A Song Called Youth (101 page)

“If I remember rightly, their ‘charter’ is to locate terrorists and collaborative saboteurs—”

Smoke ground his teeth in frustration. “That ‘collaborative saboteurs’ chestnut is a smoke screen, an all-purpose phrase they use whenever they want to get rid of anyone. The ‘saboteurs’ who supposedly helped the Soviets in their invasion are—just by coincidence—always Jews, Muslims, Socialists, anarchists, or the wrong kind of intellectual. The SA arrests anyone it wants with—”

“Now, whoa again. You keep referring to the SA as if it’s the same organization that was policing the war zones a few months ago. To the best of our information, the SA is now just an ordinary private-cop outfit.”

Smoke looked at him in amazement. “You really believe that?”

“Our information is—”

“Let me run the scenario down for you in its simplest terms,” Smoke snapped. “Western Europe has been through hell, and its people are hungry for the kind of orderliness promised by SPOES. But the European countries who are part of SPOES are puppet governments run by the same people who ran the SA. The SA has become a police-action arm of SPOES. They’re talking about dissolving their NATO ties in favor of the SPOES charter. Now each SPOES military force is on the surface commanded by nationals from the country it occupies, and most of its troop strength are local people—except for the SA, which functions more or less as the SS did for Hitler’s people—but the orders come from outside the country. Each country thinks it’s developing a new nationalism, but in fact it’s selling its soul to a greater European Fascist state. There are dissenting voices, but—”

“Do you have evidence for any of this? This talk of puppet governments—”

“We have video testimony, affidavits, some of our agents you can talk to. But I’d like to start with the most pressing issue, the images of ongoing apartheid and genocide . . . ” Smoke turned and hit a button on the bank of monitors; the technicki recorded the vid for later intercutting. Hand turned to watch the monitor.

The image was sometimes focused, sometimes not; it was apparently shot from waist height, and it wobbled. But they could make out a room packed full of detainees—heads shaved, filthy uniforms, starved. One of them clearly dead. An SA bull suddenly stepping into the shot, grabbing a young girl by the throat, dragging her aside, someone rising to protest, beaten down by an RR stick wielded by a second guard, whose back blocked the cameras. “This video was shot by one of our people who penetrated a processing camp . . . Here’s a shot of the SA rounding up ‘detainees,’ as they call them, into a transport. You can see there are whole families here, old people who can barely walk, children, people herded like animals, hardly a raid on a terrorist camp—”

“Now, this material looks very convincing, and it could be what it appears to be. It could also have been staged, or mixed with computer-generated imagery,” Hand said. “You have to admit you have the resources. And we do have some contradictory video from these processing centers.” Hand signaled the technicki, who ran the video on another monitor. “This came to us from the French minister of foreign affairs . . . ”

Another kind of processing center. Happy, well-fed people in their own clothing in a comfortable dormitory, waving at the camera. A guard handing a doll to a small girl, who hugged him and then kissed the doll . . . Interviews with the ‘refugees.’ In French, dubbed in English. A man wearing a yarmulke: “I was worried when they asked us to move to the processing center, but when you get here you understand, we have food here, we have safety and warmth—we didn’t have any of this at home. They did it to save us from the terrorists. God bless them.”

Smoke stared at the screen. “You are going to show this patently obvious fake to the American public?”

“We have to show both sides—”

Smoke turned and pointed a trembling finger at him. “If you don’t see for yourself, you’re a fake yourself. Come and see for yourself, or you’re no reporter. I can get you into Europe. Our lines of transportation are open. It’s dangerous, but I can get you in. I challenge you to see for yourself.”

Hand glanced at the technicki, who was watching him, curious to see what he’d say. Smoke said, “You can edit this out, you can edit all of this. No one has to know I challenged you to see for yourself. But you’ll know, Hand.
Nguyen Hinh
will know.”

The two men looked at one another. Hand swallowed. “Set it up. I’ll go.”

A tall, black Witcher guard in fatigues and boots, pistol strapped to his hip, banged in through the door from the next room. “Intercepted this maybe thirty seconds ago.” He passed Smoke a printout. Smoke read:

PD 5

REPORT TYPE IS 0370

!FDC 8/2621 FDC PART 1 OF 2

CARIBBEAN FLIGHT ADVISORY . . .

