by Jackson, Gil
us ...’
‘Who is Satan?’
He whispered. ‘Doesn’t exist. A figment in some lost region of our brain, who knows? God perhaps?’
Hamilton bringing some semblance of order to a debate that was out of place said: ‘Well, whatever, but the words Pandora and box spring to my mind and as representative to Max Stenna and the New York Post, I’ve got to tell this story that’s not going to start another Roswell. The story of an avenging angel. I mean to say, somebody help me here. I’ll need a lot more than that. There’s got to be a simpler explanation.’
Annie Carter who had been schooled in higher Catholic learning’s to know that philosophical writing was one thing and argument quite another had had to acknowledge that Charlie O’Hare had suffered some kind of spiritual possession for a long time. And that there were more things in heaven and earth. There was magic here, of a good versus evil content, which is where she comes in.
Hamilton — still thinking of the destruction of the building from the experience of being on its inside — said: ‘Well whatever it is I’d sure as hell like to know because if it is your Spannocs and this Angel running amok where will they strike next?’
* * *
Charlie agreed with Hamilton. That wasn’t going to be easy. It had appeared to him for some time that Spannocs was in league with Nathaniel Claypole and Daniel Thomas. He knew how they had been so successful. Two men, with aliases, the ability to disguise, working with scarce links between the FBI and the pensions department of the United States Government and the same immortality that he possessed had been a powerful catalyst to those Order of the Most Divine Third Circle people. The bizarre experiment that had been carried out at Brooklyn Central suggested that they were well organised, that suggested others. The President? Past and future ones? Allowing the abuse of children to continue? It was all too frightening to contemplate. A hanging girl. Lucy trying to get her down? And, the Entity ... the Entity, the creature that Frank had written of, that I had a passing experience of: thinking it no more than an hallucination. Is that who they were after? A creature from the other side. A god perhaps? What was Spannocs to do with all of it?...
‘The richest man in the world?’ Hamilton added.
‘It would need to be sponsored. A scientific experiment of that magnitude ... that could be carried out in secret, would need a lot of money to grease palms, let alone ... didn’t you say, that one of the witnesses at Brooklyn Central had said it looked like a mini reactor?—’ Annie said.
‘They did.’
‘And what about Lucy being taken from our workshop. Where was the need for that. She could come and go as she liked. When we accidentally found her at San Andreas she was well concealed. Like she was resting ....’
‘Or re-charging.’ Charlie said.
‘You said yourself, she seemed to come and go as she chose; would turn up when the experiment was to be conducted, using an abused child as bait, to bring out this Entity thing. Why would anyone attempt to steal her?’
‘Your Spannocs, might.’ Hamilton said. ‘If he thought that when all of this had been concluded he would be out on a limb, law-wise. He might liked to have taken things into his own hands. Double-crossing those that were his guardians.’
‘And having shown his hand, she’d decided that she’d come for him. He’s been the key to his own downfall, the lid to his own Pandora’s box flown open.’ Annie said.
They walked out of what was left of Spannocs’s reception in single file leaving government people in white suits and masks shovelling up into bags what was left.
‘Damn,’ Charlie said rubbing his foot on something he didn’t see on the floor.
‘What is it?’ Annie said.
‘Think I’ve stubbed my toe on a brick.’
* * *
The helicopter that took them out gave them their first overview of a town that’s inhabitants had all been killed, leaving only buildings intact; and Hamilton wondering if any of this could have been avoided with the intervention of Charlie O’Hare sooner. And the doubt in his mind that what he knew of Sister Annie Carter and Charlie himself: that they had told him everything. He mentioned that he supposed there would be a need for a cover up. And the good Sister had replied with the blasé platitude that:
‘Becland will have been hit by a meteor. There are few survivors.’ He looked at Hamilton. ‘Certainly none to interview. A fifteen mile exclusion zone is to ring Becland with no one being allowed in or out. And to be declared an area of high radiation.’
‘Just like Chernobyl.’ Hamilton said sarcastically seeing his story being spiked.
‘Oh, and by the way ... The chauffeur, Tony Di Sotto. Who we thought had taken a cyanide capsule,’ Charlie said with the wryest of smiles. ‘You’ll never guess what? Well, his body’s gone! ... Chernobyl! ... Not quite, Hamilton, that wasn’t for real either. Didn’t you know?’
PART THREE
CHAPTER 28 – 1997
Charlie O’Hare lay on his bed unable to settle, for although the light of day was a long way off, and he was tired; the same time wide awake, he was once again anxious. For the last seventy years he had lived his life as a mentor to what she had become. She was a link to his past and he to hers; and although he would be happy for her to find some rest as a spirit which had become earthbound yearns: she was not herself a ghost. At least he did not imagine her as one; although he’d never experienced the presence of one he couldn’t be entirely sure; and yet, he was certain that she was not.
He’d also never questioned that she wasn’t a female. How could he? After all it was a perfectly natural trait in humans to put things into categories. Black, white, Jew, Catholic; male, female, angel. Except, in her case. He had met her when she was flesh. What she was. And that was the problem: not what she was, but what she had become. There was after all, nothing remaining to suggest what sex she had become. It was of no consequence. There was no longer a question of it being required, she had attained a plane where it was not needed. Superfluous.
