The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne

by R. S. Darling

  “Please don’t let this be it,” she prayed and hoped and feared. She opened her hand and, there in the sweat-slicked palm sat Linnux’s unmistakably cool flash drive.

  She dropped it on the bed as though it were a red hot coal.

  Lexi was panting when she began searching the room for a blade.

  Chapter 24

  She lay there in her own blood for hours, listening to the crickets and feeling the crimson fluid congealing. Nothing dries the skin out like dead blood. She knew what it looked like, the five parallel slices in her wrist. But what did it matter, her old life was over.

  Lexi didn’t care enough to clean up the mattress or to wipe the blood that had clung to Satan when the cat came snooping while she cut.

  As always though it had worked; her mind was clear and her breathing had calmed to a sedate pace. After a shower she downloaded the files from the flash drive, jerking when the laptop beeped to inform her she had mail. It was from Vortex again.

  FBI maybe?

  Maybe they’d discovered Leslie’s ISP and tracked his codes. She opened the e-mail.

  “We need to meet F2F Miss M. Without your entourage. You are not safe. I have information on the Tower and on the murder of your father. Send reply without names.”

  Murder.

  That word hovered fat with meaning on the screen. She put a hand to her mouth and exhaled. Then she zipped off a curt response, opening a door to yet another new world. This one, she vowed, would not find her a victim of circumstance but rather an instigator, an affecter.

  She caught up to Lewis as he was heading for the truck at 6:01 in the morning, dropped the flash drive into his trench coat in a smooth move worthy of the Artful Dodger.

  “We need to find an internet café where we can access the files we need,” Lewis grunted. “Be ready to run. They’ll be watching their files closer now.” He looked down at her, the fedora plunging his oversized eyes into impenetrable darkness. “But you need to consider, Miss Montaigne, that if we do this they will be on to us. They might be following us right now, but they definitely will be if we access those files.”

  It took her a few seconds to summon a look of feigned indifference. “If we really want to stop Dorl, what choice do we have?”

  He nodded and as he drove Lexi searched Web-linked maps for the nearest internet café in northern Indiana, finding one in Leesburg on South Main. After giving directions to Lewis she e-mailed Vortex, asking him if he could meet her in Leesburg that day. He responded within minutes, giving her an address with didactic instructions not to bring her ‘companion’.

  Lewis tried to sneak a peek. Lexi slammed the laptop shut.

  “What were you looking at, sights to fulfill the prurient side you showed last night?” There was an undertone to his voice, an unspoken meaning that he knew perfectly well why she had gone to him last night.

  “I still have friends, believe it or not.” She flinched as the words came out defensive.

  The sky yawned away the night and a great blue canvas materialized from the darkness. Thank God for small miracles. “Listen, Lewis, I think I—”

  He interjected, I think it would be better if I went in alone. There might be things about your grandfather you wouldn’t want to see. Give me an hour.” When they eased into a spot outside the Café, Lewis handed her a Benjamin. “Find us something to eat. Pie, if they got it.”

  Despite his lame excuse for privacy, relief welled for the fact that she didn’t have to come up with an equally lame excuse to drive out alone in Leesburg to find someone called Vortex. She pulled away from the curb, wondering if she would ever see Lewis again. Do I want to?

  The deeper she drove into town, the stranger it seemed that an internet café should be found here. There was a young couple out on a morning jog, but besides them the vacancy was glaringly obvious. Even ghost towns need Facebook friends, apparently.

  She found the place Vortex had described; an abandoned diner that sill boasted an eight foot ice cream cone and eaves lined with custard waves.

  Lexi killed the engine. Got out. Distant crickets took up the silence.

  She absently kicked at patches of grass slinking up from cracks in the pavement. Her playtime was interrupted a few minutes later by the steady whap-whap-whap of chopper blades sounding from the west, growing louder by the second. A violent crescendo of whap-whap-whap as the chopper came into view over the trees at the far edge of the lot. With Lexi’s hair flapping all around, the chopper landed.

