Shock Warning

by Michael Walsh

  Devlin closed his eyes and let his mind race. This was the moment he had been waiting for—not for months but for years. This was the moment when he could tell the lot of them to go hang. This was the moment he could simply walk away, the moment when his life sentence was lifted, when a sudden, miraculous deus ex machina pardon had suddenly descended from the sky. All he had to do was say no—which under the terms of his indentured-servitude contract, he was now free to do—and that would be the end of it.

  Only one thing stood in his way.

  Her.

  Had she betrayed him, like everybody thought?

  Had she double-crossed him, been an Iranian plant all along? Set him up, established her legend with him as far back as that day in Paris, seven years before his final confrontation with Milverton? The Iranians, the inheritors of a thousand-year empire, knew how to play the long game, that was for sure. But did she? Would she? Could she?

  He had bet his life on the proposition that she could not. Based on absolutely nothing but a hunch, he had staked his fortune on twenty-two black, just like in Casablanca—one spin of the wheel for all the chips, and devil take the come what may.

  “Send it through.”

  Now it was Tyler’s turn to pause. They were locked in a loveless embrace, he and the U.S. government, neither side able to live without the other, but wishing passionately that it could be otherwise. “On its way.”

  The Android started to buzz. That would be the security check.

  “One more thing.” This time the voice was Seelye’s. “One more thing I thought you’d like to know. That compromised computer?”

  That would be the computer he had entrusted to her before he dove under the Hudson River, on his way into Times Square to take up the fight against the terrorists. She had taken it with her to Hungary, at his command, and whatever had happened there, it had disappeared along with her.

  “What about it?”

  “Nothing. It has not self-destructed, nor has been accessed in any way that we can tell. So either it’s lost, they haven’t touched it, or . . .”

  “Or she didn’t defect, and it’s still with her.”

  “I figured I’d throw that in as a deal-sweetener. What do you think?

  Devlin waited a beat before responding. He couldn’t let his hopes get up, it was unprofessional. But there was no reason he could not dream.

  “I think it’s sweet,” he said, and rang off. Anyone attempting to listen in would have heard nothing. They would not even have heard scrambled noise. Instead, they would have picked up some perfectly banal conversation between a mother in Bemidji, Minnesota, and her middle-aged son in Merced, recorded by NSA ops and used just once, on this occasion.

  He could imagine the SecDef ’s rage. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, and was probably still laboring under some quaint delusion about the sanctity of the chain of command. She was new to the operation of Branch 4, new to his unit and its strict protocols. If he could have his way, he would cut the secretary completely out of the loop, but since Branch 4 had operational authority in any theater of war, he was just going to have to live with it.

  Oh well, the election was coming right up and it would all soon be over, one way or another. He was already past Bakersfield, so there was only another sixty miles or so to go, and he could make that in no time. There were no Chippers out here in the desert, and if one stopped him, well, that wouldn’t work out so well for the Highway Patrol. He had neither the time nor the inclination to fuck around with some dickhead with a badge.

  He let his mind drift back to California City. The rose was still on the seat beside him.

  Had he dreamed the whole thing? Jacinta, the mute driver, Father Gonsalves? He still had the priest’s money in his pocket, so that part at least was real. That part and the rose.

  Whether he’d really seen something, there was no way to tell. He fished around in the seat for the Polaroid photos, but couldn’t find them right away.

  The Android gave off a series of beeps. That would be the incoming. As prescribed, he didn’t touch the PDA for at least two minutes after the receipt of the information; anyone trying to intercept it would be eager to open it, and that would destroy all the data, plus send a locator to the Building. Accidents happened quickly once NSA headquarters got a tracer on you, including sudden car crashes that couldn’t quite be explained, house fires, and gas explosions. Operational security was everything, or else it was nothing.

  He didn’t even have to look at the material to be able to guess what it was. As he had told the President in the aftermath of the failed operation to snatch Skorzeny from his lair in France, the crazy bastard was at war with the West, so his common cause with Kohanloo in the Times Square assault came as no surprise.

