Two Songs This Archangel Sings m-5

by George C. Chesbro

  The aide sitting on Madison's right tapped his microphone with the tip of his pen. "That's preposterous, Frederickson."

  "Are you speaking for yourself, pal, or your boss?"

  The aide glanced at Orville Madison, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head. "Secretary Madison continues to deny any knowledge of Veil Kendry, aside from what he has heard in the past few days."

  "No kidding? Then, perhaps the good secretary would care to tell us just who Archangel was."

  "That information is classified," the aide said stiffly.

  "It doesn't make any difference, pal. As far as I'm concerned, what you just said is the first worthwhile thing that's gone into this record. I trust the stenographer will make a note of the fact that Madison nodded his head when I asked if you were speaking for him. In fact, some years ago Veil executed a series of paintings-"

  "Paintings," Lefferton interrupted, peering over the top of his bifocals at a paper in front of him. "There is something here about paintings. Would you care to tell us what it is these paintings purport to show?"

  "They paint a picture of a liar."

  "But you don't know where to find these paintings. Is that correct?"

  "You know it's correct, Senator. Thanks to the I.R.S., acting on behalf of the president, the records of the whereabouts of these paintings have been seized. The paintings are scattered all over the country, maybe all over the world. But I'll eventually find them-and if I end up in prison as a result of all this, then I'll hire somebody to find them for me. That's something you're now betting your reputations and reelection campaigns on, gentlemen."

  "And they lose, Mongo," a very familiar voice said from somewhere above and behind me. In the vast, nearly empty chamber, the voice echoed. "I know where the paintings are."

  Veil Kendry's words were punctuated by an ominous schlish-clack of metal sliding over metal-an ammunition magazine being slipped into the stock of an automatic weapon, the safety being released.

  The faces of the marshal, aides, stenographer, and the senators drained of blood and their eyes went wide as they stared up at the balcony above our heads. Garth and I slowly turned in our chairs, glanced up.

  Veil, dressed in jeans and a faded denim jacket over a green plaid flannel shirt, was standing on a seat in the balcony, one booted foot resting on the protective brass rail. His gray-streaked, yellow hair fell to his shoulders, and he was unshaven. Even in the dim light that just reached the first row of the balcony, his pale blue eyes glinted with anger as his gaze swept over the men on the dais below him; even without the Uzi submachine gun he held in his hands, he would have made a most imposing, spectral figure, and I felt a chill run through me.

  The anger left Veil's eyes as he looked down at me, and he flashed a crooked, bittersweet smile. "It looks like you've found the dark at the end of the tunnel, my friend. A hell of a job, Mongo; a hell of a job."

  "Yeah," I replied dryly. "Thanks, Veil; it's always nice to hear from satisfied clients."

  "I'm sorry."

  "For what?"

  "For all the pain, and for placing you in such bad company."

  "You don't have to apologize for anything, not to me. I know you never really wanted to involve me in the first place; I just about had to ransack your place to find my retainer. I'm honored that I was the one you chose to ask for help."

  "I'd be long dead by now if it weren't for you, my friend."

  "Somehow, I doubt that."

  "It's true. You distracted the bastard, and made him split his forces. I needed you and you were there-as I knew you would be."

  "Yeah, well, wait'll you see my itemized bill."

  "This wasn't the way I thought it would go, Mongo."

  "I know. You made the mistake of giving some of our elected representatives too much credit for integrity and guts. They don't want to hear what you have to tell them."

  "So I've noticed. Well, maybe we can still salvage something from this mess."

  "Go for it."

  The marshal had taken advantage of the chitchat between Veil and me to start to draw his gun out of his holster. Now his hand froze in midair as the Uzi abruptly swung in his direction.

  "Unless you want to be carried out of here in halves," Veil said calmly to the man, "take the gun out of its holster with your fingertips, then carry it over and put it on the witness table."

  The marshal hesitated just a moment, and Veil squeezed off a burst of fire that cut a line of holes in the wall barely six inches above the man's head. The marshal ducked, covered his head with his hands, and fell to the floor. Veil waited for the terrified man to look up, then waved toward the witness table with the Uzi. The marshal rose to his feet, walked quickly down into the well, and placed his.45 on the table in front of Garth and me, then went back to where he had been standing.

