Bleak History Read online

  Loraine shivered and closed the excerpt and went back to the personnel file, determined to put it out of her mind for a time. Personnel was busywork, but she was glad to have it. Glad to think about anything but the artifact, for a time; anything but the heart's darkest impulses.

  Someone came swaying up from the rear of the aircraft, gripping the backs of a seat to keep his footing in the turbulence: Drake Zweig, in his tight gray suit, tight gray smile on his lipless mouth. Vigorously rubbing his nose, he stood in front of his assigned seating, to the left of her, then let the plane's motion dump him into the seat. “Slam dunk!” he said, grinning at her.

  She winced. The phrase slam dunk was not pleasant to people working in the American intelligence community.

  He buckled himself in, irritating her by leaning over, glancing at her laptop. “You know that pisser back there, it's smaller than the ones the airlines got. Didn't think they could be made smaller.”

  “Uh-huh.” She tapped at the laptop, making notes on Agent Caffee, hoping Zweig would give up talking to her.

  “That the file on the new agent?” Zweig asked, craning closer. “Yeah, she worked with some guy who telepaths with dogs and cats, for Christ's sake, how useful is that? But I bet you're glad to have another woman in the agency. Funny there aren't that many—but then again it figures, what with Forsythe having an attitude.”

  Loraine glanced at him. “Which attitude?”

  “Oh, he doesn't like female agents. Just thinks they're too...they get too emotionally involved. Not coolheaded enough. Got to be chill-chill-chill, like my kid says, to be able to, you know, do the necessary.”

  “You've got children?” She hadn't known that.

  Sadness drew over his face like a shade drawn over a bright window. “Yeah. Haven't seen the boy in a while. He kind of flaked out on the family, second he turned eighteen.... Anyway”—eager to change the subject—”old Forsythe surprised me, bringing you in. But then maybe it's because of you and that Bleak guy he prizes so much. The whole lure concept...1 dunno why Bleak's such a big deal. I worked around him along the Pakistan border. Half the time he went out, he'd be the only one to come back. What's that about? Well, maybe not half the time, but still...And then he was always giving me shit about my intel sources: 'Not reliable, we could be hurting civilians.' Like that was his job. Not a company man, let me tell you. Thinking he could be relied on to work with Sean—” “Wait—Drake, what did you say about a lure concept? You mean me? I'm the—” “Zweig!” Helman snapped warningly, leaning forward to glare over at Zweig. “You're violating need-to-know.”

  “Hey, I wasn't going to say anything else.” Zweig spread his hands as if to say, All right, whatever! And turned his back to Loraine, putting his seat back a little, as if to take a nap, grumbling, “They don't give us any goddamned blankets, even, on these transports. Rather pay my own way and go on a regular commercial flight.”

  Lure?Loraine thought about demanding to know what that was about. Then decided that this wasn't the time. She'd talk to Helman alone.

  “Loraine,” Helman said softly. “I have something I'd like you to review. Quite another sort of journal entry.”

  He handed her a flash stick. “Just insert that into your laptop. The top file in the list...I'd just like you apprised. It'll come clearer later. Or perhaps it's not relevant. To tell you the truth I'm not sure. But I wanted one other set of eyes on it. It's from the general's report of his attempt to...to reach out to the Wilderness...to the Other Side...to gain us, well, allies, amongst UBEs. This was done right before we started to see certain manifestations, like the Gulcher case, not long ago. It's not an accident...1 mean, what happened to Gulcher and...this.”

  Puzzled by his manner—a feeling that he was taking a chance, showing this to her even as he'd warned Zweig not to step outside need-to-know parameters—she clicked the wafer-thin flash stick into her laptop and opened the file.

  CCA EXPERIMENT #351, NOTES

  This is the seventeenth day in my attempts to use ritual magic to contact the Great Powers beyond the Wall of Force. Admittedly experiments of this nature are controversial in the agency. Erlich and Swanson (increasingly a liability, those two) would have us focus on narrowing the gap in the Wall, and controlling those already activated by the increase in AS energies. But suppose we cannot repair the artifact? We must deal with the new reality, and to that end we will need allies. A threat may become an asset, if we learn to control it.

