The Golden City

by John Twelve Hawks

  Lights burned inside the shed, and Maya could hear cheerful music coming from a television. She pressed the shotgun stock against her shoulder, then yanked open the door. Folding cots were in the middle of the room. A television placed on a table played a video of dancing animals. Another dead man lay a few feet away from the television with his mouth and eyes open.

  “Only two people worked here?”

  Boone nodded. “Maybe Doyle took the kids out to the desert.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s dark. He couldn’t find them if they ran away. Let’s go to the mine.”

  They left the shed and followed the narrow railway track that once guided the handcarts. Near the top of the mountain, a framework of steel struts had been built over the mine shaft. An electric motor powered a winch that raised and lowered a steel cage. When the mine was active, the handcarts were filled underground, rolled into the cage, and raised to the surface.

  “This works like a freight elevator?”

  “That’s right,” Boone said. “If he’s got the children down in the mine shaft, they can’t run away and we can’t save them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Doyle will hear the winch moving when we raise the cage up to the surface. He’ll kill everyone before we reach them.”

  Maya left the area near the mine shaft and began to search the site. “Did you ever read Sparrow’s book, The Way of the Sword?”

  Boone nodded.

  “There’s a chapter about evaluating your opponent. The weakest opponent is the one who expects a victory.”

  “And you think Martin Doyle is in that category?”

  Maya picked up an old towel covered with grease. “He’s waiting to hear the elevator, but that’s not going to happen.”

  She ripped the towel in half, slipped the shotgun strap around her neck, and climbed onto the elevator struts. Wrapping the towel around the cable, she swung out into the middle of the shaft.

  “I’m going to follow you,” Boone said.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “This is my responsibility.”

  Slide down a few yards. Stop. Slide down a little farther. Stop. A year ago, she had met her father in Prague and stabbed a man in an alleyway. Since then, her life had been shaped by what was hidden from view. Maya felt as if she were descending into a secret world. Somewhere beneath the surface, the innocent were about to be destroyed.

  The cable swung to one side, and she almost lost her grip. Looking upward, she saw that Boone was about thirty feet above her, swaying back and forth as he followed her down. Maya tried to move a little faster, pressing her feet against the cable to control her descent.

  Finally, she reached the top of the elevator cage and stopped, waiting for Doyle’s attack. When nothing happened, she climbed down into the mine’s main tunnel. Light came from dust-covered bulbs attached to an orange power cable. The tunnel went off in two directions, but she could hear voices coming from the left. Children were singing a frightened, wavering chorus.

  “If you’re happy and you know it,

  Clap your hands ”

  With the shotgun close to her chest, she followed the tunnel into the heart of the mountain. Small hands clapping. Voices singing. Then she heard a man’s voice echoing off the stone walls. “Louder, everyone! Louder!”

  As she came around the bend of the tunnel, she saw the captive children. A man stood in front of them like a choir director who wasn’t satisfied with their performance. The children watched him—obedient, terrified—as the big man swung his hand to beat out the time.

  “If you’re happy and you know it

  And you’re not afraid to show it—”

  “You’re not clapping,” Maya said. Drawing a handgun, Doyle spun around to face her, and she fired the shotgun. The pellets knocked him backward and he collapsed on the floor of the mine. His body convulsed, and then relaxed. The malevolent power that had propelled him through the world melted away, leaving nothing but a dead body.

  Maya was frozen in that moment of destruction until the children started crying. Their tears and frightened faces changed everything. She slung the shotgun on her back so they couldn’t see it, then stepped forward and spoke with a soothing voice.

  “Don’t worry. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  She took a little girl’s hand and guided her and others back down the tunnel. “You’re safe. The bad man is gone,” Maya said. “We’re going to take you back to your families.”

  Boone was waiting for them at the base of the mine shaft. The elevator gate made a shrieking metallic sound as he forced it open. The children scurried into the cage like baby chicks trying to hide from a hawk, but instead of following them inside, Boone shut the gate and turned to Maya. He looked as if they had just lost the battle.

  “There was another child.”

  “What?”

  “Another child’s body is at the end of the terminal. She wasn’t on the list.”

  Maya felt sick to her stomach. They had entered the mountain and destroyed this demon—and failed. Without thinking, she touched her belly. All her caution disappeared as she followed Boone down the tunnel to a T-intersection. She was prepared for a dead body, but found only gravel and dust. Suddenly, Boone pulled the automatic from his waistband and faced her. There was no way she could defend herself.

  Boone stared at her for what felt like a long time. She could see his sadness and pain.

  “Forgive me.”

  Maya nodded. Yes. I forgive you.

  Boone raised the gun with one quick motion and shot himself in the head.

  41

  P riest used Boone’s key card to enter the room at the Culver Hotel. Immediately, he saw two dead men, one on the carpet and the other on a couch. The Harlequin slipped a plastic shopping bag over his hand, turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom. The third mercenary was lying beside the bed with a surprised look on his face.

