The Land Across

21 THE COVEN

We went into the station and I sat down on a bench. I had walked a heck of a lot by then, and I had danced some with Martya on top of it, so I would have sat down on the floor if that had been the only place. As it was, there were all these cozy hardwood benches with backs. At least a hundred empty seats, when I only needed one. The third border guard wandered off after I sat down. I looked around for him, but he had gone.

Pretty soon a big, raw-boned woman in a red-and-black-striped dress came in. Disguised, right? Okay, she had changed clothes somewhere and even changed the way she wore her hair, piling it on top of her head. But I would have known her anyhow, and there was a dead giveaway. She was carrying a long canvas case I knew damned well must have the camera and tripod in it, so the buck-toothed guy had stuck her with those. I watched while she rented a locker (there was a guy you gave money to who handed you the key) and put her canvas bag in it.

Of course I thought of busting her on the spot. There were two reasons I did not do it. One was that I did not have handcuffs. Give me a cop with cuffs and a patrol car, and I would have run her in right then.

The other was that the more I looked at it the dumber it looked. Suppose she ran. I would run after her and most likely catch up to her. (But I might lose her.) Or I could shoot, maybe. But I knew myself well enough to know I had no chance of hitting her where I wanted to unless I stopped to aim. That meant that she would get away unless I hit her solidly enough to bring her down. That meant a good hit in a leg, and her legs would be moving fast.

If I missed her, she would get away. If I killed her, she would not talk. Okay, we could probably find out where she lived and search the place. Maybe she had something that would tell us something, and maybe she kept it where she lived. And if she did, we might find it. About one chance in five, maybe.

On top of all that, the JAKA would not like a brand-new guy shooting in the railroad station. So no. Shooting if she ran was out, and I would have to catch her. I was fast but I was tired and she looked fast, too. It was dark outside, and there was a jungle of trees and shrubs around the building.

So I just watched, watching out hard for anybody who might be with her and not showing it. It seemed like she was alone, but after she had put the canvas case in her locker she went over to a door with a coffee cup painted on the glass and went in.

That gave me a problem, a good one. There would not be a whole lot of people in there at this time of night. Hell, there were not a lot of people in the whole station. If I went in there I would stand out like a pickle in the lemonade, and she would have seen me in the Golden Eagle just like I had seen her.

If I waited for her to come out, she probably would not. There almost had to be some other way out of that coffee shop, and ten to one she would take it. So I went outside and got around to where the coffee shop had to be. Right, there was an outside door. I backed into the trees.

And waited.

First thing. If she went back into the big room where people waited for trains, I had no way of knowing about it. From there, she could go out the front of the building and I would not see her. Or she could walk the tracks out back. I would not see her there, either. Or she could even take a train, and it was a dead certainty that I would not see her. I was just about ready to stroll into the coffee shop and ask for a glass of water when she came out.

Not through the regular door I had been watching, but through a big overhead door that opened onto a loading dock. For half a minute I wondered whether she was really strong enough to lift that thing, but it was probably counterbalanced some way. It could even have been powered.

Whatever the answer was, here she was, walking fast and leaving the freight door open behind her.

I did not dare to get too close and I almost lost her twice. If I were to go into all that here, it would take half the book. It got later and later, and we got into a really crummy part of the city. There was almost nobody on the streets there, but you saw guys—it was always guys—waiting in the weeds between the trees. I was one building behind her when she opened a door with a key and went in.

I walked past it and had a look. There was black lettering on the window, but I could not read it and there were no lights inside. After that I walked past again on the other side of the street. Sure enough, there was a guy standing in the shadows under a tree.

If I had money, I would have slipped him a little for information. I had nothing, and all of a sudden it hit me that if he was selling something, like peddling crack or maybe pimping, he would have money already. Maybe quite a bit.

So I went up to him and said, “I’ve got a question.”

He looked right past me as though I was not there, and I tried a couple more lines before he slugged me. It was a pretty good one. I staggered backward, but I did not fall until I tripped over something. Then I went down for two or three seconds before I got up and went for him.

He stumbled into some bushes and I should have given him half a dozen more, but I grabbed him instead. He tore loose, leaving most of his shirt behind, and drew. His piece had been stuck in his waistband under the shirt. I kicked him and it fired, the bullet hitting a rock or something and singing away. I know I kicked him then and tagged him some more, but I cannot remember which came first. He went down still holding his gun until I kicked it out of his hand. I will not tell you the rest, but the fight went out of him pretty quick.

