Dark River (37 page)

Jugger stepped between a zebra-skin drum and a wooden statue of a rain god. “Our friends in Berlin say that the Evergreen Foundation has been testing a beta version of a computer program called Shadow. They use data from RFID chips and surveillance cameras to track every person in the city. If it works in Berlin, they’re going to roll it out to all of Germany and then the rest of Europe.”

Linden glanced at Mother Blessing. “Berlin is a good location for them. That’s where they currently have their computer center.”

“And we know where the center is,” Jugger said. “A Free Runner named Tristan found the building. It’s in an area that used to be the dead zone for the Berlin Wall.”

“That’s all we need to know at this point. Thanks for coming tonight, Jugger.” Hollis opened the entrance door to the shop. “I’ll be in touch with you.”

“You know where to find me.” Jugger sauntered over to the doorway. “There’s just one thing I want to know— is Gabriel all right?”

“No need to worry,” Linden said. “He’s being protected.”

“I don’t doubt that. Just be aware that the Free Runners are still talking about him. He made us feel that there was a little bit of hope.”

Jugger left the shop and the three of them were alone together. Mother Blessing shifted her sword case and crossed the room. “He might tell his friends about this place. That means we have to move the Traveler.”

“Is that all you’re going to say?” Hollis asked. “Aren’t we going to do anything about his information?”

“What happens in Berlin is not our concern.”

“If the Shadow Program works, every government in the world is going to end up using it.”

“The technology is inevitable,” Mother Blessing said.

Hollis concentrated on the silver locket hanging from his neck and an ice-cold anger changed the tone of his voice. “You can think whatever you want— run around the world with your goddamn sword— but I’m not going to let the Tabula win.”

“I want obedience from you, Mr. Wilson. Not initiative. Blind obedience and mindless bravery.”

“Is that why you brought me to see Vicki’s body?” Hollis asked. “You wanted to turn me into a perfect little soldier?”

Mother Blessing smiled coldly. “I guess it didn’t work.”

“I want to destroy the people who killed Vicki. But I’ve got my own way of doing things.”

“You don’t know the history of the Tabula and the Harlequins. This conflict has been going on for thousands of years.”

“And look what’s happened. You Harlequins are so wrapped up in the past— all your little traditions— that you’ve lost the war.”

Linden sat down on a bench. “I don’t think we’re entirely defeated. But we are at a turning point. It’s time we did something.”

Mother Blessing spun around and faced the other Harlequin. Although her face was a rigid mask, her dark green eyes were intense and focused. “So now you’re on Mr. Wilson’s side?”

“I’m not on anyone’s side, but it’s time to face the enemy. The Tabula don’t fear us anymore, madam. We’ve been hiding for a long time.”

Mother Blessing touched her sword case as she moved around the cluttered room. Hollis felt as if she wanted to kill someone just to prove that she was alive. “Do you have a proposal?” she asked Hollis.

“I want to travel to Berlin, contact the Free Runners there, and destroy the Shadow Program.”

“And you’re going to do this alone?”

“Looks that way.”

“You’ll fail completely— unless a Harlequin is with you. Any successful plan will require my participation.”

“And what if I don’t want you to come along?” Hollis asked.

“You don’t have a choice, Mr. Wilson. What you’re telling us is that you want to be an ally, not a mercenary. All right, I’ll accept that change of status. But even allies require supervision.”

Hollis let a few seconds pass, and then he nodded his head. Mother Blessing relaxed slightly and smiled at Linden. “I can’t imagine why Mr. Wilson wouldn’t want to go to Berlin with me. I’m just a pleasant middle-aged Irishwoman….”

“Oui, madame. Une femme Irlandaise… with a very sharp sword.”

** CHAPTER 37

At random intervals, the man with the blond braids and the black man wearing the white lab coat would remove Gabriel from his cell and drag him downstairs to the school gymnasium. The long, narrow room still had bleachers on one side and a wooden floor with red stripes painted on the edge. Instead of basketball and badminton, the room was used for the torture of prisoners.

