Текст книги "The Chosen"

Автор книги: Алекс Арчер

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Chapter 20

The news that morning had been full of the disaster at the candlelight vigil in Chimayó. It even made the national shows.

Impeccably chivalrous, Godin left Annja to sleep in the bed while he stretched out on the floor – somewhat melodramatically, she thought – at her feet. Although in fact the little room was not set up to make it easy to do so anyplace else. She passed a fitful night drifting in and out of sleep. Partly, what disturbed her were the dreams. Part was the sense of his proximity, the sound of his breathing, the illusion that she could feel the warmth of him from down there.

I've been alone too long, she had told herself that morning, brushing her teeth in the bathroom, using brush and paste picked up along with the first-aid supplies. But then, she'd been alone her whole life, in any way that mattered.

She emerged to find Godin doing a yoga headstand in front of the television, his feet pointed in the air, his black trouser legs pooling midcalf. Well, there had to be somereason he stayed so limber. His legs were very white.

"Authorities continue their search at this hour," the newscaster was saying, "for what they describe as either a rabid mountain lion or an illegally owned melanistic leopard – often incorrectly referred to as a black panther – possibly made psychotic by abuse and neglect."

"Do mountain lions get rabies?" Annja asked aloud.

Father Godin lowered his legs and rolled easily to his feet.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "All they need is an explanation other than the truth. A rabid mountain lion is a rational explanation. Who but an equally rabid conspiracy buff would question it?"

Annja made a noise deep in her throat. Her worldview was getting rearranged in ways she didn't much like. Also she suspected she resembled his last remark.

But not even she could believe it had been a natural animal she'd fought last night.

I guess that wasn't an eagle, either, she thought.

After a subdued breakfast Godin drove her back up in the hills to where her car was parked. Dozens still dotted the roads. She wasn't the only one who had left the vicinity without recovering her vehicle, it appeared. The news had spoken repeatedly of three dead and eleven injured. She hoped these vehicles hadn't all been left by people in no shape to reclaim them. She was a lot less complacent right now about trusting what she saw on the news these days.

The sun had come out with New Mexican vengeance. Although the air was chilly the roads were clear, and most of the snow had vanished. Up ahead they could see state police utility vehicles blocking the road to the sanctuary.

Obviously investigations were continuing. She doubted either the state or the county authorities had much to do with them. She did not doubt the Black Hawk she had seen, unmarked and painted midnight-black, had belonged to some federal agency.

Unless it belonged to the security forces of some sinister and quasiprivate secret contractor.

In parting she gave Father Godin a quick but fervent hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. It seemed the least she could do. Then she got in her car and drove back to Albuquerque.

After a shower and a change of clothing Annja rooted around in the litter of random documents and sundry pocket artifacts that always seemed to accumulate on her dresser. She finally came up with the business card given her by Randy West, the burly Kiowa-looking artist who had greeted her at Chiaroscuro. He was on lunch break when she got him on his cell. She had offered, mostly from a sense of guilt, to buy him lunch in exchange for his arranging for her to meet a close friend of Byron Mondragón's at his day job stacking books at a store called Title Wave. Aftereverything got sorted out.

The young man's watery blue eyes darted quickly left and right. He and Annja were alone in the science-fiction-and-fantasy stacks off in the back corner of the cheerfully lit used-book store in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights district. With only four feet of bookshelves to either side of them, making it hard for anyone to join them without being noticed, his caution struck her as excessive.

"Okay," he said. "Listen, though. You're sure nothing bad's going to happen to Byron over this, right?"

Annja had always loved the smell of used-book stores. This one didn't quite have the must of accumulated ages of antique or rare-book dealers. But she found the smell of ink and paper very pleasant. The not altogether subtle scent of weed wafting from her informant did little to detract from the effect.

"I'm not a cop and I'm not looking to cause him any trouble," she said. "And if I'm a crazy stalker, do you really think he'll mind?"

That struck her as bold and egotistical – as well as actively ridiculous – the instant it was out of her mouth.

But it seemed to hit the right chord. The young chiaroscuro art guerilla bobbed his head. He had a stiff brush of what was probably dark blond hair to start with, judging by his pale bluish-pink complexion. But the roots were currently dyed black, and it appeared that yellow paint, more or less, had been daubed on the rest with a brush. He wore a Rage against the Machine T-shirt, jeans almost falling, and rotting, off his near emaciated frame and black tennis shoes that seemed to be held together by sheer force of habit.