But he was human and she for the purpose of the exercise would have to remain female. Apart from that it was not possible to talk of someone without a gender; without it sounding disrespectful and cold. And in any case, he told himself, she deserved that much at least — whether she was aware of his feelings or not.
That was another aspect to her; he suspected she had neither feelings nor compassion; something else no longer required, another piece of human baggage. Wherever that might be, she certainly didn’t seem pushed for time. There: time, another burden for me to carry.
He reached across to his bedside table and took a sip of water from a glass. Perhaps she wouldn’t come back to him after her previous days’ razing of Becland. And perhaps she was only a dream to him: a reality in her own torment. But Becland was real enough all right. So were her dead.
He laughed quietly to himself. The same dream for seventy years and she’d shown neither acceptance nor rejection; love or hate; happiness or indifference towards him, she kept coming. She had been taking something from him, quite what that was remained a mystery. His thoughts perhaps? Which ones? All of them, some of them? Discarding others. He could not be certain. He supposed that he should be honoured that he was the object of her attention, and able to provide what she needed. Whatever that was he could only guess at. He couldn’t be sure that it was to do with Marcus Giuseppi, although he must surely be a contributing factor. He had racked his brains and thoughts as to how that could be so and had come up with nothing more than old memories and assumptions that lodged in his brain. The frustrated efforts by him and Frank Weinberg that must have clearly upset Marco’s earlier ambitions concerning the Fariq family were real enough. Sweet Mother of Jesus any other Irishman would get a leprechaun, what do I get? A bloody Angel.
He decided to get up. Sleep was going to be out of the question this night; there was far too much going on inside his head. Putting on his dressing-gown and slippers he made his way into his study. There at
least he could take his mind off her by reading; perhaps an early morning nightcap to dull an overactive brain. He poured a whiskey and sat down in his armchair, turning his side reading lamp on before picking up the book he had been reading earlier at the marked place. He took two mouthfuls of the liquor and settled himself down feeling that he should have got up sooner and stared at the page of print before him. Taking none of it in those past thoughts came flooding back again. The only thing he would have liked to have done would have been to share what he knew with someone else, it would have made the knowledge more tolerable. A wife perhaps, someone he could confide in. But it was not to have been: the only other woman he had ever wanted had married another.
And they speak of the luck of the Irish!...
His eyes began to water; his spine shivered. The dream or the reality of it was arriving in his soul to pick him over. Where do you think all this is heading? His voice had a hollow ring in the semi-darkness. Don’t you ever stop to consider your actions? Aren’t you accountable? — we fooking are!
He heard himself speak his own words this time. ‘You’re responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, how do you reconcile yourself to that in the great scheme of things? Eh!’
He had anger. A sweat. His throat had a burning sensation to it. He spoke again. ‘Not all in Becland abused you, you know. Only those at that damned gathering. Did you have to go to all that trouble; I could have taken him out an age ago. With your help it could have been done mortally. But you knew that didn’t you. Is this some kind of crusade for your own personal salvation or His wish?’
He went quiet again. He had been through this emotional roller coaster before and each time it took more of him. So much of her vengeance was making him sick; if she carries on like this she’s going to take us all out. ‘ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? How much longer are you going to abuse me in this way?’ His voice carried out into the half-light of the room before stilling, and an awareness that he was talking to himself came over him. His breathing rate that had increased with anger was starting to abate. Old as he was he knew that any chance of a heart attack or stroke was unlikely, his heart-rate and pressure were those of a young man; his blood virtually fat-free and thin gave him no circulatory problems and all vital organs functioned well. She was, ‘DAMNED WELL keeping me alive,’ he shouted out, under his breath, muttered an oath at her leaving.
He screamed the words after her. ‘I can drink myself to death you know! I’m from a race well versed in the art!’ But she was gone. Whatever she had come for she had taken; and sleep would come easy to him now.
* * *
‘If you believe him, he’s amazingly energetic for an 107 year old, don’t you think?’ Hamilton said to Annie.
‘Well what was it he had said that Spannocs was the same age as your grandfather would have been—’ Annie Carter replied.
Hamilton thought, and said: ‘Well we’d better find out what he wants this time, come on?’
They went up the steps but did not get as far as the door before it opened and Charlie greeted them. ‘Before seeing the President, I thought we’d have a turn round the park, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said adding. ‘It’s a beautiful morning, don’t you think?’ Striding off at a pace that left them standing. Dressed in an old pair of walking boots, corduroy trousers tucked into combat green socks, a red bobble hat, and an anorak looking as if it had been left behind by Sherpa Tensin; looking for all the world like he was to ascend Everest, but to Annie’s relief stayed to the path.
She turned to Hamilton. ‘Still think he’s lying about his age?’ They walked in silence, the previous days’ events at Becland and the government’s suppression of information, and its legality was something they had up to this point put out of their minds.
