Steal the Lightning

by Tim Lees

  Perhaps I’d get away with it.

  We left the coffee shop, all this still running through my head. I scarcely even noticed when a car pulled up beside us. Not till I saw it was the limo from the Gemini. That was too much coincidence. The rear window came down and someone called out, “Mr. Copeland!”

  I was wary, straightaway.

  I’d assumed the limo must be Cleary’s. But it wasn’t his voice. The voice was big and cheery, with a southern twang. In the shadowy interior I saw a broad, tanned, cowboy’s face, and a grin as wide as his sunglasses.

  There is no need for sunglasses in a car with tinted windows. No damn need at all.

  “Now which of you fellers would that be? You, I’m guessing.” A big hand appeared, wagging a finger at me.

  I said nothing.

  “Yes? No? Mr. Christopher Copeland?”

  I looked at Silverman. He shrugged.

  “Oh, hey now.” The door swung open. “I’m forgetting my manners here.” The man who stepped out really should have been tall. He gave off that impression, anyway: it was there, in his rugged, film star looks, his cropped black hair, the stubble on his chin; the large head, big shoulders, the bodybuilder muscles in his arms and torso. It was in his stance, feet wide, arms at his side, ready for anything. It was in the clothes he wore: the faded jeans and denim shirt, though it was denim of a quality I had never seen before. The press-stud buttons were inlaid with pearl, and I had no doubt it was real.

  Around his neck was a simple leather thong from which hung a large black talon, nestling in the hair that spilled out of his shirt-neck.

  Like I say, the look of a tall man. Till he stood up.

  He was about five-two, stocky—a result of all that bodybuilding—and a paunch was just starting to stretch his denim shirt. He made up for all this when he shook my hand, squeezing just a bit too hard, grinning just a bit too wide.

  “And these guys.” He looked to Angel, to Silverman. “Let me see—Angel Farthing. Registry. Right?” He reached to take her hand, but she moved back. It was subtle, and it disconcerted him for maybe half a second. “Which makes you,” he said, turning to Paul, “Paul Silverman. Uh-huh?”

  He caught my blank look.

  “Edward Ballington. Eddie-boy Ballington, if you’d rather. Call me Eddie. Everyone does.”

  He extended this as if it were an offer of great generosity.

  My look grew no less blank.

  “Now. You ready for lunch? You’re ready for a beer, at least, huh?”

  “No. In fact we’re very busy now,” I said.

  “Chris,” said Angel.

  Silverman had the camera in the crook of his arm. I noticed that the light was on. He was filming.

  “Chris, Chris,” said Eddie. “I told you my name. You know who my father is? Oh, hey. You’re a Brit, aren’t you?” He looked sad, as if he’d just found out I’d got some crippling illness. “You see the car, right?”

  “Whoever you are, what makes you think we want lunch with you? Or beer, come to that?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Charm, good looks? Or maybe . . .’cause I see you got a problem here. And I,” he slapped his chest, “can make it go away.”

  He gestured to the open car door.

  “My mother told me never to take lifts from strangers,” I said.

  “Your mom ain’t here, Chris. Pastor Cleary is.”

  “You know him well?”

  “I know how to get him out your hair. You can make that retrieval any time you want, then. Tomorrow. Maybe tonight, even. Depends how fast you want to move.”

  “Retrieval,” I said.

  “Oh, sure. Come on. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  He had a very masculine cologne, a smell of sweat and monkey glands, steroids, bourbon, and the faintest hint of gasoline.

  The whole car stank of it.

  Chapter 28

  An Audience with Eddie-boy

  “You like the horses, Chris? Go to the track? The Derby? Watch on TV?”

  We were driving nowhere. We were cruising, drifting with the traffic. Highway flotsam. The chauffeur was a hat, behind a tinted screen. The car was like a little floating island, dedicated to the joys of manly luxury: paneled wood, deep red upholstery, a bar that offered nothing so effete or wimpish as a mineral water (Angel’s choice; she settled for a beer).