  Everyone but Madison had reacted sharply to Veil's unexpected appearance, and everyone but Garth and Orville Madison had jumped to their feet when Veil had fired the Uzi. Now I glanced at Madison, saw that his previously impassive face was twisted with hate. His button eyes had come alive and were glowing with hatred and rage. Both of his aides had dropped out of their chairs and crawled in the direction of the senators, leaving their boss alone and isolated at the far end of the table. I found myself grinning, immensely enjoying the show. I nudged Garth, but he did not respond.

  John Lefferton took a deep breath, adjusted his bifocals, then stabbed a trembling forefinger at the figure in the balcony. "Sir, we are United States senators! You-!"

  Veil silenced the man with a second burst of gunfire that raked the wall above and behind the senators' heads; wood splinters and chunks of plaster erupted in a spray that fell over the men as they ducked under the table.

  Welcome to the war.

  In a single motion, Veil pushed off the balcony railing, leaping out into space and sailing over our heads fully fifteen feet in the air. Flexing his knees at the last moment like a ski jumper preparing for a landing, he crashed down directly in the middle of the table on the dais. There was a sharp, resounding crack, and the table split, collapsing down its length. Veil, who had never lost his balance, casually stepped from the rubble, brushing plaster and wood splinters off his front, walked down into the well, around the table, and up to stand next to me.

  "How'm I doing?" Veil asked in a low voice.

  "Not bad. Damned if I don't think they're ready now to listen to your statement."

  "We'll see," Veil said, placing the Uzi on the table in front of him, pulling up a chair, and sitting down next to me. He pulled the microphone over, tapped it with his fingernail to test if it was live. It was a somewhat eerie sensation watching Veil preparing to testify in a hall that was filled with suspended plaster dust particles, pocked with bullet holes, and reeked of cordite. My ears still rang from the thunderous gunfire.

  Through it all, Orville Madison had barely moved, except to pull his chair back from the collapsed table. The marshal had backed up to the wall, and was staring wide-eyed at Veil. The senators and Madison's two aides, brushing debris off their suits and out of their hair, slowly emerged from beneath the table and glanced tentatively at the man with the Uzi seated at the witness table. Veil could easily have killed them all, and they knew it; but he hadn't, and now they were waiting anxiously to see what he was going to do.

  "Seats, everybody," Veil said dryly. "You wanted me here in person, so here I am. Now here's my statement."

  The marshal slowly reached out for the doorknob a few inches from his left hand. Veil merely grabbed the metal stock of the Uzi, looked at the man, and slowly shook his head. The marshal dropped his hand back to his side and moved away from the door.

  "Ma'am?" Veil said to the stenographer, who was still slumped in her straight-backed chair with her hands over her head. After a few moments, she slowly peered out from under one arm, and Veil gestured toward the machine in front of her. "I won't hurt you, ma'am. Would you please continue to take a record?"

  The woman
sucked in a deep breath, lowered her arms, placed her hands out over the machine. Slowly, one by one, the senators began to sit back down. The aides remained on their feet, halfway between Madison and the senators, as if sensing they were trapped in a kind of no-man's-land.

  "First of all, gentlemen," Veil continued, speaking quietly into the microphone, "it's a fact that the president of the United States has chosen to keep a sadist and a murderer as his secretary of state, even after the facts were made known to him-by both Dr. Frederickson and myself. For some inexplicable reason, Mr. Shannon has chosen to play a bizarre game rather than take advantage of the opportunity-an opportunity paid for with much pain, great risk, and the blood of innocent people-my friend and I have afforded him. I suggest to you that Mr. Shannon is badly in need of your advice and strong guidance, to say the least.

  "On the afternoon of the day when President Shannon was to announce his choices for his cabinet, Madison called to inform me that he was shortly to be nominated to become secretary of state. The purpose of the call was twofold; to enable Madison to personally gloat over me in what he had reason to believe would be the last moments of my life, and to position me by the telephone, in the center of my loft, where I would presumably make an easy target for his sniper, who had been waiting for Madison to make the call. Unfortunately for Mr. Madison, I had taken the precaution of installing thick, optically distorting glass in all the windows of my loft; the sniper missed-and I made sure he didn't get a second chance.

