She’s wearing black leggings, black sneakers and a red sequinned sweatshirt. She’ll have a black purse with her and some kind of travel bag.” McKay took a deep breath. “Find her. Get her here. If you can’t find her alive. .” And there was a hesitation, an understanding among them of what they might have to do if her plane hadn’t touched down by 9:17. “Bring her purse and her luggage. This is vital. This is. . this is to vital what the Nagasaki blast was to a damp sparkler. Understand?”

Shango thought, Oh, shit . His uncle had been one of the cops to clean up the wreckage after a Delta flight had come down on a New Orleans housing project in the seventies.

“About a month ago,” the President went on, “I heard a rumor that what I’d been told was a minor project of energy research called Source was receiving clandestine sums from both the Department of Defense and the CIA-”

Czernas opened his mouth, glanced sidelong at Shango, then back to McKay, with Aren’t there too many people in this room ? written all over his handsome young face. McKay’s eyes met his, long and steadily, then he continued deliberately, “far more than any minor research installation should have been getting. I couldn’t get a straight story out of either DoD or CIA, and in fact I got substantially different stories from each person I talked to. I still don’t know if they thought what they told me was the truth. The reports I’ve received over the past eighteen months-and the reports Source has been turning in since the Reagan administration-were all carefully tailored to make the project look like something other than it was.”

Czernas looked over at Shango again, tightened his lips, and then asked, “And what was it, sir?” Shango said nothing and didn’t react. He understood already why McKay was telling them both this.

“That was what Ms. Bilmer was trying to find out. We agreed that whatever day she came in, from whatever direction, she’d be on the 9:20 Houston flight, United Airlines 1046. She planned to change planes a couple of times, in case anyone was a little curious about which direction she came from. I don’t know her starting point, other than that it was somewhere in the West.”

“It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to get to Dulles by bicycle,” said Czernas after a moment. “I biked here this morning. My backpack should hold enough water for the trip.”

“I’ll lend you my backpack,” said McKay to Shango. “You can carry water.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Shango said quietly. “I’m not sure taking bikes is wise, at this point. There’s rioting down in Anacostia and in other places as well. There’s still no transportation as far as I’ve heard. Bikes may make us a target.”

“Can we really afford the time it’ll take to walk?” replied Czernas. “Would the risk be that much greater, to justify the delay? We’ll both be armed.”

McKay hesitated. “Speed is of the essence,” he said at last. “And even more than speed-getting back here with those papers. With that information. That’s why I’m sending both of you. I must get whatever it is she has. And I must get it soon.”

“Yes, sir,” said Shango. Already the buildings had the faint smell of sewage, of plumbing that wouldn’t work, of water that wouldn’t come through pipes. First it’ll be water, thought Shango, and then it’ll be food, if something isn’t done. He knew the Army and the National Guard were already stockpiling supplies. That would cause further trouble.

“I’ve written you an authorization, as Commander-in-Chief.”

“That won’t cut any ice with Jerri Bilmer,” said the aide. “I mean, she’ll know us by sight, but she wouldn’t trust Jesus Christ if he showed her the holes in his hands. If some of the other services are involved in the cover-up, she may recognize us and vanish in the crowd. Is there anything we can give her, to let her know she can go with us?”

Shango thought Czernas was referring to another document, but after a moment’s thought, McKay reached into the open collar of his sweat-stained shirt and drew out a little ball-link chain that still bore a slip of punch-printed tin.

Shango had one like it, in a footlocker at his sister’s place. The sign of someone he used to be.

McKay coiled it down into Czernas’ hand.

“Mr. Shango,” he said, turning to the agent, “Czernas is in charge of this mission, but you’re both responsible for its accomplishment. If one or the other of you should not be able to complete this task, I charge the other one to complete it. My authorization will let you take whatever you need, do whatever you must.” And Shango saw in his eyes exactly his own thoughts about what had happened to every plane in the sky that morning. “But find her and the information. Bring them back.”

“We’ll get them,” said Czernas. Then he grinned his boyish grin and added, “Heck, by tomorrow they might have got the cars running again, and this whole thing’ll be a snap.”

“They won’t,” said McKay, and there was in his voice a note of sureness and sorrow that turned Shango’s heart icy with dread. “They won’t.”

NEW YORK

One hundred three point two. Shit.

Cal shook down the thermometer, gazed at his sister. Her hair was plastered to her brow in thin strands, clung to the side of her face. She turned her head on the pillow with a bleary, fevered intensity. By the bedroom’s candlelight, she looked like some refugee child, fragile and very pale.

“How’s the head?” he asked.

“Light,” Tina whispered dreamily. “Like if I let go, I’d just float up and up.”

When he and Colleen had entered the apartment, they had found Tina leaning against the window frame, staring out at the night as though the fight was still raging. He’d called her name several times before snaring her attention, and then she’d turned to them with an eerie slowness, seeming to summon herself back from a long distance.

He had touched her face, felt an alarming heat. Then he’d gathered her in his arms, as he had so many times when she was little, and carried her to her room. In the gloom, his foot had found a heavy volume-the Nijinsky diary, fallen from the nightstand in the tremor. He had nudged it aside and set Tina softly on the bed, a feather.

Colleen hadn’t said, “Maybe I should go.” She’d just gone to the kitchen, soaked a dish towel in water from an Evian bottle and brought it to him, along with the aspirin. Then she had withdrawn to the living room, silent, waiting.

Cal shook the thermometer again, guided it toward Tina’s mouth. She groaned a protest. “Just one more time,” he said, “just to-”

He stopped, startled, as he spied her hand resting atop the covers. In the moonlight it appeared bloodless, translucent, faint tracings of veins beneath the skin.

Tina followed his gaze. “Looks like I’m turning into one of those fish you can see through,” she murmured, but he could hear the fear beneath.

Tightness gripped his chest, and he had the wild thought that vampires had gotten to her, drained her. He pushed it away, held the thermometer before her mouth. “Just to be sure.”

She nodded this time and took it.