Bleak History Read online

  Krasnoff collapsed, wriggling on the concrete floor. The Asian woman who'd lost her soul in the image crumpled onto the ground. Lay sprawled on her back, staring.

  Dead.

  Billy, freed from Gulcher's uneven control, started toward Forsythe and Gulcher, raising his hand, the woman with the blood on her mouth stumbling ahead of him, near the sprawled form of Soon Mei.

  Billy was sending the blonde to attack them, Gulcher realized. “Doctor!” Forsythe said sharply. “The boy—the suppressor!”

  Helman rushed the dolly with the machine on it between Gulcher and Billy Blunt, and the boy seemed to shiver and shrug...and turned away, giving up, when the machine got close.

  The blonde sank to her knees, her eyes going blank. She hugged herself, muttering in some foreign language, near Soon Mei. Who lay there chattering in her own dialect. The surviving woman from Southeast Asia came to sit next to them—some impulse of moral support—weeping and babbling. Three women crying out in three separate languages, voices overlapped and tangled.

  The fourth woman, the dead one, just stared emptily at the blackened sky.

  Billy sighed loudly and simply sat down on the ground, talking to himself. “This totally like fuckin' sucks, man. I wanta be back in my cell. I got a hella headache, dude.”

  Gulcher closed his eyes. He felt sick himself. Like someone had injected sludge into his veins. Like he was tainted.

  “Well,” said Sean, behind him, “there you have it, General. Like I predicted. A goddamned fiasco.”

  “Not at all,” said the general. “I'll admit it was a mite messy—as you predicted. Pressure on Soon Mei created some kind of backlash, opening a doorway we never intended to open. I did not anticipate losing that subject's soul. Billy proved to be more resistant than we supposed. But the principle was proven. We had control—and then we lost it. But we made progress. We just need to refine our approach. There were a few damned good moments there, when the one who came through Gulcher controlled Krasnoff—and to some extent, Billy and Soon Mei. The image of the Wilderness showed us the possibility. The mass visitation. We could use that, on purpose, if we wanted to. Send a mass

  visitation against those who get in our way, and then the Great Wrath will be...” Forsythe let the sentence trail off, unfinished.

  Gulcher just closed his eyes and wished he could smell something besides blood and fear.

  Where the hell have I gotten myself to?

  ***

  RIGHT ABOUT THAT TIME. Generals Swanson and Erlich. In that same Pentagon office, staring into the same computer surveillance window. But they were looking through another set of cameras, a new vantage on the Containment Authority: the courtyard of Facility 23.

  General Erlich toyed with a cup of coffee, untasted and gone cold. “Can we be sure Forsythe doesn't know we're monitoring him like this?”

  “I don't think he'd have said some of the things he did, if he knew,” General Swanson pointed out, unwrapping a piece of chewing gum. Hard to find Juicy Fruit anymore. Had to order it online. He folded the stick into his mouth, chewed meditatively a moment. “That thing about those who get in their way. Who'd that be? Us maybe? The senators that are down on this project? Foreign enemies? Who? Forsythe knows we're trying to talk the president into closing this thing down.”

  Erlich frowned. “Does he? Who's told him?”

  “He just always seems to know what we talk about with the commander in chief.”

  Erlich put the coffee cup down on the desk. “I need to see that footage over again. Not sure what I saw. I don't think the cameras picked up everything. Looked like something coming out of the wall. Looks like they've got experimental subjects we never approved. Looks like one of those subjects died. Definitely got a woman going insane, chewing on someone's leg. And that fella Gulcher. You know what he's done? And he's working for us?”

  “You know what they'll say about that,” Swanson said. “Might be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.'“

  “Is he? I'm not sure Forsythe's our son of a bitch. So maybe Gulcher isn't ours either.” “You weren't bothered by that remark, about those who get in his way?” “Could be talking about the Iranians, for all I know,” Erlich said, shrugging. “What if he meant us?”

  “You and me?” Erlich took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Even if he didn't...this thing sure looks like it's spinning out of control. Let's look at it again, slow, see what we can see.”

