Wild Cards: Death Draws Five (42 page)

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.

He had already traveled far on this holy road, and had learned much. He had to walk the final few miles and see what waited for him at the end of it, no matter how rocky or dangerous the way.

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A
s it turned out, Barnett was more than happy to see Fortunato and Digger. Fortunato was in fact surprised at how eager he was to see them, as he invited them up to his headquarters after a simple phone call on Digger’s part. Barnett’s penthouse office was located at the top of the Angels’ Bower, at the end of a short corridor guarded by two men in suits and dark glasses. Fortunato didn’t need special power to tell him that they were cops. He’d seen plenty of their type before he’d left the world. Since Barnett was an ex-President, that meant Secret Service. He scanned their minds as Downs gave them their names. They were nats. Competent enough, but nothing more. They knew nothing other than the fact that Barnett was expecting them. Good to know, Fortunato thought, that we aren’t walking into a trap of some kind.

He was still surprised, and a little suspicious, at Barnett’s eagerness to meet with them.

The antechamber to Barnett’s office was like that of many other business offices. The decor lacked the faux Middle East crap that infested the other parts of the Peaceable Kingdom Fortunato had seen. A very decorative blonde sat at the receptionist’s desk. She looked at Fortunato with almost predatory interest and flashed an inviting smile.

“Mr. Fortunato. President Barnett is waiting for you in his office. Please go right in.”

“Fortunato is fine,” he told her. “For future reference.”

“Fortunato.” Her voice caressed his name. Her look promised more.

“Great,” Digger said. “Let’s go.”

The blonde took on an expression of professional regret. “I’m afraid that President Barnett would like to have a few words with Fortunato in private. I’m sure you understand.”

Digger frowned. “Well. Not really. But if I must wait to see the great man, then I must wait.” He perched casually on the corner of the receptionist’s desk. “Have you ever considered a career in modeling?” he asked as Fortunato knocked on the office door.

Fortunato glanced back to see the blonde regard Digger with polite distaste as Barnett called out, “Come in.”

Fortunato entered his office, closing the door behind him. He took a few steps, then stopped, looking all around.

Is everything fake in this place? He was standing in a replica of the White House’s Oval Office, down to the insignia woven into the carpet, the desk, and the draped flags behind it. Sitting at the desk was a handsome, well-preserved man, perhaps in his fifties. Fortunato recognized Barnett, though he had been out of the country during both terms of his presidency. Before his career had turned to politics, Barnett had been a popular conservative evangelical preacher. Fortunato had never been politically active, though he knew that Barnett’s attitude towards wild carders wasn’t exactly benevolent. He could extrapolate further how Barnett felt about mixed-race wild carders who had once pimped women and dealt drugs and were now Buddhist monks.

In the old days Fortunato would have read his mind without a second thought. Now, after the years in the monastery had leeched him of his arrogance and taught him something about humility, he thought about it first, then jumped into his mind anyway. His son’s life was on the line. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Barnett was involved some way in the attempted kidnapping, and this was a sure way to find out. What he read there, though, surprised him.

“Fortunato!” Barnett said, rising from behind his desk and extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure, a real pleasure, to finally meet you.”

Fortunato came forward and guardedly took Barnett’s hand. His handshake was firm and strong. His smile was sincere, as were his words of greeting. Barnett was genuinely glad to see him. “Sit down,” he said.

Fortunato did.

“Drink?” he indicated the cut glass container in easy reach on his desk. “Oh. Can Buddhist monks drink alcohol?”

“Some more than most men,” Fortunato said. “I don’t, however.”

“Fine, fine.” Barnett sat in his own chair and beamed across the desk. “Well. Glad to see that you’ve turned your life around and become a brother of the cloth. So to speak.”

“Forgive me if I seem impatient,” Fortunato said. “But there are some questions I’d like answered.”

“No doubt,” Barnett smiled back. “But couldn’t you read my mind to get your answers?”

I could, Fortunato thought, and I already did, at least partially. “You know that I turned my back on my powers when I left this country.”

