The Angel forestalled a grimace. This, she didn’t need. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I have to take a shower.”
John Fortune nodded, his eyes wide as if he were considering the possibilities. “Sure,” he finally said. “I’ll just wait for you here.”
The Angel went into the bathroom and quietly locked the door. Maybe, she thought, if she drew this out as long as she could, John Fortune would get distracted by the TV or something. It didn’t seem likely.
The water came out of the showerhead at a trickle. She took as long as she could, but the mildew and fungus stains on the stall wall did not incline her to linger. The towels were paper-thin and didn’t really dry her body as much as blot it kind of fruitlessly. She wrapped a paper-thin towel around her form and stuck her head out of the bathroom, but John Fortune was lying on the room’s single bed, sound asleep, a bright aura shining all around him.
The Angel sighed in relief. He’d been very tired, she supposed. She watched him for a few minutes. His face was angelic, if not exactly God-like. He looked like everybody’s favorite son.
She dried herself as best she could and shrugged into her jumpsuit again. It was tough to put on while she was still damp. She wished that she’d thought to bring her duffel bag along so she could change into one of her spare suits, but it was still sitting in the Escalade back in New Hampton. She hoped that Ray had remembered to return the SUV to the rental agency before the late charges started to pile up. He probably hadn’t, though. He didn’t seem particularly dependable, even if he did seem to have some uses.
She tiptoed into the tine room and sat carefully in the creaky chair next to the bed. Something nagging at the back of her brain made her feel jumpy. It was a sensation that something was breathing on her. Snuffling about her in the dark. She put it down to nervousness about the Allumbrados somehow striking their trail. When someone knocked on their door in the middle of the night, she jumped.
It turned out to be the mechanic. He was finished with the van.
The Angel awoke John Fortune. He seemed groggy and at first was disinclined to get up. She felt his forehead in concern. He was hot, of course. She wondered if he was running a temperature, or if it was his ace metabolism acting up. She knew that it could take some getting used to. When her card had turned ten years ago it took months before she’d gotten used to hers. Her mother never had. She never believed her when she said she was hungry. That she was starving. She just called her a glutton, and said it was a miracle that she wasn’t a fat pig because of all the food she ate. It was hard to be hungry all the time.
She finally got John Fortune up. It was about three o’clock in the morning by her watch. She overpaid the mechanic enormously. She felt guilty about it, but as Ray had said, Barnett could afford it and after all she was doing God’s work.
They hit the road again in the dark. The Angel, even though she knew it would add a couple of hours to their trip, was more determined than ever to take the detour she’d been considering. Something was driving her. Calling her, really. She wondered if it was old ghosts.
Whatever the source, it could not be denied.
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
It was dark by the time Nighthawk and his group arrived at the Peaceable Kingdom. A limo had been waiting for them at the airport and taken them to the suite reserved for them at The Angels’ Bower. The hotel was quite crowded.
They went up to their suite. Nighthawk thought it was a little kitschy, but kept quiet because Magda was quite taken with it and Nighthawk saw no need to stir up trouble. Usher was satisfied because it was comfortable. That was all he needed. Nighthawk checked in, and they waited. They didn’t have to wait for long.
The doorbell rang within half an hour and Usher answered it. A bellhop and a luggage cart piled high with massive trunks stood in the corridor outside. “Mr. Nighthawk?” the brightly scrubbed young man asked brightly.
“Inside,” Usher said, stepping back.
“Special freight delivery,” the bellboy said, wheeling the cart into the room.
Nighthawk nodded. He gave the boy a twenty. He knew what it was like to be in his position.
“Thanks,” the bellhop said. “Want me to unload the cart?”
“No thanks,” Nighthawk said. “We’ll handle it.”
“Have a nice stay at the Peaceable Kingdom,” the boy said at the door. Usher smiled at him, nodded, and closed and locked it.
“Our agent came through,” Usher said, taking a heavy trunk off the cart as Nighthawk watched.
“Of course,” Nighthawk said. He watched Usher and Magda unload and assemble their equipment for awhile, then suddenly stood and stretched. “I’m going to go for a walk. I want to get the feel of this place.”
“What are you sensing, John?” Usher asked. Magda looked up from assembling an automatic shotgun.
Nighthawk shook his head. “I don’t know, yet.” He nodded at the weapons they were unshipping from their padded trunks. “But we’ll need those before it’s all over.”
Magda grunted wordlessly and went back to assembling weaponry. There was something of satisfaction on her face. If it was in her, Nighthawk thought, she’d be whistling right now.
“Go find some food when you’re done,” Nighthawk said. “Needless to say, room service would not be a good idea.”
Usher shook his head sadly. “Grubbs always loved room service.”
Magda grunted wordlessly again as Nighthawk went out into the corridor and took the elevator to the lobby below.
It wasn’t that late, but the lobby was already quiet. Outside, the night was pleasantly cool. Nighthawk walked around the grounds. He didn’t have much company. The patrons of the Peaceable Kingdom seemed to be part of the early to bed, early to rise crowd, even when on vacation.
He passed by a couple of night walkers like himself, once a knot of two score or so women wearing name tags that proclaimed themselves to be members of MAGOG, whatever that was, probably on the way back to their hotel from some function or another that had just ended. They were chatting animatedly, clearly enjoying themselves.
The Peaceable Kingdom was, Nighthawk admitted, a nice, well-groomed place, sanitary and unthreatening where those who liked their fun safe and predictable could have a good time.
And why not? These people worked hard for their money. If they wanted someplace to come that was a little mysterious, a little exotic, yet catered to what they believed, upheld their view of the world and affirmed their place in it, that was fine by him. One thing that his long life had taught him was that people needed different things from life. The Peaceable Kingdom served the needs of its patrons admirably.
He was a little worried, though, about what might happen here in the next couple of days. Nighthawk hoped that the Cardinal and his team would stop the Angel long before she reached the Peaceable Kingdom with her charge. In Nighthawk’s experience high-powered weaponry and tourists didn’t mix very well.
He could have skipped all this. He could have faded off into the night or taken the train out of town with Cameo. But two things had held him back, one practical, one theoretical. Practically, he didn’t want to cut and run, leaving a pissed off Cardinal wondering what had happened to him. Contarini didn’t take desertion lightly, and Nighthawk didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of what still might be a rather long life. Theoretically, his vision to the contrary, what if the Cardinal was right and the boy was the Anti-Christ? Revelations were extraordinarily difficult to interpret, and stranger things had happened in this world. Granted, not many. But the Cardinal, for all his demagoguery, was an educated man. He knew things that Nighthawk could not even begin to guess at. What if he were right, and the boy was the Anti-Christ, or, at least some kind of tool of the Devil. Nighthawk couldn’t walk away from this until he was sure, one way or the other. And his gut told him that it was all coming together. Soon. That all the forces for good and evil were gathering in once place. And that place was not called, this time, the Plains of Meggido, but rather Branson, Missouri, and that it was his fate to be among their number.