Fatal Error rj-13

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Never." He stared at Jack. "You're not a cop. So what are you?"

  "A nobody."

  Mack pressed the elevator button and the door opened.

  "Well, Mister Nobody," he said as they got in, "you gotta work on your tough-guy act."

  Jack hid a smile. "Yeah? Where'd I fail?"

  Mack hit the DOWN button.

  "Shoulda bashed me with your gun the first time I said no. Real tough guy woulda dented my skull for that. When you didn't, I knew you was mostly show."

  Jack shrugged. "Not many jollies in pistol-whipping a skinny old man just for doing his job."

  "Ain't old."

  "So… when you told me to go ahead and shoot, you knew I wouldn't."

  His smile was sheepish. "You don't look like you have it in you, so I was pretty sure."

  " 'Pretty sure'? Tell me the truth: Would you have taken a bullet for that key ring?"

  "Don't know. I would've hoped whoever was on the other end of that gun wouldn't shoot."

  "But you weren't going to give up that key ring."

  He shook his head "Uh-uh."

  Jack pressed him. "It's only a set of keys."

  Mack held his gaze. "I think you know what I'm talking about."

  "I think I do, Mack. I think I do."

  He really liked this old guy.

  "What's the 'Mack' stand for? I've got a feeling your mother didn't name you that."

  "Yeah, she kind of did: McKinley's on my birth certificate."

  "Last name?"

  "First."

  "Oh, right. Next you'll be telling me your last name's Morganfield."

  He gave Jack a look. "You a blues hound?"

  "Better believe it."

  He smiled. "Well, the last name ain't Morganfield, but I am the Hoochie Coochie Man."

  "That you are. No question about it."

  The doors opened onto the lobby and they both stepped out.

  "All right," Jack said. "Osala's gone, left the building for good. You've got no obligation to him anymore. So what can you tell me about him?"

  Mack looked around the empty lobby, then shrugged. "Ain't much to tell. Strange duck, I can tell you that. Not like I'd know from anything he ever said, because I don't think he ever spoke to me. Had his people do it for him. Usually his housekeeper, Gilda, did his talking. Lemme tell you, there's a lady with a face I wouldn't want to come home to every night. And if it's not her, it's his driver-gofer. Used to be a guy named Henry, but he quit or got fired last year. Liked him. Now it's Georges who's got this kinda French accent. Won't miss either of them. Come to think of it, I ain't sure Mister Osala's ever even looked at me. Not once."

  "What's he do?"

  "For a living? Damn if I know. Got lotsa money, that's for sure. Need a ton to own this place and have all that plastic surgery."

  "Whoa-whoa-whoa! Plastic surgery?"

  "Well, it's gotta be. His looks changed last year. He started off this lily-white guy somewhere like forty or so, and now he's darker, like a Latino or something, and younger. Even looks smaller, though I don't know how he did that."

  "You mean he darkened his skin?"

  "Yeah, though not as bad as Michael Jackson lightened his. Sort of like a good tan. And grew a mustache… like he was going for the Latin-lover look or something."

  Dawn hadn't mentioned that. Maybe because she'd grown used to it.

  "Where'd he go?"

  Mack shrugged. "Never said."

  "Well, he must have left a forwarding address."

  "Not with me."

  "What happens if a package arrives?"

  "I don't know. I suppose he'll have Georges stop by now and then and pick it up."

  Jack narrowed his eyes. "You sure?"

  "Absolutely."

  Jack pretended to reach behind him for the Glock. "Don't make me use this."

  Mack waved a hand. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure you will. I'd tell you if he left a number, but I wouldn't give it to you."

  Jack laughed and offered the man his hand. "I don't know what these folks pay you, Mack, but it can't be enough."

  Mack gave his hand a firm shake. "You got that right."

  As Jack pushed through the door into the tiny vestibule before the sidewalk, he glanced at the directory of tenants, listed in order of their floor. He froze when he saw the top name.

  MR OSALA

  Again… something about it…

  And then he knew.

  "Holy shit!"

