She walked out of the arrivals hall without giving him a chance to respond and slid into a cab before he could catch up with her. "Downtown," she told the driver.
She'd been to San Francisco on a school trip back in junior high. She remembered its quaint gingerbread houses and tree-lined streets descending to the water which surrounded it on three sides. But now the leaves looked limp on the branches and the shadows of the Market Street high-rises seemed too sharp, as if they could cut the city to pieces. It felt like enemy territory, as if she'd never left the prison in Eastern Europe, or had brought something of it back with her. She hunched her shoulders and headed towards Union Square.
She was signing a credit-card receipt in Saks when PD finally called. "I'm claiming all this back on expenses," she said before he could speak.
He laughed and she realised it was the first time she'd heard him do so in a long time. "Two rooms at the Hilltop Express," he said. "The federal government doesn't stretch to boutique hotels - and it doesn't stretch to a clothes allowance at Saks Fifth Avenue, either."
"How did you-?" she said, but he just laughed again and ended the call.
She hated the fact that the contact with him had warmed her. She debated staying out till midnight then retiring to her room without having to spend any time around him. But she was in a town full of strangers. She didn't want to be alone and there was no one she could talk to - no one who'd understand. She'd already called her mom to let her know she'd been sent away on an unexpected field trip for an American history class. Her mother was in Europe, where she spent most of the summer these days, and she hadn't seemed terribly interested. Even if she was, Alex couldn't tell her the truth. It was too implausible and - worse - too dangerous. Hammond had made it clear she was his, his asset. She didn't like to think what he'd do to anyone who threatened his possession of her.
That ruled out her friends too. Only PD was left, the one person in the world who knew exactly what she was going through. The fact that he was partly the cause of it seemed almost an irrelevance in the face of her sudden, hollow loneliness.
The hotel looked better than its price tag, keeping up with the high-class Joneses of its Nob Hill location. PD was waiting for her in the lobby and he took her shopping bags without a word, only quirking an eyebrow at the number of them.
Alex lay on the queen-sized bed in her room and watched as PD unpacked her shopping for her and carefully hung each item in the wardrobe.
"Is this your way of saying sorry for ratting me out to Hammond?" she said. "Because as apologies go, it sucks."
"I didn't have a choice, kid."
It was the answer she'd expected. "So, PD - I guess we're partners, huh? Is that how this works? You've got my back, I've got yours, you'll break all the rules if I'm in trouble, hand over your gun and badge when the boss tells you to back off?"
His face was bland as he turned back to her. "You've been watching too much TV."
"Are you my partner?"
"Yes."
She rolled over, crooking an elbow to support her head as she looked at him. "So, partner, tell me about yourself. What does PD stand for anyway? Peter David? Prancing Dog? Perennial Dick?"
He looked at her through narrowed eyes and she thought she'd angered him. Then he smiled. "It stands for Positive Discrimination."
"What - seriously?"
"It was John's joke, my first partner. He said the CIA got to tick all their minority recruitment boxes in one candidate with me."
Alex frowned. "You mean because you're Native American?"
"Don't try that politically correct bullshit, kid - it doesn't suit you. Just Indian will do. And Jewish."
She gawped at him. "You're Jewish? But..."
"You know the stories - how one of the lost tribes of Israel came to America."
"I thought it was only the Mormons who thought that."
"Nope. My mother's tribe believe it. Claim they've got some of the lost Temple treasure, too. There's a box in the chief's hut where they keep it. Of course, no one except the chief gets to look inside - you know the drill."
"And do you believe it?"
He perched on the bed, close enough for her to touch. "When I was a kid I thought it was so much bullshit. It used to embarrass me - my primitive people and their dumb fairytales. But since I joined the Agency... It's like you go through life thinking you're playing five-card stud. It's a tight game, only one hole card per player and you can guess what it is. There aren't many secrets or surprises. But instead you find out you've been playing Omaha all along and deuces are wild. There are too many combinations to figure and you think you know the odds, then fifth street shows a possibility you hadn't even considered. Everything that matters is hidden. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Not a word." She sat up, hands around her knees. "I don't get any of this. I don't get what we're supposed to be doing. Even if the stuff I see when I take the drugs actually is the spirit world, so what? The real threats are out there in the real one. Christ, I'm a New Yorker. I know that."
"No. They're not. Did you hear what went down in St Petersburg a couple of months back?"
She frowned. "There was some kind of terrorist attack, wasn't there? And an international incident when the Russians refused foreign aid for the victims."
"It was no terrorist attack. From what I heard, it was almost the end of the world. One of our agents was involved - a girl called Belle. The Brits blamed her for what happened, almost refused to give her back to us. Hammond put pressure on to get her released, but now he keeps her on a tight rein. She's... there's something dark inside her. If you took the peyote and looked at her, you'd see it. That's why you're so valuable." He rested a hand on her knee, his palm warm and a little rough. "This isn't a bad job, kid. It might not beat hanging around the lower East Side living off your trust fund, but it's important. You get to make a difference. And you get to see something no one else can, the true world behind the illusions."