  They found me!

  She ran for the truck—was fiddling with the key when a screeching voice blasted from a blow horn. Though she failed to make anything of the words, the sight of the blank chopper capsule arrested her flight. This was a personal helicopter, not an official we’ve-found-you-so-now-you’re-screwed FBI chopper. The blades slowly whirred down to silence as a man with a shining dome for a head stepped out.

  Another man, equally bald, stepped out and together they removed a black and stainless steel wheelchair. They hauled out an old man with a gray ponytail. They deposited him in the wheelchair.

  One of the twins of baldness wheeled him over until the man in the chair raised a hand and they stopped. Baldy walked over to the Dakota. His expression was vague but he bore down on the vehicle with the clear intent of physically removing Lexi if she refused to cooperate. He looked the sort of man who would not be slowed down by locked doors.

  Lexi inhaled and got out. Baldy took it upon himself to frisk her with Russian hands and Roman fingers. When he was done he nodded at Ponytail—who returned the nod—and then Baldy left them.

  “Good evening Miss Montaigne,” the old man said. “Sorry if I frightened you, but as I’m sure you know by now, the feds are everywhere and it is a fool’s game to trust anyone.”

  Lexi scanned Ponytail and his chair, provoking him into responding.

  “You are wondering how a cyberspace junkie of Vortex caliber could possibly be an old useless lump like me.” His voice was pleasant, soothing, like fingering a day-old bruise. “As you can imagine, I don’t get out much and I can’t move much more than my hands. So I spend my days in the Web where I am god and the people out here are the cripples.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “We have Timothy Colson to thank for my withered legs,” he said without rancor.

  “Simon’s father?” Lexi moved closer, wondering if she should kneel to be eye level, comfort the patient.

  “Yes. After I learned Tim was working for the Bureau, I tried to expose him.” Vortex lowered his hoary head and snickered. “It was ‘86, I was young and naïve, without a clue as to the extent of the Bureau’s reach. I worked with your father, Michael, back then, and when he told me about the Tower and the Bureau’s interest in him and of his abduction, I believed him. That was the first time I felt a part of something bigger than myself, something important.”

  Lexi leaned down beside his chair, settling into the unwashed stench of a man but bearing it for the interest in her father. “Why do you think my father was killed?”

  “Because I saw it happen,” he stated simply. “I walked in on them at a supposed 459 in Batavia, and there was Michael, lying on the floor with a bullet in his back. It was a hit. Sure as sure, as your grandfather would say.”

  She felt as though he had slapped her face and she wanted to cry for her father, to display the love she had never had the chance to show. But her eyes remained dry.

  “Tim Colson had called in a robbery, making sure Michael showed up first, alone,” Vortex continued. “But by then Michael was almost as paranoid as Virgil, got that way after your grandfather showed him his ‘trove’, so Michael called me for backup. I was too late and it nearly cost me my life. I entered the house and saw poor Michael just lying there. Tim turned and I saw the look in his eyes; the vacant gaze of a man more agent than human. I tried to run but he shot me in the spine. I went cold.” Vortex stared at the ground, his face crimped with the pain of memory.

  “I
remember seeing his shoes—chestnut leather—as he stood over me. Since I couldn’t move he must have figured me for dead. “Later Virgil showed up, like an angel of mercy, fixed everything for me after the surgery. He set me up in a safe house, being tedious about everything, watching his back, watching mine. He was amazing. I bought some stock in Apple and later IBM—lucky guesses really—with the money he gave me.”

  Lexi clutched her head as images flashed through her mind, sounds and pictures of agents in a small room, profound darkness attacked by light brighter than the midday sun.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” she lowered her hand, recalling the room but not the events surrounding it. “I just get these headaches sometimes. Images too, random memories. At least I think they’re memories.”