There were no new forms of torture in hell. All of the techniques used to inflict pain, fear, and humiliation had already been used in Gabriel’s world. At some earlier time, the wolves had learned about the four barriers that separated their own realm from the others; their particular system of torture corresponded to the barriers of air, fire, water, and earth.

For the interrogation inspired by air, Gabriel’s wrists were tied to a rope and his arms twisted behind his back. The rope was attached to a basketball hoop; then he was pulled upward so that he was dangling a few inches off the ground. “Are you flying?” the men asked. “Why don’t you fly a little more.” Then someone would push him, and Gabriel would swing back and forth while his arms were almost pulled from their sockets.

For fire, metal rods were heated up in a gas flare and then pressed against his skin. For water, his head was pushed deep into a tub of water and released only when he had sucked water into his lungs.

The “earth” interrogation was particularly frightening. One day, he was blindfolded and dragged out of his cell to a patch of dirt behind the school. Someone had placed a straight-backed chair at the bottom of a deep pit in the ground. Gabriel was strapped to the chair and then— slowly— his interrogators began to bury him alive.

The cold dirt surrounded his feet first, and then moved up past his legs, waist, and chest. Occasionally, the two wolves stopped and asked the same questions: Where is the passageway? How do we find it? Who knows a way out of this place? Finally the dirt reached Gabriel’s face. He was completely covered, each breath drawing dirt into his nostrils, before the two men dug him out.

During each of these ordeals, Gabriel wondered if his father had also been captured. Maybe another group on the Island was holding him prisoner or maybe Matthew had finally found the passageway home. Gabriel tried to figure out what lesson his father had learned from this place. It wasn’t surprising to discover that hatred and anger had a persistent power, but compassion still survived within his heart.

Gabriel refused to eat the scraps of food brought to his cell, and the hungry guards gobbled down anything left in the bowl. Gradually, he became frail and weak, but his memories of Maya remained. He could see the intense grace of her body as they practiced together in the loft back in New York. He could remember the sadness in her eyes and the way her skin felt against his when they made love in the chapel. These moments were gone— lost forever— but sometimes they seemed more real than anything around him.

THE BLOND MAN called himself Mr. Dewitt, and the black man was Mr. Lewis. They were enormously proud of their names, as if having a name suggested both an elaborate past and a possible future. Perhaps because of the lab coat, Lewis had a quiet, serious manner. Dewitt was like a big boy in a schoolyard. Sometimes, when the two men were dragging their prisoner through the hallways, Dewitt would tell a joke and laugh. Both wolves were terrified of the commissioner of patrols, who held the power of life and death in this section of the city.

Time passed and, once again, he was brought back down to the gymnasium, where the tub of water was waiting for him. The men tied Gabriel’s wrists in front of him with a length of rope, and he suddenly glanced up at them.

“Do you think it’s right to do this?”

Both men looked surprised— as if they had never heard this question before. They glanced at each other, and then Lewis shook his head. “There’s no right or wrong on this island.”

“What did your parents teach you when you were children?”

“Nobody grew up here,” Dewitt growled.

“Were there any books in the school library? A philosophy book or a religious book— like the Bible?”

Both men glanced at each other as if they shared a secret; then Lewis reached into the outside pocket of the lab coat and pulled out a loose-leaf school notebook filled with stained sheets of paper.

“This is what we call a Bible,” he explained. “After the fighting started, certain people realized that they were going to be killed. Before they died, they wrote books describing where weapons were stored and how to destroy their enemies.”

“It’s kind of a textbook explaining how to be powerful next time around,” Dewitt explained. “People hide Bibles around the city so that they can find them at the beginning of the next cycle. Have you seen the words and the numbers painted on the walls? Most of the numbers are clues about finding Bibles and caches of weapons.”

“Of course, some people are really smart,” Lewis said. “They write false Bibles that deliberately give the wrong advice.” Cautiously, he offered the book to Gabriel. “Maybe you could tell us if this is a false Bible.”

Gabriel accepted the notebook and opened the cover. Each page was scrawled with instructions on how to find weapons and where to establish defensive positions. Some pages were filled with meandering explanations about why hell existed and who was supposed to live there.

