“Where are you going?” his brother demanded.
“To buy salt,” Dean responded, and the door shut on him.
James McMannon stood on the threshold of his sister’s brownstone house, bathed in the flashing red and blue of a police cruiser’s revolving lights. Peering through the open curtains, he saw his sister. Maria’s face was blotted with tears, her left cheek pressed into the thick of an older man’s shoulder. Maybe a neighbor, James thought, not recognizing the man. At least she has someone. If he went inside, they’d ask him to explain something that couldn’t be rationally explained, to tell a story that no sane person would believe.
Two uniformed officers were visible as well, both of them wearing the forlorn grimace of men sharing bad tidings. Your son is dead, they’re saying. We found his body. James didn’t need to read their lips, all he had to see was his sister’s anguished face.
The sight drove James off the stoop and back onto the narrow sidewalk. He began to shamble slowly northward.
Over the course of the evening, he had managed to piece together his shattered memories of what had happened to Barney—what he had done to Barney. He had never felt particularly in control of the direction his life was taking, but this was something different entirely. For a good chunk of the past few days, James hadn’t been in control of his hands, his feet, or anything in between. Now he felt like a stranger in his own body, just stopping by until the next occupant moved in. Every few hours, he would simply wake up in a new place, unsure of how he had got there. The memories might eventually return, or they might not. Only one had stuck—
I killed Barney. And people are going to be looking for me. New York was a city with a million small, dim corners to hide in, and his only option was to find one of them and disappear into it. My sister’s son, he thought, the words burning into his psyche. The only person she had left. Facing her was not an option. He had to vanish.
However, as the swirling light from the police cruiser faded into the distance, James found himself doing something peculiar. He was walking back toward Manhattan, toward the first place people would be looking for him—the Waldorf Astoria. A nagging voice in the back of his mind insisted that everything could be worked out, if only he was back at the hotel.
If only he was near the vault.
ELEVEN
Sam left the apartment before the sun had crept above the skyline, knowing it would be hours before Dean woke on his own. They weren’t accustomed to staying in one place for this long, and with the auction still two days away, there wasn’t a particular need to roll out of bed early. For Dean, that was an overdue invitation to get more than four hours sleep. For Sam, it was an excuse to get some time to himself.
Dean had indeed bought salt for the shotguns, but he had stayed out nearly the whole night finding it. Sam didn’t want to know how Dean had spent the rest of his time, considering Dean’s tendency to fraternize with less-than-virtuous characters. I suppose I’m one of them, Sam realized. Nothing less virtuous than jump-starting Armageddon.
After a twenty-minute walk, Sam arrived at the clerk’s office for the borough of Manhattan. It was just before eight in the morning, but there was already a line forming at the information desk. A young woman, probably twenty years old and wearing a slightly too-tight sweater, stood behind the desk.
By the time it was Sam’s turn, she was starting to sound frazzled.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked, the tone of her voice indicating that she hoped she couldn’t.
“Long morning already?” Sam responded with a smile, thinking that charm would be the best way to pull this off.
“No, sir. Did you have a records request, or is this a social visit?” she said tersely.
Sam was momentarily thrown.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah I do,” he stammered, and pulled out his wallet. He flipped through the selection of counterfeit IDs and badges, none of which were appropriate to the era. Settling for the most promising one, Sam flashed it at her briefly, then folded it back into his wallet before she could get a good look.
“Secret Service,” he intoned, changing tack to sound more serious.
The girl glanced over her shoulder at a morose-looking man sitting behind a typewriter, toward the back of the cluttered office. Her boss, Sam decided. He didn’t look any happier to be there than she did.
“Just one moment,” she said, getting up to talk to her boss. After a brief back-and-forth, the man came to speak with Sam directly. His narrow tie was knotted too tightly around his neck, making his head look like a bright-red balloon about to pop. Must be part of the dress code, Sam thought.
“Can I help you?” the man asked gruffly.