"All right," he said. "You're right. And I don't see what harm it'll do to tell you what you want to know."

"I am right," she said, stifling the urge to grab him and shake him.

Annja tore her eyes away from his piercing. It was a silver hoop through the septum, culminating in a pair of balls right beneath his nose. To be sure, living in New York City, she was not unaccustomed to seeing piercings, some much more exotic than this. But this particular type always exerted a certain sickening fascination for her.

"All right," he said. "All right, I saw him."

"Who? Byron?"

"No." Another eye slide. "The Holy Child. I guess."

"What?"

"Some little kid dressed like him, anyway." The young man named Quade seemed unhappy. "It was pretty late at night. Sometimes I go there to work on things. It's about the only time I get." From Randy she knew that Quade did metal sculpture. He was also taking classes in welding at the Central New Mexico Community College.

"Go on," she said when he bogged down.

"Well, like, I totally saw him. This kid. All dressed in these funny clothes, you know? Just like those paintings Byron does. Walking around the yard all by himself late at night."

"Didn't you say anything to anyone about it?"

He seemed to shake all over rather than just his head. "I don't really believe in all this religious stuff, you know? And anyway I may have been a little stoned the time I saw him."

"Really? Well, thank you, Quade. You've been a real help," Annja said.

"Please don't tell Byron about any of this. Please."

She smiled broadly. "And you are who?"

She wondered, as she hopped down from the top of the elaborate ironwork arch over the narrow front gate to the Chiaroscuro Guerrilla Art Compound, if she was trespassing. Or breaking and entering.

Feeling a little gun-shy, literally, about the street north of the gallery, she had parked on a more industrial side street a block south, just up from a gas station that was closed for the night. A quick reconnaissance on foot had convinced her that any other means of getting into the compound would be too challenging. The compound was surrounded on three sides by a nine-foot cinder-block wall topped with gleaming rolls of razor tape. Perhaps it was a relic of its days as a warehouse and industrial lot. And possibly not. There was some valuable equipment on the grounds, as well as the artwork.

Getting in this way required Annja to do so in plain view on a wide, well-lit street. Fortunately there was little traffic going by at the late hour.

It was a pleasantly cool evening, tinted with the remnants of the day's chili roasting and some other, less distinctive and also pleasant burn smells that she rather hoped came from the ritual cremation of autumn leaves. A fingernail moon did little to illuminate the area.

Inside the front gate the narrow passage between buildings was dark. She dropped into a three-point landing, froze, listened. Nothing.

She wore her dark jacket zipped over a canary-yellow T-shirt and dark blue running pants. She had opted for a compromise between low visibility and going around dressed like, well, a burglar. She figured if she bumped into anyone official she could quickly unzip her jacket. The blazing hue of her shirt would bolster the desired presumption of her innocence. She hoped.

There were some floodlights shining sloshing bright light among the buildings and the courtyard. They were not many nor particularly well sited. They left big, irregular bands and blotches of shadow ideal for slipping through on sneaky business. Annja half stood and crept forward, quietly.

Quade said Byron has a studio apartment in the southwest corner of the courtyard, she thought. That's just ahead and to the right.

She reached the end of the dark-stuccoed building to her right, paused, listened. She sensed no sign of any other life within the compound. She slipped around the corner.

A man stood scarcely six feet in front of her. She gasped.

"I believe the line is, 'We've got to stop meeting like this,'" Father Godin said.

"What are you doinghere?" She managed to whisper even as she struggled to breathe again. He'd startled the air clean out of her.

"Steady, there," he said softly. He shook his head in exaggerated reproof. A black watch cap covered his silver plush hair. Other than that, he was dressed as usual. "I thought we were going to be working together."

"Really. Well, it occurred to me that might not be the brightest idea for me," Annja said.

"It's better than working at cross-purposes, is it not?"

"Am I going to keep stumbling over you everywhere I go?"

She saw his grin in the darkness. "I might ask the same."

A train began to rock and clatter along the tracks a couple of blocks to the west. By its sound it had not slowed for the station a little way north.

"All right. I should've known you'd be thinking along the same lines I am. And if we're going to be following parallel lines, I'd rather have you on my side," she said begrudgingly.

He held a finger to his lips. It momentarily infuriated her.

He had turned around and started walking along the back of the brown building toward the right edge of the little courtyard. The tree and the twisted-metal sculptures went beyond bizarre to outright menacing in the random mixing of glare and shadow.