  I told him, “I don’t bet. Don’t like the odds.”

  “But, man, the horses . . .”

  Angel was playing on her phone, something she hardly ever did in company.

  “You gotta love the horses, man. Back when I was young, I’d wake up on my Dad-o’s farm, first thing I’d do, right before breakfast—go see the horses. Say hi, good morning, call ’em each by name. We had a feller there named Star—beautiful, beautiful boy. I loved that horse. Cried like a baby when they sold him on. But that’s life, right? One thing ends, another starts. You gotta move with it, don’t you? You wanna see my Dad-o’s farm, Chris? Come see the horses? Sure you do!”

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a proposition, Chris, and a good one. The best you’ll ever get.

  “You got a god out there. You’re here for it, right? ’Cept you got Cleary and his three-ring circus standing in your way. Now—here’s the thing. I make a couple phone calls, I can end all that. I can make it all go clean away.”

  “How?”

  “Ah.” He wagged a finger. “You don’t get that just yet. But trust me, I can. And for a fair price, too.”

  “Go on.”

  “You get your god. And then, by way of thanks and gratitude, and the fact that it was me who made it possible—you tear me off a chunk of it. Not much. But you do it. Sound good?”

  I had had such offers other times—offers, or threats. But now, I looked at him, and a notion came into my head, and it would not let go. It was like all the pieces fell together, all at once. How many times had he done this, one place or another? How many little chunks of god had he collected, and sold on?

  Personable, Melody had said. I could see that, at a pinch: Southern charm.

  And the other thing: dark glasses . . .

  “I cut you off a piece of this. And you do what with it?”

  “Well, Chris, that’s kind of our business, y’know?”

  He was smiling still.

  “Sell it? Maybe to some old lady? Dying of cancer? That the plan?”

  “I don’t follow you, man.”

  “Someone scared? Weak? Vulnerable? That the kind of racket that you’re running here?”

  “I don’t think you’re getting me.”

  “Is this just business for you? Or is it something more? Looks like you’re doing well out of it, anyway.”

  Eddie held his hands up. He looked to Silverman, to Angel. “Help me out, guys!”

  I glared at him.

  Then Angel handed me her phone.

  There was a picture on the screen. It looked like a tourist site: some huge, palatial building, like Blenheim but a hundred times more intricate; the sort of place that Ludwig of Bavaria might have built, if he’d been born in the US. Beyond it there were trees, and fields, and green, rolling hills . . .

  Horses . . .

  “That,” said Angel, “is his daddy’s farm.”

  “What?”

  “The Ballington Estate. It’s actually quite famous.”

  “Open to the public.” Eddie-boy was watching me. When I looked up, he had the smuggest smirk I’d ever seen.

  I said, “They ever call you Mike? Mark? Anything like that?”

  “I got the name my mom and Dad-o give me, Chris.”

  He held his hands out, palms up.

  I said nothing.

  He said, “I guess we had a little mistaken identity thing going for a while there, didn’t we?”

  I still said nothing. And Eddie must have thought I needed to cool off a while, because, smooth as silk, he turned his focus onto Angel. But if he thought he’d find an ally, then he’d got things very wrong.<
br />
  “You’re looking at my claw, aren’t you?” he said.

  “What?”

  He fingered the talon hung around his neck, lifting it so she could see it better.

  “Six-ninety-pound grizzly, six feet seven inches long, nose to tail. Most terrifying thing you ever did see. Did it the right way, too, just me and the bear. Man against Nature.” He raised his arms, holding an imaginary rifle. “When you hunt, you’re part of nature. You see your prey. You sight, take aim—boom!”

  Angel said, “And that’s a fair fight?”

  “I tell you. That guy—coulda torn me apart. One swipe of those claws, your guts are on the floor. I swear.”

  “And the bear. Did the bear have a gun too?”

  “Hey. The strong and the smart win out, the rest go down. That’s Mother Nature for you. I win because I am smart enough to use a Ruger Hawkeye. Bear just ain’t that smart.” He turned back to me. “You understand, I know, ’cause you hunt too.” We were man-to-man. “You hunt your prey, you gotta learn to think like it, to act like it—you gotta know it, inside and out. Am I right?”