  “An atheist’s apocalypse,” he had said. “End-times craziness.” It would be just like Skorzeny to sign on to the Shiite eschatology, and use their religious belief as the tip of Klingsor’s spear—and to plunge it not into Parsifal, but into Christ’s side one last time.

  Maybe all of this was related. Maybe the vision in the desert had something to do with whatever was happening in Iran. There didn’t have to be a supernatural explanation for any of it, but the thematic relationship was irresistible. That would be how Skorzeny would want it, Klingsor the magician, always signing his dirty work with the hand of the master, the last civilized man eager to put out the lights of the West before death finally took him and carried him, screaming, only God knew where.

  Only one caveat—sending the bastard to hell was his job, not God’s. And that was one job he planned to finish this time, no matter what.

  That and find her. If Maryam really was in Iran, then Skorzeny couldn’t be far behind.

  Now that was a twofer.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  San Sebastian de Garabandal, Spain

  They were passing by the church, as they did every day after school, four of them, four schoolgirls, two named Mari, after the Virgin, and Jacinta, and Conchita. Just like the girls back in the early sixties, same first names and all, the ones who had seen the vision, and heard the warning about the Great Chastisement that was sure to come if her words were not heeded.

  Like schoolgirls everywhere, they babbled and giggled as they passed the parish church. The time was long past that they thought maybe they just might catch a glimpse of what those girls had seen so long ago: a vision of radiant loveliness, her face creased with sorrow, her message stern: Repent.

  It had been easier to believe when they were children. It was easy to repent of sins you had not yet committed, not even in your heart, and yet almost impossible to imagine what those sins could really be. They were things only whispered about, to be savored and to be feared.

  The first message had been delivered on October 18, 1961: We must make sacrifices, perform much penance, and visit the Blessed Sacrament frequently. But first, we must lead good lives. If we do not, a chastisement will befall us. The cup is already filling up and if we do not change, a very great chastisement will come upon us.

  Chastisement was a word they all understood. Franco’s Spain died long before they were born, but its memory lingered on, especially here in northern Spain, not far from Santander. Chastisement meant punishment and pain. Especially in light of the second message, the one Conchita alone received:

  Previously, the Cup was filling; now it is brimming over. Many priests are following the road to perdition, and with them they are taking many more souls.... We should turn the wrath of God away from us by our own efforts. If you ask His forgiveness with a sincere heart, He will pardon you. . . . You are now being given the last warnings.... Reflect on the Passion of Jesus.

  They could all recite the words by heart, for they had been hearing them all their lives. Tourists came and went through the small village and occasionally a man from the Vatican, which was still investigating the apparition, trying to decide whether it was real or fake. Of the hundreds and thousands of Marian apparitions around
the world, fewer than a dozen were officially recognized by the Catholic Church.

  So there was no reason to suspect that this glorious October day would be any different from all the others—or that it would be the same as that day back in 1961.

  It was early morning, and at first they thought it was the glistening of the sun, past its summer prime. Later, in talking to the villagers and to the newspeople who showed up at their doorsteps, they described it as a blinding flash of light that caught them all in the eyes, as if someone were shining a very powerful searchlight directly at them. And yet, it was focused on each them, individually.

  It took a few moments for them to begin to be able to see clearly once more as their retinas began to synthesize the light and the image.

  She was framed against what appeared to be a celestial doorway, but on later reflection they realized it was the portals of the simple parish church that served the spiritual needs of the three hundred souls living near the Bay of Biscay. She wore a crown and a cloak. They could see her clearly, silhouetted against an impossible backdrop of the clear blue sky and the shining sun.

  But all these details came later. Because, for many weeks, after the apparition, they could not really remember what the Lady had looked like, or how she was dressed, or whether she was holding anything in her arms. They could only remember that her lips were moving but that, strain as they might, they could not hear what she was saying.