“So the story goes,” Barnett said. “But I’ve heard strange things about your recent doings in New York City. People say you came back from the dead and stopped an ace from destroying the Jokertown Clinic. Hell, people are saying you’re still in New York doing all kinds of miracles. Healing the sick. Curing the deaf. Turning baking soda into crack, for all I know.”

“Careful,” Fortunato said. “Your prejudices are showing.”

“Hell, man, the only thing I’m prejudiced against is sin. You know that.”

Fortunato shook his head, as if unconvinced. “Was that your ace who attacked the Jokertown Clinic?”

Barnett laughed out loud. “Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. All I know is that someone with some very powerful underlings wants me dead, Peregrine dead, and our son dead.”

“That ain’t me,” Barnett said. “That’s the Cardinal’s boys.”

“The Cardinal’s boys?” Fortunato asked.

Barnett nodded affably. “Pay attention, now,” he said. “The boys after you are the Allumbrados, the Enlightened Ones, as they’re so puffed up with pride to call themselves. It’s an ancient and secret office of the Catholic Church. Goes way back. Has ties to another Holy Office that still exists officially, but hasn’t seen much action lately.”

Fortunato frowned. “The Inquisition?”

“That’s the one,” Barnett nodded. “These Papal boys are run by Cardinal Romulus Contarini. Real nasty stuff, actually. They hire all kinds of criminals and scum. Jokers and aces and real people alike—”

“’Real people’?” Barnett was so smooth that Fortunato had to occasionally remind himself not to forget where the evangelist was really coming from.

Barnett shrugged apologetically. “I don’t like to use the term ‘nats.’ It’s demeaning.”

“Uh-huh.”

“All right,” Barnett said. “Just between us, let’s cut the crap. You know that I’ve preached against the wild card, but it’s the virus I’ve preached against, not its victims. The virus has turned its prey into things both lesser and greater than human. They get my pity, my help, and whatever solace I can give them. But the virus—the virus has caused unimaginable misery in this world and it must inevitably be eradicated.”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Fortunato said.

Barnett shook his head. “I haven’t. But the world has. There’s no doubt in my mind that the end days are upon us. The signs are all around. Israel. Moral decay. The wild card itself. The downfall of communism.” He paused and looked seriously at Fortunato. “The boy, John Fortune.”

Fortunato looked back just as hard at Barnett. “What about him?”

“He is, without a doubt, Jesus Christ reincarnate. The Second Coming is upon us and the battle of the Millennium is about to start.” Barnett held out his hand, forestalling Fortunato’s incredulous reply. “Now hear me out. I’m not the only one who realizes that John Fortune will play a critical role in the upcoming Struggle. Contarini and his Allumbrados believe this as well. Only, wrong-headed as usual, the damned Papists think he’s the Anti-Christ. They believe that he must die, while I know, I know as well as I know the love of my God, that he must be shielded. He must be sheltered and protected until he realizes his fate and brings about the Kingdom of God on Earth.”

Fortunato, who had edged forward on his seat during Barnett’s speech, sank back in the chair, flabbergasted at the ex-President’s words.

“I know,” Barnett said at the stunned look on Fortunato’s face. “How can they be so wrong? How can they be that stupid? Well, God has, if you forgive the metaphor, thrown us a curve ball on this one. I could hardly suspect myself that He would chose a stained vessel such as Peregrine to be the mother of His Son, but God does work in mysterious ways—”

“Wait a minute,” Fortunato interrupted, unable to contain himself any longer. “What about me?”

“Well, what about you?”

“I was there when he was conceived. I can assure you that this was not a case of virgin birth.”

Barnett shook his head. “We all have a place in God’s plan. Some of us just aren’t aware of what that place is.”

“And some of us,” Fortunato said, “are so certain that they think they can put others in their place.”

“Well, just so. Look. I know you want to help the boy. I want to help the boy. I showed you my hole cards. Time for you to show me yours. Go ahead. Read my mind. I’m not faking it.”