Ghost Dance (6 page)

Morgan's head jerked round at the sound of the door opening and he felt a moment of panicked guilt before he remembered he had every right to be there.

The young man paused in the doorway, blinking at Morgan.

"Oh," he said, "I thought I had my supervision now. Is Dr Granger not around?" He had curly brown hair cut short in a vain attempt to tame it, and wide hazel eyes that made him look permanently startled.

"I'm sorry," Morgan said, "Dr Granger's dead."

The young man's eyes widened even further. "What the hell happened?" he asked. Morgan realised he had an American accent, one of those flat, bland ones which were hard to place.

"She was murdered." Morgan took a step closer, studying the young man's reaction. "If she's your teacher, how come you haven't heard?"

"I'm her PhD student - I don't see her all that often and I live out of college. Jesus Christ! Murdered? Who'd want to do that?"

Morgan showed him the police ID. "That's what I'm here to find out. And you are..?"

"Coby, Coby Bryson. Like I said, I'm studying for my doctorate with Dr Granger. I mean, I
was
. Jesus - sorry, it's just a lot to take in."

Her PhD student, Morgan realised, probably knew more about Granger's field of study than anyone else. He pulled out the office chair for Coby, then perched on the prickly, over-stuffed sofa opposite him.

"What can you tell me about Dr Granger?" Morgan asked. "She was an expert in-" he flashed back to the powerpoint display she'd been preparing before her death "-Elizabethan alchemy, right?"

Coby swallowed, then nodded. "Yeah, but she was particularly interested in Dr John Dee. Have you heard of him?"

Morgan shook his head.

Coby leaned forward, hands on knees. He looked suddenly confident and enthusiastic - a man in his element. "John Dee was probably the most famous alchemist of his age. He was a scientist too, but people today aren't so interested in his conventional experiments. They tend to focus on his more esoteric fields of research. Not that I'm sneering, that's what my PhD is about too; his search for the philosopher's stone."

Morgan vaguely remembered that had something to do with
Harry Potter
.

Coby read his expression. "It's the search for eternal life," he said. "Dr Dee believed he was close to uncovering the secret of immortality."

CHAPTER FOUR

The flight back from Europe took even longer than the journey out, crossing a continent this time as well as an ocean. By the time they landed in San Francisco, Alex felt like she hadn't slept in a week. Her hair was greasy, her skin too, and she concentrated very hard on these minor discomforts to avoid thinking about any of her real problems.

"You need rest," PD told her when he'd reclaimed his luggage.

"I need some clothes, too," she said, watching him sling his black bag over his shoulder. "And a toothbrush. I have nothing with me except my purse."

"Then I guess you'd better put some of that thirty million dollar trust fund to work. I'll fix us a room and you can pay a visit to the Croatoans in the morning."

"
Two
rooms," she said. "You can snatch me away from home and conscript me into an army I never wanted to join, but there is no way you can make me double up with you. You slept on the plane and you snore like a landslide. Call me when you've booked us in."

She walked out of the arrivals hall without giving him a chance to respond and slid into a cab before he could catch up with her. "Downtown," she told the driver.

She'd been to San Francisco on a school trip back in junior high. She remembered its quaint gingerbread houses and tree-lined streets descending to the water which surrounded it on three sides. But now the leaves looked limp on the branches and the shadows of the Market Street high-rises seemed too sharp, as if they could cut the city to pieces. It felt like enemy territory, as if she'd never left the prison in Eastern Europe, or had brought something of it back with her. She hunched her shoulders and headed towards Union Square.

She was signing a credit-card receipt in Saks when PD finally called. "I'm claiming all this back on expenses," she said before he could speak.

He laughed and she realised it was the first time she'd heard him do so in a long time. "Two rooms at the Hilltop Express," he said. "The federal government doesn't stretch to boutique hotels - and it doesn't stretch to a clothes allowance at Saks Fifth Avenue, either."

"How did you-?" she said, but he just laughed again and ended the call.

