Code of Blood

by George C. Chesbro

  “I thought I did,” Chant said evenly. “You’re my friend, Tony, and I obviously trust you with my life and freedom. Because you’re my friend, I tell you that you don’t want to know the reason why I walked away from the war. It would do you no good to know, and it’s the kind of information that could conceivably get you killed one day if our relationship ever became known. It could also cost you a lot of sleepless nights.”

  “There was … a story that you killed six American servicemen.”

  “True. They were trying to kill me. No more, Tony.”

  “You want to do Japanese? Maybe Szechuan? There’s a really fine place just up the street.”

  “Actually, if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer a good American steak house.”

  “Christ Cella?”

  “Perfect.”

  “The CIA?” Black asked quietly. “Are they the reason you walked away? Are they the people who want you dead?”

  Chant laughed easily, rose, and walked to the door. “Come, my friend. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  field of fire and fangs

  Chant, by his estimate, was a third of the way through the course—a netherworld of acres of flame, choking smoke, barbed wire, and machine-gunfire raking through the air four feet above the ground at irregular intervals—when the first snake struck. Chant heard the rattle and saw the movement of the serpent’s head a split second before it came at him; his hand moved with lightning speed, catching the six-foot-long timber rattlesnake around its thick neck. He smashed its head against a rock, then threw its carcass into a fountain of flame to his right as machine-gun bullets suddenly began to whine through the air over his head. Then the firing stopped, and Chant could hear the shouts of frightened men above the omnipresent crackling of the flames.

  Chant thought he knew what had happened: the flames, smoke, barbed wire, and gunfire on this field at an abandoned Army base in upstate New York were there by design, intended to test the men’s nerve and courage under conditions of extreme stress; but the rattlesnakes were a deadly surprise. Montsero had had the incredible bad fortune to lay out the course over a nesting area where untold numbers of the deadly reptiles had been roused from hibernation by the heat of the flames, which meant there was a good possibility that the psychologist was going to lose a number of the increasingly elite group during the course of this particular trial.

  At the moment, Chant thought with a wry smile, there weren’t too many men on the course left worrying about winning the thousand-dollar bonus that went to the man who finished first, they’d be too busy worrying about the snakes hissing in their faces as machine-gun bullets filled the air over their heads.

  He grabbed three more snakes as they slithered toward him and threw them into the fire, clearing the immediate area When he heard a scream to his left, he sucked in a deep breath, rose from his belly into a crouch, and darted through a cloud of black, acrid smoke, circumvented a wall of flames, heading toward the sound. He found himself in a small area of burned-out ground. In the center of the area was a rangy, short-tempered man Chant knew as Chuck Politan. His face, beneath the dagger tattoos on both cheeks, was ashen as he stared, frozen with panic, at the huge rattlesnake coiled to strike in front of him He cradled his tattooed right forearm in his left hand, and even from yards away Chant could see the crimson fang marks in the black ink of the arm. Politan saw Chant, and his eyes went wide with both horror and appeal He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

  “Be still?” Chant shouted in order to be heard over the rattle of gunfire and roar of the flames.

  “I’m going to die!” the tattooed man screamed.

  “Not if you do as I say’ Lie still?”

  Chant slowly crawled forward in an easy, flowing motion toward the man and the snake The rattler finally struck at Politan, but Chant struck even faster, his hand darting out and closing around the snake’s neck as streams of cloudy venom squirted from the extended hypodermic fangs, splashing over the faces of both men In a single, fluid motion, Chant rolled over on his back and hurled the snake away.

  “Jesus Christ!” Politan shouted, shaking his head in relief, shock, and disbelief. “Alter, you are one fast son-of-a-bitch! I never even saw your hand move!”

  “Be very still,” Chant said calmly “Montsero has a medical kit with antivenom serum There’s venom in your system right now, but we have time” Chant removed his belt, tightened it around the man’s right forearm, above the fang marks. “You won’t die if you can control your panic Try to relax and breathe as deeply as you can without choking on the smoke. Panic just flushes the poison through your system faster.”

  “How the hell are we going to get out of here?! I don’t know which way to go!”

  “I do.”

  “But we’re surrounded by fire! We’ll burn to death!”

  “Be still, Politan, or you’re going to shout yourself to death I said I’d get you out.”

  The tattooed man stared at Chant, blinked, then visibly relaxed as Chant gripped his wrist and began leading him to the opposite side of the burned-out area. “You know, Alter, damned if I don’t believe you really can get me out of here in time.”

  And Chant did.

  Outside the perimeter of the flames, while Politan was being treated by one of Montsero’s assistants, Chant abruptly turned away from the plain of fire, and as he did so caught a glint of sunlight off glass or metal midway up the side of a mountain in the distance.

  The Watcher, Chant thought. He had been right.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Chant?”

  Chant wrapped his arms around the slight, gray-haired woman who rushed out onto the porch of her East Side brownstone to greet him. He bent down and kissed Martha Greenblatt, then hurried her back through the door. “Come on, love,” he said, closing the door on a savage gust of wind. “You’re going to catch pneumonia running around in the cold like that with no coat on.”