  “Damn!” Vortex slapped his chair. “They gave you Lot 111. I was hoping you could describe Dorl for me. I know they took you to the facility in Ashford Hallow but . . . damn.” He lifted his hand. One of the twins of baldness arrived with a flash drive, gave it to Vortex and turned back to the chopper to continue flavoring the air with cigar smoke and being a proper henchman.

  “It’s everything the FBI has on the Tower, going back to the thirties.” He handed it to her like the Olympic Torch being passed on, except his arm didn’t move much.

  “How did you get this?”

  “Linnux helped. I was sorry to hear about his death. Smart little shit, Linnux. He helped me break through some firewalls and back doors.”

  “You knew Linnux?” She was on the verge, her eyes moist and yet still nothing came.

  “I have been monitoring your internet activity, and I see the pattern now. It is the dates, the technology and the slow accumulation of time.”

  “You’re talking about Dorl’s pattern, what it might indicate en toto, so to speak?”

  Vortex nodded. “Find that and you’ll know how to stop him. Because believe me, the Tower knows how to survive. He’s been thwarted for decades but never destroyed. When the Bureau gained power in the thirties they made him a priority watch: Black bag jobs for Tower employees, technicals, all that G-men crap. It’s all in there.” He pointed at the flash drive.

  “How does Lewis figure in to all this? He a plant?”

  “Worse, he’s taking you to the Tower to offer you as a sacrifice.”

  “What? Then I won’t go back to him. I’ll go to Nevada alone, use your data—”

  “No! You must go back, continue the game. He is the only reason the entire Bureau isn’t on your ass already. If he knows you’re on to him, he’ll call it off and you’ll vanish without a trace.”

  She pondered this; something didn’t fit. “Then what was the attack at the library?”

  The September sun was beating directly on them, summoning beads of sweat. “That’s where it gets complicated,” Vortex explained, “the Bureau is in transition. The Director recently retired, so in their rush to find a replacement they can trust, they are divided. A small subdivision hunts the Tower while those agents outside the loop are sent to capture ‘rogue’ Agent Lewis.”

  Vortex sighed, shifted in his chair. “It is a dangerous world you’ve stepped into. Be careful what you believe. Search the drive only with Leslie’s laptop and only when alone. Find the pattern. Find out what Dorl is building out in the desert.”

  One of the twins of baldness started up the chopper while the other came to wheel Vortex back. Under the escalating whap-whap whir of the blades Vortex shouted, “One more thing! You have five days to find the pattern and use it to destroy the Tower.”

  “What? Why five days?” A shiver ran through her blood, nestled in her heart.

  “The news lies,” Vortex shouted. “Wormwood’s going to impact earth in five days. Maybe the Tower is working on a way to save himself and his people, so that after the fallout—”

  His voice was lost in the whirlwind of the choppers blades. But it didn’t matter; Lexi had a pretty good idea what he was saying, and the more she thought about it, the more she felt like puking.

  Chapter 25

  1953-Prague

  He tried not to breathe too deeply as he stood conspicuous in the interior of St. Vitus’ Cathedral. Crimson sunlight spilled through the Rose Window, splashing color over the otherwise gray gargoyles and bathing Virgil in holy warmth. The air was still and quiet.

  The faithful had not yet arrived.

  Virgil had spent almost two years learning to speak Czech, taking night classes after coming home from the station, where he feigned ignorance of Captain Colson’s covert operation. Czech wasn’t exactly a walk in the ballpark, the quick blending of phrases, the slight differences at the ends to indicate gender. And the swift change in hard consonant’s and the liberal use of soft, unspoken vowels was infuriatingly difficult to master.

  The experience only made his hatred of Dorl all the more acute.

  According to Hughes, after the dead end in Arfion Mr. Rold (Hughes always referred to Dorl as Rold) had fled to Prague, but for months remained dormant. All Virgil had to go on other than Hughes’ word were a few references in the Czech papers about a mysterious underground man buying up land in Praha’s 1 and 6.

