Two Songs This Archangel Sings

by George C. Chesbro

  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 years 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 secreatry of state.”

  “Tell Mom and Dad I love them,” Garth whispered in my ear as Lester Bean sat down at the witness table and pulled the microphone over in front of him. “Try to explain, and ask them to forgive me.”

  Intent on Lippitt and Bean, and the reactions of Madison and the senators, I wasn’t certain I’d heard Garth right. I turned toward him, was startled by the glazed look in his eyes and the almost blank expression on his face.

  “What?!”

  “I’m dying, Mongo,” my brother whispered, “so what I do doesn’t matter. I’m still not sure these people are going to get it right.”

  “Garth, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Garth’s answer was suddenly to grab the marshal’s .45, click off the safety catch, raise it, and without hesitation fire two bullets into Orville Madison’s head. Madison died instantly, collapsing over the table and rolling down into the well, leaving blood and brains smeared on the wall behind where he had been standing.

  It happened so quickly and without warning that everything, including the roar of the gun, had some of the quality of a dream; there were no shouts, no scrambling, and even as the echo of the gunshots faded away everyone remained still—except Garth, who swept the Uzi off the table and then backed away a few steps. I watched in horror as the .45 in Garth’s hand slowly turned, stopped when it was pointed at Veil.

  “Garth, please put the gun away,” I said quietly, terrified by the expression—or lack of it—on my brother’s face. In the dusty light Garth’s flesh was a pasty, pale green, and suddenly the man with the gun in front of me became a stranger who had somehow been able to invade the body, and was lurking behind the glassy eyes, of my brother.

  “My brother could have been killed because of you,” the stranger said in a stranger’s voice to Veil.

  I half expected Veil, with his incredible speed and reflexes, somehow to take command of the situation—duck away out of the line of fire, perhaps even get to Garth and disarm him.

  Instead Veil, his arms at his sides, merely stepped slowly and deliberately back from the table, away f
rom Lippitt, Bean, and me, presenting himself as a clear target. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Veil said evenly. “You’re absolutely right; I had no right to do what I did.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough,” the stranger said.

  I knew Garth was going to pull the trigger of the .45, just as I knew that Veil wasn’t going to do anything to defend himself. I pushed my chair out of the way and lunged for Garth, trying to put myself between him and Veil. I failed at that, but did manage to spoil Garth’s aim. The gun went off a few inches from my left ear, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Veil grab for his right shoulder as he was spun around by the impact of the slug.

  Then Lippitt, the marshal, Bean, myself, and even a couple of the senators were on Garth, dragging him to the floor. I ended up on the bottom of the pile, both hands gripping the gun. I was expecting a fierce struggle, but there wasn’t any. Garth was lying very still, his joints apparently locked, his muscles rigid and hard as stone.

  “Get off!” I screamed, shoving and kicking at the bodies covering Garth and me. “Get the hell off!”

  The shouting and kicking weren’t necessary. The others, reacting to Garth’s sudden catatonic stiffness, had already begun to back off. I was left alone, kneeling beside Garth with tears flooding my eyes and rolling down my cheeks.

  The signs had been there all along, I thought; I’d seen them, but had simply refused to do anything about it. McGarvey, the trooper, had seen them and pointedly warned me that Garth was ready to explode and shatter. I’d ignored the warning.

  Now even the stranger was gone, and I was left with a stiff, empty-faced, and empty-eyed figure whose hoarse, labored breathing was the only indication that he was alive.

  Orville Madison was finally dead, but it meant nothing to me; I had lost my brother with him. Garth was gone, hiding in some lonely, cold, hideous place in his mind where I feared I would never be able to find him.