“Hi...” Sam replied, looking down at the man’s nametag, “Mr. Walker. The Secret Service requires a selection of blueprints for the Waldorf Astoria hotel.” Sam pulled out the fake ID again, intending to flash it for only a moment, but Walker grabbed the wallet out of his hand.
“Counterfeiters,” he barked.
“Uh, excuse me?” Sam responded, his hand reaching protectively for his wallet.
“What does this have to do with counterfeiters?” Walker asked, handing the wallet back to Sam.
“Oh, right. I don’t deal with counterfeit money,” Sam said, then he lowered his voice. “I protect President...” His mind raced, Who was the President of the United States in 1954? After Truman, before Kennedy. “Eisenhower. Sorry, we usually refer to him by his code name.” He leaned in, whispering, “It’s ‘Papa Bear.’”
The girl, who was now standing next to her boss, gave Sam a curious look, but Walker didn’t seem to have noticed Sam’s lapse.
“That right?” he said.
“He’ll be staying at the Waldorf Astoria in a few days. In the Presidential Suite,” Sam said.
“I’ll be damned. Ike staying right down the street from us!” Walker said, excited.
“Yes,” Sam agreed. “It’s very exciting for the people of New York. We—my colleagues and I—need to review the plans to look for security weaknesses in the hotel.” It was half true. With the plans, Sam was hoping to find an alternative entrance into the suite that wouldn’t draw suspicion from the Waldorf’s security, who would recognise Dean.
“They ain’t got that at the hotel? Seems they probably got a better idea about their plans and such than we would.” Walker had a point, of course, but the Waldorf employees would also know that Eisenhower had no plans to visit in the near future. This was the only way.
“Just doing my due diligence,” Sam replied.
“Marcia, see if we ain’t got that in the records,” Walker commanded, sending the girl scurrying away into the back room. “Say, what’s old Ike like, anyhow?”
“Oh, he’s... great. Just a swell guy. Really... tall.”
“Yeah? Got any stories?”
“Of course, but, you know, they’re top secret,” Sam said, trying to hold his poker face.
“Ah. ’Course.” Walker said, disappointed. He looked like he was going to persist when, to Sam’s relief, Marcia returned to the desk with the plans.
Finding a corner table in the Records Office reading room, Sam poured over the blueprints, searching for a back door, a nearby service elevator—anything that would make their trip in and out of the Presidential Suite easier. He couldn’t help but think about how much simpler this would be in 2010. Electronic records had saved them more times than Sam could count, and symbols that were taking him ages to decipher could have been explained with a ten-second Google search. He’d definitely appreciate that convenience more when—if—they ever got back to the present.
Just as Sam was about to give up, Walker barged into the reading room, another rolled-up set of blueprints under his arm.
“Can’t believe I forgot about these,” he said, plopping the prints onto the table in front of Sam.
Sam looked at the designs, but wasn’t able to make head or tail of it.
“Being as he’s the President, it seems appropriate t
hat he use the Presidential Siding,” Walker explained.
“The what?” Sam asked.
“Are you kiddin’ me?” Walker’s face creased. He pointed at a knot of intersecting white lines against the field of blue paper. “You don’t know what’s under the Waldorf?”
And with that, Sam’s plan began to come together.
Dean woke up with a start to the noise of a dump truck reversing down the street outside. The sun blazed in through the small, barred window, brightly illuminating the fact that Sam wasn’t in his bed.
“Sam?” Dean called out. “You up?”
When no one responded, he slid off the couch and headed for the shower. Eight hours of sleep plus time for a hot shower. Dean hadn’t had both in months, probably not since Lucifer had been popped from his cage.
After his shower, he went straight to work disassembling the shotgun shells Sam had bought and refilling them with rock salt. He was nearly finished when the sound of keys rattled in the door’s deadbolt.
“Sam, that you?”
“It’s me. Don’t shoot,” came the muffled reply. As the door swung open, Dean’s eyes caught on the brown paper bag in Sam’s outstretched hand. It bore the unmistakable grease stains that came along with a cheeseburger, and instantly dispelled any hard feelings Dean had left over from the previous night’s conversation.