  As he stood beside the dead man, Priest remembered a line of scripture from the Collected Letters of Isaac Jones. “The foolish man calls forth a demon to harvest his fields and carry his water. But the demon will destroy his master.”

  “Hell, yes,” Priest muttered. It looked as if Boone’s particular demon was killing everyone around him. Trying not to step in the blood, he checked the bathroom and the closet, then called Maya on her mobile phone.

  “We just found three dead rats.”

  “Get out of there and help our friend find his brother,” Maya said. “I’ll call you when I get more information.”

  Priest left the building and returned to the car. When they had searched Boone’s hotel room, Maya found a manila envelope filled with black-and-white photographs of the kidnapped children. Gabriel was sitting in the front seat, examining each photograph.

  “Boone was telling the truth. There were three bodies in the room. Now what do we do?”

  “This could be the moment that we challenge the Brethren. If the children are still alive, then it substantiates our own story.”

  “Will you make your speech?”

  “Let’s wait to hear from Maya. If the news is good, we’ll activate the Revelation Worm. I’ve got a laptop and a web camera in my pack. We need to go on the Internet at a location where we won’t be disturbed.”

  “We can probably use my martial arts studio. It’s still being run by my students.”

  He turned south and drove through his old neighborhood. All the familiar sights seemed to float past the windshield. An elementary school surrounded by a chain-link fence. A doughnut shop with barred windows. A line of palm trees defaced with graffiti that marked off the borders of different street gangs.

  There were skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles, but the urban style was distilled into cheaply made two-story buildings with stucco façades. These days Priest felt no connection to a city or a language or a name on a passport. So many things in the world were just glitter tossed on a dance floor.

  His old martial arts school was in a mini-mall on Florence Avenue. The liquor store was still there, but the video outlet had been replaced
with a shop that sold beauty supplies. His two best students, Marco Martinez and Danny Wu, hadn’t changed the words painted on the front window, but they had placed a sign on the dirt strip near the sidewalk. The sign showed four people—black, white, Latino and Asian—flying through the air with a variety of capoeira moves. Think. Feel. Be Real, the sign said. Defend Yourself!

  “Do we have to break in?” Gabriel asked.

  “There’s a key for emergencies. It might still be there.”

  A clay pot filled with cactus was near the entrance to the school. Priest dug his fingers into the dirt and found a fake rock with a secret compartment. He took out the key, opened the door, and led Gabriel into the reception area.

  The glass case with his karate and capoeira trophies was still there, but someone had added a new display. Now his framed photograph was hanging from the wall with a sign that said Hollis Wilson. Our Teacher. Our Master. Our Guide. Beneath the photograph was a shelf where people had left votive candles, gold medals won at recent competitions and folded pieces of paper. Priest unwrapped one of these messages and read: The warrior uses the power of the brain to be deliberate and the power of the heart to be instinctive. He had told them that. A lifetime ago.

  “This is new.”

  Gabriel laughed. “You always had a big ego. But I didn’t think you’d put up an altar to yourself.”

  “That’s what it is. An altar. It’s like I’m dead.”

  “Now you have the opportunity to see your legacy. It’s clear that you changed some lives.”

  They walked past the two dressing areas and entered a long windowless room with a mirror on one wall and a little office at one end. Someone had installed a bookshelf and had cleaned up the messy desk. While Priest set up the web camera and attached the computer to an Internet cable, Gabriel called Simon Lumbroso.

  “I think we’re going to offer the world a Revelation. Tell all the groups to get ready.”

  Gabriel sat down at the desk and switched on the web camera. The Traveler’s face appeared on the monitor, but it was half-concealed by shadows. Priest turned on all the lights in the office and adjusted a desk lamp. When everything was ready, Gabriel went on-line and used the cell phone to contact the Nighthawk in London.

  “This is your friend in America. It might be time for the message. I’m on your site right now. Can you see my face? What about the sound?” Gabriel lowered the mobile phone and turned to Priest. “We need the microphone in the backpack. He says it’s difficult to hear me.”

  “No problem.” Priest plugged in an audio cord and attached a microphone to Gabriel’s shirt.

  Gabriel switched off the phone and began adjusting the lamp. “Right now, all we can do is wait. Let’s see what happens out in the desert.”

  Priest left the office, found the school’s refrigerator, and took out two bottles of water. He gave a bottle to Gabriel, then paced back and forth in the work-out room and watched himself in the wall mirror. What would happen when Tommy or Marco opened the school the next morning? Would they notice that someone had been there? He had spent years of his life in this room, teaching people, trying to show them a better way. Now Hollis Wilson had turned into a house god, a minor spirit protecting a new generation of students.

  He heard the cell phone ringing and hurried back to the office. Gabriel was smiling as he talked to Maya. “That’s wonderful! Okay. I understand. Be careful and come back to the city as soon as you can. I’m sending out the message in five minutes.”

  Gabriel switched off the phone and began typing on the keyboard. “The children are alive. Maya’s calling the local sheriff. She’s going to wait on a side road until the police show up at the mine.”