  In the course of #E3511 have taken the advice, and some of the formulations, of Eliphas Levi: I have fasted and meditated and honed my mind to single-pointed focus on the summoning. This is how magicians in the past have penetrated Newton's Wall of Force. It can be done, if only passingly. It is like a weak radio signal, coming through the static. But even a weak signal can call a gunship, and a gunship is what we need if we are to overcome our enemies. Today, in Room 32,1 felt the sigils as if the insignia, the names, were all coming alive, like creatures in themselves, like that Kabbalistic idea of letters as living things. The ritual markings were glowing and moving about and I saw a distant place in my mind's eye. Is the stress, my admittedly obsessive focus, making me imagine things? It's not impossible! But I don't think so.

  [Another entry, the following day.]

  Eureka! I have seen, I have communicated, I have touched the Great Wrath from Outside, the lord of the Wilderness! In contact with it, I have understood it! We see and

  think in three dimensions. The fourth-dimensional reality of a UBE is not completely comprehensible to us. But growing up in South Florida, I saw creatures living in lagoons, that also lived outside them, and this is something of that kind: the lagoon is its world; the atmosphere is ours. It can extend part of itself into our world; it can reach through the rift, without quite being here in fullness. It can influence things here. It can send its i own version of what, in this world, we call familiars; “independent pseudopods “ Dr H calls them, or Formless Familiars; and till now they 're theory. But some have been released into our world this day, as a result of my contact with the Great Wrath. It has reached out to our world and we will see those human beings who are congruent with its nature light up with its force. I myself have seen the Great Power reaching for me. I seem to see a circle within a circle, and in that circle is an eye that extends itself, an eye that elongates to contact my forebrain. I drew back, instinctively, in the course ofE351 but this time, today, I will not draw back, I will give It access, so that I can learn Its ways, as the Seminole Indians once did with animal spirits. I will be Its means of knowing this world, and in the course of Its knowing, I will know It in turn. Already I have identified It, have learned the name It was called by the ancients: Moloch!

  At first, a giant with the red-eyed head of a bull and a man's body, but all made of hot brass. Whenlsawhim, I heard a slow-thudding drumbeat, and infants screaming in pain, as Moloch reached for me.

  And then I saw into him, past the shell imagined by men. I saw his truer form, another being, the single yellow eye within many mouths, mouths that turn one within the next, wheels in wheels.

  [The following day's entry had only two lines.]

  CCA EXPERIMENT #352, NOTES

  Today I am redefined...!

  That was the end of the file.

  “The phrase 'today I am redefined,'“ Helman said, just loud enough for her to hear over the background grumbling of the big jet. “It puzzles me—what do you think it means? You've read widely in the occult.”

  Loraine shrugged. “Hard to say. Makes me think of writing by some of the gnostics. Both notes have that, um, apocalyptic tone. Visionary.”

  “I see. Well. Probably not a matter for concern.” Helman glanced over at Zweig, then leaned a little closer to her. “Close the file. Read the second file, on Troy Gulcher. And then—when you've done that—please give me the flash drive back. Do not save these files to your computer...and discuss this with no one else.”

  Helman didn't say another word on t
he trip to Long Island. Loraine watched him from the corner of her eye as he took an orange out of his pocket and incised the peel with one extralong thumbnail, exactingly removing it in an unbroken spiral. Then he frowningly ate the orange, section by section, without spilling a drop of juice. Seeming, to Loraine, haunted by something he couldn't quite bring himself to say.

  ***

  ABOUT THAT TIME, the same evening, Atlantic City.

  Gulcher was getting thoroughly sick of the casino. He was even sick of this claustrophobic little room, though it contained ever-growing stacks of money. Jock wanted to pile a van high with that money and just take off. Sooner or later the Baronis' people would come around.

  But the whisperer didn't want Gulcher to leave Lucky Lou's Atlantic City Casino.