She looked down at his hand, the flecks of dirt caught in the corners of his fingernails. "The place I see when I take the drugs isn't some fairy-tale land, PD. It's not somewhere anyone sane would want to spend any time. And what would you know about it, anyway? You've never been there."
His expression shifted, a closing off of something she hadn't even realised was open. He lifted his hand from her knee. "No. I'm just your caretaker. I guess it's dinner time - I'll see you in the lobby in ten."
He exited before she could ask what the hell she'd said that pissed him off. She gnawed her lip for a moment, then shook her head. What the hell did she care, anyway?
Haight-Ashbury looked like it belonged in a different city, somewhere shabbier and meaner. Tourists sweated in the Fall sunshine as they peered at the tat filling every store as if they couldn't wait to be fleeced. Fake Goths coveting knock-off T-shirts of bands they were too young to remember, Alex thought. Or buying bongs to smoke some Bay Area bud and see a pale imitation of the terrifying world the drugs opened to her.
She shook her head, trying to shake away her mood and concentrate on the job. PD had told her that the Croatoan recruitment centre was near the junction with Delmar and she knew it was approaching, but she tried not to seem as if she was looking for it. She'd wanted PD to come with her - almost begged him to. He'd told her a pretty white girl and an older Indian guy would attract the wrong kind of attention. "Don't worry," he'd said, "I've got your back."
That was what partners did, she supposed, however much he might have scoffed at the idea when she'd suggested it. They looked out for each other. The thought was odd, a shape she couldn't quite slot into a convenient category in her mind. Her parents had looked after her, of course, but they hadn't looked out for her. And her friends... She'd never forgotten that her old school friends had given her up to the police to save their own skins.
As she crossed Delmar she made herself glance at her watch rather than the recruiters waiting to pounce on passers-by from beneath the awnings. For a moment, she thought t
hey were going to ignore her. Then a hand on her elbow startled her and she looked up to see an attractive blond man with surfer hair and a beach-bum tan. The other recruiter idling by the curb was a pretty young woman. No doubt she'd pounce on any likely-looking straight men who passed.
In the time Alex took to assess him, the recruiter drew her to the side, beside the door to an anonymous blue-painted building.
"Hi," he said, "how are you enjoying your visit?"
Alex frowned. "How do you know I don't live here?"
He laughed. "No one who lives here comes to Haight-Ashbury. It would be like a New Yorker spending her Saturday up the Empire State Building.
His pinpointing of her origin unsettled her, but she managed a smile in return.
"Listen, do you have a spare minute?" he asked.
"I'm on vacation," she told him, "I've got a spare day."
"Awesome." He squeezed her elbow. "I've got something really incredible I'd like to tell you about, but it would be easier if we moved this inside. Is that OK?"
She frowned suspiciously, which she imagined was the normal reaction at this point. "I don't know..."
"Don't worry - it's just through here, and there'll be plenty of other people about. I can get you some ice tea, too. You look hot."
She shrugged. "Sure, why the hell not."
"Hey - I never asked your name."
She held out her hand. "Alexandra - but Alex will do."
His hand held on to hers just a little too long. "And I'm Phil. It's really good to meet you."
When she followed him through the small lobby, she saw that the building was lit by hundreds of candles. The effect was pleasing but a little disorienting and she thought maybe that was the point. Her companion led her to one of several tables, seating himself opposite her.
"That ice tea would taste good right about now," she said and he smiled and stood again, giving her time to study the room in his absence.
It looked like it had been decorated by someone who'd read dozens of half-assed New Age books about Native American culture and believed every single word of them. The ceiling was painted in a pattern that mirrored Indian designs with stripes of orange and ochre and brown, but the tones were just a bit off, the pattern a little too geometrically precise. The walls were strung with dream catchers, as if they expected to mop up industrial quantities of nightmares. Alex saw that some of the other people in the room - all of them white - were wearing feather headdresses and wondered what the hell PD would have thought if he'd joined her.
"What do you make of it?" Phil said as he returned, following the sweep of her eyes around the room.
"I don't know what to make of it. What exactly is going on here?"
He rested his hands on the table between them and she saw that it too was covered in fake Native American artefacts: beads, obsidian arrow heads and what might have been intended as a peace pipe.
"Have you heard of the Croatoans?" he asked.
She widened her eyes in mock surprise. "So you're those guys."
"I guess you've heard some pretty disparaging things about us, huh?"
"Oh well... I've kind of heard you called a cult."
"A cult's just what people call a religion they don't understand. The Romans said Christianity was a cult when it first started."
"Well, I guess that's true," she said, smiling coyly at him. She was surprised how easy she found it pretending to be something she wasn't. She'd never considered herself much of an actress, but maybe she'd been playing a part for longer than she realised.
Phil leaned back, his expression and tone softening. "Don't worry, we're not here to convert you. In fact, we don't want anything from you at all - unlike some other groups that get called cults, we just want to help you."
"Help me do what? I have to tell you, my life's pretty good right now."
"I'm glad to hear that, Alex. But don't you sometimes feel - I don't know, like there might be more to life, if only you could figure out what it was."
"Sure. But doesn't everyone feel that way?" Make them work for it, PD had told her. Just enough so they don't get suspicious.