  "Now that Mr. Madison had attempted to make good on a threat he had made to me many years ago, I considered simply hunting him down and killing him. I chose not to, although he certainly deserved it, for a simple reason. In a few hours, Mr. Madison would be nominated to a lofty and very public position, and this country, which has given me so much, has seen and suffered far too many assassinations of its public officials. Also, I had absolutely no desire to make a martyr of this piece of latrine slime. As astounded as I was by the nomination, and knowing that it had triggered the attempt on my life, I assumed at the time that a new president had simply been duped by a very clever criminal who was out of control. I thought I owed it to my country to expose the man for what he was, while at the same time trying to limit the damage to the country. It was to this end that I enlisted Mongo's help. My friend was tortured and almost killed because I could not be close enough to prevent it; I was fortunate to get to him in time to save his life, but not the lives of the five people who died in the fire that Madison's men started. For those deaths, I am, in a way, as responsible as Madison, as guilty, because I was the one who'd purposely sought to panic the man. If I had foreseen the deaths of those people, perhaps I wouldn't ever have begun. But once having begun, and with five people-including two children-dead, I felt I had no choice but to continue, and to rely on Mongo's-Dr. Frederickson's-investigative skills to uncover the truth and to put together a case that the right powerful people would listen to.

  "At no time did I foresee, or possibly could have conceived, that the president of the United States would not only turn his back on the truth and continue to protect the man, but actually try to keep him in his post; at no time could I have imagined that members of the United States Congress would turn their eyes from the truth and allow themselves to be manipulated by a president. Truly, politics must carry a danger of its own kind of madness. Had I to do it over again, I would certainly proceed in a different way. But, to my regret, I can't do that-any more than I can restore the lives of the thirteen people Madison has killed while pursuing me. But I'm still not going to kill Orville Madison, gentlemen; that would be far too easy on all of you. Instead, I leave him with you; he's your problem now, not mine. And while you and this wretched administration are pondering what finally to do about him, I think it's time for me to pursue justice in the third branch of the government. I'm curious to see what my own trial for murder will bring out, and what the reaction of the public will be to my testimony and that of the brave men sitting beside me. As of this moment, I am surrendering myself into the custody of Detective Lieutenant Garth Frederickson."

  Veil clicked on the Uzi's safety catch, then abruptly slid the weapon across the table to Garth. This done, he leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and casually folded his arms across his chest as he stared back at the dust-covered senators sitting on the debris-littered dais.

  "Well done, Colonel," came another very familiar voice, this time from the back of the meeting hall. "Your trial would certainly be interesting, but I think there may be a better solution."

  It was beginning to feel like Homecoming Week in the Old Senate Office Building, and it wasn't a bad feeling at all. This time even Garth reacted, grunting with surprise and turning around with me in time to see Mr. Lippitt, looking rather odd-at least to us-in a finely tailored three-piece suit, come ambling down an aisle out of the darkness into the light. Veil, it seemed, was not the only uninvited guest who knew how to pick locks.

  Mr. Lippitt, a head shorter than the man who walked beside him, hadn't changed at all since I'd last seen him; he never seemed to change. I had no idea how old the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency was, and I didn't think anyone else did, either. Mr. Lippitt, with his totally bald head, piercing brown eyes, and electrifying, commanding presence, seemed to be forever. I knew only that he had fought in World War Two, which would put him well past the age when most men his age would have retired. But Mr. Lippitt was neither retired nor retiring; from the moment he had made his presence known, there had been no question about who was in charge in this meeting hall.

  Veil slowly rose as the men approached, pushed back his chair, stood very straight, and saluted.

  "Well done, Colonel," the tall, stiff-backed, gray-haired man with Lippitt said, returning Veil's salute. "Very well done."