  “Not yet, “the whisperer had said to him, last night. “You're needed right here. To focus through. The Great Power hasn 't fed enough yet. Still hungry. We will go to other casinos and take those over too; in other parts of the world. Las Vegas. Europe. All be yours, you wait for it.”

  He wasn't going to admit he was scared of the whisperer. And Moloch. But how did you argue with a thing like Moloch—or his whisperer? And Moloch was the only reason he wasn't in prison. But he was going stir-crazy in this place.

  “Jock,” he said, staring at the piles of money in the counting room, “I can't believe I'm bored with this money, here.”

  Jock leaned on a table stacked with cash, grinning. He was fucked-up again, looked like. “I'm not bored with it. Sure would like to take it with me though.” He reached past the two Chinese guys and took a big, sealed stack of twenties. Tossed it up and caught it.

  When would they be able to get out of here? Gulcher tried to call the whisperer, to ask, get some kind of answer. But there was no reply. Hadn't been able to get a response since last night.

  “Whisperer,” he muttered. “You there?”

  Maybe it was gone. Maybe he was free of it. And maybe that was a good thing. “Boss?” A voice from the air.

  Not the whisperer. The whisperer definitely didn't think of Gulcher as “boss.” Which worried Gulcher. No, it was Stedley talking on the intercom.

  “I hear you, Stedley, what's up?”

  “There's federal agents all around the damn place. Surrounding the casino. FBI, ATF, all kinds of guys. State troopers too, did I mention that?”

  “Okay—” Gulcher's mouth was dry but he was almost glad. “Don't do nothing yet.”

  “What do you mean, 'Okay, don't do nothing'?” Jock demanded, throwing the money on the table. His eyes were suddenly wild and he was breathing hard. The bonhomie was gone; the paranoia was back. “You bring these guys here? You tradin' me for some deal, that the idea?”

  “Cut that tweaky shit out, Jock, goddammit, and get upstairs and help Stedley. You forget we got the whisperer. What happened is obvious. Those greaser Baroni fucks went missing and they musta told somebody where they were going and somebody infiltrated the place, checked it out. Probably ID'd me. But we got the power to turn their little minds around, all right? Now cool your fucking jets.”

  Jock was gaping at him, his eyes pinned, but Gulcher just walked away from him, went out to the elevator.

  Just before the doors closed, Jock caught up and shoved his way into the elevator, breathing hard.

  “Right, okay, we're gonna handle this,” Jock muttered, his eyes darting around.

  “Goddammit, Jock.” Gulcher just shook his head. “Just be quiet...I got to contact.”

  He closed his eyes. Felt the whisperer there. And no response when he called out to it, inside. It had gone into a sullen silence on him.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered, as the doors to the elevator opened. He and Jock stepped out into the main poker room: a cavernous space with rows of green felt card tables. All of the tables empty, no players. Stacks of chips still sitting on the felt, in front of the seats. The big television screens over the room showed ESPN, a horse race, and—the front of Lucky Lou's Atlantic City Casino: a newsbreak shot showing rings of cop cars, staties mostly, some vans Gulcher associated with the FBI, all around the casino. And there were the FBI agents, with their cute little jackets and the letters FBI real big across the back. Lots of guns out there too.

  “Oh, fuck, Troy,” Jock breathed, gaping up at the screen.

  He darted frantic looks around the empty room. The rows of slots chattered and buzzed and dinged from the next room, but they could see through the open doors that no one was playing them. “They already got the players out—so that means—”

  “Means we're already here,” said a man, in an Air Force general's uniform, crossing over to them. His hands were held up as if he were surrendering.

  The general was a medium-small guy, with a lot of ribbons on his chest; middle-aged, smiling slightly. He didn't look scared at all. “If you have guns, please don't fire 'em.” He had a mild Southern accent, Georgia or Florida. “Look beyond me—you see the sharpshooters, there, among the slot machines?” He paused, half turned, nodded toward the men behind him.