  But they could see her clearly enough, and that was all that young Jacinta needed. For Jacinta was deaf and she had learned to read lips—not only in Spanish but in Basque and border French—from the time she was young. St. Bernadette, who had seen her own famous vision not terribly far from here, in Lourdes, had heard the Lady speak in Pyrenean patois: “Que soy era immaculada concepciou.” And so had Jacinta—not heard, but seen.

  And this was the proof, the evidence, that what they had seen was not an illusion, not a fake like so many of the so-called apparitions. This was real, in the way that Guadalupe had been real, and Lourdes had been real, and Fatima had been real. The Virgin had not spoken to them in Castilian Spanish, but in their Cantabrian dialect. Halfway between the Basque country and the French Pyrenees. This was the reason that at first hundreds, then thousands, and then tens of thousands of pilgrims had flocked to Garabandal back in the day. This was the reason they were now on the news.

  Because they knew the secret. They knew the Word. And what a sacred word it was. It was the word the Lady had been saying for a hundred years—an eternity to them, but the blink of an eye to the Lady, who was still mourning the death of her Son and yet celebrating His coming apotheosis. There could be no final triumph without trouble, no everlasting transfiguration without confrontation. The final battle between good and evil must be enjoined, and Jacinta knew that it was her sacred and spiritual duty to make that happen as fast as possible.

  Therefore, no matter how rigorous the questioning from the priests—some of them Spanish, some of them French, some of them black Africans and races she had never even imagined before, not here in her little village of Garabandal—she had stuck to her story, their story. Jacinta had emerged as their leader, and the leader she would stay. Even if she was only twelve years old.

  For the Lady had spoken but a single word, but that one word was chilling in its simplicity, and its warning:

  “Repent!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  New York City

  “There something I don’t like, boss,” said Lannie Saleh to Captain Francis X. Byrne. Byrne was the commander of the Counter-Terrorism Unit of the New York City Police Department and Aslan Saleh was his subordinate, but he didn’t act much like it. Which was one of the things Frankie Byrne liked about him.

  “Haven’t you Arabs caused enough trouble around here already?” replied Byrne. They were in CTU command headquarters in Chelsea, still picking up the pieces of the assault on Times Square.

  “Iranians aren’t Arabs, remember? Shiites aren’t Sunnis.”

  “But you all look alike,” said Byrne. “What’s the difference?”

  “What’s the difference between Orangemen and Catholics in Londonderry, Northern Ireland?”

  “You mean Derry, Ulster.”

  “I rest my case.”

  “Then take your case and shove it up your ass. Don’t you realize that the Irish are the only people on the planet with legitimate grievances?”

  “What about the Jews, boss?” sang out Sid Sheinberg. “We’ve got plenty of legitimate grievances.”

  “That’s all you got, Sheinberg,” cracked Lannie. “Grievances. Comin’ out your ears.”

  Byrne let them go. That was the way it used to be in the old days, when he and Sy Sheinberg, and Matt White had all been young, before the lawyers and the politicians had infected everything with their sophistry, corrupted everything with their relativism, blocked everything with their protocols, outlawed both thought and deed, word and action, and criminalized emotions in the name of . . . well, superior emotion.

  Police work was so much easier in the old days. Law in one hand, nightstick in the other. That was how New York had been tamed of the likes of Happy Jack and Owney Madden, back in the days when the Irish ruled the roost, on Fourteenth Street, at Tammany Hall, and on the wild West Side, on Battle Row and in the sanctuary at St. Mike’s, and in the Gopher hidey-holes under the docks and under the streets and up your arse if you weren’t careful. Law of the jungle, when you stopped to think about it, worked every time it was tried.

  Only cowards and lawyers feared the law of the jungle. And now they, along with the women and the eunuchs, were running the show. Today, it was like 1984, with Big Brother on every corner, CCTV everywhere, revenue and citizen control directed straight from Gracie Mansion, for your safety and protection. Fascism could be fun, if only you would shut up and let it have its way.

