But Leffingwell waved them back down. “Please—keep your seats. This will just take a minute, and won’t involve any classified information.”
He walked to his desk, picked up the phone, and tapped in a two-digit number. After a few seconds he said, “Hi, it’s me. You and the kids might as well start dinner without me—I’m going to be late.”
After a brief pause he said, “Yeah, I know I promised. But something’s come up, and I have to deal with it now. I’ll see you as soon as I can.” Another pause. “Okay, bye.”
Leffingwell returned to his guests. Once he was seated again he said to Libby, “So, tell me about the conversation this... vampire had with your partner. Although it just occurred to me that given Quincey’s famous ancestor, I would expect that he and vampires would be deadly enemies.”
“Normally they are, Mister President. But they believe this CIA plan to be so potentially disastrous, they’re willing to put aside past animosities. Or, at least the one who talked to Quincey was.”
“Interesting—and rather alarming,” Leffingwell said. “All right, so what did this vampire have to say?”
Libby related everything Quincey Morris had told her about his bizarre meeting with Ignacio de la Muñoz. She did so without resorting to notes; like any witch, Libby had developed phenomenal powers of concentration.
Leffingwell only interrupted her once, as she was describing what had brought Quincey Morris to the desert that night in the first place.
“Ghouls,” he said, without changing expression.
“Yes sir. They’re out there, too.”
“Of course they are. Please proceed.”
Once she had finished, Leffingwell sat in silence for a few moments. “So this vampire Muñoz didn’t offer any evidence to support his story.”
“No, sir. But he said such evidence existed.”
“That particular technique goes back to Joe McCarthy, if not before.”
“Yes, sir, I know,” Libby said. “It would have been better if Muñoz had shown Quincey some tangible proof of what he’s claiming. But apparently it’s compelling enough to have Muñoz and some other vampires very concerned—concerned enough to take extraordinary measures.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, after all, they hired a man who you correctly described as their archenemy to put a stop to it—and they did so after first saving his life. Under ordinary circumstances, any vampire would be pleased to kill Quincey Morris, I think. Heck, there might even be a bounty on him among the undead—we once heard a rumor that there was.”
Leffingwell nodded slowly, then turned to Stark. “What’s your take on this, Howard?”
“I don’t know anything about vampires or ghouls, sir—outside of the movies, that is. But I know that I’d trust Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain when they were talking about the supernatural world. They’re the experts.”
To Libby, Leffingwell said, “Why would a bunch of vampires give a damn whether someone over in CIA is conjuring demons—assuming that’s really what’s going on?”
“A couple of reasons, sir. One is, demons are more powerful than vampires. Quincey said that Muñoz didn’t admit that, exactly, but he implied it. Vampires see themselves as being at the top of the food chain—after dark, anyway. They don’t want to be replaced by demons.”
“They’re scared of demons.”
“Yes, sir—they are. Muñoz didn’t say it in so many words, but that’s what he meant.”
“You said there were a couple of reasons. What’s the second one?”
“Muñoz, and whoever sent him, believes that should demons establish themselves in this plane of existence, it would endanger the vampires’ food supply—in the long run.”
“And their food supply is...”
“People, sir.”
Leffingwell blinked a couple of times. “Muñoz believes if this alleged demon-conjuring project succeeds, it will wipe out humanity? Seriously?”
“Yes, sir. For what it’s worth, I agree with him.”
Leffingwell looked at her for a couple of seconds before saying, very deliberately, “You think the people engaged in this... enterprise, assuming it really exists—are in effect, committing suicide?”
Libby shook her head. “No, sir. Not deliberately. But hubris is hardly unheard of in intelligence circles, is it? They probably believe that they can actually bring forth a number of mankind’s most dedicated and dangerous enemies, control them, and send them out against the Caliphate, or Al Qaeda, or whoever we’re worried about next week. Or next month.”
“And you believe this to be... infeasible?”
“Oh, the summoning part is feasible, Mister President. There are probably any number of practitioners around the world who can summon demons. But, as for controlling them...”
Libby leaned forward, cleared her throat, and then recited:
“There once was a lady from Niger
who rode on the back of a tiger.
They returned from the ride
with the lady inside
and a smile on the face of the tiger.”
She sat back, spread her hands, and said, “Viewed as poetry, it’s pretty jejune, Mister President. But as a philosophy, especially when you’re talking about controlling demons, it’s right on the money.”
“Demons can’t be controlled?”
“Not reliably. There are practitioners who seem to be good at it, but that’s only true until they make their first mistake. With demons, your first mistake is usually your last. And it’s difficult enough controlling a single demon, even for an experienced witch or wizard. Summoning multiple entities, and trying to bend them to your will...” Libby shook her head, expressing the sheer futility of such an undertaking.
“A pity, that,” Leffingwell said. “It sounds as if they’d make formidable weapons against some of our enemies.”
“So would nuclear weapons, Mister President,” Stark said. “But you haven’t employed them, have you, sir? And I believe I know why: because you’re quite aware that the after-effects would be uncontrollable—and disastrous.”