DUE TO PUERTO RICAN INSURGENCY DANGEROUS ENVIRONMENT IN LESSER ANTILLES/ PUERTO RICAN CARIBBEAN ZONE . . . US NAVAL VESSELS AND AIRCRAFT OPERATING BETWEEN 20 DEGREES NORTH AND 15 DEGREES NORTH ARE PREPARED TO EXERCISE APPROPRIATE MEASURES. IT IS STRONGLY ADVISED THAT ALL AIRCRAFT/ FIXED WING AND HELICOPTERS/MAINTAIN A LISTENING WATCH ON 121.5 MHZ VHF OR 243.0 MHZ UHF WHEN OPERATING WITHIN THESE AREAS. SPECIAL CAUTION ADVISORY: AIRSPACE ISLAND OF MERINO.

PD 5

REPORT TYPE IS 0370

!FDC 812621 FDC PART 2 OF 2

CARIBBEAN FLIGHT ADVISORY . . .

MILITARY AND CIVIL AIRCRAFT UNDER ATC CONTROL SHOULD IMMEDIATELY ADVISE ATC OF ANY CHANGE OF HEADING AND, IF APPROPRIATE, DECLARE AN IN-FLIGHT EMERGENCY. FAILURE TO RESPOND TO REQUESTS FOR IDENTIFICATION AND INTENTIONS, FAILURE TO ACCEPT RECOMMENDED HEADINGS, FAILURE TO RESPOND TO WARNINGS, OR CONTINUING TO OPERATE IN A THREATENING MANNER WILL PLACE AIRCRAFT FIXED WING AND HELICOPTERS AT RISK BY US COUNTER INSURGENCY AND/OR DEFENSIVE MEASURES . . . 

END OF PART 2 OF 2 PARTS

Smoke passed the printout to Hand, who scanned it and gave it to his technicki. “Get a shot of this.” He looked at Smoke. “If that’s okay.”

Smoke nodded. “You know what it means?”

“It means there’s some kind of guerrilla action involving aircraft on Puerto Rico—”

“The revolutionaries on Puerto Rico have no aircraft at all,” Smoke interrupted tiredly. “These ‘counter insurgency measures’ are part of a CIA operation, working through the NSA. They’re going to claim the Puerto Rican Communist guerrillas were constructing some kind of military base on Merino. They’ll claim the Communists are launching an air attack from there. With aircraft that doesn’t exist. They know we’re here, which is why we’re leaving. And they know we’re leaving. They don’t intend for us to get away. I’m afraid you visited the island at a rather unfortunate time, Norman.”

• 03 •

Paris.

“St. Zoros,” Father Lespere was saying, as he slapped a clip into the assault rifle, “is one of the most important examples of the Flamboyant style of architecture in Paris.” His accent was thick, though his grammar was good. Roseland and Torrence had to listen carefully to make out the words. Words like flamboyant and important, spelled the same in French and English, Lespere pronounced the French way. Roseland listened raptly as Father Lespere took aim at the firing range’s target. “The south side of St. Zoros, on the cemetery—the decoration is marvelous.” He pronounced this roughly mar-vay-you. “The traceries on the gables, the pinnacled buttressing, all the best saints in sculpture, and some very fine gargoyles. These gargoyles, creatures of real character, you understand? Not these banal, bland gargoyles one sometimes sees . . . ” He switched off the laser-sighter, which he regarded as unsportsmanlike for target shooting and not much use in a firefight (he was wrong about that, Torrence maintained), and opened fire on the target, a riddled and splintery outline of a man with a mirror-visored motorcyclist’s helmet stuck on the top to resemble an SA guardsman. The helmet was quite intact until he opened fire from seventy feet; Roseland jumped a little at the racket of the gun in the narrow, low-ceilinged stone chamber, and the helmet spun on the stump of the neck. When it stopped spinning, its back side was turned to them: shot through, shattered.

Roseland had spent ten days recovering in the NR’s chilly, badly outfitted infirmary. But the dingy infirmary was a franchise of heaven, after the processing center. He’d eaten twice a day, and bathed, and shaved, and they’d given him imitation vitamins and blue jeans, boots, and a soft blue plastic jacket.

Now they were a few hundred yards from the abandoned police station that was the NR’s regional headquarters, and about thirty-five feet below the nave of the church of St. Zoros, in what had been a wine cellar for the manor that had stood here before the church. The wine racks were long gone; there were only stone flags, stone blocks, a chemlantern, and two battery-powered floodlights for the gallery; the target at the far end of the room stood like a war-disfigured scarecrow against a thick backdrop of bullet-pocked fiberboard and mattresses.

