“Well, I think it is.”
That was the level of their discourse, Logan thought: Is too, is not, is too, is not...
Meeting the young man’s unblinking gaze with his own, Logan said, “We don’t know enough. Really, we don’t know anything. We still don’t know where their headquarters is, we don’t know where you were raised, other than the Wyoming mountains somewhere...”
Seth exploded out of the chair. “What have you been doing while I been risking my ass?” Seth gestured with both hands, his arms wide in frustration. “What are you doin’ with those fancy-ass computers? Downloading porn? Hitting the cybercasinos?”
“These things take time.”
Bouncing on his heels, Seth said, “You’ve had what — three, four weeks? Enough time for me to take out Devane, and you haven’t found out anything?”
Seething inside, Logan resisted the urge to tell Seth to use his abilities to take a spectacular flying fuck, and said, “I’ve started looking into old factories, abandoned prisons, military bases. But these people are smart, and they’re dangerous, and they don’t want to be found. If they did, you would have found them already.”
Seth seemed almost to pout, and said, somewhat childishly, “But you’ve had three weeks, man!”
“You’ve had how many years? And you haven’t found them, have you, Seth?”
“I haven’t been looking — I’ve been hiding. But now I got you, and your resources... we can take ’em on, Logan! We can take ’em down!”
“And we’re going to. We are. And I do have a lead...”
Seth’s eyes widened, like a child anticipating Christmas. “What kind of a lead?”
“I take it you didn’t see the bulletins on the LA Massacre — I ran it three times yesterday.”
“No... I was... busy.”
“I guess you were. Come with me.”
Logan walked Seth to the office-cum-broadcast-center, where the main monster computer was (as always) running and each monitor had several windows open. The cyberjournalist played the X5 a video CD of the bulletin that included the grisly footage of the Chinese Theatre slaughter. At the mention of the troops in black rumored to have supported the Brood in the massacre, Seth perked up.
“That’s Manticore... that’s got to be Manticore.”
Logan ran the VCD again, with the sound down. “What would draw Manticore into helping one side of a street gang war?”
“I’d like to know the answer to that.”
“Good.” Logan smiled at Seth, rather blandly. “Because that’s where we’re going to start... assuming you don’t kill our target, before we find anything out.”
Seth smirked. “Who is he?”
“Well, it is a him... but it’s more than a him. It’s a ‘them.’ ”
“The Brood?”
“The Brood is part of it. You heard the bulletin: they’re expanding to Seattle.”
“Who did they send here?”
“They didn’t ‘send’ anybody — the top man himself came... Mikhail Kafelnikov.”
Logan brought up another picture: a muscular blond man who had the good looks of a pre-Pulse rock star, and the rap sheet of a serial killer. “He’s rumored to have ordered or taken part in as many as one hundred murders in Los Angeles.”
The young man studied the picture. “You made a good point, Logan — Manticore and a street gang... it just doesn’t compute.”
“Seth, back in the early part of the last century, street gangs of Italian kids evolved into the biggest, most successful organized crime syndicate in the history of man.”
“And this history lesson is because?...”
“The Brood may evolve into something much bigger than a street gang... particularly with covert support from Manticore.”
“So what is this... Haselhoff guy up to, in our great city?”
“It’s Kafelnikov...”
“Whatever.”
“... and he’s selling art and Americana to foreigners. Any precious remnant of our past that he can get his hands on, really, he’ll sell to whoever offers the most.”
Seth arched an eyebrow. “And we care, because?...”
“Because he’s selling off priceless works of American art.”
Seth was not following this. “The point being...”
Logan knew he could never make Seth understand how he felt, and why this battle was important.
No Americana would eventually mean... no America. He’d watched other countries sell the heritage that was their symbolic soul, during financial hardships since the Pulse. People needed that cultural bedrock to build their societies on, and when that bedrock was peddled to other nations, it took away a country’s sense of permanence, a people’s sense of home. Citizens began to feel like renters in their own land.
“I can’t explain this easily,” Logan said. “You were Manticore’s prisoner for how long?”
“Ten years. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Even though you hated it, even though you eventually ran from it, Manticore was your home. When you escaped, didn’t part of you miss it?”
“You are high!” Seth’s eyes blazed. “No, hell, no!”
Logan put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You mean to say you didn’t... you don’t... miss your siblings? The sense of belonging that comes from being with a group you know you can trust to take care of you? That sense of wholeness? You didn’t miss any of that?”
Seth looked at him for a moment, then the young man’s eyes fell away and he found something on the floor to study.
Logan said, “That’s what I’m talking about, with these people selling off American art. It destroys, one piece at a time, who we are... how we feel about the American family... making it easier to divide us. We’re all abused children, now, Seth — and this kind of abuse to our... national spirit... well, it’s one thing we don’t need.”
“Run for fuckin’ office, why don’t you? Look, this art scam — it’s the first hustle the Brood’s working on our turf?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Logan, why didn’t you say so. We got to stop the bastards.”
Feeling a little embarrassed, and a bit like a pompous ass, Logan couldn’t keep himself from smiling. “Kafelnikov isn’t moving the stuff out of LA — somehow he’s moving it out of the country through Seattle.”
“And you want to know how he’s doing that?”
“Yes — who’s working with him, and where the deals go down — maybe we can... rescue some Americana.”
“Groovy,” Seth said, still unimpressed by the cultural flag-waving. “Any clues at all?”
Logan leaned in, used a mouse to open a window on one of the many glowing monitor screens. A picture popped up of a blond, trimly bearded man in his late twenties, next to a painting called Death on the Ridge Road.
Pointing, Logan said, “That’s Jared Sterling.”
“Looks like an upstanding citizen.”
“As upstanding as they come... major art collector, philanthropist, and billionaire computer magnate.”
“Sterling... Sterling — the Internet guy?”
“The Internet guy.”
Seth leaned in, taking a closer look at the Grant Wood painting. “Looks like he’s into, what’s-it, Americana, too.”
“Oh yes.” Using the mouse, Logan brought up pictures of various American art pieces. “These paintings — American Gothic... Whistler’s Mother... Jackson Pollock’s Key, works by Thomas Hart Benton, Winslow Homer, and several other major American painters — have come into Sterling’s hands... legally... and then disappeared.”