  It had to be General Lester Bean, I thought. Our old friend had brought quite a surprise with him, and it explained a lot of things-if not everything. Lippitt hadn't turned his back on us after all; he simply hadn't been able to help us, or even communicate, without tipping off Madison that he was baby-sitting Veil's ex-commanding officer, waiting for-now.

  Lippitt came over to Garth and me, squeezed our shoulders. "It's good to see you, my friends," the old man said, smiling warmly. "I'm deeply sorry I wasn't able to respond to your calls; I thought it best to keep our point of attack completely hidden. Orville Madison is a formidable opponent."

  Indeed. "I think we understand, Mr. Lippitt," I replied. "Better late than never."

  Lippitt nodded slightly. "Somehow, I knew you'd say that. Also, you know what faith I have in your ability, and Garth's, to handle any situation. I was never really worried about you."

  "Funny, Lippitt; somehow I knew you'd say that."

  Mr. Lippitt turned toward the dais. "Gentlemen, may I be permitted to address this gathering?"

  "Of course, Mr. Lippitt," John Lefferton said, shaking his head slightly as he used a handkerchief to wipe perspiration from his neck. "Would you care to join us up here?"

  "I certainly would not," Lippitt answered curtly. "What I have to say won't take that long. It's past time-long past time-that this unfortunate business was wrapped up."

  An ashen-faced Orville Madison slowly rose to his feet. "Lippitt," he said in a low voice, "I want to talk to you. In private. You owe me that much."

  Lippitt ignored him, spoke directly to the senators. "The man with me, in case you don't know him, is Lieutenant General Lester Bean, U.S. Army, retired. I believe you will be interested in what he has to say, since he was Colonel Kendry's commanding officer in Viet Nam, and both men have had extensive dealings with Mr. Madison. General Bean will testify to the fact that Orville Madison was Colonel Kendry's C.I.A. controller-something which I believe Mr. Madison has denied. He also has a great many other things to tell you about Mr. Madison, and is prepared to present certain U.S. Army documents which will shed a great deal of light on an incident that occurred in and around a Hmong village in Laos many year
s ago, Colonel Kendry's surrender to the authorities for what we might call a breach of military discipline, and Mr. Madison's key involvement in the disposition of that case. It was soon after this disposition that this committee was informed of the cancellation of the so-called Archangel plan."

  Lippitt paused, and for almost half a minute there was not a sound in the chamber. Then, moving almost as one, the five senators, marshal, and two aides turned to stare at the man sitting at the far end of the broken table. Suddenly Orville Madison began to tremble, almost imperceptibly at first, then with tremors that moved in waves up and down his entire body.

  "Lippitt," Madison said in a hoarse voice as he leaned forward on his knuckles, "stop this. You're making a big mistake. The president needs me."

  Lippitt continued to ignore him. "General Bean came to me some weeks ago," he said to the senators. "It was the same evening that President Shannon announced the choices for his cabinet. General Bean told me that he feared for his life, and that he wished to share with me certain classified documents he had secretly photocopied and taken with him when he retired from the military. Frankly, I did not take the general's fears seriously, and I refused to look at documents which were, in effect, stolen. What I did do, out of courtesy, was invite the general to spend the night in my home. In the morning, we learned that his home had burned to the ground during the night, and that the police strongly suspected arson."

  "Lippitt!" Madison screamed.

  "After making arrangements for General Bean to stay in one of our own safe houses, I began my own investigation into just what-and how big-the problem was. It quickly became apparent that the problem was a big one indeed. In order to keep Mr. Madison off my trail, and the general's, I deemed it necessary to cut off all communications with everyone-including my dear friends the Fredericksons, to whom I owe my life, even when I knew they desperately needed my help. All of us, gentlemen-Colonel Kendry, Mongo and Garth, General Bean and myself-have sacrificed a great deal to come to this juncture; we have risked our own lives, and the lives of beloved friends, and we have had friends die, all so that, finally, the elected representatives of this great nation would be given an opportunity to do what they are supposed to do, namely, show that we are a nation of laws. This, gentlemen, is the moment of truth, and none of us is leaving this room until the evidence is read into the record, and until you have decided how to deal with a president who appears to be as out of control as the man he wants for his secretary of state."