There was a wad of bills in his front pants pocket. I got it and got off him, checked to make sure the hand was still in the side pocket of my jacket, and tried to clean myself up a little. That was when I noticed that my new watch was broken.

I was still swearing when a black and silver skidded to a stop and a cop jumped out. You can probably guess what the first thing I did was—I looked for the third border guard in the front seat. He was not there.

The second thing was to flash my badge.

The cop touched his cap. “Need help, operator?”

I nodded and found the gun the guy I had just robbed had dropped. It was an old Walther, the kind the German Army used to use. “You better take this,” I told the cop. “I don’t want it weighing down my pants.”

“Yes, operator.” He took it. “This I will see to. You will file charges?”

“No. He wouldn’t talk to me, but I’ve got a feeling he’ll talk now.”

The cop chuckled.

“What do you know about that place across the street?” I pointed.

“The mortuary, operator?” The cop scratched his head. “They must close soon. A funeral every few weeks, it might be. They have the fine dead wagon, however. It I see now and again. It is behind if it is not out. Good blacks to draw it, operator.”

“Did it go out tonight?”

He pursed his lips. “You know, operator, it did as I think. I passed it.”

“I think it did, too,” I said. The guy Naala talked to had called it a hearse, probably, and when Naala said truck I had thought of the kind of hearse they use here in the States. Over here, quite a few bands buy old hearses for transportation. I asked the cop, “You know where the Golden Eagle is?”

“I do, operator.” He sort of hesitated, which told me he knew it was JAKA.

“Go there and ask around for Naala. She’ll be there. Tell her you talked to five five eight, and tell her where I was.”

“At once, operator.”

“Nice looking, about forty, white blouse, gray jacket, gray skirt. She’s a senior operator. Do you know her?”

He shook his head.

“She’ll be there. Find her and tell her what I said.”

“Yes, operator. I fly.”

I watched him drive away, then told the guy I had tangled with to stand up.

He did, moving pretty slowly, but moving.

I said, “I could take you to JAKA headquarters, and they’d hold you for a year or so just to practice on. Maybe once a week they’d knock you around or burn you a little. I’m not going to do that this time, but I don’t ever want to see you again. You got that?”

He turned his head and spit blood. “Cross the street and you will not.”

I took a step closer and said, “Maybe you’d better tell me about that.”

He ran instead, and he was fast. I watched him duck into the deep shadows, and made a mental note to corner the next guy I wanted to question.

There had been a fight and a shot fired, so I figured there was a pretty fair chance the woman I had followed was looking out a window somewhere, and it would not do to just stroll across the street and try the front door. It had been locked when she got there anyway, so there was a real good chance she had locked it again once she was inside. So I walked a couple of streets down before I turned a corner and circled around to get at the back.

You may have noticed that every once in a while I put something in this book that I cannot explain but think I ought to tell you about anyway. Okay, this is another of those. I passed a store that had a big picture of the third border guard in the window. He was younger in the picture and maybe a little bit better looking than he really was, but it was him.

Here is another thing, but I do not believe it is much of a mystery. Most of the stores I passed had a few lights on. Even some of those that had burglar bars did. But I think that was just like it is here. You leave some lights on so the cops can see in, and like I said, that was a seedy neighborhood. If the lights are on, the cops can see there is somebody in there when there should not be. If they are off in a store that usually has them on, maybe they will check that out, too.

The cop had told me there was a coach for bodies out back, and a couple of horses. What was really there was a barn. It was stone up to about four feet, with wood above that, and I got the feeling it might have been there back when there were farms where I was instead of city streets. Doors front and back, both of them padlocked. I figured I could probably get in pretty easily, but it was not worth doing. The woman I had been following had gone into the building, not the barn.

The thing that threw me was that there were no lights in the windows of the building. None. If she had gone in there she had not turned on a single light, or that was how it looked. The cop would have given me his flashlight if I had asked for it, but I had never thought of it. So live and learn.

I tried the back door. Locked, which was what I had expected. Then the windows. The first three I tried were closed and locked good. I pushed up hard, but nothing doing. The fourth one (I have always thought since then that four was my lucky number) was open at the bottom about three inches. It would not go up any farther no matter how hard I pushed. At first that made no sense, but it was summer and the people inside would want some ventilation. Nobody here seemed to have air conditioning, and it would have been miserable in there with all the windows closed.

So leave one or two open a little, but locked or blocked so they could not be opened any farther. And I remembered the hand.

