“Yeah, well, sorry to spoil their plans,” I said.
“Quite frankly, I’m rather pleased with how it turned out. It’s very informative.”
“Okay,” I said, “so what now? Shouldn’t we be filing fifty kinds of formal charges?”
“That’s one way to go, Captain,” said Church, “but the fact that there are no records of this makes it the word of a covert group against that of the current administration. Remember, Captain, we don’t officially exist, at least as far as the public knows. If we file formal charges, our useful anonymity ends, and there would be consequences to that.”
He had a damn point. Because of betrayal from within, and hacking of the older generation of MindReader, the DMS had hit some serious heavy weather. The biggest problem was the Kill Switch case, where Harcourt Bolton, Sr. used a mind-control device to literally take over the actions of several DMS agents, including Top, Bunny, and me. While being suborned by this “mind-walking,” we did some truly awful things. A lot of innocent people died and there was video footage of one bloodbath on the docks in Oceanside, California. Doesn’t matter that we were all wearing balaclavas that hid most of our faces. Doesn’t matter that Bug used MindReader to go in and mess with the images on those videos. There are people in the government who know, or at least suspect, that it was our fingers on the triggers.
“If we go after them,” I said, “they bury us with Kill Switch.”
“And other things, yes,” said Church. “They don’t need to prove anything. All they need to do is put us in the spotlight and wait for the public to demand our heads on pikes. If that happens, Captain, the DMS is effectively dead, which means that we will be cleared off the battlefield at a time when we are very much needed.”
“Shit.”
“It frequently astounds and disappoints me when I witness the lengths some people will go to to get in the way of their own conscience or sense of duty.”
“So, do we just forgive and forget?”
“Did I say that?” When I did not answer, he said, “I seldom forgive, Captain; and I never forget.”
“Then what’s our play?”
I could hear him crunching on a cookie. If the world was actually burning and there were missiles inbound to where he sat, the man would pause for a vanilla wafer.
“Aunt Sallie will address matters in Washington,” he said. “I want you to go back to San Diego. Take a week off. Maybe have your brother and his family come out for a visit.”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously. “Are they in danger out here?”
“No. I’m recommending an actual vacation.”
“A vacation? Who are you and what did you do with Mr. Church?”
“Good-bye, Captain,” he said, and there was the slight chance he actually laughed. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. Hard to tell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Church set down his cell phone, leaned back against his pillows, and rubbed his tired eyes. For several moments, he did nothing but listen to one of his favorite albums, Blue Moods by Miles Davis. It seemed as apt now as when he’d first heard every cut played live at a club many years ago, while he was on a mission in Germany. Charlie Mingus had invited him to the gig, and Church — then known by the code name Der Rektor — had gone to hear a few songs but stayed for three sets. A good end to what had been a terrible day. He remembered standing in the bathroom at the club, washing blood off his face.
Church touched his face, remembering that night with awful clarity. He had done dreadful things and taken wounds that ran very deep. Not of flesh, but of soul.
How many times since had he been marked like that? he wondered. Even he’d lost count.
Then he recalled that it had been the same night he’d met Aunt Sallie, then a young African-American field operative working undercover with Interpol. Were the horrors of that night mitigated by meeting one of the most important people in his life? Auntie became an ally, a fellow warrior, and a trusted friend. Together they had saved the world from greater horrors even than those Church had faced in Germany. Now, of course, Aunt Sallie was getting old, and he knew that she did not understand why time touched her with a heavier and crueler hand than it did him.
It was so sad. Auntie was family to him. Kin.
Kin . That word had been stuck into him like a knife blade for months now. The mad trickster Nicodemus called him “kinsman,” knowing that it would inflict a special kind of hurt. It did. Hurt and shame and a particularly dangerous frequency of nostalgia.
Kinsman . Not an accurate statement, but dangerous. It was tied to another of Church’s names. One that he had left behind long ago, even before the affair in Germany. A name discarded like so many others. A name no one alive knew, and Church was content to let that aspect of him die and be forgotten.
In truth, “Mr. Church” was the latest identity into which he’d stepped when he formed the Department of Military Sciences. Shucking previous names had become easy for him. He was rarely sentimental about any of his former selves and had cast them off with the cold efficiency of a molting tarantula. He remembered each of them, though some only distantly. The Washington and U.S. military crowd still tended to call him Deacon. A few old friends and enemies in Eastern Europe, Lilith among them, called him St. Germaine. Here and there were key men and women who knew him as “Cardinal” or “Saishi” or “Ep ískopos.” But most of those people were old and he knew he would outlive them. As he would outlive the memory of who he was when he wore those names. Other, older names were completely lost to time, and that was how it should be. Though once in a while — a very great while — a sadness crept into the edges of his day as he remembered old friends long gone. He even mourned some of his enemies.
Even Nicodemus.
Not that Church would ever admit that to the people who worked for him. And not that it stayed his hand when the two of them had fought last year during the Dogs of War matter. He closed his eyes and there, in his personal darkness, he could remember every moment of that battle. Nicodemus had worn as many names as had Church, and had shed them as easily. Church had flown from Brooklyn to the Pacific Northwest and tracked Nicodemus to the home of the brilliant and destructive psychopath Zephyr Bain. He’d arrived to find Nicodemus fighting — and beating — Top and Bunny. Church stepped between his men and Nicodemus, knowing that they could never have taken that man down. Not with the kinds of weapons they had — guns, knives, fists. He’d ordered his agents to flee, and Nicodemus, mindful of old rituals and etiquette, had allowed it.
That fight that took place had been a terrible ordeal. Church never let on to his people how close a battle it had been, or how much it cost him to win it. He never told them, or anyone, what happened in Zephyr Bain’s house. It was a memory that haunted him, though, and he knew he would relive it for the rest of his life. And now, all these months later, alone in his quiet house, Church mourned Nicodemus. Not the man who wore that false name, though. No, Church’s grief was older than that, ran deeper than that. Nicodemus had once been a different person, and Church mourned for that man.
There was a soft creak and he looked up to see Lilith standing in the bathroom doorway, drying her face with a hand towel. She wore a black silk camisole and matching slip. In the semidarkness shadows hid her eyes and hollowed her cheeks, transforming a beautiful face into a death mask. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.
“Was that Ledger on the phone?” she asked.