  There was some truth in this, but none that I was willing to allow him.

  “Or the other way,” she said. “You kill the bear, just teeth and nails. I might respect that.”

  He laughed. She didn’t.

  “Hey,” he said. “You think it’s trophies, don’t ya? Nuh-uh. Trophy’s just the extra, just the icing on the cake. It’s about life. The way the world works.

  “There’s a place out in Montana. I can take you, if you want. You pay two grand, you hunt whatever you want. Rhino, lion, elephant. Anything. They buy it in special, see?”

  He smiled; he had beautiful teeth. Not bear-killing teeth, exactly, but clean, and even, and white as a toilet wall.

  “OK,” I said. “So now we’ve had our little talk, you drive us back to our motel, OK? And we can all get on with what we’re meant to do.”

  Silverman was sitting back, sipping a beer, the camera in the crook of his arm. Eddie seemed oblivious to its little red light.

  “You guys are not convinced,” he said at last.

  He looked at each of us in turn.

  “You’re cautious. I don’t blame you. Good business sense. So—I guess I’m gonna have to sweeten things. Here’s what I’m gonna do, OK? I’m gonna act like we got a bargain. I told you: I can make this problem go away. And that, I will do. What you do is up to you. You come through with the goods—then we talk money, and we all go home happy. But it really is your choice now. Got that?” He rummaged in a small drawer that came out of his chair arm, handed me a card. “That’s my cell number. Gimme a call, OK?”

  “What makes you think,” I said, “I want to lose my job?”

  And he smiled, as if it was all very obvious, and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

  “Makes the world go round,” he said.

  I pulled a face, as if I’d never needed money in my life.

  He didn’t look convinced.

  “You’re a smart guy, Chris. Let me lay it on the line for you. We have interests in the energy business. We looked into tidal power, wind power, atom power, all that shit. What you’ve got is the up-and-comer. We want a piece, that’s all. We want what your boss wants, what the Registry wants. We have a right to it, OK? It’s ours. One way—or another.”

  He grinned, to sugarcoat the threat.

  I said, “What makes you think that you can handle it?”

  “Very simple.” He leaned back, stretched luxuriously, put his hands behind his head. “Because we have a god already, Chris. What we want now is another one.”

  Chapter 29

  Full Battery

  “Asshole.” Angel stared after the vanished limo. She stood there on the grass verge, hands up, fists clenched. “This guy pays money to go shoot some helpless fucking animal? Can you believe that? I mean, hunting, all right. Real hunting. That, I understand. But what kind of dick—?”

  “I’m more concerned about the other bit, to tell the truth,” I said.

  “What bit?”

  “The bit about them having a god,” I said.

  “It’s bullshit.”

  But Silverman looked up from his camera. “Not so sure,” he said. “They’re definitely interested.”

  Angel sniffed.

  He said, “The exhibition—‘We Got the Power’—they did some of the sponsorship. Not directly, but one of their companies.”

  “Tax write-off,” said Angel. “Proves nothing.”

  “Well, sure,” said Silverman. “But—” and he stopped himself, shook his head.

  I said, “What?”

  He fidgeted. Then, “He knew that I was filming him. Today, I mean. Just now.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “He didn’t care. Just came right out, said what he was going to say. Some of which, I don’t know, but some of which I’d guess was probably illegal. He wasn’t bothered. You saw that, right? He didn’t give a damn.

  “So maybe we should think that over for a while. Considering what we’re getting into . . .”

  Considering what we’re getting into.

  I left Silverman and Angel at the motel. I got into the car and drove a few miles till I found a back road, with no neighbors to complain. Then I stopped, checked out the generator, topped it up and set it going.

  I wanted a full battery. Whatever we did, and however we did it, I wanted the best chance we could get. And I was curious. Maybe it wasn’t such a long shot, after all.