Gabriel handed the notebook back to Lewis. “I can’t tell you if it’s real or not.”

“Yeah,” Dewitt muttered. “Nobody knows anything.”

“There’s only one rule around here,” Lewis said. “You do what’s good for yourself.”

“You better rethink your strategy,” Gabriel said. “Eventually, you’ll be executed by the commissioner of patrols. He’s going to make sure that he’s the last person alive.”

Dewitt scrunched up his face like a small boy. “Okay. So maybe that’s true. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We could help each other. If I discovered a door out of here, you two could leave with me.”

“You could do that?” Lewis asked.

“I just have to find the passageway. The commissioner said that most of the legends involve the room where they keep the school files.”

The wolves glanced at each other. Their fear of the commissioner almost overwhelmed their desire to escape.

“Maybe…maybe I could take you there for a quick view,” Dewitt said.

“If you’re getting off the Island, then I’m leaving, too,” Lewis said. “Let’s do it now. Everyone is out of the building, doing a sweep for cockroaches….”

The two men untied Gabriel’s wrists and helped him stand up. They held his arms tightly as they left the gymnasium and hurried down an empty hallway to the file room. The wolves appeared cautious and frightened as they opened the door and pulled him inside.

The file room hadn’t changed since his last visit. The only light came from the small flares burning from broken pipes. Although Gabriel was in pain, he felt alert. There was something in this room. A way out. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Dewitt and Lewis were watching him as if he were a magician about to perform a spectacular trick.

Slowly, he shuffled down the outside aisle past the metal file cabinets. When he and Michael were little boys they used to play a game with their mother on rainy days. She would hide a small object somewhere in the house and they would search for it while she occasionally told them they were “cold” or “warm.” Down one aisle. Up another. There was something near the work area at the center of the room. Warm, he thought. Warmer. No, now you’re going the wrong way.

Suddenly, the door to the file room burst open. Before Lewis and Dewitt could react, a group of armed men ran down the aisles.

“Take their weapons,” a voice said. “Don’t let them get away.” The men grabbed the two traitors as the commissioner appeared, holding his gun.

** CHAPTER 38

Hollis gazed out the window of the Eurostar train as it raced down a gradient and entered the tunnel that ran beneath the English Channel. The first-class train car resembled the cabin of a passenger plane. A French steward pushed a trolley down the aisle, serving a breakfast of croissants, orange juice, and champagne.

Mother Blessing sat beside him wearing a gray business suit and eyeglasses. Her unruly red hair was pinned back in a neat bun. As she read coded e-mail on her laptop computer, she looked like an investment banker on her way to meet a client in Paris.

Hollis had been impressed by the efficient way the Irish Harlequin had organized their trip to Berlin. Within forty-eight hours of the meeting at Winston Abosa’s drum shop, Hollis had been provided with business clothes, a forged ID, and documentation for his new identity as a film distribution executive based in London.

The train emerged from the tunnel and headed east through France. Mother Blessing switched off her computer and ordered a glass of champagne from the steward. There was something about her imperious manner that made people lower their heads when they served her. “Is there anything else I can bring you, madam?” the steward asked in a soothing voice. “I noticed that you didn’t eat breakfast….”

“You’ve done your job adequately,” Mother Blessing said. “We don’t need anything more from you.” Holding the napkin-wrapped bottle of champagne, the steward retreated back down the aisle.

For the first time since they had left London, Mother Blessing turned her head toward Hollis and acknowledged the fact that another human being was sitting next to her. A few weeks ago, he might have smiled and tried to charm this difficult woman, but everything had changed. His anger about Vicki’s death was so powerful and unrelenting that sometimes it felt as if a malevolent spirit had taken over his body.

The Irish Harlequin removed the gold chain hanging from her neck. It held a black plastic device about the size of a stubby pencil. “Take this, Mr. Wilson. It’s a flash drive. If we’re able to get into the Tabula computer center, it’s your job to attach this to a USB outlet. You don’t even have to touch a keyboard. The drive is programmed to download automatically.”

“What’s stored on this?”