Any Minute Now (30 page)

“Ruth,” Preach's voice rumbled like thunder, “you have been expected. Be seated.”

“I prefer to stand.”

Again, St. Vincent was shocked. He felt his mother's fear like a clap of thunder rolling across the bayous. He smelled it like the aftermath of a lightning strike, as if the atmosphere inside the hovel had suddenly filled up with ozone. The tip of his nose wrinkled; he felt like sneezing, as if to expel the fear he had absorbed.

“Desmortiers,” she said. “This is my son, Luther.”

“Preach, Ruth. Everyone calls me Preach.”

“You think I give a shit what others call you, Desmortiers?”

The creature turned his blindingly blue eyes on St. Vincent. “I know your father, boy.”

“No you don't,” his mother said quickly. “You couldn't possibly.”

“Why?” Preach said. “Because you don't?”

His cackle sent shivers down St. Vincent's spine. “Why do you do it, Ruth? Strive to save people's souls through the spirit of Christ. When will you learn that there is no God.”

“No,” Ruth said with a sneer, “there is only you, Desmortiers.”

“Me?” That cackle again. “I do not exist, Ruth. That, too, you refuse to believe.”

The two of them eyed each other, mortal enemies on either side of a blasted battlefield.

“And yet,” Desmortiers went on, “you continue to come here, you continue to seek me out.”

“You need food. Even if you do not exist, that boy has to eat.”

“You know nothing about the boy,” Preach said. “In any event, my parishioners care for us.”

Ruth glanced around the hovel. “So I see.” She smiled. “The truth is, I feel compelled to do you favors every once in a while. Without you my tent would not be filled to the outer stakes, I would not have had to spread increasingly larger tents over the past five years. Your presence fuels my works like no one else.”

“It's good to have an enemy, in other words.”

“Yes.”

“Because someone like me validates your existence.” A crack appeared in that awful face as the smile that terrified her appeared again. “And now you bring your son to me. Why? So I can tell him who his father is?”

“Don't you dare!”

“You told me you didn't know, Ruth. You've lied to me.”

“It isn't the first time.”

“Knowing you as I do, I would hardly think so.” His head moved, as if with great difficulty. “Still, he has a right to know.”

“Luther's all mine!”

“On every level, how you deceive yourself. The truth surrounds you. Just because you deny its existence does not change its legitimacy. Tell him, Ruth, or I will.”

St. Vincent became aware that he had come under the young boy's scrutiny. He was more or less the same age as St. Vincent and in all ways unremarkable. And yet the look he gave St. Vincent was pregnant with meaning, as if he knew something about St. Vincent, something even Ruth didn't know.

And then there were two explosions that threatened to fracture St. Vincent's head. He leapt backward, stumbling. When he had righted himself he saw his mother holding the largest handgun he had ever seen, and in his time he'd seen plenty. Preach Desmortiers and the young boy were both sprawled on the floor.

“Now d'you understand why I brought my son?” Ruth said.

Outside the shack, striding along behind his mother, St. Vincent saw a bicycle, probably the kid's. As he took it, he glanced at what looked like a license plate, except it read:
CTHULHU IS COMING.

Ruth did not look back, but her son did. A scream stifled in his throat as he saw an enormous crow fly out of the open door, and behind it, the shadow of the creature his mother was certain she had killed.

Preach Desmortiers's lips curved into a smile, and then he winked at Ruth's son.

St. Vincent, having absently sucked on his cigarette until it was finished, was jolted from the past by the sound of his mobile. This had better be Dickerson, he thought. It was a text, not a call. Opening the text, he discovered a still frame from a CCTV camera. Underneath the photo was the time and date stamp, along with the log line: “JIB.”

St. Vincent knew what that stood for: Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport. He squinted at the photo, used a hand gesture to zoom in, just to make sure. Dickerson had come through. Once again, he glanced up at the lights from Sydny's apartment. The uneasy truce is over, he thought. This is war.

 

30

“I can't see,” Julie said.

“That's the point.” Sydny's voice seemed to float in the air in front of her. “You're here to feel.”

