Ghost Dance

by Rebecca Levene

  "Get dressed," Lahav said. "He's your size, I think."

  Morgan wanted to argue, but the Mossad agent was right. He was far too conspicuous wearing only his boxers and the day was drawing to a close, chilling his damp skin unpleasantly. He sighed, taking the time to check that the tourist was still breathing, his skull intact. Then he began unbuttoning the man's jeans, tugging them down his legs before pulling off his hoodie and brown T-shirt.

  The fit wasn't perfect on Morgan. The jeans were too loose at the waist and tight around his muscular thighs, and the T-shirt pulled around his shoulders. But no one who wasn't looking for it would notice. He could walk down the street without attracting curious glances.

  First they had to get to the street, though. And the cops were still there, gazes once again scanning the road right and left.

  "Not here," Lahav said. "Pull back, then left - we need to be near the colleges."

  "I thought you said they were watching everywhere?"

  "They are." Lahav moved before Morgan could ask anything else, crawling on hands and knees through the undergrowth. Morgan sighed and followed, annoyed that he made far more noise at it than the Israeli.

  They broke from the trees into an open, over-grown meadow. The deep green of the grass was dusted with the white of cowslips, their long stems bobbing a little in the breeze. It was very beautiful, but the Mossad agent hardly seemed to notice, only grunting in irritation as he dropped to his stomach to slither through the more open terrain. It was slow going, but ten minutes took them to another road as Lahav had predicted. And there were policemen at each end of it, he'd been right about that too.

  But the pavements were more crowded, the rush of tourists making the cops' job that much harder. Morgan saw one of them, a young man with sandy hair, frowning as he scanned the passers-by. And then he saw what Lahav must have been waiting for and couldn't help smiling. The other man was cold as iron, but he knew his job.

  The tour group was at least 30 strong, Italian by the look of their olive skin and dark hair. Lahav would fit right in, though Morgan would need to keep to the centre of the group if he wasn't to stand out. But the police were barely paying them any attention as they followed the red umbrella of their tour leader.

  A couple of the tourists gave Morgan puzzled glances as he pushed his way through them, but their protests were drowned in the general hubbub and when he raised his head to watch the tour guide give her speech they quickly did the same.

  The group was drifting left, towards the centre of town. Morgan could see a cop on each side of the pavement, eyes scanning the crowd. His attention wanted to stay on the cops, to watch them watching for him. He made himself focus on the tour guide instead, as the woman's musical Italian washed over him. And he concentrated on steadying his breathing as they approached the policemen flanking the road.

  Just for an instant, Morgan felt eyes on him and knew he'd been spotted. Then the eyes passed and he realised, with a physical rush of relief, that he'd been seen but not perceived. He felt Lahav stiffen then relax beside him, and guessed the other man had felt the same careless regard.

  "We should check Coby's bedsit," Morgan said. "I know where it is."

  "A waste of time. The American won't return there."

  Morgan smiled. "Exactly. Which means he'll have left it without having a chance to clear it out. If we want to find out what he's up to, that place is our best hope."

  Lahav nodded, but he didn't look pleased. Morgan's smile widened as he led the way towards Coby's building. He knew his job too.

  Lahav stopped outside Coby's door, rearing back as if struck - and Morgan saw the red cross still smeared on the wood. 'Protection' Coby had called it, and now he knew what it was meant to protect the American from. He felt a shock of both fear and hope.

  "If I open the door, can you get past it?" he asked the Israeli.

  The other man nodded and Morgan turned the knob. Locked. He kicked out fast and hard against the weakest point and the wood gave with barely a groan of protest. The noise might have alerted the other residents in the house, but Morgan doubted they'd act on it. He'd lived in this kind of place himself and he knew how very little neighbours knew or cared about each other.

  Lahav brushed past him to enter first, but Morgan was interested to see that the other man was very careful not to touch the door, as if even the faintest contact could hurt him. He knew there might come a time when he too needed some protection from the Mossad agent.