  Virgil roamed the corridors of St. Vitus in the hope of finding evidence of Dorl’s previous presence in the city, as he had begun to suspect that Dorl had a pattern of returning to old haunts—like a dog to its vomit.

  The corridors, absent the ancient stained glass of the apse, were cooler, with a faint smell of musty stone. The Royal Crypt beneath the cathedral was not easily reached. There was little light to guide him; only the small clerestory openings high above permitted tiny beams of light to stream down. The atrium contained voluminous statuary dating from the Renaissance up through the Gilded age, but nothing caught his eye as being especially Dorl-esque.

  But he had yet to search the 15th century section for evidence.

  Evidence; that all important and often elusive proof which would help him open the eyes of the world to the activities of the mysterious man. But either because of the Bureau’s interference or Dorl’s own nefarious genius, he’d yet to unearth any proof, merely circumstantial evidence which he was certain would be confiscated the moment he brought it to light.

  He needed something old, something public yet also safe from governments; something protected by both royalty and religion.

  So he ranged deeper into the labyrinthine tunnels, always alone, constant fear of exposure in mind. He removed a flashlight and shone the beam on stonework shaped by moisture, invisible rivulets trickling down to chambers deeper still.

  The silence here was almost startling. Nothing like Batavia.

  He swept the beam left and right. Found the path down to the Royal Crypt, revealed by miniature stonework crowned with ring-sized diadems and royal vestments of curtained stone.

  His only company now was the tap-tap of his Doc Martens as he crossed corridors and shuffled through doorways concealed under centuries of cobwebs. His breathing remained steady, even when a tiny bat screamed past him. At last he found the door, an oak behemoth limned with iron, rusty and impenetrable, bolts as much a part of the wood now as the knots. He shoved, straining his shoulder, drenching his shirt in sweat.

  The door scraped the floor as it gave, the sound filling the space with a frightful clamor. Virgil rested before entering. His steps were tentative and always in the path of the beam until at last he stood in the center of the crypt. The distinctive laborious breathing of an hundred bats punctuated the otherwise dreadful silence.

  He felt as though he had crossed into another world, a crepuscular chamber designed to shun light and expel all sense of joy and safety. Daring to move forward, he made for the walls in languorous steps, reaching the southern wall—at least he thought it was the southern wall—and splashing the flashlight beam over the stone.

  The wall was etched with a thousand letters and glyphs.

  Virgil drew his hand over it in lazy arcs, collecting dust and dispelling a tapest
ry of intricate webs. He shook a dozen arachnids off before retraining the beam. Its light slunk into lines of honor for kings long dead and mostly forgotten. As he traced the borders of the crypt, lighting each portion in turn, hope began to dwindle. A dim recollection of Poe’s Pit came to him as he followed the path of the walls.

  “Come on, where is it? There must be something, dammit!”

  He pounded the wall with his free hand. Beat the dust from his long coat. With a final hallow sigh he made for the great oak door. And there it was, meant not to be seen by any but one who stands insides with the door closed. In absolute solitude.

  On the inside half of the door he found, not more writing, but a depiction; a pictograph of what at first appeared to be a man but on further inspection was revealed to be something else entirely. In the center of the door, two feet up and rising another three feet was scrawled in deep flutes a figure flanked by parallel figures, one on each side in rabbets shallower and less pronounced, their inferior nature serving to augment the central image.

  When he threw the beam on the figure, the fluted man became a visual representation of the various descriptions of the Tower. Virgil gasped despite himself and had the presence of mind to retrieve his Kodak 35mm. The light that filled the room from the flash bulb startled him. He jerked back, fell. His head struck the floor.

  Darkness swallowed him.

  His first act on waking was to check the camera. “Thank God,” Virgil whispered, finding it unharmed. A memory struck him then of Silas standing over him. He couldn’t make anything of it, but withdrew a pad of paper and jotted down the faint memory before it fled. He shivered and within moments was flying back through the labyrinth, climbing flights of stairs three steps at a time, and finally breathing the clean air of the soaring vista of cathedral’s nave.