She followed. The train sounds subsided. Godin reached the long, slumpy porch shared by the apartments and paused. She moved up beside him. He glanced at her, eyes invisible behind his circular lenses. Then he walked toward Byron's door. He stopped suddenly. Coming up behind, she sensed tension in him, like a hunting dog on point.

The door of the artist's studio apartment stood open just a hands-breadth behind the swayback, fraying screen. Inside it was dark.

From within came a tortured moan.

Chapter 21

Godin's right hand came out of his jacket holding his revolver. He opened the screen slowly. Annja held it for him. From somewhere he produced a short, thick flashlight. Holding it reversed in his left hand, he crossed wrists, bracing his gun hand on top. Clicking the flashlight on, he kicked open the door, stepped inward and immediately out of sight to the right.

None too sure what was expected of her, Annja went through the door after him. She did not summon the sword. It was unwieldy in close quarters, and she didn't want to accidentally stick Godin. Or Byron, should the young artist still be on his feet.

With Godin a dimly sensed presence hard on her right, her attention was drawn by the intense beam of white light angled downward. It illuminated a shape sprawled with its head toward the door. The head had wild, wavy dark hair. Parts of it seemed matted to the big, round skull.

With a cry Annja dropped to her knees beside the youth. She helped him sit up gingerly as Godin moved through the small apartment, checking room by room with light and handgun ready. She remembered vaguely that such room-clearing was supposed to be done by more than one person. But he knew what he was doing and she didn't. She deemed it best to keep out of the way and tend to Byron.

He wore a gray sweatshirt, dark sweatpants. His feet were bare. The shirt was ripped and spattered with blood. He had drying blood trailing down over his mouth, and his skin looked very pale.

"The house is clear," Godin reported, coming out of the back. He clicked off his flashlight, put it away, then moved to right a lamp on its end table and turn it on. The shade, madly askew, cast dizzying shadows up the wall.

The place looked as if a struggle had taken place, but was not thoroughly trashed or ransacked. Whatever the intruders wanted they had got without much searching. She doubted the goal was merely to rough up Byron Mondragón.

She examined him as best she could. His face was puffed to a weird asymmetric caricature of its usual fine-boned beauty. It was mottled with the blue-black of a truly brutal bruising. Though he winced frequently to her unskilled probing, she found no broken bones. Godin came and squatted next to them, shone his flashlight briefly in Byron's eyes.

"No pupil dilation," he pronounced with grim satisfaction. "No concussion, and probably no subdural hematoma to kill you in a few hours. Bon. You would appear to have been subjected to a thoroughly professional beating, young man."

"They seemed to know what they were doing," Byron croaked, feeling the back of his head. They were the first words he had spoken. "That didn't make it fun."

Annja rose and went through the door into the back. She found a little kitchen, fairly clean but none too tidy, with cracked gray linoleum tiles on the floor and cabinets with peeling facades. A dish rack by the sink held a jumble of plastic cups and plates. She found a roll of paper towels, ripped off a big wad and soaked them in cool water. Filling a big red plastic cup with water, she went back into the living room.

Godin sat on the couch with his elbows braced inside splayed knees and his fists to either side of his chin, studying the young artist. Annja allowed herself to notice now that the walls were a riot of paintings in a multiplicity of styles. None of them suggested Byron's own hand to her. Most favored broad strokes and big colors. Not his trademark near obsessive precision and attention to detail.

"You like to hang your friends' artwork?" she asked, kneeling beside him and giving him the water. His hand shook slightly. She helped guide the cup to his lips.

He drank deeply, choked, coughed, drank a little more. Then he nodded as Annja began to daub blood from his face.

"They're a very talented bunch," he said. "And it's cheap. They lend it to me, then they don't have to store it. A lot of it's Billie's. She's one of the best."

"Your studio in back is in disarray, too," Godin said. "Suppose you tell us what happened."

The young artist sighed. His eyes were infinitely sad. They were also well blackened – he'd look like a raccoon by morning.

"They took him," he said.

"Who's 'he'?" Godin asked.

"Who's 'they'?" Annja asked.

He drank some more. His hand still shook. Water ran down his chin, diluting the blood that had halfway dried there. Annja availed herself of the opportunity to wipe most of it away when he lowered the cup to his lap. He was sitting cross-legged on a rumpled dusty throw rug in the center of the hardwood floor.