  What had happened to his country?

  No time to worry about that now. Saving the world was not part of his job description. Keeping Matt White happy was.

  Frankie looked at his men. And yes, they were all men. It was a good thing the names of all the members of the CTU were secret, just as their location was secret, or else the bowtied bed-wetters at The New York Times would have a conniption, railing from the anonymous safety of their homes in Riverdale and Bronxville and Scarsdale about the unfairness of it all and exposing his men’s identities for all to read. Everyone single one of Byrne’s men lived within the five boroughs of the City of New York, joined since 1898, fifteen years after the Brooklyn Bridge and the father-and-son team of John and Washington Roebling had transformed a small island into the capital city of the country, in deed if not in word.

  New York needed fewer lawyers, and more men like the Roeblings, if it ever wanted to get anything done again. One look at the hole downtown, where the World Trade Center had once stood, told you everything you needed to know about the state of America these days. Sue everybody, accomplish nothing, and have the Times cheer your uselessness on. And on and on and on . . .

  Until the next attack.

  Until the next deaths.

  Until the next opportunity for grief counselors and shrinks and candlelight vigils and makeshift memorials and weeping, as if the dead were just so many John Lennons writ small, never-were celebrities made briefly less anonymous by the arbitrary hand of the Reaper and the tabloids and the network news shows’ crocodile tears in the pursuit of transient ratings.

  What was their motto? “We don’t have to be right. We just have to be right today.”

  Byrne’s shoulder had pretty much healed, but Sid Sheinberg’s broken leg was never going to be the same: he was looking at a lifetime of desk duty. But the gunshot wound that Byrne had sustained in his duel with Ben Addison, Jr., otherwise known as the late Ismail bin-Abdul al-Amriki, was the least of his problems. Arash Kohanloo’s coordinated attack had been a very near thing: their electronic eyes blinded; their computers crashed; billions of dollars worth of damage to Forty-se
cond Street, Times Square itself, the subway lines, the surrounding buildings . . .

  He was lucky he hadn’t lost his job. His personal heroism that day had won him yet another medal from the mayor, but he was acutely aware of how signally they had failed their city. After 9/11, the NYPD had adopted the Israelis’ motto of “never again,” but again it was, 9/11 all over again, this time perhaps even worse. Because all their equipment and their independence and their courage had been defeated by a denial-of-service attack from somewhere thousands of miles away. Just a few minutes was all it took to render them eyeless in Gaza, for the bad guys to smuggle in the weapons through the same old riverside tunnels and hidey-holes the Gopher Gang was probably using back when Madden was a pup.

  The worst of it was that they had recruited so many Americans—not just Ben Addison, Jr., a converted con, but hillbillies like the kid they found with his head blown off in the pump house under the Central Park Reservoir. They’d probably never get a firm ID on him, since whoever killed him had made damn sure there no prints, teeth, or any other identifying characteristics. Sure, they could grab some DNA, but unless the punk was in the database—which he wasn’t—he would molder forever in an unmarked grave, unclaimed and unmourned—just another stiff in the ongoing history of the island of the Manhattoes.

  Byrne had promised himself that he would find the man’s killer. Not necessarily to bring him to justice, or to shake his hand and thank him for a job well done, but to come face-to-face with a man he very much wanted to meet. The man who had saved him from Ben Addison, Jr., the man who had cleaned his gunshot wound and left him safe in the maelstrom of Forty-second Street. The man who had guided him to the chopper, to the shooter, and to the final confrontation with Kohanloo on the East River.

  “We shoulda struck back, right away, hard,” said Sid, still walking with a cane. Sid was the nephew of Frankie’s old friend, rabbi, and mentor, Sy Sheinberg. That was back in the day when medical examiners were hard-drinking standup comics, not civil servants as bloodless as the corpses they dissected for fun and profit at the taxpayers’ expense.