  ***

  ABOUT HALF AN HOUR later, in Manhattan. The same night.

  Bleak and Loraine were standing outside an ordinary apartment building in uptown Manhattan, under a softly buzzing streetlight. The apartment building was relatively modern; yellowish plaster, impregnated with little stones, covered the facade. Only one streetlight on the block worked. Maintenance had been shifted to privatization, in most of America, so some neighborhoods kept their streetlights and fire hydrants up, and some wouldn't pay the company fees.

  Bleak stood there, waiting, watching the sky. Wondering again if he was doing the right thing, bringing Loraine here.

  Doing the right thing? Hell, this could be insanely—catastrophically—wrong. The meeting had been Shoella's idea in the first place. With the coming of the detector and that close call on the Jersey dock, Shoella and Oliver had gone to Scribbler, who channeled the words the recruiter should be recruited—and he made it clear the “scribble” meant Agent Sarikosca. Loraine.

  It was Bleak's idea to bring Loraine to Scribbler. But Bleak was having second thoughts. This woman was an agent of CCA. And the CCA preyed on ShadowComm. And there were ShadowComms in this building....

  Shoella had surprised Bleak by agreeing Loraine should come. “Why we got to be afraid of them all the time?” Shoella had said. “If we had someone we could trust—someone who saw we could work on the outside, maybe even help them, on some things, if they trust us to be free while we did it, we could stop hiding. “

  It was a compromise. Some in ShadowComm could choose to keep their freedom—in exchange for doing some work, at times, for the government...i/Shoella and Bleak could make some kind of diplomatic connection with the government.

  If Scribbler's scribbles approved it, on his meeting with her—that'd go a long way to convincing the other ShadowComms. But it would require trusting CCA.

  And then there was the other reason Bleak had gone to Loraine—to find out about Sean. If some prototypical form of CCA had abducted his brother, how could he do business with them? For the greater good? But maybe it was the only way to really find Sean.

  “We waiting here much longer?” Loraine asked, as an ambulance went warbling by on Second Avenue, headed uptown.

  “We're waiting for someone. We can't go inside till she gets here—or I get some other signal to go in. Or to get the hell out of here.”

  The sidewalks were nearly deserted, though lights burned in the buildings, and hip-hop played from an open window across the street. Bleak watched a bent, white-haired, old woman laboriously pulling a bag of groceries in a small metal cart. Another ten steps and she turned toward a limestone-fronted tenement, maneuvered the cart clankingly down the stone stairs to a basement apartment, descending out of sight.

  Loraine looked at the sky. “We shouldn't be out here too long. I don't think we're being surveilled at this point, after changing trains three times, but...”

  “We won't have to wait long now.”

  A blue-and-white NYPD patrol car cruised by. Bleak wanted to turn away, hide his face, in case CCA had pulled strings to get an APB out on him. But instead he looked down the street, as if impatient for someone to meet him. Which he didn't have to fake.

  The cops looked them over and moved on.

  “What worries me,” Bleak said in a low voice, when the cops turned the corner, “is that maybe the cops have Lucille Rhione. Maybe she accused me of being a murderer. Maybe there's an APB out on me—CCA might do it that way. Easiest way to pull me in. Then they get me from the cops.”
r />   Loraine shook her head emphatically. “No—we don't want the police bringing you in unless it's way, way necessary. It was a big hassle, with Gulcher, squaring it with all the interested parties. A lot of lies had to be told about where he was going to be—” She broke off, seeming to think she was saying too much; an expression of irritated self-reproach on her face. “Anyway—if the police try to take you, you might be forced to use your gifts. And who knows what might come out in the media. We don't want the general public knowing about that. You could get yourself shot too. You're too valuable to risk to the police.”

  “If that's true, it's one less thing to worry about. That leaves four hundred other things.” Bleak licked his dry lips. It was a warm night. After the fight with Gandalf, the conference with Shoella, then getting Agent Sarikosca here on all those trains, Bleak was hot, tired, and he badly wanted a glass of beer. Maybe a pitcher of beer. The shooting had left him with a clutching feeling; a feeling that was still there. He wasn't much moved by death, especially not the death of a speed dealer. But shooting someone in the head brought back that morning in Afghanistan. Isaac dying, Bleak running to find the mortar, killing another militant because there was no one else to kill...then killing the militant's son. Shooting a teenage boy in the head. Yeah, the kid was shooting at him at the time. But the kid was crying with grief as he fired at Bleak. Yelling the Afghan word for “father.”