  Coby's room was as cramped and messy as Morgan remembered it. But nothing looked like it had been packed and he thought his guess had been right: the student hadn't wanted to risk returning when he'd fled the river.

  "What should we be looking for?" Morgan asked.

  Lahav raised an eyebrow. "This was your idea, my friend. What do you think we should expect to find?"

  It was a good question. Morgan hadn't trusted Coby, but he'd underestimated him. He'd assumed the other man was working on his own, and that his need for Morgan would bind them together, at least temporarily. But what if he had other allies?

  "Is he working for the other side?" he asked Lahav. "For Belle and her people?"

  Lahav scanned the room. "Let's try to find out."

  There was a surprising amount of junk in such a small space. There were stacks of papers, but they all seemed to relate to Coby's PhD, likewise the stacks of books in, on and around the bookshelves. When he finally found something, it was in Coby's sock draw, buried between twelve identical pairs of socks. He heard them clink as he slid the draw open, an almost musical metallic sound. Brass fragments shone through the black material.

  They were shell casings of at least three different kinds, some from a small-calibre handgun, others clearly the product of a large semi-automatic. Morgan pulled them out and lay them on top of the chest of drawers, herding them with his hands when they would have rolled off. He counted twenty-seven in total. Coby had hidden them and they must have been important - he could feel that they were - but he didn't understand why.

  "Trophies of his kills," Lahav said. "Did you know he was a murderer when you agreed to help him?"

  Morgan forced himself to look the other man in the eye as he nodded. "I knew he'd killed, when he was younger. I thought... I guess I just assumed he regretted it."

  "As you regret the things you've done," Lahav said. To Morgan's surprise there was no judgement in his eyes. "Coby has no regret, Morgan. If he could feel remorse, then there would be hope for him when the end comes. But he can't feel it. He is a sociopath, without conscience - the only thing he can feel about his crimes is pleasure. That is why he must seek immortality. Because if he won't repent, he must go to hell."

  Morgan wiped his hands against his stolen jeans, though he knew there'd been no blood on the shell casings. They weren't what had killed Coby's victims, only a memento of the murders. "Who did he kill?" he asked, a question he knew he should have asked Coby.

  "Two teachers and a lot of other children at his school in Iowa," Lahav said. "He murdered them when he was 17."

  Morgan returned the casings to the drawer and slammed it shut. "Hang on - I remember that one. The boy in the George Bush mask. But he shot himself after he shot all the others, didn't he?"

  "The police, they found a body on the scene wearing the mask and carrying the murder weapons. They had the school locked down and no one had crossed their perimeter, so they said he must be the killer. But the people in the town who knew that boy, and knew Coby Bryson, to them it wasn't so clear. Coby was outside the building, he could not have done it - and yet... And so he finished his time at high school surrounded by people who suspected what he'd done and hated him for it. I've seen his photo in the yearbook. He's smiling. This is the man you've helped nearer to the secret of immortality."

  Morgan felt himself flush, but he stood his ground. "And you want me to help you instead. But you killed Granger and Julie in cold blood too. Do you regret it?"

  Lahav grimaced. "I took no pl
easure in it. But it was necessary. They were dangerous. I removed the danger. This is my job."

  Morgan found himself getting angry all over again. "Julie wasn't dangerous. I didn't see any evidence she was involved in Granger and Coby's research. And even if she was, what's so wrong with that? So she wanted to find the secret of immortality. So fucking what? Wouldn't we all want that?"

  "It's forbidden," Lahav said. "The Almighty has forbidden it."

  He seemed to think that was the end of the argument. And maybe it was. What did Morgan know?

  "There's nothing else here," Lahav said. "We won't find where he's gone, because he didn't decide where that was until you told him Dee's secret."

  Morgan gritted his teeth, but he knew the other man was right. He had one puzzle piece and Lahav had a lot of the others. They needed each other. But after Morgan had handed over his intel, Lahav wouldn't need him anymore. And he trusted the Mossad agent no more than he'd trusted Coby, despite what might be living inside him - or maybe because of it.