Julie, sitting on the chair in Sydny's blacked-out bedroom, felt her thighs tremble. The dampness seeping out onto the leather was warm as blood. Squirming a little made the leather slick as her latex hood.

“Now come,” Sydny said, “slide off the chair … No, don't try to stand. Kneel. Kneel with your legs spread.”

“I don't like this,” Julie said. Her body was stiff and unyielding with incipient terror.

“Of course you don't like it. You're still clinging to your past, to the things you think shaped you, without any idea that you can free yourself, shed your past like a snake sheds its old skin.”

She could sense Sydny standing over her, heat radiated from her like a sun.

“I seem to have heard that argument before,” Julie said.

“Don't be confused. This isn't some kind of break-you-down-to-build-you-back-up bullshit. That's the province of cult leaders. That's brainwashing, pure and simple.”

Sydny's voice was abruptly closer, almost beside her right ear. “Kitten, there is a time, a place—with a
someone
—to let go, to submit, to give yourself wholly to that other person—to do what they say, to respond when they command you, and then to
feel
. Once you do that, once you fight through your fear, what you gain is incalculable.”

“What?” Julie's voice could not have been smaller if she were a mouse. “What do I gain?”

“A strength you never knew you had. A power no one can ever take away from you.” Sydny ran her fingers through Julie's hair. “A new life is waiting for you, kitten.” She took her hand away, leaving Julie alone. “You have only to reach out and take it.”

And yet not alone. Julie submitted, slipping off the chair to kneel with her legs spread as Sydny had commanded.

“Bend over until your forehead touches the floor.”

She bent over until her forehead touched the floor. Fear grabbed her; she had never felt so vulnerable.

For some moments thereafter nothing happened. Then Julie felt something slick and smooth penetrate her from behind. “What is that?”

“No questions. Just feel. Feel.”

The thing—possibly a dildo—moved in and out of Julie. At first she resisted. She wondered whether this was what it felt like to be raped. Then she realized that she was holding on to fears engendered by notions, misconceptions, outright lies that were part of her past. She trusted Sydny, though she could not say why. Maybe it was because Gregory Whitman trusted her, but she suspected that, even more, it was because she was sick until death of her gray past. She wanted to be rid of it, burn it on the pyre of the unknown future.

“
You can free yourself
,” Sydny had said, “
shed your past like a snake sheds its old skin
.”

She wanted that, oh, yes, she did, she discovered, with every fiber of her being.

She began to relax, to, as Sydny kept reminding her, feel. But a new fear began to creep in to replace the old, engendered not by the penetration but by the realization of having no control. To cede control as an adult in the modern world was a terrifying experience.

As if she were reading Julie's mind, Sydny said, “But you see, we have no control over what happens to us. We may think we do, but we're just fooling ourselves. Life is random. Life is chaos. The pretense of control is what keeps most people sane. But here, with me, you don't have to keep up the pretense. Here you confront life as it really is—raw, primitive, unfamiliar. Here you will find out the truth about yourself.”

With her complete and utter submission her fear faded, and with the banishment of her fear, the pain was transformed into—what? In perceptible increments into pleasure, which rose and rose like a shining tower before her until it blotted out the sky, the sun, the moon, everything. She groaned from deep in her belly and, for the first time in her life, she came. Wave after wave of pleasure washed over her, until she was inundated, until she dropped below the surface, immersing herself without any fear of drowning. In fact, the opposite was true. As her orgasm raged on, she sensed the power in it—a power beyond her imagining.

And then it subsided, slowly, languorously, leaving her on a shoreline, without breath and with a pounding heart. She wanted nothing more than to look back at the eternal waves, to crawl back into that tide of pleasure.

But there was a distant sound, as of a bell tolling. From behind and above her, she felt the cool draft of Sydny moving away from her, her footsteps exiting the bedroom, heels clicking down the hallway and across the parquet floor of the living room—how clearly these small sounds came to her in her new private world, as if they were whispered intimately into her ear!

She heard Sydny's voice call out “Who is it?” as if it were a shout.