  “Not likely,” Martha Greenblatt said as she took Chant’s sheepskin coat and hung it up in a hall closet. “Lord, it’s good to see you. Harry will be so sorry he missed you” The woman paused, reached out, and gently stroked Chant’s massive chest “When I don’t see or hear from you in months, I’m always so afraid you’re either dead or in prison, and I’ll never even know about it.”

  “If I’m ever on my way to prison, you can be sure you’ll hear about it. What would be the sense of having the best lawyer in the world as a friend and not using her when you need her?”

  The woman laughed lightly as she took Chant’s arm and led him into a living room beautifully furnished with fine Persian carpets and French antiques “Not so good a lawyer anymore, Chant. Just an old courtroom brawler who does a little pro bono work here and there to keep the gray matter from drying up.”

  “You always did pro bono work, my dear, for anyone who needed it.”

  Martha Greenblatt eased Chant down onto a couch beneath a Monet in a gold frame, sat down beside him, and took his hand “I wouldn’t be doing any kind of work if you hadn’t fished me out of the Hudson ten years ago.”

  “I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I’d been tracking that neo-Nazi client of yours for three months. You should have been—should be—more careful about the people you choose to represent.”

  “Now, Chant,” the woman said, clucking her tongue. “Who better than John Sinclair would know that guilt or innocence has nothing to do with the practice of law?” She paused, squeezed his hand. “I was so happy when you called. Can you stay for a few hours?”

  “Overnight, if you’re willing to put me up.”

  “Good! Harry’s due back from Spain tomorrow, and he’ll be delighted to see you.” Martha Greenblatt clapped her hands with delight, like a child, and her pale green eyes gleamed with pleasure. “I’m going to prepare a fine dinner, but first we’ll have tea! You can stand over my shoulder to make certain I get that ceremony you taught me right.”

  “That would be ve
ry nice But if we’re going to enjoy a tea ceremony, then I’ll get the business part of my visit out of the way first.”

  “What can I do for you, Chant?” Martha Greenblatt asked, sitting up straight and folding her hands in her lap. Suddenly the retired attorney, who had been one of the country’s foremost criminal trial lawyers as well as a recognized authority on constitutional law, was all business.

  “Give me some information, if you can. Are you familiar with the research project involving ex-convicts over at Blake College?”

  “Yes,” the woman replied easily, curiosity evident in her voice “Why?”

  “You think it’s legitimate?”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m not sure what I mean I’d just like to know what you think.”

  “What’s not to be legitimate? It’s a long-range thing, been going on for years It’s an easy way for ex-convicts who qualify to pick up a few dollars by sitting around for a couple of hours filling out questionnaires.”

  “Is that what they do?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “I intend to find out for myself. I need to know what the most common procedures are for referral or application. I don’t want anything about me to seem unusual.”

  “That may not be so easy, Chant. You can’t just go over there, knock on the door and introduce yourself as an ex-convict. They only use long-termers, people who’ve been locked up fifteen years or longer, and I’m sure they must check with the prison you supposedly came out of.”

  “I’ve already done some preliminary work. I’m going to assume the identity of a man by the name of Neil Alter.”

  “Is there a real Neil Alter?”

  Chant nodded. “He just got out of prison after serving twenty years for a murder, which, the authorities finally discovered, he didn’t commit. From what I understand, the people at Blake College don’t care whether you’re guilty or innocent, only that you’ve served time.”

  “That’s right. But why Neil Alter?”

  “According to the newspapers I researched, he’s about my size, and I should be able to construct a fairly simple disguise to resemble his other physical characteristics. He comes from the Everglades section of Florida, which means the chances of his showing up in New York City are minimal. Naturally, I’ll have appropriate identity papers.”

  Martha Greenblatt shrugged her shoulders. “In that case, there’s no problem You finish putting yourself together as Neil Alter, and I’ll pick up the phone and have you in the project in five minutes.”

  Chant shook his head.

  “Why not, Chant? It would be so simple.”

  “Martha, this may turn out to be a waste of my time. Then again, it may not I don’t know what I’m going to find over there If something does happen, I don’t want anyone to be able to connect you with Neil Alter.”

  “Now you’re being silly You wouldn’t be the first person I’ve sent over there.”

  “I’d be the first phony. And even if I were willing to risk having you linked with me, which I’m not, I wouldn’t want you to refer me You’re too illustrious a celebrity, and your name might attract attention As long as I’ve set things up properly, why can’t I just go over and apply?”

  “You could But you said that you didn’t want anything about you to seem unusual Your home is in Florida, and you just got out of prison What are you going to tell them when they ask what you’re doing in New York? Of course, you’ll come up with a good reason—but it will certainly seem like an unusual reason Don’t you think so?”

  Chant gave a slight nod of his head. “Your point is well taken, Martha See why I came to you?”

  “What you need is referral by a social worker. That way, the people at Blake will figure all the tough questions have been asked and you’ve already been screened They might not even check your prison record.”