Father Lespere was a man of pale skin and very dark hair and eyebrows; he had a long nose and hands as precise in their movements as in their manicure. He wore the traditional black cassock; his hair was tonsured, but only by middle age, balding at the crown. “And the tower of Elizabeth de Bathory,” Lespere went on, sighting in on the belly of the target. “I will show you myself. The art is late Middle Ages, very fine, nothing damaged in the war at all. The interior of the church is splendid: remarkable vaulting—” He fired, stitched a line of bullet holes across the target’s middle. He spoke with luxuriant pleasure in the description as he aimed the weapon again: “The vaulting of the side aisles and ambulatories, delicate columns that flow up into the vaults, into ribs like fans, you must set them—Joris-Karl Huysmans compared them to a palm forest.” He sighed. “I should have remained in the study of architecture.” He passed the gun to Torrence and turned to Roseland. “You will forgive me my enthusiasms, but I have not belonged to St. Zoros very long . . . I was a priest who was really only a kind of tourist guide at Notre Dame, and then when there were no tourists to guide, a priest who was really only a custodian. Do you like our place for target practice?”

“I’m no connoisseur of target shooting, Father,” Roseland said. “They can’t hear it on the street?”

“No.” Lespere watched critically as Torrence fired a burst through the helmet, spinning it on the stump again. “You are pulling the trigger too hard, Daniel.”

“I hit it, didn’t I?” Torrence said, shrugging a little too briskly. He could be defensive, Roseland had noticed.

“Some of the rounds hit and some did not,” Father Lespere replied. “Enough for now. Come on.” His cassock whisked softly on the stone floor as he switched off the floodlights, plunging the bullet-crucified target into darkness. He picked up a chemlantern and led the way from the room.

Torrence tossed the gun to Roseland, who caught it clumsily and followed them down a damp, dark, low-ceilinged corridor of irregular stone blocks. There was a faint smell of sewage, with dissolving minerals. And gunpowder.

Lespere bent near Torrence to speak softly, probably intending that Roseland not hear him; but the whisper carried with eerie lucidity along the echoey stone shaft. “The news for you is not good. Apparently you have been identified. They do not know where to find you, but they know who you are. What you look like. They have connected you with the Le Pen assassination. Perhaps it’s time you . . . ” He hesitated.

“I can’t leave,” Torrence said. “If I do, people like Pasolini . . . ” He didn’t finish it, merely shook his head.

“I was not going to suggest you leave. We cannot spare you. I suggest, instead, that you change your face.”

“Those kinds of surgeons are in short supply.”

“It is your decision, but . . . you need not use those kinds of surgeons.”

Roseland felt his gut contract at the suggestion. This Lespere was one hardassed priest. Christ! Basically, telling Torrence that disfigurement was a viable option . . . 

Torrence said, “If it comes to that.” His voice very flat.

Lespere shrugged. “Do you really suppose it matters how pretty you are? None of us are likely to live a year.”

Hearing that, now, didn’t bother Roseland at all. It was perfectly, entirely appropriate. (A flash of memory: the Jægernaut arching over Processing Center 12 . . . )

Lespere went on, “You must understand: Klaus is sending
The Thirst
after you. He will do things. This man The Thirst is a German, raised in Argentina and Guatemala—his great uncle was an SS officer. His grandfather a Hitler Youth. His name is Giessen, but they call him The Thirst, and he will
do
things . . . ”

Open space swelled around them. They were in a vast, dimly lit room. Their footsteps took on a different sound here. The room was big, very long, two stories up to the pipe-clustered ceiling; it was subterranean but not a cavern; its walls were hidden by strips of exposed insulation, veined with wire; its floors were piled with plastic crates, and cryptic machinery: old-time dynamos and factory presses. The insulation and metal surfaces and crates were sloppily starburst with red and yellow. Paint splashes, splattered with impact bursts. “What’s all this?” Roseland asked.

Torrence gestured vaguely, perhaps thinking, Roseland guessed, about the kind of man who could earn a nickname like The Thirst. “Underground storage for the downtown system of fallout shelters,” Torrence said. “The crates are mostly filled with loose plumbing parts. They’ve forgotten all about it.”

“Please, take a little stroll, look at this place,” Lespere told Roseland gently.

Why? Roseland wondered. But he took a few steps farther into the chilly, shadowy room, looking around. He strolled into the maze of junk, peered into the shadow-wrapped dimness. It reminded him of a big train station in a way, “What are we going to do with this place?” Roseland asked. “Some kind of, um, hideout or—”