“You draw a nice analogy, Howard,” Leffingwell said, and stood. This time, he did not motion his guests back into their seats. “I want to thank you both for coming here tonight. If the information you bring is reliable, then clearly there’s something going on at CIA that I need to put a stop to.”
“It’s reliable, Mister President,” Libby said. “I’m as convinced of that as I am about tomorrow’s sunrise.”
“I don’t doubt your sincerity, Libby—not for one moment.”
A couple of vertical frown lines appeared on Libby’s forehead, just above her nose—as if this was not quite the response she had been hoping for.
“With all respect, sir, I hope you’ll act quickly,” she said. “According to Quincey, one of the things that Muñoz didn’t know was the timetable these rogue CIA people are following. They might be planning to launch this insanity six months from you—or it could be tomorrow.”
“No need to worry, Libby,” Leffingwell said. “I won’t waste any time attending to this.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
HOWEVER, ONCE HIS visitors were gone, wasting time is exactly what President Robert Leffingwell did—although only in the nation’s capital is sitting still and thinking very hard regarded as a waste of time.
He considered slipping into Vaughn Murdock’s office and having the Chief of Staff apply his formidable intelligence to the problem, but he didn’t. Eventually, even Murdock had left.
More than once, Leffingwell looked at the elaborate telephone on his desk. Joyce Mitchell had probably gone home by now, but one of the operators on the White House switchboard could reach out to wherever Gus Hinton was at the moment and get the Director of Central Intelligence on the line. Leffingwell did not pick up the phone.
He even contemplated just returning to the residence to spend a few hours with his family before the kids went to bed. But he remained seat
ed behind his immense desk, known as the Resolute—a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. Pieces of furniture, no matter how elaborately carved, don’t usually have names attached, but this one had been made from the timbers of HMS Resolute, the first ship to explore the Arctic. Leffingwell sometimes envied Hayes the relative simplicity of his job back then, although it probably had not seemed all that easy to the big man who occupied the Oval Office 130-some years ago.
Robert Leffingwell’s current problem had two interrelated components. One involved credibility—could he trust the information that had been presented to him tonight?
So this little horror story comes to me courtesy of Libby Chastain. What do I know about her, really? She’s a so-called ‘white’ witch, she can do magic—the real kind, as I’ve seen for myself—and she helped Quincey Morris and a few other people, along with someone named Ashley who claims not to be ‘people’ at all—in saving the nation from the first demon-possessed President, give or take Richard Nixon.
She’s got an FBI file, but there’s not an awful lot in it. The Bureau opened the file only after that business at the national convention two years ago. They dug into her past, the way they always do, and came up with—nothing. In fact, most of the file consisted of negatives—no convictions, no arrests, no grand jury indictments, no history of mental problems, no suspicious associations, unless you count that Quincey Morris character, and he was only considered suspicious on the strength of what happened at the convention, about which nobody is saying much. There was a rumor that a couple of the Bureau’s own agents, who work out of Behavioral Science in Quantico, had some contact with them over the years, but there’s nothing in writing to support that, and the agents claim they have nothing to say.
Shit.
The other part of Leffingwell’s problem had to do with the integrity of the information chain. He’d learned from playing the Broken Telephone game in grade school that the more people information passes through, the more distorted it will become en route to its intended destination. His life and career since then had provided innumerable examples of the same phenomenon, although they tended to involve more complex messages and much higher stakes.
So I proceed on the assumption, for now, that Libby is telling the absolute truth—as she perceives it. She has no agenda other than the one she claims—to prevent a disaster of literally Biblical proportions. But she doesn’t have personal knowledge of any of it, apart from that bizarre business she walked into up in New York recently. What she knows about this comes from Quincey Morris, who’s supposed to have received it from a Latino vampire, for Chrissake, who supposedly saved Morris from being eaten by a bunch of fucking ghouls. And who told this guy Muñoz about it? How many levels of possible distortion did the story pass through before it even reached him?
Leffingwell’s Fourth Grade teacher, Mrs. Monicelli, had started the Broken Telephone game by whispering in the ear of one of the kids, “There are three rats living underneath the school building, and their names are Hughie, Dewey, and Louie.” By the time the message had passed through 28 sets of ears, one whisper at a time, the final version was “There are a bunch of huge rats living in the city sewers, and they ate three guys named Louie, Marty, and Harry.”
So there’s a rogue CIA operation dedicated to summoning a bunch of demons and sending them against the Caliphate? What did that item sound like at the beginning of the chain? How many people, or not-quite-people, had it passed through before it got to Libby? And how accurate was it to begin with?
Shit.
And even if it’s true, is it really a bad idea? In some ways, it sounds better than anything we’ve got going now. Maybe Libby is exaggerating the dangers of trying to control demons. After all, she’s supposed to be a ‘white’ witch, and summoning demons sounds like something that black magic people would get involved with. Libby’s got to be suspicious of that bunch, and fearful, as well. Too suspicious, maybe? Too fearful? Or is she right about putting a loaded gun in the hands of a mental defective?