  Bleak felt nothing that day. But later...the feelings came.

  Somehow it was all one thing. Isaac getting killed was of a piece with shooting that kid. As if it were all one shooting.

  It didn't help much to know there was life after death. Not when he also knew that people were trying to live out their lives for a reason. The spirit of the young militant he'd shot was probably still wandering in that village. Maybe he should have tried to talk to him, after. But that wouldn't work. Then there was the sheer violence of the thing—right through the head...and the blood...the smell of blood and shattered brains...

  Think about something else.

  Loraine Sarikosca. Maybe she was an enemy, maybe not. But he liked looking at her; he liked wondering about her. And he felt something extraordinary when they were together. A desire to trust her that he felt to the core of his being. As if he'd known her all his life, and beyond this life. “Okay with you if I call you Loraine?” he asked impulsively. “Calling you Agent Sarikosca...” He shook his head. “It's not discreet and...the agent part gives me the willies.”

  “Call me Loraine if you want.” She glanced at him and looked quickly away. “If you don't mind that I continue to call you Bleak.”

  Bleak wondered why that was important to her. But all he said was “I was looking at some of your books, before I sprang my visit on you.”

  “And my records. You're out there poking through my things—”

  “Hey—you're detecting me, I'm detecting you. You've got Jane Austen, Fielding. Dickens. O'Brian and Cornwell. I've read those. And the nonfiction. The Occult by Colin Wilson. Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe. Some Richard Smoley, some Alice Bailey, Jay Kinney—some Leloup. You're pretty well read in the occult.”

  She looked down the street. “I had a fascination with the supernatural. When it seemed so far away. So unreachable. Now I feel like...”

  “Wish it was still...Hidden?”

  “Sometimes. I'm still not used to seeing it right there in front of me.” She looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “I wouldn't think you'd bother with books on the occult, Bleak. Being up to your neck in it.”

  “I went through a period of trying to understand it better. Wondering what other people understood of it.”

  “And those books—are they right?”

  “Don't you know? You've got all those...pets of yours, at CCA.”

  Her cheeks reddened. “They're not my...1 don't have that much interaction with them. Tell you the truth, I haven't been with CCA that long. I was...1 was with another agency before CCA. When I transferred, they put me to work right away. I'm getting kind of a crash course. I'm not exactly sure why they're putting me on...” She got that look of being annoyed with herself again. “So—are those books right about the supernatural or not?”

  He waved vaguely at the buildings around them. “It's like this island—if you'd never been to Manhattan, and you've just arrived by sea, and went around the island in the sightseeing boat, would you know Manhattan from that? No. You'd have an impression of it, though, in some ways. You'd have a sense. But you'd figure a lot of things wrong too. Or—like that story of the blind men and the elephant. Each one of them gets it partly right.”

  He saw she was trying to read the words printed on his T-shirt—he opened his unbuttoned white shirt so she could read it. “Are you in a motorcycle club?” she asked, perplexed by the T-shirt. “The... Black Rebel Motorcycle Club?”

  “That's a band. I collect rock-band T-shirts. Mostly old bands. Most of them are stored at...” He broke off, not wanting to say Cronin's name. “A friend's house.”

  She peered down the empty street. “You don't want to tell me who we're going to meet here?”

  “Someone I trust who...has gifts. A certain woman. And someone we call Scribbler, who uses automatic writing, to get insights. Psychic insights. He doesn't always know what the 'scribbles' mean. It always turns out to be meaningful though. Sometimes it sees the future. Sometimes it sees things we can't see in the present. Let's leave it at that.”

  She pushed at a flattened beer can with the toe of her shoe, her tone way too casual as she said, “On the subway you asked about someone at CCA. I didn't answer. There's probably not much I can tell you. But maybe you should ask me the question anyway.”