Phil didn't seem put off. "You know what, Alex - everyone does feel that way. And that's because there is something missing from pretty much everyone's lives."
"And you think you know what that something is."
"I know I do. Because I've seen it and I'm here to tell you, Alex, it's the most incredible thing there is."
She leaned forward, as if he'd hooked her and was just beginning to draw her in. "Seen what?"
He lifted the elegant black and white curve of an eagle feather from the table. "The flesh is earthbound, Alex, but the spirit flies - or it can if we let it. There's a whole world out there, behind the world we see with our eyes, and I can tell you how to explore it."
For the first time, she felt a genuine flash of interest, and a beat of apprehension. There was a world behind the world, and she understood why Hammond thought people like this shouldn't have access to it.
"Do you want to see that world?" Phil asked. "We can show it to you, if you want."
"I do. But is it dangerous?"
"It doesn't need to be, if you find the right guide. Would you like to find yours?"
She heard the flap of raven wings and swallowed before she answered. "I'd like that very much."
He led her deeper inside the building, down a corridor lined with doors until they reached the furthest. The room inside was small and dark. There were no candles here, only an oil lamp flickering on the table.
He gestured her to a seat, but this time drew out the one beside her. She could smell the faint odour of his sweat and the masking scent of his cologne. It was expensive, she could tell, subtle and complex. Before he sat, he put his hands together and bowed towards the opposite wall. She realised that a painting hung there, veiled in shadow. It showed the back of a man dressed in a white robe, his curly brown hair falling over its collar. Two coyotes threaded themselves between his legs.
"Our leader," Phil said. "Laughing Wolf."
"Is he here? Can I meet him?"
Phil shook his head. "The Grand Shaman is only an occasional visitor to this plane of existence."
It was absurd and yet she couldn't find it funny. Her eyes returned to the painting and she knew she didn't like it. There was something about that hidden face which troubled her. She remembered the figure she'd seen in the spirit world in the Eastern European prison and, though she didn't know why, she was suddenly certain it was the same man.
Phil seemed to sense her unease. Maybe it was a common reaction in people coming here. But Alex wasn't afraid of the unknown. It was what she knew that terrified her.
"Don't worry, this is painless," he said. "It's not a full spirit journey - you'll have to study with us for a while before you're ready for that. This is more like looking at a map to plan your route than going on the actual journey."
"What map?" she said, looking again at the painting. She knew she didn't want to follow where that figure led.
Phil laughed. "I guess that was kind of a metaphor. I'm going to help you get to the edge of the spirit world, but we'll stop there, and then we'll wait for your spirit guide to find you."
"Oh." There was no sign of any peyote, not even any weed to help her get in the right state of mind. Maybe they weren't needed. Maybe they were like training wheels, something you could manage without once you knew what you were doing.
Phil put a finger under her chin, the touch curiously asexual, and turned her head until she was looking at the oil lamp. "Just gaze into the flame," he said. "Don't look at it - look through it, into the world beyond."
She tried. The flame danced, a tantalizing randomness that felt as if it might reveal itself as patterned if she only looked long enough. Her eyes began to water and when she blinked them the tears blurred the flame to a soft glow. She let herself sink into it, no longer straining for meaning but letting it come.
There were shapes in there,
she could see them if she didn't look for them: a curve that might have been a petal and an oval that could have been an eye. Was this really a way into the spirit realm? It was gentler than the path she'd used but who said the journey had to be a painful one?
"Tell me what you see," Phil said.
"I can see... it's not clear, but I think there's an eye, a flower..."
"That's good, Alex, that's very good. And what else?"
She had to fight to keep her eyes unfocused, to let the flame dictate what it wanted to be. "There's an apple," she said. "And something that looks kinda like a map of Manhattan."
"OK then." There was a slight catch in his voice, a note of what might have been impatience. "And how about any animals? Can you see any of those?"
She squinted her eyes until the lines of her lashes strobed across the yellow flames. "There might be, I don't know, maybe a cat's face."
"Awesome!" Phil said. "The lynx. There's your spirit guide."
"And if you believe that," a voice croaked in her ear, "you'll believe anything."
Her head spun so quickly she felt her neck click, but she saw only the shadow of black wings fading into the distance. Then there was just Phil, staring at her with an expression of alarm which he quickly schooled into concern.
He put a hand on her arm, meant to comfort and also, she thought, to restrain. "It's OK, Alex. He's your guide, he isn't going to hurt you - he's on your side."
"My guide?" she said. "A lynx?"
Phil's grip on her arm loosened a little and she pulled it free with a jerk.
"That's what you saw," he said. "The flame doesn't lie."
Lies hurt the liar here, Raven had said.
"No," Alex said, "but you obviously do. Thanks for your time, Phil. I've seen enough."
He didn't try to stop her as she slammed the door and hurried from the recruitment centre.
CHAPTER FIVE
Morgan woke with the idea of using the university's resources to find out a little more about Dr John Dee before returning to Kate in London. He wanted to prove his worth, he supposed, prove that he could do more than just use this unwanted gift his father had bequeathed him.
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