  Chant smiled, kissed his friend on the cheek. “Thank you, Martha; you’re a wonder. Tomorrow, after saying hello to Harry, I move down to the Bowery.”

  Martha Greenblatt playfully pushed Chant away, then made a not-so-playful gesture of disdain with her hand “Talk about wasting time! If you try to get next to a social worker by going the Bowery bum and Salvation Army route, it’ll take you two months just to go to interviews and fill out welfare forms. Believe me; I know what I’m talking about. If you won’t let me refer you directly to the project over at Blake, at least let me refer you to a social worker.”

  Chant smiled. “And what would I tell the social worker when he or she starts asking the tough questions?”

  “Are you kidding me? I said the people at Blake might assume they’d been asked, not that they actually had been. Do you have any idea of the size of the caseload for the average social worker in New York City?! I’m serious, Chant.”

  “I don’t think so, Martha. There’d still be a link.”

  “But not the same kind of link. It’s not a big deal, Chant. Really. I would consider it a great privilege to help you. Will you tell me why you want to go over there?”

  Again, Chant smiled, “Nope.”

  “You listen to me, John Sinclair. With all the pro bono work I do, I deal with social agencies all the time. There are a dozen different ways I could have met you, and there would be nothing suspicious about my referring Neil Alter to one of them. In fact, I already know what I’d like to do; I’ll refer you to a woman by the name of Jan Rawlings. She’s a pretty young thing, just getting started in the social work business and getting a bitter taste of just how rough New York City can be if you’re down and out. I like her, even if she is—or maybe because she is—a hopeless idealist. I’m sure meeting you will be good for her, no matter who she thinks you are.”

  Chant, still smiling, said nothing.

  “Are you thinking about it?” Martha Greenblatt asked.

  “Nope.”

  “There’d be no danger to Jan, if that’s what you’re worried about. Even if something did happen and you were found out, there’s no way on God’s earth anyone would hold a poor, overworked caseworker responsible for not spotting a ringer. When will you be ready to be Neil Alter?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, madam.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “Nope.”

  Suddenly the laughter was gone from Martha Greenblatt’s voice and eyes. “Yes, you will,” she said very seriously. “You make a virtual fetish out of working alone, because you’re so afraid of an innocent person being hurt because of you Well, there’s no way anyone—except you, of course, but that’s always the case—can be hurt by the procedure I’m recommending. I didn’t earn my reputation as a pretty good trial lawyer by being unpersuasive. You’ll think about it, then realize that it’s pointless to waste time freezing on the sidewalk and getting chewed on by rats when it’s possible—without risk to anyone but yourself—to get right on with the business that brought you here” The woman paused, broke into a grin. “Any more business?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good!” Martha’s eyes now sparkled with delight. “Then you’ll please come and supervise my preparation of the tea. I have all the things you bought for me laid out—something I did right after I hung up. The ceremony is lovely, but I’m sure I’ve forgotten everything you taught me.”

  “I doubt it,” Chant said dryly as he rose from the couch, offered his arm, and let the woman lead him toward the dining room. “You never forget anything, Martha.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Music from a Salvation Army band wafted up from the street seventeen stories below, penetrated the Thermopane window and grated against Jan Rawling’s senses. The trombone was at least half a pitch flat, Jan thought, and she wondered if the player knew, or cared In the three years since she’d graduated from college and come to New York City, Jan had come to hate the Christmas season. She hated having to buy gifts, but knew that she had to in order to avoid embarrassment when she received them; she hated signing and addressing the five dozen or so cards she mailed out each
year, received no pleasure from the five dozen or so she got in return. She longed to join a Skip Christmas Club.

  Like every year at this time, she was very depressed.

  Jan hated Christmas parties, but always felt compelled to attend the annual office party for fear that she would offend her co-workers if she didn’t. For the same reason, she always felt compelled to accept a drink, but even one usually proved to be too much, leaving her feeling flushed and nauseous. The storage-turned-conference room where the party was being held was overheated, and Jan felt decidedly uncomfortable.

  She jumped when she felt the back of someone’s hand deliberately brush across her buttocks. She spun around and found herself staring down at Roger Wheeler, a short cipher of a man with fleece on his face that was meant to pass as a beard. Wheeler was a recent graduate who parted his hair in the middle, wore tweed jackets with leather patches on the sleeves, affected to smoke a pipe, and played with hand-held electronic games on his coffee breaks and lunch hours. His face was usually a blank, except for his eyes, which stared at any woman with naked longing.

  “I’ve got a message for you, babe,” Wheeler said, a leer in his voice and his eyes fixed on Jan’s large breasts.

  Most of all she hated sex, Jan thought as she glared at Wheeler. After three boyfriends, including one live-in lover, she’d decided that she would never experience the pleasure other women seemed to find in the act To her, sex meant only bad smells and ugly slapping sounds, pain and blood and acute embarrassment; it meant grunting men groping her, sucking her breasts as if they were infants, sweating on her, staining her sheets.

  Sex and Christmas, Jan thought, were two things she could definitely do without.