“Thank you,” I managed to say. When we’d said goodbye and I’d hung up the phone I repeated to myself, “ ‘I look forward to meeting you”. Wow.” Then I ran to tell my folks the news.
2
The office was a little smaller than I’d expected. There was a desk—some kind of dark red wood—and some leather-chairs, and walls of books, most of them in sets of twenty or so volumes. I wondered how many years you had to go to school to learn all that stuff.
Alison Birkett was a little fatter than she’d looked on the cover of Time. A little shorter, too, but otherwise she looked just like I’d imagined her as I lay awake half the night. Wavy red hair which she pushed back from her face. Narrow nose and wide mouth, which gave her face a lot of movement, a lot of expression. When she frowned, you really could see it. When she smiled, she let it take over her face. She wore a grey silk blouse open at the neck and with the sleeves rolled up slightly, and a straight dark purple skirt. Round her neck, on a silver chain, she wore the three peaked medallion of the Winged Lady of the Mountains. Just above her left wrist I could see a small crescent-shaped scar, a mark of initiation. She noticed my looking at it. Her eyes dropped to her arm and then back at me, and she smiled.
She shook all our hands and said our names without our telling her. When she came to me she nodded once and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Ms Pierson.” Right there in front of my parents. If the chair hadn’t been there I might have fallen over.
She sat down in a chair at the side of her desk, with her legs out before her, crossed at the ankles. “First of all,” she said, “that disaster yesterday.”
“It was horrible,” my mother blurted. “Absolutely horrible.”
Ms Birkett nodded. “I know. Just hearing about it sickened me. I am very sorry you had to suffer such an outrage. As I told your daughter, however, it will not happen again. And the SDA will pay for the damage.”
“The SDA?” my father repeated.
“Let me explain what I’ve found out. To begin with, the F.I. request turned out to be quite a battle. Our government agencies do not like giving up their secrets. Especially the embarrassing ones.” She looked at Paul. He was breathing heavily. “When we talked on the phone,” she said, “you told me that your Lisa ran a temp agency.”
He said, “That was her cover.”
“Oh no,” Ms Birkett said. “That part of her story is actually true. Except that she does not find little typing jobs for secretaries. Lisa Black Dust—that’s her proper designation, by the way—Lisa Black Dust 7 runs a temp agency for Malignant Ones.”
None of us spoke for a moment, then Mom said, “I don’t understand. You mean she hires out demons?”
Ms Birkett nodded. “Precisely.”
Mom said, “But who are their clients?”
Ms Birkett smiled again before she spoke. “Corporations, lobbyists, large charitable organizations—but mostly the United States’ government.”
My father whispered, “Oh my God.” Paul moaned.
“The government?” I repeated.
“That’s right. Various agencies, investigatory arms and, I suspect, the White House, though sections of the report came blacked out. ‘National Security Sanctification.’ One part that was not censored, however, described the involvement of one particular client of Black Dust 7. The Spiritual Development Agency hires her services on a very steady basis. When Mr Cabot and Ms Pierson came for help they spoke first to an underling. Someone ‘not in the loop’ as the expression goes. When Mr Sebbick came on the case, however, the situation changed dramatically. For Mr Sebbick knew Lisa Black Dust 7’s cover name and the location of her operation.”
I said, “So the noble SDA tried to shut us up in order to protect themselves.”
“Exactly, Ms Pierson. And protect their convenient relationship. And they might have succeeded except for one factor their over-confidence failed to take into consideration. You and your family refused to let the matter drop. You contacted me.”
I grinned, “Too bad for them they didn’t get a Malignant Speaker to tell their fortunes.”
Ms Birkett laughed. “Yes, and lucky for us.”
My father said, “I’m glad you two find this so funny.”
“Not at all,” Ms Birkett said, but something of a smile remained. “I assure you I recognize the urgency. In the past two weeks I have done little else but work on this case.”
Mom asked, “But what do they do for the government?”
Ms Birkett shrugged. “Spying, sabotage, manoeuvering decisions by other agencies, or even other governments. Possibly assassinations.”
“The French prime minister,” I blurted. “His so-called heart attack.”
Her eyes narrowed, and then she nodded very slightly. “I spoke out of turn,” she said. “A bad habit. I think we had best keep such speculation amongst ourselves.”
I looked at the floor. “Of course,” I said.
My mother said, “This is horrible. It’s…it’s just horrible. How does the government pay the Malignant Ones?”
Ms Birkett said nothing for a moment, then, “I don’t think you want to know that.”
“Oh,” Mom said. “Oh.”
Paul said, “What am I going to do? What can I do?”
Ms Birkett said, “You already have done it, Mr Cabot. We have done it.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. But his voice sounded a little stronger.
Ms Birkett leaned back in her chair. “We have something on them. We know something the government would not like to see published in the New York Times.”
Mom said, “But what can we do with it? I mean, we can’t just give interviews to the Times.”
“Please,” Ms Birkett said, “I do not envision you appearing in the newspapers. Quite the contrary. The possibility is simply a threat, a weapon.”
“I still don’t understand—” Mom said, but Ms Birkett stopped her. She held up a sheet of paper dense with writing and some sort of sacred seal stamped on the bottom. “This,” she said, “is a cease and desist order, issued this morning by Judge Malcom Bennett. Judge Bennett is a very useful man. A number of times, when the government and I have come to an agreement, Judge Bennett has given it the appearance of judicial compulsion.”
Daddy asked, “What exactly do they cease and desist doing?”
“The order, in fact, does not restrain them so much as compel them. It requires the SDA to cease protecting Black Dust 7 and to begin protecting you and your family. In short, to do its duty.”
Mom said, “But that horrible…that disgusting…yesterday—”
Ms Birkett nodded. “The agreement came into effect at 12:01 this morning. Yesterday was Black Dust 7’s last chance to express her rage. I had demanded immediate application, but the SDA argued that they needed time for their technicians to establish controls. Now they will pay for that mistake. I have already made some phone calls and begun the paperwork for damage claims.”
Daddy asked, “Do you need information from us for the claims?”
“There’s no hurry. Marjorie—my secretary—will get the details from you after the depossession process.”
“This court order,” Daddy said. “It doesn’t order them to stop hiring Malignant Ones to do its dirty work?”
She shook her head. “No. It does require the government to cease all dealings specifically with Black Dust 7 and her agency. It does not, however, require anything further from them. The language is very careful.”
“And we don’t go to the Times?”