The Third Magic (19 page)

Hesitantly he approached the entrance to the church. There was so much he needed to know, so many questions. Why had they all been brought to this place with Launcelot?

Some of the knights, like young Fairhands, had done no real evil at all in their lives. Had he been summoned from the Summer Country simply because he had known a sinner like Launcelot? Was God so unfair?

And Arthur. What on earth was Arthur doing here, and at such an age? He had been a great king, yes. And his pulling the sword from the stone had become the stuff of legend. But why had he come back? To produce miracles replicating those of Christ?

Whose work was this, God's or Satan's?

Launcelot needed to pray. He reached for the door.

It had been bolted with a metal device.
Not for you,
the door seemed to say to him. The church would accept sinners, but not suicides.

No, of course the doors would be locked, the knight thought. This was hell, and God did not dwell here.

Launcelot mounted his motorcycle and roared down the road to join the others.

A STAR IS BORN

I
n Grenoo, Louisiana, Mary
Faith and Ruth Ann Newcastle looked over at one another from above their glasses. Mary Faith turned down the volume on the television.

"The loaves and the fishes," she said.

Her sister patted her white hair pensively. "Do you think it matters that it was Jewish fish?"

"Jesus was Jewish," Mary Faith said.

"Oh, dear, yes." Ruth Ann fanned herself with the
TV Guide.
"What do you suppose it tastes like?"

Mary Faith sniffed. "Wouldn't know, and wouldn't care to know," she said.

O
n a farm near
Jacksonville, Texas, an African American family consisting of five adults and ten children all got on their knees.

"Hallelujah," the matriarch said. Her name was Martha.

Her youngest son, Roland, an entertainment lawyer who practiced in New York City, had been about to refuse to participate in Martha's call to worship, but his wife had smiled and touched his elbow. Go ahead, her eyes told him. She's your mom.

"Thank you, Jesus," Martha intoned.

"Thank you, Jesus," the others repeated.

"He's not Jesus," Roland said. "His name is Arthur, or some damn thing. Yes, Arthur, as in King Arthur, which he thinks he is. I can't believe we're all here on our knees in front of the television set adoring some Marjoe white bread con artist."

His mother narrowed her eyes at him. "Don't you start," she rumbled, her massive forearms flexing beneath her shawl. She looked back at the television.

"Shut up, Roland," his brother Tony said placidly. Tony had remained in East Texas to work the farm. He weighed 350 pounds and bench-pressed over six hundred.

Roland grew silent.

"The Messiah don't have to be black," Martha said.

"If he was, he'd be sent to jail," Roland muttered under his breath.

"Shut up, Roland," Tony said.

I
n Minneapolis, Minnesota,
Minh Tran bowed three times before the prayer doll left to her by her dead son. The boy who had brought the doll to her was in need of her prayers.

Slowly she rolled her ivory prayer beads between her palms and began the long chant whose words had been transliterated centuries ago from ancient Sanskrit writings.

Minh did not understand the words of the chant, but that did not matter, since the words and their meaning were of no importance. It was the sound of the prayer itself that held the magic. Through her chant, she would set up the vibration of a holy thought that would travel through space and envelop the quiet American boy who had once driven so far to tell Minh that her son had died.

Before she began the ritual of the chant, she had been watching the television, on which the boy had appeared, surrounded by a nimbus of light. Minh had only seen such a light once before, when she had been a very young child in Saigon.

The light had appeared around a monk who was buying a papaya from a street vendor. Minh had watched him shyly from around the corner of a building. He spotted her and smiled as she ducked behind the crumbling stones. In those days Minh had been afraid to speak to anyone. She had awakened one morning to find her mother lying dead, her face red as a demon's and her tongue cut out. Minh had fled, screaming, and for three days she had lived on the street, hiding from whomever might have come into the apartment where she and her mother had lived and then taken nothing but her mother's tongue.

By the time she saw the monk, she was dizzy with hunger. And so she was surprised and delighted when she peeked again from behind the building to find the papaya, freshly cut and waiting for her.

After she ate the papaya, the monk, who was still a young man, picked her up and carried her to a weeping woman whom Minh would come to call her mother, although she would always remember that her real mother had died without her tongue, and that no one had ever found out who had killed her, or why.