  He turned and slammed back through the door and strode toward Mack. The man turned at his approach and backed up two steps when he saw him.

  "Jesus God! What-?"

  "Osala," Jack said. "You work for him?"

  "N-no. I work for the building."

  "And you don't have any idea where he's gone?"

  "No, I told you. And I take back what I said about you."

  The remark surprised Jack.

  "What?"

  "About you not having it in you to kill someone. You do. What happened?"

  "Why do you think something happened?"

  "Your face. You look ready for murder."

  Jack realized he was.

  Mack stepped closer. "What set you off?"

  "An anagram," Jack said. "A lousy goddamn anagram."

  7

  "You really think this is necessary?" Weezy said.

  Despite the gravity of the situation, Jack had to suppress a smile. Weezy looked ridiculous in the oversize worn cloth coat, babushka, and huge sunglasses he'd picked up in a secondhand shop on his way over.

  "You've been made, Weezy."

  "You really think they're watching?"

  "I didn't see anyone outside, but they could have someone parked in an apartment across the street keeping an eye on the front entrance. We can't risk leading them to Veilleur."

  She distastefully inspected the rubber tips of the four-footed cane he'd picked up along with the clothes. "Why don't I just teleconference the meeting? I don't have to be there in person."

  "You know we're not set up for that. And besides, I need you there with the Compendium."

  "Gonna give me a hint of what it's about?"

  "Has to do with the One. I'll explain the rest when we're all together."

  "You looked upset when you showed up. Still do."

  He'd been kicking himself for missing the anagram.

  "You'll understand later-if we ever stop talking and get you out of here."

  "Okay, okay. I'm ready. But…" She looked at the warning on the exit door before them. "It's alarmed."

  He'd scouted her apartment building's rear before approaching her with the plan. They now stood before the exit door that opened onto an alley that led to the neighboring street.

  "That's okay." He held up a rectangular metal wafer. "We have this."

  "And that is…?"

  "A magnet. All I-"

  "What kind?"

  "NIB. I don't know what that stands for but-"

  "Neodymium, iron, and boron. Those things are powerful."

  He stared at her. "How do you…? Never mind."

  She looked up at the magnetic contact on the doorframe. "You're assuming that's a closed circuit sensor."

  He sighed. Was there anything she didn't know?

  "It's too new not to be. I'm going to-"

  "-slip it between the magnet and the sensor to keep the circuit closed. Cool. Let see."

  He did just that and the NIB wafer snapped up against the sensor. Jack pushed on the door but it wouldn't budge.

  Weezy pointed to the handle labeled PULL. "Another Midvale graduate, I see."

  Jack sighed as he pulled on the handle. "Class of eighty-seven. We're everywhere." He opened the door an inch. When no alarm sounded he said, "Vy-oh-la."

  "My hero."

  A slew of memories peppered him.

  "You used to say that to me when we were kids."

  "I didn't mean it then."

  Jack let that slide.

  "Okay… time to ge
t into character."

  Weezy hunched her back, knocked her knees so she was flat-footed, then stepped through the door into the alleyway. Jack watched her wobble toward the other street, then closed the door and removed the magnet. She'd catch a cab while he went out the way he'd come in. They'd meet at the Lady's.

  8

  "I can't believe I didn't see it."

  Mr. Osala… Rasalom.

  Jack still hadn't forgiven himself for missing that anagram. Jerk.

  Rasalom… the Adversary… the One… right under their collective noses.

  "Neither did I," Weezy said. "Because we weren't seeing it. We were only hearing it."

  "But I wrote it down."

  "You only wrote 'Osala.' Kind of hard to scope out an anagram without all the letters present."

  Veilleur spoke from the end of the table. "Failing to recognize the anagram is of little importance now. But its simple existence is important-and instructive."

  Jack had called Veilleur and then Weezy as soon as he'd left Mack. They'd rushed to the Lady's apartment and settled into their usual positions around her big table.

  "How so?" Jack said. "I thought using anagrams of his name was his MO."

  "It has been. For millennia. In fact it was an anagram-Molasar-that allowed me to track him to Wallachia and eventually imprison him in the keep."