She hated the fact that the contact with him had warmed her. She debated staying out till midnight then retiring to her room without having to spend any time around him. But she was in a town full of strangers. She didn't want to be alone and there was no one she could talk to - no one who'd understand. She'd already called her mom to let her know she'd been sent away on an unexpected field trip for an American history class. Her mother was in Europe, where she spent most of the summer these days, and she hadn't seemed terribly interested. Even if she was, Alex couldn't tell her the truth. It was too implausible and - worse - too dangerous. Hammond had made it clear she was
his
, his asset. She didn't like to think what he'd do to anyone who threatened his possession of her.

That ruled out her friends too. Only PD was left, the one person in the world who knew exactly what she was going through. The fact that he was partly the cause of it seemed almost an irrelevance in the face of her sudden, hollow loneliness.

The hotel looked better than its price tag, keeping up with the high-class Joneses of its Nob Hill location. PD was waiting for her in the lobby and he took her shopping bags without a word, only quirking an eyebrow at the number of them.

Alex lay on the queen-sized bed in her room and watched as PD unpacked her shopping for her and carefully hung each item in the wardrobe.

"Is this your way of saying sorry for ratting me out to Hammond?" she said. "Because as apologies go, it sucks."

"I didn't have a choice, kid."

It was the answer she'd expected. "So, PD - I guess we're partners, huh? Is that how this works? You've got my back, I've got yours, you'll break all the rules if I'm in trouble, hand over your gun and badge when the boss tells you to back off?"

His face was bland as he turned back to her. "You've been watching too much TV."

"
Are
you my partner?"

"Yes."

She rolled over, crooking an elbow to support her head as she looked at him. "So, partner, tell me about yourself. What does PD stand for anyway? Peter David? Prancing Dog? Perennial Dick?"

He looked at her through narrowed eyes and she thought she'd angered him. Then he smiled. "It stands for Positive Discrimination."

"What - seriously?"

"It was John's joke, my first partner. He said the CIA got to tick all their minority recruitment boxes in one candidate with me."

Alex frowned. "You mean because you're Native American?"

"Don't try that politically correct bullshit, kid - it doesn't suit you. Just Indian will do. And Jewish."

She gawped at him. "You're
Jewish?
But..."

"You know the stories - how one of the lost tribes of Israel came to America."

"I thought it was only the Mormons who thought that."

"Nope. My mother's tribe believe it. Claim they've got some of the lost Temple treasure, too. There's a box in the chief's hut where they keep it. Of course, no one except the chief gets to look inside - you know the drill."

"And do you believe it?"

He perched on the bed, close enough for her to touch. "When I was a kid I thought it was so much bullshit. It used to embarrass me - my primitive people and their dumb fairytales. But since I joined the Agency... It's like you go through life thinking you're playing five-card stud. It's a tight game, only one hole card per player and you can guess what it is. There aren't many secrets or surprises. But instead you find out you've been playing Omaha all along and deuces are wild. There are too many combinations to figure and you think you know the odds, then fifth street shows a possibility you hadn't even considered. Everything that matters is hidden. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Not a word." She sat up, hands around her knees. "I don't get any of this. I don't get what we're supposed to be doing. Even if the stuff I see when I take the drugs actually is the spirit world, so what? The real threats are out there in the real one. Christ, I'm a New Yorker. I know that."

"No. They're not. Did you hear what went down in St Petersburg a couple of months back?"

She frowned. "There was some kind of terrorist attack, wasn't there? And an international incident when the Russians refused foreign aid for the victims."

"It was no terrorist attack. From what I heard, it was almost the end of the world. One of our agents was involved - a girl called Belle. The Brits blamed her for what happened, almost refused to give her back to us. Hammond put pressure on to get her released, but now he keeps her on a tight rein. She's... there's something dark inside her. If you took the peyote and looked at her, you'd see it. That's why you're so valuable." He rested a hand on her knee, his palm warm and a little rough. "This isn't a bad job, kid. It might not beat hanging around the lower East Side living off your trust fund, but it's important. You get to make a difference. And you get to see something no one else can, the true world behind the illusions."