  “What about Doyle?”

  “He’s dead, and it sounds like Boone killed himself.”

  “The Tabula won’t be happy.”

  “Let’s give them something else to worry about.”

  Words flashed on the screen. Sound good. Image good. Ready for transmission. Nighthawk. Priest felt alert and ready. For years, the Panopticon had grown larger and more pervasive. Now some of those walls were going to collapse.

  Gabriel sat up straight in the office chair. “Give me ten seconds.”

  Priest raised his hand and counted off the final seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.

  And then the Traveler began to speak.

  42

  H ello, I’m Gabriel Corrigan. “I realize that it’s a surprise to see my face on your monitor screen. Some of you might be frantically pushing the ‘delete’ key or wondering if you should unplug your computer.

  “The first thing I need to explain is that your computer hasn’t been harmed and none of your data has been lost. My message to you is a one-time event. When I finish speaking, this video will end and will never appear without your permission. You can erase it or play it again by searching on your hard disc for a file called revelation.

  “Right now, I’m in the United States, in California, where something terrible has happened. Fourteen children have disappeared ” Gabriel held up a photograph of one of the kidnapped children. “Including a little boy named Roberto Cabral.”

  “The people listening to this message have different nationalities and speak different languages. But all of you can understand how the loss of a child evokes powerful emotions. The parents living in California are frightened. They’re worried that they can’t protect their children.

  “Towards the end of this message I’m going to share some news about the lost children, but first I need to explain why all this happened. The disappearances were not some random event caused by a madman. The children were kidnapped because of an elaborate plan created by my brother, Michael Corrigan, who is currently the head of the Evergreen Foundation,

  “The Foundation is the public face of a group called the Brethren, a secret organization that has existed for many years. Their members hide in the shadows as they push and guide our leaders toward a system of pervasive social control. Anyone who has noticed the changes taking place all over the world can sense their presence and their power. The men and women who belong to the Brethren have one purpose: they want to control your life.

  “Now some of you might be asking: ‘Is the Brethren a left wing or a right wing group? What is their political philosophy?’

  “These kinds of questions aren’t misguided—just irrelevant. Ideology is dying in our new age. Political slogans have become code words for different cultural and economic groups. In most countries, left-wing and right-wing governments share the same goal: to strengthen the technology that watches our lives. This all-pervasive system of electronic surveillance is called the Vast Machine.

  “Some of you have already become aware of this new system. One morning, you wake up, look around, and realize that surveillance cameras are everywhere. It feels like you’ve stepped into a massive electronic prison.

  “But the cameras are only a small part of the Vast Machine. Every major government in the world is reading your email messages and listening to your phone calls with scanning programs that react to certain words and phrases. Security agencies and corporations monitor your bank and credit card activity. Your mobile phones and your car generate data about your location and activities.

  “We can usually see the cameras, but the rest of our prison is invisible. Sophisticated software programs acquire information from your purchases, your work activity and your medical files to create a shadow image of your life. Separate databases are being combined into a total information system, and this data will be saved forever.

  “Many people will gladly trade their personal privacy for small improvements in their lives. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ proclaims the honest citizen. ‘So why should I be worried?’

  “We are being watched, but who is in charge of the watching? Although some of us freely offer up our private lives to the Vast Machine, we have no knowledge of how the information is being used and who is using it. Criminals can duplicate our identities. Corporations can manipulate our spending behavior. Governments can manufacture opinions and crush dissent. We
are seen, but they are faceless. We are asked to live in a transparent house while the forces of power are concealed.

  “In order to justify these changes, the Brethren have used the politics of fear. Kings and dictators have always used fear to strengthen and validate their power. Much of history is simply a record of one group of people trying to destroy another group of people who have a different language, faith or culture.

  “But the new technology has made some crucial changes in the politics of fear. Modern media allows frightening images to be broadcast immediately with great emotional impact and power. In addition, there are very few leaders that challenge the public to be brave and take responsibility for their lives. The political credo of our times sounds like an all-powerful parent talking to a child. Sit down and don’t ask questions. We’ll take care of everything.

  “Michael Corrigan has created a crisis here in California. He’s used the politics of fear to gain support for something called the Guardian Angel system. In this system, every child under the age of thirteen will have a radio chip implanted beneath their skin.

  Some of you might think this is an impossible fantasy, but the technology is fairly simple. In China, the authorities are insisting that everyone carry a special ID card. The card can be detected by sensors that allow the Vast Machine to track your movements.

  “The infrastructure is already in place for a world where our individual Self becomes just another object like an automobile or a television set. In this system, we become a mobile ID chip, moving through an environment of other chips that link and communicate with each other. Our individual actions are simply more data for the Machine.

  “Privacy is the ability to control access to information about one’s Self. It’s easy to see that this invisible, all-pervasive system will destroy any sort of privacy. We’ll lose the power to protect our Self from the scrutiny of unknown groups or individuals.