"I've been painting mostly from a sitting model," he said. He showed Annja a shy smile. "I think you suspected it from the first."

"I did," she said. Not really, she thought. But maybe. Somehow.

"As for who 'they' were – " He shrugged, then grimaced at the pain the movement caused. " Theyare whoever comes in the night to capture beings like the Santo Niño. Men in black suits with masks. And guns. Machine guns."

Annja looked quickly to Godin, who shrugged. They might have been the same men last seen descending from the clouds to the slaughter scene at Chimayó. They might just as well have come from any number of federal, state or even local agencies. Or from some government contractor. Or even been conventional if well-equipped criminals, although that seemed unlikely.

"How do you capture a being who can walk through walls?" she asked.

"They used Tasers to stun him," Byron said mournfully. "They were holding me down by then. Then they put him in a sort of sack. That's when they started to beat me so I didn't see what happened other than that they carried him out. I – I thought I heard a helicopter. But it was hard to tell with them hitting me."

"An eight-year-old boy?" Annja said, aghast. "Who on earth would Taser an eight-year-old boy?"

"Any of a number of your local American police agencies, to judge by the wire services," Father Godin said. "That would certainly explain his inability to escape."

"I think he wanted to help me," Byron said. "He couldn't. He isn't violent. He doesn't have that capability. He tried to talk to them, reason with them. But they just shot him with those darts and shocked him."

"Jesus," Annja said.

"He spoke to you?" Godin said, leaning forward slightly. He was twining his fists together between his knees now.

"Often," Byron said as Annja finished cleaning his face, or at least smearing the blood and grime around to a more consistent film. There was no hope of effecting any better cleanup with the tools at hand, so she tossed the pink-stained paper towel aside and sat back to give the young man space to breathe. And talk.

"Of what?" the priest asked.

Byron smiled sadly and shook his head. "Many things. Some of the same things he said to the people he met on the roads. He seemed sad tonight. That was strange. Usually he's very cheerful. That makes his prognostications of doom a little more shocking. If effective. He would never specify what exactly was going to happen, though. Only that it was bad.

"Other things we talked about – those were just for me. Please."

"It could be vital – "

Annja held up a hand, cutting the Jesuit off. "What is he?"

Byron's smile was magical. It lit his face. It seemed to light the room, small, cramped and dingy though it was. "A marvelous child."

"Is he – ?" She could not force herself to pick a next word, much less say it. Jesus? An alien? A remarkably clever impostor?

A siren cut the night like a razor. It was still thin, with distance. But unmistakable. Godin stood up. "Time to go," he said.

Annja rose. Byron waved off her attempt to help him up. "I think I'll be fine here. I'd better let them take me to the hospital."

"Good idea," Godin said. "Get X-rays, in case my field-expedient diagnosis was wrong."

"Byron, this is important," Annja said. "Is there anything else you can tell us?"

"Oh, yes," Byron said. "Just before the men burst in he said to give you a message."

" What?" Annja was gratified, if slightly, to hear Godin utter the incredulous monosyllable in unison with her.

He nodded carefully. "He said to tell what he called 'those who come after'to seek for him 'within three leagues' of the spot he was first found."

Godin stood by the door, poised to exit. The slight frown furrowing his brow indicated he was very upset. Puzzled but knowing no time remained, Annja joined him.

As he held the door for her, Annja's conscience twinged. She looked back at Byron, who now sat holding his head in his hands. He's hurt. He's innocent. Isn't my duty to look after him?

Byron looked up at her and smiled. "Don't worry, Annja," he said beatifically. "I'm not the one you're meant to look out for."

"Leagues?" Annja said.

Godin lay on his back on her motel-room bed with his shoes off and the backs of his hands over his eyes. "You're a historian," he said with unaccustomed asperity. "Surely you know what a league is."

He had experienced a savage coughing fit shortly after they came into the room. He had gone into the bathroom for quite a while. Even now he seemed to be slow recovering. She tried not to let herself feel concern as she sat at a round table by the floor-length curtains covering the window, waiting for her notebook PC to connect with the motel's broadband network.

"It's just not a term I'm used to hearing in everyday speech."

"What about this affair suggests the everyday?" Godin said.

She made a sound from the base of her throat and shook her head. Her insides seemed to writhe with frustration and urgency. They have the child! What are they doing to the poor little thing?