I took it out and whispered, “I hope you can hear me, and I hope you really like me like Magos X said. I’m going to put you halfway in, through this little opening, see? I want you to unlock the window for me so I can raise it and get inside. Will you do that for me? Please?”

Most likely you think I have too much imagination, and maybe you are right. But a breeze sprang up just then, not a strong wind but plenty strong enough to ruffle my hair. Up until I talked to the hand the air had been still that night, like it mostly is in the summer.

I laid the hand on windowsill and waited, and as soon as I looked away it was gone. Pretty soon I heard a rattle inside. I waited a few seconds more before I lifted, and the window went right up just as slick as you please.

The hand came out then, so I picked it up and said thank you and put it back into my pocket. Sometimes I have wondered how the ghost felt, walking along beside me all the time with her hand in my pocket. But I did not think of that then.

Jumping up, pushing aside some velvet curtains, and crawling through the window were all pretty easy. Doing those things without making much noise was a whole lot harder. I did the best I could, because as soon as I was inside I had heard voices. Not loud, and a long way from being loud and clear enough for me to understand what the people were saying, but voices for sure. When I stood still and listened hard I thought I could tell the men’s voices from the women’s. It sounded to me like there had to be at least four people talking, and it could have been more. Later I found out there were thirteen, but I did not know that then.

The worst thing, and it was really pretty bad, was that I did not have any kind of a light and it was blind dark in there. I walked as slowly as I could and as carefully as I could, too. The floor creaked anyway, little slow creaks every time I took a step. I knew there was a really good chance that I would trip over something even if I was careful. Knocking something over might be just as bad.

Only I was tempted to do it. For one thing I was tired and I had taken some good solid punches. I wanted everything to be over so I could maybe take a shower and for sure go to bed. For another, when the people I could hear talking heard me, they would turn on the lights.

And I cannot tell you how bad I wanted those lights. If they got rough or even looked like they wanted to, I was going to shoot. And if I ran out of bullets they were in for one hell of a fight.

Only hell was on their side, or at least they thought it was. I had never thought that heaven was on my side, but I told God I could sure use an angel with a flaming sword right about then.

What I got instead was tables with stone tops, or at least tops that felt like stone. I found a couple of those and had just figured out that there was a row of them side by side when my fingers found one that had somebody lying on it. I felt him, and he was not exactly cold, but you probably know what I mean. A kid, I thought, not moving and no clothes on. There should have been a stink, but there was a heavy smell pretty much like roses only not as good as a real rose. Not as good as the rose perfume a girl I used to know wore, either. You could tell it was chemicals formulated to smell like that.

So it was an undertaker’s for real, and I was just wishing that I had found a row of empty caskets instead when I saw a little gleam of light. Not much. Very, very small. Only light just the same. You know I went toward it.

The tough thing was going quietly. I wanted to walk faster, and I had to make myself go slow and step down easy and keep feeling my way with my hands.

It was a door, an old wooden one from the feel of it. It was closed and latched, but it was not tightly fitted enough to keep a little light from getting through here and there. Just a few gleams.

I laid my ear to one that was about the right height, and that was where the voices were coming from. A woman in there was saying, “… and the news would get out.”

The latch squeaked even when I turned the knob slowly. In fact, it squeaked so much I felt certain they had heard it, but when I pulled the door open they were still talking among themselves. The hinges squeaked, too. So, do I go in or stay out?

That one took maybe half a second. It would be dumb to go down there. I had sent the cop to Naala, and she would be here in another ten minutes or so. Probably she would bring the cop with her, and maybe a couple of other operators. So stay upstairs.

By then I had gone down the first couple of steps, and I kept going. Call it pride. I did not want Martya to know that I had been there but had waited for backup. I knew I was being stupid, and cussed myself, and went down anyway.

Every old wooden step creaked. I was being as quiet as I could and keeping to the edge of each step, but they still creaked under my weight and I could not do one damned thing about it.

They saw my feet before I could see them, and by the time I could they were ready. A man I had not noticed in the Golden Eagle and the woman I had followed had guns and had them out and aimed at me. The little guy who had said he was a photographer had a knife. He was holding it to Martya’s throat. I ought to have been watching the whole bunch of them. I know that, but I was not. I was looking at her. Only at her, really, and not paying much attention to the two with guns.

She was naked and tied to a cross, with ropes around her wrists and ankles. Here and there they had stuck skewers into her, long steel pins with metal ornaments at the ends. There was one in each arm, and one through her right leg about halfway between the ankle and the knee. They had gagged her, too, but when she saw me her eyes got big.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “Help is on the way.” She could not nod or anything. She just stared.