  The FBI sharpshooters, four that Gulcher could see, were stepping out into sight—in partial cover from the slot machines. They stood just inside the slot aisles, rifle barrels resting on the warbling, flashing machines, getting a bead on Gulcher and Jock.

  “Where's Stedley?” Gulcher asked, for something to say.

  Stalling while he tried to contact the whisperer again.

  The general lowered his hands, walked slowly, carefully toward them. “Oh, poor, confused Stedley is under arrest. We took him out of the building and the influence he was under simply passed from him. Last thing he remembers is the mornin' you showed up. There was a riot, he says, and then —he woke on up out there, in our custody.” The general stopped just out of Gulcher's reach. Clasped his hands in front of him. Smiled gently.

  “Yeah, well...what do you people want?” Gulcher asked, still stalling. “I got a casino to run, here. We're losing money with this interruption. You got a warrant or what?”

  Mentally calling, Whisperer...Moloch...

  “Yes, we have a warrant, Mr. Gulcher.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jock said. “Troy—they—”

  “Shut up, Jock. Okay, so you think you've ID'd me, General Whosis,” Gulcher said.

  Whisperer...Moloch...Needyou to step in, this time...you there?

  “We know exactly who you are, you and your friend here. As for my name, I am General Allan Roger Forsythe. That is, anyway, how I used to be known. And how most people know me. You, sir, you made your mistake when you snuffed out the Baronis. They were part of a big organization. His people knew they were last seen here. And Mr. Baroni's son was smarter than you think. He got a picture of you with his cell phone, sent it to his people, with a little text message: 'Who the fuck is this guy?' Beard and all, one of them recognized you from the news reports. They thought if they bulled in, you'd shoot their bosses—though I expect you've done that already. What did they do, these professional criminals? They called the police! Just one of those little ironies that make life so darn interestin'. Now, the police, they are under instruction to inform all federal agencies if they run across you. And those agencies are under instruction to inform the CCA. We were duly informed—and here we are.”

  “And what the fuck is the CCA?” Gulcher was aware that Jock was breathing hard, through his mouth.

  “I'd rather not explain it all right here. Most of the young men behind me have never heard of it. Maybe none of them have. It's a very special offshoot of our special branches. But believe me—if you come along with me—”

  Whisperer...Moloch...

  Forsythe's smile broadened yet somehow became colder. His voice softened. “That won't work, Mr. Gulcher. What you're trying to do.”

  Gulcher stared. “What'd you say—what I'm trying to do?”

  “You called to Moloch,” the general said, with unruffled confidence. “I heard you.” He smoothed his hair, looking around at the empty poker tables
as he spoke. “The Gulcher cat was out of the bag when you killed those men and that image was sent, so...the Great Wraith decided to let us take you now. He has ingested a great deal of what he came here for. There was to be wore, but...the timetable too is an issue. Things outside your sphere of awareness have shifted, just this morning—it's been decided he will use you in a different context. Essentially—he sent me to pick you up.” The general put his hands in his pockets, rocked casually on his heels as he went on thoughtfully, “I use 'he' because that's how you think of the Great Wrath. In fact that entity has no definite gender. Some people see Moloch as a female...but Moloch is not so limited.”

  “Jesus, Troy,” Jock breathed, an hysterical whine in his voice. “Oh, Jesus and Mary, they're all around us and now they're in our heads, they can read our minds!”

  “What the fuck are you?” Gulcher demanded, glowering at the general.

  “I am someone without your talents—but with a special relationship to one of the Great Wrath's servants. His benign promise is...within me. Always. You are not to mention that, within the confines of the CCA. We don't control everyone there, hence not everyone at the authority can be trusted. Now —the one you call the whisperer has conveyed the Great Wrath's decision. You are to join me. To join forces with us. No longer a loose cannon, but a cannon—lashed to our ship. What do you say to that?”

  “I say-”

  “I say fuck you!” Jock shouted suddenly, the words accompanied by spittle. “ Whatever the fuck you are!” He reached into his coat, just barely got the gun out before the sharpshooters' bullets slammed into him, made him stagger four steps backward. He fell flat on his back, twitching, already dead.