All of Vietnam was in chaos then, with soldiers and businessmen and criminals from everywhere filling the streets of the city, getting drunk and finding women and laughing, while just outside the perimeter of lights they were cutting one another with knives and shooting bullets into village children. Some said that the Americans were the barbarians; others, the French. Still others blamed the northerners, who had embraced the ways of the Chinese and turned their backs on sacred things and the ancient Buddhist chants.

But the monk had believed that they were all wrong, that everyone who lifted a hand in violence insulted the gods and brought shame upon all humanity.

At least that was what he said before he sat down in the middle of the Street of Plum Blossoms and recited the short poem that was the summation of his life and thoughts.

Later, Minh would understand that he had chosen that particular street for his final act of humanity because the flower of the plum tree blooms even in snow, but she never heard the poem, because the woman to whom she had been given turned away then, sobbing loudly and trying to cover Minh's eyes and ears as she ran down the street with bouncing short steps.

But before she was taken out of sight of the monk, Minh saw the glow around him once more, and it was brighter than before, a halo of light that nearly blinded the girl as she watched the young man in the process of accepting his death.

When she heard the
thwoop
of flames as the monk immolated himself and the gasps of the other people on the street, Minh turned around and for a moment, before the weeping woman pressed Minh's face into her chest to prevent her from watching, saw the monk sitting calmly in the midst of a gasoline-fed fireball. But the aura around him was stronger than ever then, diminishing even the flames that surrounded him.

Since that day Minh had chanted for him, sending the sound of her prayers to whatever realm the monk now dwelt, believing him to have been one of the true holy beings alive at any given time on the plane of earthly life.

But for today, she would chant for the boy who had brought rain and food to the people on the road. Because he, too, had a wide aura of light around him. Like the monk in Saigon, his life was burning too brightly, and would soon be extinguished.

T
itus Wolfe watched the
last minutes of the broadcast from the bar of the Bluejay Motel. At the far end, near the restrooms, Pinto played intently on a pinball machine.

Pinto had left him reasonably alone. That was something in his favor. He spoke little, and fended for himself. Titus had no idea where Pinto got any money—stole it, he supposed—but he seemed to have some, at least enough to feed himself. Titus saw little of him during the evening, when he himself stayed in the motel room, out of sight until his wound healed. Pinto only returned to sleep, smelling of beer, and Titus asked no questions.

Meanwhile, Titus's entire appearance had changed. Aside from his dark hair with its artificial bald spot, his moustache, and the overbite provided by the dental appliance in his mouth, he had also made a point of eating as much as he could. Already the contours of his normally sculpted, almost gaunt face had filled out a little. Nothing changed one's appearance like weight gain. Within three months he would be unrecognizable.

It would take at least that long for the panic in Cheyenne to die down. That was all right. There was plenty of time to get back to the missile silos. The important thing now was to get out of the country.

But that, too, would have to wait.
Sea Legs
was not scheduled to dock in Atlantic City for another two weeks. Titus had confirmed the pickup through an Internet connection with the Coffeehouse Gang made at the public library. The captain of the boat would not jeopardize his operation by changing his schedule. It was up to Titus to avoid capture until the appointed time.

Fair enough. Who was the Fed, he had wanted to know. The one who had been shot and hospitalized.

The answer had come within four minutes: Hal Woczniak, former FBI agent. During his truncated hospital stay, he had met twice with current agents.

Titus did not ask for any more information. The Coffeehouse Gang would already know that Woczniak had given Titus's description to the Feds. Now they would be watching Titus. The FBI would not catch him alive, he knew. Lucius Darling and his network would never permit that.

So it was important that he make the rendezvous with
Sea Legs.
But that was two weeks in the future. Between now and then, a great deal could happen.

He was about to order another drink when the television screen filled with the image of a huge crowd assembled on I-90. The scene showed a motley group of people, some chowing down on the salmon and bagels that had spontaneously been offered, some on their knees and in a state of bliss.

"Assholes," a patron of the Bluejay Lounge said.

"Yeah, some people'll do anything for a free meal."

"They want to be on TV, that's all it is."

Then came the angry motorists, the frustrated policemen, and the men on motorcycles who looked nervously toward the boy who was at the center of it all.

