Brooklyn Knight (29 page)

“This must be pretty important.”

“I think it is, yes. You need to understand what is happening, what might yet happen. For you to do so, you will need to know that I believe everything I am telling you.”

“Of course,” offered the detective, carefully watching for Knight’s reaction, “you could just be crazy. I do deal with the tinfoil-hat brigade on a regular basis, you know. They believe what they’re telling me pretty passionately, too.”

“I understand,” answered the professor, “and if you wish to
think of me as merely another harmless crackpot, that’s fine. That’s not the kind of reaction that worries me.”

LaRaja nodded. Saying nothing more but wearing an expression that announced that he planned to be as open as possible, he waited for whatever it was the professor was offering to him. Knowing he could ask for little more from the detective, Knight swallowed, then said;

“I told you we saw a ghost here earlier. I’m telling you now that I’ve seen them before. I’ve seen worse. There are in this world, Denny, all manner of things. Most, thank Heaven, are locked away, barred from reaching mankind. The Bible stories of Solomon, sealing Hell things away for eternity—more than just flights of fancy. He was not the first, nor was he the last.”

LaRaja felt the moisture in his mouth begin to evaporate. He had heard such talk before—far too often. But this was different. Knight was a man with everything to lose, and little to gain, by revealing what he claimed to believe to the detective. Of course, those others over the years who had spoken to him of like things were in the same position as the professor. The only difference was, Knight understood the possible consequences. The others—the crazies—they spoke with an unshakable belief, the tone of which indicated they fully expected anyone hearing them to instantly accept anything they said as proven fact.

But the professor’s voice was different. There was no doubt in LaRaja’s mind that Knight was afraid to speak as he was, that he understood completely what kind of a leap of faith he was asking the detective to make and how damaging it could be to him if that leap was not attempted.

“The world is filled with dark forces, and sinister men willing to use them. But they’re never … what you would think. Novels, Hollywood, the entertainers of this world … they never get these things right—not even close. There are no men in opera capes living
forever on the blood of young women who confuse the erotic with murder. But there are vampires. Twisted, unnatural parasites that exist beyond the understanding of men. There are witches and demons and wizards, an entire underground race of nightmare and wonder of which most mortal beings have not the slightest clue.”

“But …” LaRaja choked slightly, so dry had his mouth and throat become that he found he could not form words. Taking a moment, he forced himself to produce a small ball of saliva, then swallowed it, adding, “But you do. Correct?”

Still sitting in the car, listening, Bridget held her breath, waiting to hear the professor’s response. Knight nodded, staring directly into the detective’s eyes as he gave it. It was a hesitant motion, a delay conveying not his lack of faith in what he had to say but his fear that his faith would not be shared. Then, before either man could say more. Bridget interrupted their conversation by calling out;

“Professor, I think you were right.”

As both men turned toward the detective’s car, they saw Bridget pointing off to her left with both hands. Following the directional cue, Knight viewed what he had fervently hoped he would find that evening. LaRaja beheld something practically beyond the scope of his comprehension. Moving slowly across the cemetery, curling around some gravestones, passing through others, came the same type of wraith that had approached Knight and his assistant in the same spot so recently.

“This …” The detective cursed himself mentally, damning the fear that was freezing his blood, overloading the circuits of his mind. Knight had told him what to expect. Was he less of a man, he snarled at himself, than some cocky academic? Responding to the insult, his policeman’s soul denying all fear, LaRaja forced himself to finish his sentence.

“This is what you were hoping to show me?”

“I believe it must be—yes.”

The glowing, mostly transparent shape continued forward, heading straight for the two men as best it could. The apparition did not seem hampered by the growing wind as much as it did by some form of apprehension. Studying the figure, Knight wondered at what the difference might be between the two manifestations. The ghostly form did seem somewhat changed from the previous evening. Larger, he thought. Brighter, perhaps. Heartier.

Next to the professor, however, his companion’s mind was filled with different issues. All the time he was working to face down the approaching horror, a dozen different voices sounded within LaRaja’s head, urging him to flee. They reminded him of how close his car was, that the key was waiting in the ignition, waiting for him to throw his vehicle into motion. He could still make it, they whispered. Pleaded.

Others were more sinister.

They questioned Knight’s motives, suggested that perhaps the professor meant to destroy him, to feed his soul to the approaching nightmare.

“Why not,” asked one. “If you can believe this much of what he told you, why not all of it? Is this one of those dark forces he claimed the world is filled with, and if it is, is he one of those sinister men he says are so willing to use them?”

The detective found himself beginning to shake. He understood Knight’s warnings now, realized the academic had been trying to prepare him for just this kind of doubt. Then, as terror clawed its way into his soul, a small voice from the furthest recesses of his brain reminded him;

You believed the girl when she said she was here before. She saw this thing, and she came back. What exactly are you afraid of, Dennis, that doesn’t scare a young woman still wet behind the ears?

And then, the glowing shape came within inches of the two men. Without hesitation, Knight stepped forward, plunging both his arms into the undulating specter. As he did so, he turned his head slightly toward the officer, shouting;

“Do the same as me—join me!”

Trembling, but closing his eyes all the same, with a prayer on his lips, Detective Denny LaRaja did as instructed. The professor put a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder then, holding it tightly, forcing his senses to remember that he was not alone, that human contact was right there next to him.

LaRaja needed the guiding hand, for fear was invading his senses from every angle. Even knowing Knight was there at his side was not comfort enough to keep the desire to bolt from flooding his every thought. And then a sudden realization hit the detective—one so astounding as to be almost beyond his capability to accept it.

Part of him realizing that he must be right, that the professor could have brought him out there for no other reason, LaRaja was just beginning to speak when the skies barked and another terrible bolt crashed down from the Heavens, striking them all.