  "He could name himself anything," Jack said. "Why's he so fixated on that one?"

  Veilleur leaned back. "I guess you could say it's cultural. Names were important back in the First Age, especially to those serving the Otherness. He has three names. The first was given by his parents and that one is lost to antiquity. The other two he acquired when he was elevated to the Seven."

  "I've read about the Seven," Weezy said, patting the ever-present Compendium of Srem. "They were sort of the Otherness's joint chiefs of staff."

  Veilleur nodded. "Correct. But they were more than that. They were rulers as well. They governed the land controlled by the forces of the Otherness. The man who later became the One was the last to join, and the others lived to rue the day they allowed him in."

  "I also read about how he became known as the One," Weezy said. "Because of him, the Seven were eventually reduced to… One."

  "Exactly. But when he was inducted he was allowed to choose a seven-character name by which the world would know him."

  Jack said, "What's with all the sevens?"

  Weezy patted the Compendium again. "According to this, I gather the Otherness uses a base-seven counting system."

  "In an arcane ceremony," Veilleur said, "the Adversary was also given a name by the Otherness-again, seven characters. Each of the Seven had a similar name-their Other Name-composed of the same seven characters. That name was kept secret from the world and known only to the other members of the Seven."

  "I see the hubris," Weezy said. "He can't use his Other Name because that one must remain secret. But the R-name is entwined with his identity as the One, so he refuses to drop it for another."

  Veilleur smiled. "Exactly the way I see it. It's not that he can't break an old habit-he won't break it. Hubris is at work. And hubris is a very human failing."

  "So?"

  "So never forget that: He is human."

  Jack remembered his encounter with Rasalom in Florida, and here in the city last winter.

  "Well, he's the only human I know who can walk on water and float in the air."

  "He can?" Weezy said with a shocked expression. "You never told-"

  "I will. Later. Promise."

  "He may be an extraordinary human," Veilleur said, "but he's still human, with all the faults and foibles of any other human. Just because he can measure his years in millennia-"

  "As can you," Jack said.

  "Ah, but I look my age, he doesn't. And never will. As a result, there's a tendency to think of him and react to him as some sort of demigod. But he has human faults. One of them is, as I said, hubris. Another is a certain pettiness of spirit."

  Jack perked up. That sounded exploitable.

  "How so?"

  "He is incapable of letting go of a slight. If he has been injured, he must retaliate. Time will not lessen his need. He will bide his time and wait for the right moment to inflict the most pain. Then he will strike, and feast on that pain."

  "How does that help us?"

  Veilleur frowned. "I'm not sure yet. The doorman told you he'd changed his appearance?"

  " 'Latin lover' was how he described it."

  Veilleur nodded. "We can only guess why he'd do that. Not for anything to do with his mission for the Otherness, I'll bet. I believe it's personal. And I believe that is where he might be vulnerable."

  Jack felt a tingle of anticipation. "You mean it may be coming time to make a move against him?"

  Veilleur shook his head. "Sorry, Jack, but we can't risk any head-to-head confrontations. You know that."

  Jack balled his fists under the table. No point in arguing. They'd been over this too many times already.

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know. But I'm going to investigate. Perhaps we can use your skills and ingenuity to make something backfire on him. Who is to say?"

  Better than nothing, Jack guessed.

  "He is also impatient," Veilleur added. "He was reborn in 1968 and has run into no opposition since. He senses that something is amiss on our side-"

  "And he's right," Jack said.

  Veilleur nodded. "Yes, he is right. But that very lack of opposition causes suspicion. He paid a terrible price for letting his guard down in the fifteenth century. He won't do that again. But that does not leaven his impatience. And his impatience may trump his caution… again, presenting us with an opening."

  An opening for what? Jack wondered. An opportunity to sit on our hands some more?

  "That's all fine and good," Weezy said, "but where does Dawn fit in?"

  Jack wasn't following. "We're not going to involve her."

  "She is involved. Ras-I mean R has been hiding her for nearly a year. And as soon as she has the baby, he moves her out."

  "Which means he has plans for the baby and not for her."

