“But this mistake has cost us, hasn’t it?” challenged Pierce.
“Do not take that tone of voice with me, child.”
“Your precautions to deal with McCracken were inadequate. He’s faced similar battles before and won them all.”
“Not against the likes of our legion.”
“What happened to the disciple in Brazil?”
“Misjudgement, by all accounts.”
“No. As long as McCracken is still at large, our operation is in jeopardy.”
The shape took a deep breath. “We will watch him smolder in the ruins of his world. When we rise to claim the ruins, we will crush him like an ant. He represents everything you were conceived to destroy, the type of American who crushes everything in his path in the same way his nation once tried to destroy us by every means available. Your existences came about in response to this, and for nearly fifty years we have waited for the day that is soon to come. You three have helped chart everything. You three above all should know.”
“We want to be sure,” said Benjamin in conciliatory fashion. “That’s all.”
“McCracken has disappeared,” reported the shape. “But we have effectively isolated him. When he surfaces, we’ll know it. He is alone. No one in Rio would dare befriend him. He has become a pariah.”
“Why?”
The shape laughed a laugh that sounded more like the shrill wind ahead of a thunderstorm. “Apparently witnesses have placed him at the Bali Bar. He’s been blamed for the murder of Fernando Da Sa.”
“The news is bad, Kami-san.”
Tiguro Nagami had found Takahashi outside in the garden of the estate in Kyoto. The day had given itself up to twilight, the only time Takahashi’s pained eyes allowed him to drink in the rich sights, however much of their beauty might have been lost without the sun. “I felt as much,” he replied.
“The woman escaped us, and we are no closer to finding McCracken.”
“There is more. The tone of your voice speaks of it.”
“I have collated the reports of what occurred in the Botanical Garden. Twelve additional bodies were found, Kami-san…All savagely killed.”
Takahashi turned to face him. “Then it begins.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“Why should I be?”
“Because up to now we could never be totally sure the enemy had succeeded.”
“Children of the Black Rain,” Takahashi muttered.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Nothing. I trust we still have a chance of locating the woman and McCracken.”
“In any event, we have hope.”
“But it is dwindling, isn’t it, Tiguro?” Takahashi turned and gazed off into the garden for a long moment before shifting back toward Nagami. “Weetz will be in Philadelphia tomorrow. “
“His report confirms all is ready.”
“Then our battle continues. The death of the vice president will set them back, Tiguro. That is something, anyway.”
Johnny Wareagle stood in the center of the Delta Airlines terminal in Boston’s Logan Airport. He had parked his jeep close to the first terminal he came to and had spent the last several hours wandering about from one concourse to another. In his mind was the feeling that there was somewhere else he needed to be. A destination was calling out to him with a purpose all its own. The Delta terminal was no different in most respects from the others, but for some reason Johnny stopped in the center of its concourse.
In that moment the existence of the enemy was very real to him. In that moment, between breaths and heartbeats, he felt himself enter the mind of his greatest adversary. The concourse went black, and Johnny felt chaos and cool processed rage. He felt a soul cold enough to be frozen solid and a manitou that was formed of purpose and nothing more. Animals had more soul, more spirit than this. He felt he was glimpsing a machine, albeit one that gave off a foul odor of sulphur and rotten eggs.
Something lay dead in the blackness, and Johnny conjured memories of the jungle place he had walked through with Blainey. It was there that some part of his foe had been killed and replaced with another. The dead part might have reached out occasionally, but his foe never reached back. In the last instant before he slipped back, Johnny felt his adversary’s incredible power, an enjoyment of death equaled only by the capacity to bring it on.
Johnny opened his eyes, realized he was sweating. He had reached into a Wakinyan’s head for the first time, and a portion of his mind had come away scorched and seared. The night before, the spirits had brought his ancestors to him while he knelt by the fire. He could not see their faces, but their voices were clear. They told him the time for his Hanbelachia, his vision quest, had come at last. Everything he was, everything he had tried to be, was merely a prelude to the task before him. There would be only success or death, and nothing in the middle.
Johnny wanted to ask them about the hellfire, wanted to ask them about the obstacles he had overcome then, only to be faced with others. Was there no end? Would this test give way similarly to another? But his ancestors were gone, and there was only the breeze.
Johnny had smiled then. Life was a circle, after all, and a circle has no definable end or beginning. Strangely, McCracken seemed to have realized this ahead of him. He did not search for meanings or purpose; he merely acted. They shared the same circle, but seldom the same space in it.
Johnny started walking, his seven-foot, three-hundred-pound frame moving with the grace of a jungle cat even along the concourse. Many gawked, but few paid him a second glance. Or maybe by the time they tried to, he was gone. He gazed up at a screen listing departures, his eyes locking on the second one from the bottom: a Delta flight leaving in two hours.
For Philadelphia.
Chapter 23
McCracken came awake slowly, clawing past his eyelids for the light he felt beyond him.
“He’s coming around, Reverend,” he heard a young voice call from above him.
“Let me have a look, then. Let me have a look.”
Blaine’s eyes opened to an eerie half-light and the sound of water dripping somewhere nearby. A rank odor filled his nostrils, a putrid stench mellowed enough by an anomalous cold breeze to be tolerable. Suddenly a face attached to a shock of raggedy, long hair was peering down at him, twisting to get a better view.
“How you be then, governor?” asked the man, with a shadow of a British accent.
“If I’m dead, this better not be heaven.”
“Hell be more like it — and even that might be giving it too much credit,” said the man, and Blaine saw a pair of medium blue eyes set in a face layered with month-old beard stubble. “You’re in Harocimha, largest favela of them all. Home for me and my boys.”
Blaine was aware of feet shuffling toward him, the sound like rats lunging for a meal. It made him bolt upright, and a thunderclap erupted in his head.
“Easy does it, governor,” the man said, easing him back down to what Blaine realized was a straw mattress placed on top of a rickety set of bedsprings. In the next instant, the two of them were engulfed by a sea of young faces and eyes, smaller ones pushing their way forward to have a look and being shoved backward for their efforts. Gazing about, Blaine saw he was in some sort of shanty. Poorly layered brick and clapboard formed the interior of the structure, cutouts for windows, but no windows present, allowing the only light in. The interior was multileveled and steep. Only the remnants of a floor were visible, the rest being hard-packed dirt and rock. McCracken turned toward the sound of dripping water and saw a deep ravine running from outside the shanty down through it, carrying what could only be raw sewage based on the scent.