  "What do you want from me?" Lahav asked, reading Morgan's doubts in his face. "I will swear an oath to work with you, if you want. And if you don't trust my word, think of this. While you're with me, you're not with the Hermetic Division, telling them what you know. It's to my benefit to have you stay with me."

  "Or you could just kill me as soon as I've told you."

  Lahav fingered the bloody lump on his forehead and smiled wryly. "You're not so easy to kill. And you have... value. You can help me to catch Coby. An alliance, Morgan. I swear by Hashem that I'll work with you, until Coby is stopped."

  Morgan hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, the door opened.

  Kate looked alarmed when she saw Lahav and Morgan standing side by side. Afraid for him, Morgan realised. Her expression slid into something harsher when she realised he and Lahav were only talking. He opened his mouth to tell Kate this wasn't what it looked like, then realised how much like a man caught having an affair that would sound.

  She shut the door gently behind her. "For god's sake, Morgan. He killed two people."

  "Yeah, and I killed a lot more, and you still took me on."

  "That was your job," she said.

  He raised an eyebrow and she sighed, understanding his point if not quite conceding it.

  "Morgan is working with me now," Lahav said.

  Kate's head snapped round, almost as if she'd forgotten he was there. Morgan understood that this was just between him and her.

  Lahav didn't seem to. "Our countries are allies," he continued. "There's no reason we can't pursue the same aim. I can promise you what I do is no threat to Britain, or the Hermetic Division."

  "That's for me to decide," she said. "Why don't you tell me what you're up to, and maybe I'll even agree with you."

  Lahav's mouth clamped shut. Kate brushed her greying hair from her eyes as she turned to look at Morgan.

  His eyes flicked between her and the Israeli, undecided. They finally settled on the Israeli. "Why can't we tell her?" Morgan asked. "Why can't the Hermetic Division and the - whatever the hell your lot are called - work together on this?"

  The Mossad agent shook his head. "You have such faith in human nature, my friend. But it was your people who wanted the Ragnarok artefacts, objects with the power to end the world. They seek out secrets not to keep them, but to use them. And this secret mustn't be known."

  "What secret?" Kate asked.

  Morgan hesitated, then said, "Immortality."

  "Immortality? That's what this is about?" There was something in her eyes, a spark of interest, and Morgan felt his stomach clench because he saw that Lahav was right. The Hermetic Division would want this.

  "And why not?" he asked Lahav. "So what if the secret gets out? People stop dying. That's a good thing, isn't it?"

  Lahav had manoeuvred so that his back was to the door, blocking any escape. Morgan saw Kate take note of it. The pulse in her neck flickered faster but she gave no other sign of distress. "You wouldn't hurt me," she said. "Morgan would never work with you then."

  "No I wouldn't," Morgan said. He was certain about that, at least.

  Lahav sighed. "A world without death - not a utopia, but this world without death. People still living and loving and making more people, and more, and then more, and none of them dying. A world without enough food for six billion people, with ten billion, twenty, a hundred billion. Starving skeletons walking a ravaged earth, praying for a death they have forever denied themselves. And ruling over this hell is Coby, a killer without conscience or pity. Surely you see why this secret has to be kept?"

  Morgan did, but he didn't trust himself to be thinking straight. He wanted to believe the Mossad agent, because he wanted the chance to earn the reward the other man was offering. And if this explanation gave him a fig leaf to cover what would otherwise be naked treachery...

  He looked at Kate and she looked back. She already knew what he intended. She barely struggled when he pushed her up against the wall, one forearm against her throat. She only began to twist in panic as unconsciousness approached.

  "Shh," he told her, "it's OK, it's just for a little while, shhh."

  Her eyes glazed and he felt all resistance melt out of her body as he lowered her to the floor. "Get something to tie her up and gag her," he snapped over his shoulder at Lahav.

  The other man didn't move. "They'll find her soon. We will have very little time to get away."

  "Tough," Morgan said. "It's this or nothing."