And then the roar of gunshots ripped through the apartment, shattering every perfect note that had come before. The fragile shell of her brave new unvarnished world cracked open.

*   *   *

So I've kicked Whit out twice, Charlie thought as she exited the toilet. Our history has a way of repeating itself, as if both of us are bound to a wheel that raises us up and then almost drowns us. Maybe, she thought, as she rose to her feet, drowning would be a blessing compared to the wreckage we're left with.

She looked through the rooms of the villa. The blood, the sheer human waste. Her mind had had time now to count the pileup of the dead, the modern process of death so clinical the mind couldn't properly register it as it was happening. I am part of this, she said to herself. A willing participant in the death of Americans, no matter how misguided their motives.

Dimly, she became aware of a rhythmic beeping. Turning, she sidestepped the body at her feet on the hallway floor, went into the room where Seiran el-Habib was still a prisoner, tied again to his chair. He cringed visibly as she strode toward him, but she went past him, picked up the sat phone that Flix must have dropped or left behind. Where was he, anyway? And where was Whit. She shouldn't have cared, but she did. Very much so.

Toggling on the phone, she said, “Hello?”

“Who's this?” said a male voice that sounded both staticky and very far away.

“Charlie. Who's this?”

“Your boss,” King Cutler said. “You know what I'm looking at, Daou?”

“How could I possibly—”

“Stick it! At this very moment, I'm looking at a surveillance photo of you, Flix, and Whitman getting on a private plane in Djibouti. I know you're nowhere near Beirut. And, furthermore, I can guess where you are.”

“We have el-Habib,” Charlie began.

“You what?!? Never mind, I should've known. Whitman's like a dog with a bone—he'll worry it to death until he gets at the marrow.” He sighed heavily. “Did you at least find out why el-Habib was being protected?”

“He's part of a pipeline that runs from Beijing to Washington.”

Cutler felt a tiny shiver of fear run down his spine. “Christ, don't tell me it's political.” For USA to get involved in a high-level political maneuvering would mean a death sentence for the company.

“He mentioned a group called the Alchemists.”

True fear took hold of Cutler. “Alchemists.” St. Vincent's group, Christ. The shit that fucker wasn't telling him. “Who are the Alchemists?”

“No idea, at this point.”

“Are you still interrogating him?”

Silence. Static. Silence.

“Daou.” And what will Gregory do now that he's found out he's up against his former employers? “Daou! What the hell's happened to our connection?”

Silence. Over the next twenty minutes he tried to raise Red Rover six times. The connection was dead and could not be resurrected.

*   *   *

Sydny's cry was like a knife shoved between Julie's ribs. She felt completely frozen in terror. Then Sydny screamed, and, in a flash Julie got to her feet. She tried to rip off the hood, but sweat made it stick to her like a second skin. Fumbling, she pulled on the upper zipper tabs and, blinking like an owl in sunlight, could see again.

Sydny was whimpering. Then came a man's voice raised like a cudgel over hers. Julie, heart racing, was in a panic. What can I do? she thought. The intruder has a gun. Surely, he'll check the other rooms and then he'll find me. There's nowhere to hide. I'm helpless.

And then she remembered the handgun. She lunged for the closet, felt along the shelf until her fingers closed around the grips of the weapon. She recalled the way Olivia Benson held her gun and almost laughed at the thought of imitating a character on a TV show beloved by her.

She held it as Olivia would, left hand supporting the butt while the forefinger of her right hand extended just above the trigger guard, ready to move into firing position. Her pulse filled up her throat as she advanced across the bedroom to the doorway into the hall. Beyond, the lights of the living room rose with a feral glow, like a forest fire.

On bare feet she went silently down the hall, through shadows and light, striped like a stalking tiger, invisible in the tall grass. She could hear Sydny mewling like a cat, and felt her gorge rise. She swallowed hard to keep from retching.

Faster now, compelled by the desperate urgency in the noises coming from the middle of Sydny's chest. To save her meant everything, so she ran, as desperate now as Sydny, clinging to the last bloody threads of life.