  Weezy gave him an arch look. "Oh, really? Let's think about that. He didn't just kick her out, he moved her into her own place, and guess where that place is."

  Veilleur said, "I was concerned about that before I knew who Osala was," Veilleur said. "Now that I know…"

  "There are no coincidences here," the Lady said.

  That was old news, but the words never failed to send a chill through Jack.

  He turned to Weezy. "Okay, maybe he does have plans for her. But where do you fit in? You were a threat to his plans for the Fhinntmanchca, but that's over and done. So why would he be interested in you now?"

  "It somehow involves the baby," she said. "I'll bet my life on it."

  Veilleur's expression was grim. "Not a wager to take lightly where the One is concerned."

  Weezy swallowed and nodded. "Oh, right."

  Veilleur leaned forward. "Did Dawn mention anything to you about the infant's 'deformities'?"

  Weezy's hand flew to her mouth. "Ohmygod! In all the clamor about the anagram, I forgot."

  He raised his eyebrows. "Well?"

  "She said it had black hair all over its body, little clawed hands, and… a tentacle coming out of each armpit."

  Jack would have said simply that it looked like what a q'qr was supposed to look like, but Weezy was obviously letting Veilleur draw his own conclusion. And he did-with a bang.

  He slammed his hands on the table and straightened from his seat.

  "What?"

  Even the Lady seemed shocked. "Please tell me you're joking."

  Weezy shook her head. "That's what she told us."

  Veilleur dropped back into his seat. "This shouldn't be. And yet it makes a strange sort of sense."

  "Does it? Dawn giving birth to a quasi q'qr?" He glanced at Weezy. "We figure there's still some human in that baby."


  "Correct," said Veilleur. "It's not one hundred percent what you call oDNA. But obviously it has enough to take on the appearance of a q'qr."

  "That's what I thought," Weezy said. "A hybrid displaying the q'qr phenotype."

  "Whatever," Jack said. "The big question, as I see it, is why is a baby q'qr so important? I mean, important enough for R himself to keep Dawn as a houseguest all through her pregnancy and for the Order's doctors to guide her through labor and then whisk the baby away as soon as he's born?"

  "I don't have the answer to that," Veilleur said. "Let me tell you what I know about the baby's genesis. For that we have to go back to the First Age."

  "That's fifteen thousand years," Jack said. "The baby's only two days old."

  "But the Taint that fills him is ancient. You know about the q'qr race."

  Weezy said, "Genetically altered humans created by the Otherness to fight its battles-its own private Mongol horde."

  "Exactly. They multiplied like bacteria and overran everything in their path. A weapon designed to wipe them out misfired and killed only their females. So they mated with human women but human DNA trumped oDNA every time. Their offspring carried the Taint, but no new q'qrs were born. Their line was at a dead end. When the last one was killed, the q'qr race was extinct."

  Weezy said, "I think the last q'qr died in 1983."

  Veilleur gave her a strange look.

  "One used to live on your property in the Pines, Mister Foster. Jack and I ran into it-the last one I'm sure-when we were teens. We're pretty sure it drowned."

  He frowned. "You're quite sure?"

  "Quite."

  "How odd. But not impossible. A q'qr can be killed, but if left alone, it lives on and on."

  "Immortal?" Weezy said.

  "In a sense, yes."

  Jack didn't care much about that q'qr. Dawn's was the one that mattered.

  "Can we get back on topic? Why do the One and the Order want this quasi-q'qr baby?"

  "Again, I can't even hazard a guess. Though I doubt the One is personally changing diapers, he does seem to have taken the child under his wing."

  "Or the Order has. Dawn mentioned that her OB man had the Order's sigil on his watch."

  Weezy frowned. "You don't think they're going to worship him or anything like that, do you?"

  Veilleur barked a laugh. "Oh, I doubt that very much. The Septimus Order has its roots in the First Age. Its leaders took orders from the Seven and marshaled the q'qr armies. They had nothing but contempt for their filthy, ignorant, brutal charges. In fact, when the Order executed one of its own for treachery or a high crime, they q'qred them."