“Fastest way to a man’s heart, right?” he said, grabbing the bag and opening it. The smell was amazing, just the thing to remind Dean why life was worth living. “Where you been, anyway?”
Sam sat down next to Dean on the couch and grabbed his own burger from the bag.
“Clerk’s office, looking for blueprints,” he said.
“And?”
“And the good news is I may have found us an exit. The bad news is there’s only one elevator that services the Presidential Suite, and a security desk is right outside it.” Sam set his burger down without even taking a bite.
“You not eating that?” Dean asked, mouth full, then registered Sam’s annoyance. “What?”
“This would be a lot easier if you hadn’t been banned from the hotel,” Sam said.
Dean nodded toward the stack of rock salt shells he’d been working on.
“Hey, I’ve been doin’ my part. ’Sides, you’re the one that dumped us on the Magic School Bus for this field trip.”
Sam didn’t protest, but he also didn’t jump in to apologize. Dean shrugged. Sam’s stubbornness was genetic—their father had it as well, and it was the thing that had driven them apart. Ironically enough, Dean, the boy who worshipped the ground his father walked on, was less like John Winchester than the son who wanted nothing to do with him.
“Look, you wanna do your part, find another way to get into that meeting,” Sam said.
“Maybe we need to consider you flying solo,” Dean suggested.
“Are you serious?” Sam asked. “A few weeks ago you weren’t sure I was even cut out for hunting anymore, now you want me to commit armed robbery by myself?”
“You don’t think you can do it?”
“Of course I can do it,” Sam answered, agitated. “But is that our best plan? I show up, claiming to have 200,000 dollars in a briefcase, grab the scroll and run?”
“Sounds like a Winchester plan to me,” Dean said, licking his fingers clean of burger grease.
“Sounds like a stupid plan.”
“Usually it’s both.”
“Then let’s come up with a better one,” Sam offered. “From what Walter Sawyer told me, there could be a dozen people and institutions interested in the scrolls, so security is going to be tight. Maybe we can use that to our advantage. Create a diversion.”
Dean didn’t like where this was headed.
“By diversion, you mean me doing something stupid so you can smash-and-grab the scroll.”
“They know you,” Sam replied. “The guards upstairs will recognize you, so it won’t be hard for you to get a little attention.”
“And then they shoot me, you take off with the War Scroll, they shoot you, and our angel buddy can zap our corpses back to 2010,” Dean scoffed.
“What if your distraction isn’t, you know, violent?” Sam asked.
“Like I ask politely?”
“Like you pretend to be a Fed,” Sam said. “Or somebody who doesn’t believe the documents are genuine, come to warn the buyers that the seller’s a fraud.”
“Alright,” Dean said, gears clicking into place in his head. “Say that works. I bust up the proceedings, your boy Feldman is distracted, you grab the scroll... What about the demon?”
Sam’s face fell. If the demon was acting as a protector of the scroll, there was no telling what it would do.
“Last I saw, that guard seemed back to normal,” Dean said. “So it could be in anyone. Assuming it is some kind of protector, he’ll be there at the sale.”
“And we don’t have the knife.”
“You mean you lost the knife,” Dean pointed out.
“If we could get up there early, we could set up a Devil’s Trap, lure him into it,” Sam said, blowing past Dean’s accusation.
“But we can’t, so plan B,” Dean said.
Sam nodded toward the stack of rock salt shells Dean had spent the morning preparing.
“Salt shells will keep a demon at bay, but how do we get a couple of shotguns upstairs?”
“Easy,” Dean said. “We find a case big enough to fit ’em, and you waltz right in carrying it. 200,000 bucks must take up a lot of space.”
“Security, Dean. They’ll check the case.”
As it was still untouched, Dean took another large bite out of Sam’s burger, letting the taste linger in his mouth for a bit. He did his best thinking while eating.