“All right now, son, let me see if I’ve got this whole thing straight.” The major general speaking to Agent Klein did not appear to be a particularly confused man. He also did not appear to be an extremely happy one, either.

“You’ve come here to have us protect a rock?”

The speaker was Major General Mark Harris, a ramrod of a fifty-year-old, slightly gray, with metal-flake eyes and a jaw that appeared capable of withstanding a blow from a two-by-four. As he stared upward from his seat behind his desk, unblinking, the agent before him answered simply;

“Yes, sir.”

The FBI man knew enough about military protocol to both not address the officer by either his rank or name, and also to not respond to anything more than he had been asked. He had answered the question put to him. To do more would be to offer offense. It would be a silent admission that he thought the major general did not know his own mind. In most of the outside world, such
protocol seemed a particular type of arrogance, one that outraged liberal thinkers used to breaking into spontaneous debate over the slightest, most insignificant of things, often for no more reason than the mental exercise.

To the military mind, however, order and discipline were not simply niceties. They were ways of conduct that, if not followed at the right time, could lead to the deaths of thousands, to the destruction of cities or the fall of nations. Klein had been well trained in dealing with the various patterns of thought among leadership personalities. He would handle a CEO in a much different manner from a military commander, from a police officer, from a politician.

And
, he thought, forcing himself not to smile,
from an academic, as well.

“Okay, Mr. Klein, now that you’ve gotten yourself all the way up here, tell me, why do I want to do this?”

The agent understood the major general’s question. The officer was not asking to be convinced to follow his orders. He was looking for whatever information Klein might possess outside those orders. Immediately the FBI man launched into a complete recitation of the history of Hamid Ras Morand. He kept his report brief and concise, detailing all he knew of the terrorist’s various criminal activities as both a soldier of the line and a director behind the scenes. When Klein got to Morand’s most recent assignment, the watching over of Dr. Ungari and the uncovering of Memak’tori, he asked;

“If I might be allowed to offer a speculation, General?” Receiving a nod from the commanding officer of Fort Drum, the FBI man continued, saying;

“I’ve dealt with Morand in person recently. The encounter was brief, but long enough to lead me to form the opinion that he wants to—needs to, really—take possession of this Dream Stone very badly. Symbol of a cause, national pride, a totem meant for good
luck, I have no idea exactly where his internal justification lies. But whatever his reasons, it’s my opinion that the man is clearly obsessed with getting his hands on the thing.”

Klein paused in his explanation not only to swallow a deep breath before continuing but also to give Harris a moment to absorb all he had been told. The agent had done his homework on the major general in what limited time he had possessed. The officer had done several tours in the Middle East, working his way up the chain of command during every war, occupation, and skirmish available. The man knew more than a little about the mind-set of the Muslim fanatic. Harris had also nearly died in more than one surprise attack. Starting again, the FBI man lowered his tone to the conspiratorial as he said;

“We brought the piece here, sir, because we believe Morand has access to some sort of sophisticated, possibly experimental weaponry. When the piece was being stolen initially from the Brooklyn Museum, the thieves suddenly murdered one another, and then were blown to bits. Speculation by our best experts hasn’t given us anything tangible to work with. Worse, when what they thought was the stone was moved to a police station, the building was somehow burned down from the inside. Stone and steel rooms obliterated. Metal doors melted from within. And, sir, the tiny bits of explanation the pros have handed us to work with make sci fi look tame.”

The general considered what he had been told for a moment, then questioned what Klein had meant when he said “what they thought was the stone was moved to a police station.” The agent explained the mistake the thieves had made in as brief a fashion as he had everything else. Harris gave him a slight stare, then lowered his eyes so that the FBI man would have no access to his thoughts while he contemplated all he had been told.

The first thing the officer reminded himself of was that there
was no use in debating the protection of this hunk of rock. Klein and the others he was working with in New York City had used the chain of command quickly and efficiently. Before the agent had arrived, the major general’s office had already received orders to comply with the FBI’s requests in this matter, adding the somewhat disturbing tagline “no matter how outlandish.” With that much a given, the officer’s main duty was to figure out just how to keep this thing out of terrorist hands with as little risk to his men and equipment as possible.

Harris had risen through the ranks quickly, half of his brilliant rise due to plain dumb luck, the other to always being organized, on top of each situation as outlined, but also by being as prepared as possible for the unexpected. He saw before him in Klein and his rock nothing more than a replay of so many of the situations that had come his way over the years, all of them Fate’s attempts to derail his career. And now, as so often in the past, he had only a matter of seconds in which to make his decision on how to handle this latest assault on his future.

Drum was the closest facility to New York City capable of handling the needs of the moment—with that fact Harris had no argument. National Guard posts like Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn might have been infinitely closer, but they were manned by part-timers, sorely lacking in equipment, not nearly as well trained, and, even worse, situated in the middle of a major metropolitan area. And that, he thought, was his dumb luck at work once more.

This problem had not been dropped in his specific lap; it had been dropped on Drum. There might be nerves out in the world put at ease because he was the commander, but he also realized it was just as likely no one when making the decision to saddle Drum with this particular problem had considered the fact that it would be Major General Mark Harris who would be in charge of the operation.

Don’t flatter yourself too much, old man
, he told himself. The thought almost made him chuckle, until he added,
That’s a real good way to get killed in this job
.

Taking his own advice, the major general returned to pondering his problem. As for being prepared for such an event, Harris had to wonder: What exactly should he do? Lock this thing in a bunker, surround it 24-7 with heavily armed men? And dogs, perhaps? Maybe mount machine guns on the roof, circle the place with tanks? He had plenty of men and guns, more than enough heavy artillery. Even enough dogs.