She looked down at his hand, the flecks of dirt caught in the corners of his fingernails. "The place I see when I take the drugs isn't some fairy-tale land, PD. It's not somewhere anyone sane would want to spend any time. And what would you know about it, anyway? You've never been there."

His expression shifted, a closing off of something she hadn't even realised was open. He lifted his hand from her knee. "No. I'm just your caretaker. I guess it's dinner time - I'll see you in the lobby in ten."

He exited before she could ask what the hell she'd said that pissed him off. She gnawed her lip for a moment, then shook her head. What the hell did she care, anyway?

Haight-Ashbury looked like it belonged in a different city, somewhere shabbier and meaner. Tourists sweated in the Fall sunshine as they peered at the tat filling every store as if they couldn't wait to be fleeced. Fake Goths coveting knock-off T-shirts of bands they were too young to remember, Alex thought. Or buying bongs to smoke some Bay Area bud and see a pale imitation of the terrifying world the drugs opened to her.

She shook her head, trying to shake away her mood and concentrate on the job. PD had told her that the Croatoan recruitment centre was near the junction with Delmar and she knew it was approaching, but she tried not to seem as if she was looking for it. She'd wanted PD to come with her - almost begged him to. He'd told her a pretty white girl and an older Indian guy would attract the wrong kind of attention. "Don't worry," he'd said, "I've got your back."

That was what partners did, she supposed, however much he might have scoffed at the idea when she'd suggested it. They looked out for each other. The thought was odd, a shape she couldn't quite slot into a convenient category in her mind. Her parents had looked after her, of course, but they hadn't looked
out
for her. And her friends... She'd never forgotten that her old school friends had given her up to the police to save their own skins.

As she crossed Delmar she made herself glance at her watch rather than the recruiters waiting to pounce on passers-by from beneath the awnings. For a moment, she thought they were going to ignore her. Then a hand on her elbow startled her and she looked up to see an attractive blond man with surfer hair and a beach-bum tan. The other recruiter idling by the curb was a pretty young woman. No doubt she'd pounce on any likely-looking straight men who passed.

In the time Alex took to assess him, the recruiter drew her to the side, beside the door to an anonymous blue-painted building.

"Hi," he said, "how are you enjoying your visit?"

Alex frowned. "How do you know I don't live here?"

He laughed. "No one who lives here comes to Haight-Ashbury. It would be like a New Yorker spending her Saturday up the Empire State Building.

His pinpointing of her origin unsettled her, but she managed a smile in return.

"Listen, do you have a spare minute?" he asked.

"I'm on vacation," she told him, "I've got a spare day."

"Awesome." He squeezed her elbow. "I've got something really incredible I'd like to tell you about, but it would be easier if we moved this inside. Is that OK?"

She frowned suspiciously, which she imagined was the normal reaction at this point. "I don't know..."

"Don't worry - it's just through here, and there'll be plenty of other people about. I can get you some ice tea, too. You look hot."

She shrugged. "Sure, why the hell not."

"Hey - I never asked your name."

She held out her hand. "Alexandra - but Alex will do."

His hand held on to hers just a little too long. "And I'm Phil. It's really good to meet you."

When she followed him through the small lobby, she saw that the building was lit by hundreds of candles. The effect was pleasing but a little disorienting and she thought maybe that was the point. Her companion led her to one of several tables, seating himself opposite her.

"That ice tea would taste good right about now," she said and he smiled and stood again, giving her time to study the room in his absence.

It looked like it had been decorated by someone who'd read dozens of half-assed New Age books about Native American culture and believed every single word of them. The ceiling was painted in a pattern that mirrored Indian designs with stripes of orange and ochre and brown, but the tones were just a bit off, the pattern a little too geometrically precise. The walls were strung with dream catchers, as if they expected to mop up industrial quantities of nightmares. Alex saw that some of the other people in the room - all of them white - were wearing feather headdresses and wondered what the hell PD would have thought if he'd joined her.