  Bleak chuckled. “Sure, so you can learn something from the question. But I'll play. What do you know about Sean Bleak? I heard a story from one of your people—or he used to be one of your people’s—that Sean was...” He found it hard to actually get the words out. “That he was there. Alive. At one of your facilities, I guess. Being used for something.”

  Loraine seemed relieved. “I can tell you that I've heard of someone named Sean there, who seems to be important to...to my superiors. But I've never met him. I'm supposed to meet him—it hasn't happened yet. I don't know his last name. I can only read the files they give me. Some files are 'need to know.'“ She frowned, as if she'd said too much again. Then seemed to shrug it away. “Sean Bleak? He's a relative?”

  “If it's him...he was my brother. Fraternal twin. Or...he is my brother. I don't know which. I find it hard to believe he's...” Bleak shook his head. “Too long a story for right now.”

  He heard a discordantly unfriendly squawk and looked up to see Yorena circling overhead. “Here comes one animal that doesn't like me. Only it's not exactly an animal, really. You see it up there? Probably means her mistress is about to arrive.”

  A yellow cab turned onto the street. The cabbie, wearing a turban, pulled up nearby, next to a fire hydrant. Shoella paid him and got out, and as the cab drove away, she stood there, a long moment, scowlingly looking Loraine over. As if she wanted Loraine to know she didn't trust her.

  Maybe that's good instincts, Bleak thought. Simple street smarts. Ishouldn't be this friendly with Agent Sarikosca either.

  Yorena flapped down—making Loraine take a quick step backward in mild alarm—and settled on Shoella's right shoulder.

  “I'm Loraine.” Smiling slightly at Shoella. “Loraine Sarikosca.”

  Shoella didn't answer. Finally she said, turning to Bleak, “The bon Dieu knows if we do right. If she's coming, bring her upstairs, cher darlin'.”

  She twitched the big, dark red bird off her shoulder, and the familiar leaped into the air, to flap raucously overhead. “Yorena, you wait on the roof, I call you soon. Scribbler, he don't want you in there.”

  Shoella watched the bird fly off, then turned to look at Loraine. “But you—I suppose you got to come in.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  His real name w
as Conrad Pflug. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment whose only visible furnishing was the sofa bed in his living room and a coffee table. The coffee table was his center of operations. Scribbler was a compulsive pack rat, and the rest of the apartment was taken up with over packed cardboard boxes, and newspapers and magazines, fussily stacked. He was only mid-thirties, but looked older; a small, colorless, balding, wizened man with eyes crowded together above a long, narrow stroke of nose; dark red lips, weak chin. He invariably wore a long-sleeved black shirt, black slacks, black slippers. If he wore anything but black, he'd find himself scribbling on the fabric.

  Scribbler rarely went out. Maybe, Bleak thought, as they pressed through the narrow passage between boxes, Conrad Pflug stayed indoors because when he did go out, he would inevitably come back with something scavenged from the street for which he had no more room. He lived on a small annuity, and donations from people who came for his precognitive scribblings.

  Most psychics were frauds. Most who predicted the future couldn't accurately predict their own grocery list. But Scribbler was different. He was ShadowComm, and quiet about his ability, which had repeatedly proved itself. If you could interpret Scribbler's automatic writing, you got value for your money.

  Groceries and medicines could be delivered to Conrad Pflug, but Scribbler had to go out for pens, the right sort of ink pens. He needed a great many of them.

  Scribbler led the way from his front door, followed by Shoella, Bleak, and Loraine, edging along sideways between walls of cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling on both sides of the dingily lit hallway; the old synthetic carpet, badly worn, was the same color as the boxes.

  What was in the boxes? Bleak had no idea. Odds and ends collected from the street, he supposed, on Scribbler's increasingly rare forays out. What was on the boxes, though, intrigued the eye: scribbles, every square inch of cardboard covered with words, closely written cursive, mostly in black, sometimes blue, rarely in red; some of the scribbles on the boxes couldn't quite be read as words—but seemed to want to become words.