  There was a moment's more hesitation, then Lahav did as he'd said. When he'd finished, he looked expectantly at Morgan and he understood the message in his eyes. Lahav had spared Kate, against his instincts. Now it was time for Morgan to fulfil his side of the bargain.

  "John Dee talked about the shofar."

  Lahav nodded and Morgan saw the sudden tension in his eyes. "And did he say where it could be found?"

  "He said it was stolen from him and taken over the ocean, to the Queen's colony. He told me it was lost in the forests of the New World. And he said the people who took it disappeared, but they left a message behind."

  "Croatoan," Lahav said.

  Morgan narrowed his eyes. "You knew already?"

  "No. But I understand now why I could never find it."

  "And do you know where it is?"

  Lahav smiled. "I know where we should look."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Alex walked ten blocks without stopping. She forced herself not to scan the crowd or look behind her for signs of pursuit. Her plan had worked, it must have. PD was trapped in Marriott's house with the Croatoans and the Agency believed she was imprisoned there too.

  When she hit Market she finally stopped. She was beside a small row of shabby fast-food joints and cafes, the metal tracks of the MUNI scarring the road ahead of her. The sidewalk was crowded, mostly tourists waiting for the trains or crossing to explore the more picturesque streets of the Castro. Alex hesitated a moment, then joined the cluster at the MUNI stop. It was faster than walking, slower than a taxi. But it was anonymous, no driver who might remember her and report her destination to anyone with a badge who asked.

  When the train came it was crowded and Alex was glad to lose herself in the sweating anonymity of the passengers. Raven stood beside her, his insubstantial body half over-lapping with a fat German woman. The sight made Alex feel sick and she shut her eyes.

  Her heart was pounding and she felt a bitter taste in the back of her throat which she thought might be adrenaline. This was it; she was committed now. There was no going back, not just to the Agency but to the ordinary life she'd once yearned to return to. Her father was cold and distant, her mother self-obsessed and neglectful. But when she thought of never seeing them again, her chest ached and she felt the prickle of tears building in the corners of her eyes.

  Her only option was to take the money and flee over the border. She vaguely recalled that Venezuela had no extradition treaty with the USA. She couldn't begin to ima
ge what her life there might be like, but... Live free or die trying, wasn't that what they said?

  Her eyes jolted open when the mechanical voice announced Civic Centre. She pushed through a crowd of towering jocks and squeezed out of the door moments before it shut. Outside the station the crowds were thinner, dispersed through the wide, unwelcoming spaces between the buildings. Alex headed west, over grass littered with homeless men drinking beer from cans wrapped in brown paper bags.

  The bank was beyond the Opera House, in the grimmer streets that sprawled around the government buildings. She felt her heart speed as she drew closer. Her mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow. Her footsteps echoed on the marble floor when she entered and she felt as if everyone was watching her. There must be cameras here, though she couldn't spot them. She could only hope no one who mattered was watching them.

  There was no line this time and she found herself in front of the same teller she'd faced earlier. "Miss Keve," she said.

  "Sarah," Alex said, reading from her name tag. "Is it ready?"

  Sarah nodded a little jerkily. Alex felt the first stirrings of unease in her gut. But the spirit world showed her nothing dangerous. The woman's face was overlaid with her other self: a Labrador, gentle and loyal. She was no threat to Alex.

  "If you could wait out here a second," Sarah said, "I'll need to go through a few formalities and the money's all yours."

  Alex watched her walk to the back of the bank. Her blonde hair swayed with each stride, but her hips were stiff. Alex's stomach roiled. Something was wrong. She didn't need the spirit world to tell her that, only her instincts. They were screaming at her to run. But if she ran, it would be with nothing. And without the money to buy a new life over the border, where could she go?

  She looked around instead, using both her inner vision and her outer. The security guard was just a lazy, fat old tom cat, whiskers twitching behind his crooked smile. There was a woman and her child, sulky and whining behind her. The woman was a robin, perky and quick, the child nothing at all, barely a whisper of life in the spirit world, too young to have learned who he was.