But if it could really be done, with adequate safeguards in place, how cool would that be? Razin Abbas thinks he’s such a fucking badass, wiping out whole villages of Kurds or Iraqis because they dare to oppose the Caliphate. Wonder how he’d do when confronted with the biggest badasses in creation—the kind with names like Beelzebub and Leviathan, or whatever they’re called?
Shit.
Leffingwell picked up the phone and tapped in the digits that would connect him to the Top Secret voicemail system that only he and his Appointments Secretary had access to. She would check it tomorrow, immediately upon arriving at 7:00 a. m.
“Joyce, find a free hour in my schedule for the day after tomorrow. If you have to move or cancel something, then do it. Once you’ve made a slot, get on the horn to Langley. Tell Gus Hinton that I want a meeting at that time with him, Stewart, and what’s his-name, Burnett. No additional staff. See you in the morning.”
Robert Leffingwell stood up, stretched, and walked toward the main door of the Oval Office. He hoped his wife had saved him some dinner.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“SO WHILE LIBBY’S over at the White House visiting the Chief Executive,” Quincey Morris said, “I thought I’d see if you guys were in town and receiving visitors. Imagine my delight to find out that you were when I called this morning.”
They were meeting in a conference room on the third floor of the FBI’s training center, which was located just outside DC in Quantico, Virginia. Agents Colleen O’Donnell and Dale Fenton each had a cramped office in the basement, the home of Behavioral Science Services—offices that were too small to hold more than one visitor comfortably. But the training center has many rooms of various sizes, and finding a free conference room had taken Fenton just two phone calls.
One wall was lined with official photos of all of the Bureau’s Directors. Morris was a little surprised to see that there were only seven pictures up there until he remembered that J. Edgar Hoover had occupied the Director’s office for thirty-some years, holding on to the job well past his prime on the strength of his secret files and the ever-present threat of leaking their contents. Hoover, it was said, had files on everybody.
“I noticed on the way up here that you two seem to be moving around okay,” Morris said. “You’re both fully recovered, I hope?”
Eight months earlier, Fenton and O’Donnell had been driving on an interstate highway, following a car containing some very unusual terrorist suspects. The men in the subject vehicle had included a wizard who had discouraged pursuit by magically creating the illusion that a brick wall had appeared across the highway a few hundred feet in front of the FBI agents’ car. Fenton had been driving, and he had reacted instinctively, swerving off the road to avoid what appeared to be a deadly obstacle in their path.
Trying to make a ninety-degree turn in a vehicle traveling at 70 miles an hour is a physics experiment with a preordained conclusion. Completely out of control, the car had careened off the road and rolled three times. There had been no fire, fortunately—but even with seat belts on and air bags deployed, both Fenton and O’Donnell had been banged up pretty badly. Fenton had sustained a dislocated shoulder along with sundry contusions, and Colleen had received a concussion when her head had struck the passenger door’s window, along with numerous bruises of her own.
“Yeah, we’re doing okay,” Fenton said. “When she was released from the hospital, Colleen came to see me and worked some mojo on my shoulder, which helped it heal up faster.”
Fenton hadn’t known that his partner was a white witch when they’d first started working together. She had been forced by circumstances to reveal that fact two years earlier, and by that time Fenton had experienced enough of what he called “the weird shit” to realize that there were a lot more things in heaven and on earth than he had ever thought possible.
“I wasn’t able to do much about the bruising, though,” Colleen said. “Unfortunately, even healing m
agic has its limits.”
“Don’t matter.” Fenton’s brown face split briefly in a grin. “We people of color don’t show that stuff as badly as white folks do.”
Colleen took a sip from the can of Diet Coke that she’d brought in with her and said to Morris, “If you’re here to see us, and Libby’s talking to the President, I assume something’s brewing—something big and nasty, and you want Dale and me to jump right into the middle of it.”
“You’re right about the first part,” Morris said. “It’s big and it’s nasty, all right. But all I want from you guys is information, if you have it—or can get it.”
“Yeah, I think we’ve heard that before,” Fenton said.
“Tell us what you need from us, Quincey,” Colleen said. “And why.”
So he laid it all out for them—the ghouls, Muñoz, the plan to weaponize demons. The whole nine yards.
When he had finished, there was s silence in the room that lasted about fifteen seconds until Colleen O’Donnell broke it by saying, “Well, Quincey, it’s a shame your life has been so dull and uneventful lately.”
“I know,” Morris said. “If it gets any worse, I’m likely to start watching daytime TV, just to break up the monotony.”
“No need to do anything desperate,” Fenton said. Then he shook his head slowly a couple of times. “Fuckin’ CIA. It’s not enough they get to overthrow governments—now they wanna overthrow the whole damn world.”
“They probably don’t see it that way,” Morris said.
“No, they wouldn’t,” Fenton said. “The morons.”
“I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with a vampire on anything,” Colleen said. “But this guy Muñoz is right—anybody who tries to raise multiple demons, there’s no way they’ll keep control of them. The damned things will get loose, and then...”
Strange Magic Page 11