‘You know the President doesn’t want a repeat of what happened at Becland, Charlie. Doesn’t want innocent people killed; he wants the girl stopped.’
‘That’d be a good trick. And Spannocs? Never mind. Does he think that I do?’ Charlie replied facing her full-on. ‘It’s his offices that are responsible for all this carry on by not letting us take out Spannocs, but they never listen to me, they think I’m a dreamer. She’s getting closer to Spannocs and if those people working within the government’s seams think that they’re going to get a window into the supernatural world ... the only time that’ll happen is when she has done for all of us. They’ll see, they’ll meet their Maker by a more conventional method. Your President is playing a dangerous game, and you’d do well to steer a separate path.’
Annie let go the suggestion from what Charlie had said that she might be involved with, what he called, Cromwellians, and that she couldn’t be trusted. That would be a long game. ‘Has he an option, though?’
But Charlie was giving the impression of not listening.
‘Well — don’t you think you concurred with that option?’ Annie said. ‘After all, you could be wrong. Frederik Spannocs’s powers and his alter ego.’
‘He runs the biggest paedophile ring the world is ever likely to see again and you take that view. You of all people, what your own research that your people have been carrying out down the decades in the name of religion. Reinforcing doctrines that are supposed to be followed by blind faith having been proved scientifically, buried again if they should go against Christian doctrines?’
‘That’s not the same thing, we’re ... never mind, as for paedophile rings, you don’t think that his will be the last of them do you?’ She stopped realising that Hamilton didn’t know she had a separate agenda from that of a world church order of all faiths. An edict to observe the possibilities of messengers from God was something that could never be allowed to go public. It would need scrutinising, digesting, unscrambling and reassembling into well-worked doctrines in place to maintain the status quo.
‘What’s that all about? Something I should know, don’t treat me like an idiot, Annie. If there’s anything I should know now’s the time, because when this story that we’re at the centre breaks, and you’re in the way, you’ll be steam-rolled out of it.’
Charlie looked at her; said nothing.
She tried to ignore the remark but the look on Hamilton’s face was clear that they had said too much about her activities.
‘I thought you’d been brought in because of this angel? You’d better explain if you have another agenda, and quick. I’m in no mood for your shenanigans.’ He looked at Charlie. ‘I’ve had a gut full of his as it is.’
She bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry Hamilton, to get this assignment, I did have to agree to certain conditions, one of which being that anything that would affect the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church was to be passed to a higher authority within my order for approval—’
‘Oh, I see, don’t suppose there was any thought given to any parlance with the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, or perhaps the Muslims, or the Hindus?’
‘I am, will be, involved with all of these people you mention, but as a religionist observer working on the certainty that a spiritual coming is a real event. Different from Charlie’s history but we believe that what has been happening for the last 2000 years; given the evidence that has been kept under lock and key by all religions; our studies have come to the conclusion that there is a chance that someone — like Spannocs — could be a vehicle for evil. That evidence, or some of it is in the hands of the United States Government’s own special department and we’ve no way of knowing which or what or who they are, except, that they, may be powerful enough to swing President’s to their will. And yes, of course, I have an allegiance to the Holy See; what they do with any information, of a supernatural, must be left for them to decide.’
‘In that case, as representative of the American Press, its people, and upholder of the First Amendment, I must, without breaking any laws, follow the path of impartiality and print the story that God’s representative is with us on earth, as predicted.... For the first time round!’ Hamilton said looking first at one and the other.
‘What would she gain by that?’ Hamilton said.
‘We are not here to judge, just keep an eye on things, as according to documented religious beliefs, his activities are evil enough to warrant a second coming: his crimes not forgivable by God and guaranteed eternal damnation. And if there are any shenanigans that could put the human race in danger of extinction, well—. And no, in answer to your question she’d have nothing to gain. But don’t be under any misapprehension, Hamilton; this man is as close to a living example of debased evil as the founder of National Socialism. If there was to be a coming — first or otherwise; with the technology these people are employing; the capture of whatever is God’s representative in His absence, could turn the time continuum of the universe into a spiral from which it may never recover: the human race: will not be around long enough to witness time stopped still.’
‘You once mentioned: Cromwell’s. You called them that? Who were them that you referred?’ Hamilton said.
‘That’s my word for them, others may have another, and perhaps there is an official title somewhere locked in the government’s archives, I don’t know. But Spannocs has accomplices ... who were shadowing him from the beginning, accomplices he knew nothing of. Your grandfather tried to stop one of them from getting away the night we busted the Giuseppi’s place: he tackled one and took a rotor arm from a car. Those same men were members of the Bureau of Investigation. And they’re alive today and orchestrating this whole project. They know everything that I know and they’re so high within the fabric of government that you couldn’t touch them if they were to shoot the President dead tomorrow in front of the world and his wife. Not sure names. Although Agents Johnson and Sullivan ... they offered me and Frank our jobs in the BI’s Obscene Section. That would have been too ironical for words if it was either of them, what with Obscene being set up to tackle sexual abuse and exploitation against child immigrants and nationals—’