"Forget leagues," she muttered, typing furiously. She was barraging Google with sets of search terms, trying to track down all known Holy Child reports. "How the hell are we supposed to know where he was first found? We have dozens of encounter reports. Some of them are certainly phony. And how do we know how many sightings happened without anyone even reporting them? What if there's no way to find out the first time he was picked up? And does that mean this time around? In New Mexico? Or every Holy Child sighting clear back to Spain?"

"What if he does not mean being found in person?" the Jesuit asked.

She looked hard at him. "What do you mean?"

"Think back on the history of the sanctuary of Chimayó. Was there not some story associated with the miraculous discovery of the image on display there?"

She blinked. "I think you're right."

She started yet another Google search. The truth was, she had gotten so overloaded and jaded with tracking various images and origins of the Santo Niño, literally around the world, that she had simply glossed over the Chimayó legend.

"The quickest and easiest story to check firsthand," she said, "and the last I actually follow. I have a lot to learn about this hero business."

"Life is a process of on-the-job training," Godin said.

She was worried. His voice sounded weak. Maybe he's just showing his age.He was not a young man, not by any means, although that fact was hard to keep in mind if one spent any time in his company. His silver-gray hair, seamed face and air of worldly experience were more than counterbalanced by his vigor, physically and mentally, and a sprightly, youthful – or perhaps ageless – spirit.

And then again the events of the past few days had Annja worn to a nub, physically and emotionally. And she wasa remarkably fit young woman even before the sword had brought her capabilities whose full extent she had yet to learn.

"Here we go," she said, attending to the screen. "I could kick myself for spacing this out. Legend has it that some time in the 1800s a man was out plowing the fields near the town of Chimayó. His daughter told him she heard church bells ringing from underground. When he dug down he found a wooden statue of the Holy Child. It's the one kept in the chapel next to the sanctuary. The hole the father dug is where the holy dirt supposedly comes from."

She clicked back and forth between several other citations. "Basically what I get are all on the same theme, with slight variations."

She looked over to Godin. "Want to hear some other versions?"

"As the accounts are likely to bear only passing resemblance to any kind of historical accuracy," he said, "I think I shall pass."

Her shoulders sagged and her back rounded. "You don't think this has any significance?"

"I didn't say that. Whatever or whoever the Holy Child – ourHoly Child, as it were – may be, I doubt literal history holds much importance to him."

She rocked back in her chair and tapped her fingers on the tabletop beside her computer. "I know we're pressed for time," she said, "but would you care to elaborate on that? It seems like it ought to be significant, but I'm too fuzzed to figure out where you're going."

"Understandably, my dear." He sat up, coughed slightly into a fist, shook his head. Then, seeming to rally, he went on.

"I think we can take it for granted that our Holy Child is not literally a thirteenth-century child roaming the Earth."

"Since I seem to be stuck accepting impossibilities a lot these days," she said, "why not? Couldn't he be a ghost of the real kid who smuggled bread and water to the prisoners?"

"The shell," Godin said.

He smiled at Annja's look of puzzlement. "The golden brooch the Santo Niño wears on his cape is called a St. James shell. It was not added to portrayals of the Santo Niño until two centuries after the supposed events in Atocha."

"All right. But couldn't a ghost appear wearing it? Whatever it wanted to?" She shook her head. "For-give me for not being too up on the habits and abilities of ghosts, since I don't believe in them and all."

"You will learn," Father Godin said with a knowing smile. "In the meantime, I believe you make my point for me. Whatever this entity is, he – I prefer to call him he,rather than it,because I am a sentimental old fool – chooses to present the appearance we see."

"Okay. I'll give you that. And so – "

"He chooses, specifically, to present himself as a figure out of legend, fraught with spiritual significance. Why is that? I suspect the full truth is as unknowable as the true mind of God. But does it not suggest that our little friend is concerned more with symbology and myth than the world of the literal and material?"

"I guess," Annja said.

She turned back to her computer and brought up a Google map for Chimayó and its environs. "But what does that really do for us? A nine-mile radius around the sanctuary is a lot of terrain."

"True. And that particular region of the Rio Grande Valley north of Santa Fe happens to be full of restricted Los Alamos satellite sites, which complicates our search. My intuition tells me wherever the Santo Niño has been taken has something to do with one of those sites."

"You think this shadowy agency – or contractor – that hired your friend Mad Jack – "

"We're hardly friends," Godin said in tones of mild reproof. "Indeed, he and I have each tried to kill the other more than once. Although those were in the course of our professional lives, and so had nothing to do with friendship one way or another."