  If I’d been on my own, then I’d have done it, no question.

  The generator chugged and rumbled. I used blankets to pad it, then I walked away some sixty feet. It was still loud. The tent meeting might drown it out, if we went early. But then, if we went early, we’d be seen.

  And late at night, with the generator, we’d be heard.

  It was a puzzle, all right.

  Either way, we’d take about an hour setting up. And that had to be undercover, in the dark.

  No early start.

  The battery might work. It looked as though we’d have to try. But I was hoping, too, there’d be a get-out, some nice, easy stopper on the whole deal: people near, watchmen, guards, police—it didn’t matter who. If we couldn’t lay the cables then we couldn’t catch the god, and that was that. Angel wouldn’t blame me for denying her the chance. And after that, we’d get the next job, and move on.

  The trouble was, I sympathized. I knew where she was coming from. Back during my own training, I’d wanted to try anything, whatever came along. Fredericks had a nice little routine with that. “You want this job?” he’d say. I’d tell him, “Yes!” He’d nod. “You want the next one, too? And the next?” “You bet!” I was young, and I was keen. “Do this one,” he’d say, “chances are, you won’t be here to do the next. Or anything else.” He’d taught me discretion. He’d taught me to protect myself, even when the company said otherwise. He’d shown me how to have a family and a relatively normal life while still working Field Ops, though those were lessons I had yet to profit by.

  So I started thinking about Angel, and how I ought to take her out and make a night of it, once we hit a fair-sized town. A fancy restaurant, some good wine . . . Act like we were on holiday. Maybe that would compensate for calling off the mission, which I was still convinced we’d have to do.

  The battery was full. I did some calculations—at least, my phone did them. If everything was as it seemed to be, and the god was no more powerful than my readings showed, then we could do it. We’d have to move fast, and there wouldn’t be much margin, but when it came to plans, Angel got top marks for this one.

  I only wish she’d had it in her theory paper, not real life.

  An ambulance wailed by along the highway, and I watched it go. Sometimes I dreamed of doing a more useful job—nurse, firefighter, or paramedic. Too late now, probably. Strange, the way you went into a walk of life, thinking you’d try it for a few years. And then the years became
a lifetime . . .

  Chapter 30

  The Empty Square

  “So there’s this thing called div . . .”

  We drove back into town. Silverman had his camera, catching little, thirty-second shots out of the window—“milestones,” he called them: an old house, a group of bikers resting by the roadside; a billboard, looming like a skyscraper, a huge and muscular attorney grinning down (“In a wreck? Need a check?”).

  And in between, he’d talk.

  “Div—divinity, divine, I guess. I never saw it. It was gone before I got there, but people were still talking. I thought it was some new kind of crack or meth, but . . .”

  “Where’s this?”

  “Well, I interviewed some guys in Baltimore. New York. Kentucky. I’ve got a plan. It’s like, the next great Silverman unfinished documentary: Homeless in America. But I never linked it up with you guys. Not then.”

  “You still don’t know that there’s a link.”

  “The old lady. That night. You said she swallowed—”

  “Yeah.”

  He trained the camera on a chain-link fence where dogs prowled, sniffing at the air.

  “So,” he said, “there is a drug that kills people. Or makes them better. And maybe it’s a kind of god.”

  “I’ve only seen it kill.”

  “My AIDS guy . . .”

  “Could be crazy.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “I’d considered that. Which is kind of interesting in itself . . .”

  “You didn’t follow up on this?”

  “I wanted to! Believe me. Tricky, though. Anything with drugs. Back when I was starting out, I was going to do a piece on meth, how it was taking over all these small towns, changing the economy, the social structure, and—well. I got warned off. Pretty badly warned off, too.”

  I turned for the town center. There was no traffic. We slipped downhill towards the square and I could see the tents, peeping up over the trees. We’d been gone for just a few hours, but the place had changed. There was a stillness there. Abandonment. The rows of cars were gone. The kitchen, the barbecue, the Bible quiz. The crowds of people . . .