“Luggage,” he said finally.
“What about it?”
“We wait around the loading dock till it’s unattended, which it will be, because those bellhops are frickin’ lazy, trust me,” Dean answered. “Then we throw the shotguns in a bag headed for the suite. They’ll be there waiting for us.”
“That’s never going to work.” Sam let out a sigh.
“Don’t see you coming up with a better plan,” Dean said angrily, though he knew Sam was right. Getting the guns upstairs was one thing, getting access to them and pulling off the heist was something else entirely.
“We’re a little outside our comfort zone, Dean, but we’ve got to figure this out.”
“I know. Stop the Apocalypse, kill the Devil, reunite the Spice Girls, there’s a lot on our plate,” Dean said, starting to pace the small room. “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong. Maybe we go after the scroll once the buyer leaves with it. Jump ’em outside.”
“How are we supposed to know who the buyer is?” Sam asked. “We wait outside, they could walk right past us with the scrolls in a briefcase and we’d never know.”
Picking up one of the rock salt shells, Dean started to flip the cartridge between his fingers.
“Well, whoever has a frickin’ demon following him, screaming bloody murder, that’s probably him.”
The discussion went round and round, not leading any place productive for over an hour. Dean wanted nothing more than to get out of the cramped apartment, but this particular dilemma needed all brains on deck. Finally, Sam relented and stepped into the bathroom, giving Dean the perfect opportunity to escape outside for some air. No one wanted to be near the bathroom when Sam was in it.
Seated on the front stoop of the apartment building, Dean watched as a stream of New Yorkers marched past, hurrying away the afternoon. They don’t know what’s coming, he thought, feeling for a moment like Sarah Connor in T2, the harbinger of doom nestled amidst the blissfully unaware. Of course, these people have fifty-six good years left. Not like us.
Sam joined him after a few minutes, both of them listening intently to the sound of traffic, taking in all of the sights and sounds of the run-down neighborhood.
As if he could read Dean’s thoughts, Sam suddenl
y laughed.
“Admit it,” he said. “You miss Dr. Sexy.”
TWELVE
Early the next morning, Sam and Dean headed uptown to the Waldorf. Sam had insisted on another walkthrough of the lobby, and if they could get up as far as the Presidential Suite without arousing suspicion, then all the better.
While Dean skulked around the loading dock, Sam headed to the stairwell. He wanted to make sure that the exit strategy he had formulated from the blueprints would hold up in real life.
Slogging his way up the many flights of stairs was the most exercise Sam had done in weeks. Around the twentieth story, ascending to the top began to feel like an impossible task. It’d be pretty sad to die of a heart attack now, Sam thought. Whether that would be a good or bad thing for the world was another matter.
In the middle of contemplating that idea, a thunderous bark echoed up the stairwell, jolting Sam to attention. A second later, another bark pounded his eardrums, and he gripped his hands against his head tightly. If that’s a dog, Sam thought, I don’t want to meet its owner.
With the third bout of vicious howling, Sam realized that the noise was getting closer. It was coming up the stairwell—and fast. Dean said the demon barked. I don’t really want to find out if he’s right. He took the steps two at a time, hoping to outrun whatever hellish beast was downstairs. Hellish beast, Sam thought. It sounds exactly how I always imagined a Hellhound to sound.
Satan’s guard dogs, Hellhounds were the invisible beasts responsible for keeping up the nasty end of Hell’s bargains. If the demon that Dean met was somehow a Hellhound, or something like it, they were in even more trouble than they had thought.
The sound of water dripping was driving Dean crazy. Somewhere, some jackass hadn’t tightened a valve, or a nut, or whatever it was that kept water from leaking, and now it was ruining both Dean’s day and his nice new suit jacket.
He had been forced to hide in a storage locker when a truckload of perishables was delivered to the loading dock, only to have the kitchen staff take their lunch break right outside. It wasn’t the most undignified place Dean had ever hidden, but it was up there.
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