John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Another kind of processing center. Happy, well-fed people in their own clothing in a comfortable dormitory, waving at the camera. A guard handing a doll to a small girl, who hugged him and then kissed the doll… Interviews with the ‘refugees.’ In French, dubbed in English. A man wearing a yarmulke: “I was worried when they asked us to move to the processing center, but when you get here you understand, we have food here, we have safety and warmth—we didn’t have any of this at home. They did it to save us from the terrorists. God bless them.”

Smoke stared at the screen. “You are going to show this patently obvious fake to the American public?”

“We have to show both sides—”

Smoke turned and pointed a trembling finger at him. “If you don’t see for yourself, you’re a fake yourself. Come and see for yourself, or you’re no reporter. I can get you into Europe. Our lines of transportation are open. It’s dangerous, but I can get you in. I challenge you to see for yourself.”

Hand glanced at the technicki, who was watching him, curious to see what he’d say. Smoke said, “You can edit this out, you can edit all of this. No one has to know I challenged you to see for yourself. But you’ll know, Hand. Nguyen Hinh will know.”

The two men looked at one another. Hand swallowed. “Set it up. I’ll go.”

A tall, black Witcher guard in fatigues and boots, pistol strapped to his hip, banged in through the door from the next room. “Intercepted this maybe thirty seconds ago.” He passed Smoke a printout. Smoke read:

PD 5

REPORT TYPE IS 0370

!FDC 8/2621 FDC PART 1 OF 2

CARIBBEAN FLIGHT ADVISORY…

DUE TO PUERTO RICAN INSURGENCY DANGEROUS ENVIRONMENT IN LESSER ANTILLES/ PUERTO RICAN CARIBBEAN ZONE… US NAVAL VESSELS AND AIRCRAFT OPERATING BETWEEN 20 DEGREES NORTH AND 15 DEGREES NORTH ARE PREPARED TO EXERCISE APPROPRIATE MEASURES. IT IS STRONGLY ADVISED THAT ALL AIRCRAFT/ FIXED WING AND HELICOPTERS/MAINTAIN A LISTENING WATCH ON 121.5 MHZ VHF OR 243.0 MHZ UHF WHEN OPERATING WITHIN THESE AREAS. SPECIAL CAUTION ADVISORY: AIRSPACE ISLAND OF MERINO.

PD 5

REPORT TYPE IS 0370

!FDC 812621 FDC PART 2 OF 2

CARIBBEAN FLIGHT ADVISORY…

MILITARY AND CIVIL AIRCRAFT UNDER ATC CONTROL SHOULD IMMEDIATELY ADVISE ATC OF ANY CHANGE OF HEADING AND, IF APPROPRIATE, DECLARE AN IN-FLIGHT EMERGENCY. FAILURE TO RESPOND TO REQUESTS FOR IDENTIFICATION AND INTENTIONS, FAILURE TO ACCEPT RECOMMENDED HEADINGS, FAILURE TO RESPOND TO WARNINGS, OR CONTINUING TO OPERATE IN A THREATENING MANNER WILL PLACE AIRCRAFT FIXED WING AND HELICOPTERS AT RISK BY US COUNTER INSURGENCY AND/OR DEFENSIVE MEASURES…

END OF PART 2 OF 2 PARTS

Smoke passed the printout to Hand, who scanned it and gave it to his technicki. “Get a shot of this.” He looked at Smoke. “If that’s okay.”

Smoke nodded. “You know what it means?”

“It means there’s some kind of guerrilla action involving aircraft on Puerto Rico—”

“The revolutionaries on Puerto Rico have no aircraft at all,” Smoke interrupted tiredly. “These ‘counter insurgency measures’ are part of a CIA operation, working through the NSA. They’re going to claim the Puerto Rican Communist guerrillas were constructing some kind of military base on Merino. They’ll claim the Communists are launching an air attack from there. With aircraft that doesn’t exist. They know we’re here, which is why we’re leaving. And they know we’re leaving. They don’t intend for us to get away. I’m afraid you visited the island at a rather unfortunate time, Norman.”

“St. Zoros,” Father Lespere was saying, as he slapped a clip into the assault rifle, “is one of the most important examples of the Flamboyant style of architecture in Paris.” His accent was thick, though his grammar was good. Roseland and Torrence had to listen carefully to make out the words. Words like flamboyant and important, spelled the same in French and English, Lespere pronounced the French way. Roseland listened raptly as Father Lespere took aim at the firing range’s target. “The south side of St. Zoros, on the cemetery—the decoration is marvelous.” He pronounced this roughly mar-vay-you. “The traceries on the gables, the pinnacled buttressing, all the best saints in sculpture, and some very fine gargoyles. These gargoyles, creatures of real character, you understand? Not these banal, bland gargoyles one sometimes sees…” He switched off the laser-sighter, which he regarded as unsportsmanlike for target shooting and not much use in a firefight (he was wrong about that, Torrence maintained), and opened fire on the target, a riddled and splintery outline of a man with a mirror-visored motorcyclist’s helmet stuck on the top to resemble an SA guardsman. The helmet was quite intact until he opened fire from seventy feet; Roseland jumped a little at the racket of the gun in the narrow, low-ceilinged stone chamber, and the helmet spun on the stump of the neck. When it stopped spinning, its back side was turned to them: shot through, shattered.

Roseland had spent ten days recovering in the NR’s chilly, badly outfitted infirmary. But the dingy infirmary was a franchise of heaven, after the processing center. He’d eaten twice a day, and bathed, and shaved, and they’d given him imitation vitamins and blue jeans, boots, and a soft blue plastic jacket.

Now they were a few hundred yards from the abandoned police station that was the NR’s regional headquarters, and about thirty-five feet below the nave of the church of St. Zoros, in what had been a wine cellar for the manor that had stood here before the church. The wine racks were long gone; there were only stone flags, stone blocks, a chemlantern, and two battery-powered floodlights for the gallery; the target at the far end of the room stood like a war-disfigured scarecrow against a thick backdrop of bullet-pocked fiberboard and mattresses.

Father Lespere was a man of pale skin and very dark hair and eyebrows; he had a long nose and hands as precise in their movements as in their manicure. He wore the traditional black cassock; his hair was tonsured, but only by middle age, balding at the crown. “And the tower of Elizabeth de Bathory,” Lespere went on, sighting in on the belly of the target. “I will show you myself. The art is late Middle Ages, very fine, nothing damaged in the war at all. The interior of the church is splendid: remarkable vaulting—” He fired, stitched a line of bullet holes across the target’s middle. He spoke with luxuriant pleasure in the description as he aimed the weapon again: “The vaulting of the side aisles and ambulatories, delicate columns that flow up into the vaults, into ribs like fans, you must set them—Joris-Karl Huysmans compared them to a palm forest.” He sighed. “I should have remained in the study of architecture.” He passed the gun to Torrence and turned to Roseland. “You will forgive me my enthusiasms, but I have not belonged to St. Zoros very long… I was a priest who was really only a kind of tourist guide at Notre Dame, and then when there were no tourists to guide, a priest who was really only a custodian. Do you like our place for target practice?”

“I’m no connoisseur of target shooting, Father,” Roseland said. “They can’t hear it on the street?”

“No.” Lespere watched critically as Torrence fired a burst through the helmet, spinning it on the stump again. “You are pulling the trigger too hard, Daniel.”

“I hit it, didn’t I?” Torrence said, shrugging a little too briskly. He could be defensive, Roseland had noticed.