The manager’s head bobbed up and down so energetically that all Noel could picture was the man’s head set on a dashboard instead of a hula girl or a bobble-headed dog.
“I would like to see the vault, just to reassure myself,” Noel said.
The manager looked to Alicia for guidance. She nodded, and he said, “But of course.”
Two of the men from the car strode into the bank and began pushing patrons aside. This, as well as the slung Uzis, were so obvious that Noel felt he could comment. “There seems to be a great deal of… er… security around you. I’m concerned. Are you in danger?”
“Oh, no, no, no, monsieur. There is no problem inside the country.” Alicia frowned. “The problem is counterrevolutionaries who seek to stop the march of our glorious country. One of these aces actually came into the country and killed our beloved Tom. Shot him dead as he stood inspiring the troops.”
That wasn’t actually how it had been. Bahir had unloaded a clip from a machine gun into Tom Weathers’s back as he took a piss into a latrine trench. Noel put on an appropriately horrified expression. “But I met him yesterday. How did he survive?”
“Our Lady of Pain brought him back to life before she was killed by those same wicked elements.”
Ah, mystery solved, Noel thought. I’d wondered about that. But as one of those “evil elements” I know I didn’t kill her, and I didn’t hear of any other Western power moving against her. Interesting. “You must be terrified for your brother,” Noel said.
“I do worry, but the Leopard Men are ever vigilant. They even stand guard next to the beds while we sleep. And we change our rooms every night.”
“How wise. I’m reassured.” God damn it. Paranoia makes my job so difficult. And then, as if he’d heard Niobe’s voice, Noel corrected himself. Not my job any longer.
Alicia gave him a secretive little smile. “And we have other… resources. The PPA will soon be one of the great powers in the world.”
Noel slipped an arm around Alicia’s waist. It was a long reach. “Oh, you intrigue me. Might I know what constitutes these resources? I might find myself wanting to make a larger investment.”
Alicia bestowed a flirting tap on the cheek. “Now, now, you mustn’t be too nosy. Perhaps when we know each other… better.”
The manager led them down to the vault. The massive steel doors were rolled back, but steel bars still separated Noel from the actual vault. The two walls that weren’t covered with safety deposit boxes were discolored, and there were a few evidences of actual mold where the moisture from the surrounding soil had leached through the concrete. Noel made note of steel tracks beveled into the floor, cameras that had a depressingly wide angle of coverage, and tiny nozzles mounted up near the ceiling. There was a doorway into another room, and Noel could just see steel pallets stacked to a height of about four feet and covered with tarps. It could only be one thing: the treasury of the PPA.
And only twenty feet and a vast array of security devices lay between him and it. Noel looked over at the bank manager. “You have people watching those cameras?”
“But of course.”
“Would you like to see the control room, dear Etienne?” Alicia cooed.
“Yes, please.”
As they headed back up the stairs the manager asked, “And when might we expect monsieur’s deposit to arrive?”
“It will take me several weeks to raise that much cash, and arrange to have it safely transported to Kongoville.” And by that time I hope to have recruited help, returned, and robbed you blind.
Risen Savior Spiritual Center
Ashland, Oregon
The risen savior spiritual Center looked like a cheap community college. A neatly kept “campus” with winter-yellow grass where dirty snow hadn’t melted, flagstone paths, and concrete benches built to withstand Armageddon. Bugsy guessed that if the world ended in fire, there would probably still be something more comfortable to sit on. The residential buildings were in the back. They looked less like a cloister and more like dorms.
He asked a pleasant-faced woman in a conservatively cut blue dress where he could find Kimberly Joy and was directed to the back.
The meeting room looked less like college, and more like a preschool for adults. Soft couches and cheap linoleum tables. Inexpensive butter cookies and a cheap metal samovar squatting next to a stack of foam cups and a basket of herbal teas. Low bookshelves were filled with magazines featuring pictures of a white, big-eyed Jesus or his ecstatic white followers or else books with crosses on the spines. The woman by the window looked up as he walked in.
If he hadn’t spent most of the plane ride out from New York reviewing his records, he wouldn’t have recognized her. The long blond hair was gone, replaced by a shoulder-length soccer mom coif. The challenging grin was a tight, nervous smile with lines around it that made her mouth seem puckered, even when it wasn’t. The free-breasted hippie chick had vanished. A thick-bodied grandmother in her not-so-great Sunday best remained.
And still, knowing who she had been, he could see her in the shape of her eyes, the angle of her nose. Kimberly Ann Cordayne, or the ghost of her.
“You must be Mr. Tipton,” she said.
“Tipton-Clarke,” Bugsy said, “but yes, that’s me. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“I had to sit with the Lord,” Kimberly Joy said. Her inflection meant I had to think about it. Bugsy had a brief, uneasy image of Jesus Christ sitting on the cheap couch and talking the decision over with her like a cut-rate therapist.
“Well,” he said. “Thanks. I’m working with the United Nations,” he said, then regretted saying it. Her face went cold. “Not the black helicopter, new world order part. That’s a whole different division. Real jerks. I’m with the feeding the starving African babies part.”
“You don’t have to condescend,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“I’m perfectly aware of what you think of me. You think I’m an emotional cripple who’s spent her whole life bouncing from one cult to another.”
“Mind if I have some tea?”
She nodded toward the samovar and the cups. He was a little surprised to find his hands were shaking. He’d fought in wars before. Having a Christian lunatic call him out shouldn’t have meant anything.
“May I ask you a question, Mr. Tipton-Clarke?”
“Sure.”
“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior?”
“Ah. Well, not as such, no. The big guy and I haven’t ever really hung out, if you see what I mean.”
“You will be condemned to hellfire and damnation,” she said as if she were an insurance adjuster pointing out the fine print on a policy.
“If we can, let’s table that just for a second,” he said. “I was wondering if I could ask you about the Radical.”
“Who?”
“The Radical. He goes by Tom Weathers now. You knew him back in sixty-nine. He was at the People’s Park riot. I was led to understand that you and he were…”
It was like a caul had formed over her eyes. A grey film that wasn’t really there. “I remember,” she said. “I remember him. I never knew his name. I have been lost many times in my life. Yes, I know who you mean.”
“The thing is, he’s turned out to be kind of a… well… crazed, homicidal, political fanatic with the blood of hundreds if not thousands of people on his hands.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. When she opened them, there seemed to be even less joy in them than before. “I am sorry to hear it, but I can’t say I’m surprised. We were all enchanted by Satan. I am sorry he was called to do the devil’s work.”
“Lot of folks are sorry about that. Seriously. I was wondering if you could tell me more about your relationship with him, and how exactly he knew Mark Meadows?”
“Mark?” She laughed. “Oh, poor Mark. Mark didn’t know the Radical. Neither did I. I had no relationship with him.”