"And him!" a bleary-eyed fellow working on his third boilermaker huffed, pointing to Arthur Blessing's image on the screen. "You'd think the little shit was God Almighty, the way they go on about him."

"Drugs," someone offered by way of explanation. "Got to be on drugs."

"Yeah. Kids today, you can keep 'em."

"Oh, they're all into it."

As the traffic began to disperse, one of the boy's motorcycle escorts walked over to him and stood silently. It was Hal.

The Fed,
Titus thought. And then:
Is the FBI protecting this boy?

The newscaster was giving the destination of the entourage as Dawning Falls, New York. Oddly, Titus, who had spent little time in the United States, knew the town.

He had spent a few weeks there during his Coffeehouse Gang days. A rich classmate at Oxford had once taken him along on holiday to Manhattan as a lark. There Titus had met a beautiful young artist—she'd had an odd name, something to do with food, as he recalled—who had kept an arsenal of humorous stories about the small town where she had been raised.

Meeting her had been the end of Titus's association with his fellow student and benefactor. The sod had turned out to be a poof, anyway, and was spending his evenings buggering boys in Greenwich Village. Titus had left Manhattan within two days of his arrival to sport with the pretty girl in the anonymous little village she had described so vituperatively. In her charming apartment above the local bakery, they had enjoyed an idyllic fortnight.

The girl had possessed the one quality that Titus deemed essential in a woman: She had expected nothing from him. It had been understood from the beginning that Titus (who had given her a false name, as he usually did in these circumstances) was only interested in a bit of fun and would be gone from her life quick as a blink, and the lovely lady had accepted those terms. He had liked that about her. Oh, what the devil was the bird's name?

Now apparently there was something new in Dawning Falls, he'd heard from the TV reports covering the teenage Messiah—the Yanks would do anything to make their blood pump a little faster—some sort of magical well where all your dreams came true. An incredible fantasy, he thought, even for a country where greed was the national pastime.

Ginger, that was it. Ginger something or other. Beautiful black hair. She painted portraits or something. And had been great in bed. She'd probably gone on to marry the town banker or some such. She would be a portly matron by now, with a dyed helmet of hair and three chins.

The next item on the news was about the ongoing search for the terrorist known as Hassam Bagat. The FBI had received information that the terrorist may recently have been in the vicinity of Rapid City, South Dakota.

Titus shivered. They knew. The Hassam Bayat nonsense was for the press. Their former colleague, the one who had seen Titus's face, had told them to look for a blond Caucasian who would almost certainly try to disguise his appearance.

He would have to get out of the Midwest now. Pinto was a liability, but Titus still needed the thug to drive.

Calm, calm. It would be fine, he told himself. This was a big country. It would not be so easy to find him. There was, after all, only one man who could link Titus's face with his occupation.

Hal Woczniak.

Titus felt his heart beating. How difficult would it be to kill one man on a motorcycle?

The FBI were doubtless following the former agent. They had removed him from the hospital as soon as they realized how easy it would be to kill him. And they would expect an attempt on the road.

But what about afterwards? From what he had just seen, this boy Messiah was picking up new converts by the minute. By the time he reached Dawning Falls, there would be thousands of people crowding into the town to catch a glimpse of him.

The boy would be the one the Feds were watching then, not his bodyguard. Besides, there would be too many people about to guarantee anyone's safety.

Especially against a man with the skill of Titus Wolfe.

He looked up over his glass, caught Pinto's eye, and made a small gesture with his head. Pinto left the pinball machine immediately and headed for the door.

Useful, Titus thought. Pinto would still be useful for a time. As he rose, he cast a final glance at the television. Hal was still visible in the corner of the screen, mounted again on his motorcycle, looking around slowly and suspiciously.

God, why couldn't I see he was a Fed?
Titus berated himself. The man couldn't have been more obvious if he were wearing a sign.

Oh, well, it hardly mattered now. He tossed a few dollars onto the bar. Within a few days the man would be dead, and Titus would be on his way to Panama.

H
al looked ahead at
Arthur, who seemed to be handling the bike without a problem. Fairhands, riding behind the boy, gave the thumbs-up sign. With a signal, Hal sent two of the knights to ride at the head of the phalanx. There was no way Arthur was going to be point man. Not with all the nuts Hal had seen since this journey began.