The photographer said, “You struck me.” He made it sound meaner than I could make anything sound.

I said, “Yeah. I think I’m going to do it again.”

He held up his big knife. “This is good for both. If you come nearer, I cut her throat. Nearer still, and I cut yours. You think I cannot? Make the test.”

I gave him my best smile. “Later, maybe. Nice place you got here.”

“It will be the last place for you. This I think.”

“Maybe I’ll come back in fifty, sixty years.” I relaxed and had a look around. There were pictures on the walls, pictures that had been blown way up by an expert. They showed men raping women who looked dead, and naked women giving a little oral sex to dead men. One I remember a lot better than I want to showed this really good-looking brunette. She had stabbed a man’s corpse in the chest, or that was what it looked like, and still had her hand on the hilt of the knife.

“You have a gun.” That was the man who was holding one on me.

I shook my head. “Not me.” I had been trying to keep things casual, and I felt like I had been pulling it off pretty well. There was something about that place that was getting to me just the same. There were a lot of candles, which I do not think I have mentioned yet. Most of them were black, something you do not see often. One of them, burning in front of Martya, was as thick through as a young tree and had four or five wicks. Seeing them, I wondered if they were putting something into the air besides smoke. I was getting depressed, angry, and sad at the same time. Tonight I was going to be tortured to death and it did not seem right. Naala was not going to come, or if she did she would just look at this place from outside and go away.

All that stuff was crowding into my mind, but there was something else, too. It was the feeling that something really, really huge was studying me the way I might study a bug, something I could not see even though it could see me fine. The whole world had cancer, and the thing watching me now was the cancer. It did not make a lot of sense, but that was how I felt.

“You have a gun. Take off your jacket.”

I ignored him and talked to the photographer. “You think you’re going to get away with this and be somebody big and important. You’ll rule the world.”

The woman I had followed said, “We have the secret knowledge. He, I, all of us. You trust in God. Poor fool! The battlefields of all the world are manured with the bodies of those who trusted him.”

“I don’t trust in him,” I told her. “I don’t even trust in myself. But what if he trusts in me?” I was moving toward her as I said it.

“Stop!” That was the photographer. “Stop, or she dies!” He held his knife as he said it like he was about to stick it in Martya’s chest.

The woman’s shot came then, and for a minute I thought she must have shot me and wondered why it did not hurt. It had been so loud I felt deaf, but I heard the boom after it. I did not know what that was, but I dropped to the floor, and I must have drawn my own gun without thinking about it because it was in my hand. There was a little rattle that sounded faint, then another boom and another.

After that, people started screaming. They were trying to run out of that basement, but the stairs were the only way out. I had my gun up to shoot the photographer, but it seemed like he was gone. I ran toward Martya and slipped in blood and fell, but I kept my hold on my gun and did not shoot. That was because my father had taught me to keep my finger off the trigger until I was ready to shoot. It had sunk in, and I might have shot her if it had not. All this happened in a lot less time that it is taking me to tell you about it.

The guy on the stairs, the guy with the shotgun, was yelling at the Unholy Way people. I think he was trying to get them to shut up, but he was not having a lot of luck with that. For maybe ten seconds I felt absolutely certain the photographer was going to stab me; then I saw his knife lying on the floor and grabbed it with my left hand before I straightened up.

When things had quieted down a little, I pulled the skewers out of Martya’s leg and both arms. Then I cut off her gag and cut the ropes. She gasped for breath and just about fell.

“Oh, oh, oh!” and then, “I love you. Oh God, I love you so much!” I was not sure whether she meant God or me, but I figured either way was good. She was hugging me, only not hard because of the holes in her arms.

The guy with the shotgun was Russ Rathaus. Maybe you had figured that one out already, but I had not. I did not know until I saw him. You will want to know why he showed up, and I mean to tell you. But quite a few other things happened before I found out myself.

One was that I took off my shirt and cut strips from it to bandage Martya. Those skewers had been driven all the way through and into the wood of the cross. They were just puncture wounds, but they were bleeding from both ends so I had blood all over my shirt and jacket anyway.

I was about finished when Naala showed up with Aliz and the guy who had been dancing with her and three cops. She sent the one I had talked to back to the station house, and after what seemed like a pretty long time we had a paddy wagon for the prisoners and an ambulance for Martya. I think it was really about an hour and a half, but it seemed like forever. American cops would have latched onto Russ’s shotgun, but Naala told these cops to let him keep it and they did. She told them he was working for the JAKA, which surprised both of us.