“No, Ms. Maxwell. You are scared of me, because you don’t understand me. And what you don’t understand, you can’t control. Would you like me to tell you about myself? Would you like to hear about the feeling that rushes through me when I kill? I live for those opportunities, Ms. Maxwell, and when they are not provided, I create them. This bother you?”
“Er…no.”
“The Indian understood me. I saw it in his eyes. He understood me because we’re the same. It’s the same with McCracken. I can feel it. That is not good.”
“They’ll be there together.”
“I know.”
“You’ll have your chance.”
Abraham glided close enough to Virginia Maxwell for her to see his lean face clearly for the first time. “And perhaps then you’ll understand me and the others. Without McCracken and the Indian, we’ll be all that is left.”
They checked into the Days Inn-Oyster Point in the center of Newport News; they would be using it as a base. Patty Hunsecker retired to her room for a bath, and Sal Belamo went out for supplies, leaving Blaine and Johnny alone.
“What gives, Indian?” Blaine asked Wareagle, who was staring into the mirror suspended over the room’s dresser. It was too small, of course, to accommodate him, and he had to bend slightly at the knees to look into his own eyes.
Wareagle said nothing.
McCracken spoke again. “When you got into the car, you felt different, Indian, like I never felt you before.”
Wareagle turned his gaze toward McCracken. “Look in the mirror, Blainey, and tell me what you see.”
“Let me open the blinds and turn the lights on first.”
“Without the light.”
“A pair of outlines without much detail, Indian. Yours is bigger than mine.”
“Before facing his Hanbelachia, such is the true warrior. A figure from a child’s coloring book before any shades have been added between the lines.” Wareagle turned slowly from the mirror and looked at Blaine. “Facing Abraham across the sky in Philadelphia should have faced me with the Hanbelachia that is my fate, but instead it faced me with something else.” Johnny turned back to the mirror. “I looked into his eyes and I saw a looking glass, I saw myself. I realized that my shape had been filled in by the will of others.” Wareagle turned his gaze hard into McCracken’s “The Wakinyan are what the country made us into first.”
“Or tried to.”
“No, Blainey, succeeded. We were trained and tempered, and then the hellfire forged our souls in an image that has held us hostage ever since. We hide behind the illusion we are doing right, but that is only from the perspective they gave us.”
“What about justification?”
“Each act finds its own. The doing provides the context, but in the end the act is the same.”
“You’re saying we’re no better than the disciples are?”
“I’m saying we’re no different.”
Blaine came a little closer; his reflection sharpened next to Wareagle’s in the mirror. “No, Indian, you’ve got it wrong this time, and you said how yourself. Nam — the hellfire — forged our souls because we had souls to forge. The disciples had their souls stripped away. That’s what made them. That’s what makes them.”
A slight smile from Johnny flickered in the mirror. “It seems, Blainey, that you have forgotten the first lesson we learned in the hellfire: Never judge the enemy by your own values. The Black Hearts did not consider themselves soulless, and in another way neither do the Wakinyan.”
“This is more than just us against them.”
Wareagle’s bear claw of a right hand flattened out against the mirror and seemed ready to tear through the glass. “It is our vision quest to face them. Passing the rites successfully means smashing the mirror. We trap their reflections inside, at the same time we free our own from what others have made us.”
“Eleven of them left. Plus Abraham.”
“Yes, Blainey.”
“We can do it, Indian, but only if we meet them on our terms.”
“Not an easy task.”
“But you said it yourself, Johnny: I know how they think, and I know how the Children of the Black Rain think, too.”
“Your plan is to outguess them, Blainey?”
“My plan is to do exactly what they expect me to do, and take it from there.”
Wareagle’s head tilted slightly. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“I never said we could reasonably expect to be able to handle the Wakinyan alone.”
“It appears we have no choice.”
“Appearances, Indian, can be deceiving.”
Chapter 31
Virginia Maxwell’s limousine rolled into the underground garage constructed beneath the Oyster Point office building housing the Gap at 9:00 Friday morning. Access to the organization’s floors could be gained only through a single entrance at the garage level. The entrance had a single door that looked utterly innocuous except for the small electronic slot that accepted identification cards to permit access. The doorknob was just for show. It opened and closed mechanically and was formed of eight-inch plate steel.
Maxwell’s limousine slid through the serpentine garage structure and parked in its accustomed spot. Seconds later, surrounded by four guards, the head of Gap was ushered to the door and led through it. Two more armed guards were waiting in the claustrophobic entry, one already pushing the button that opened the elevator doors. Seconds later, the compartment was whizzing straight to the eighteenth floor, where Virginia Maxwell’s office was located.
The guards were still enclosing her when the compartment doors slid open on Maxwell’s floor.
McCracken and Wareagle had watched the limousine arrive through binoculars from the top floor of one of the soon-to-be completed buildings adjacent to the one housing the Gap. It had taken all of the previous afternoon and evening to get the logistics of the operation in place and, even now, too much remained unsure.
“How many, Indian?” Blaine asked Johnny, who still had not taken the binoculars from his eyes.
“Four men with her in the backseat, Blainey.”
“Can you make any outside the building or on the roof?”
“Two shooters on the roof. Five scattered about the garage entrance in various guises.”
“Makes eleven in all.”
“None of them Wakinyan, Blainey.”
“What else is bothering you, Indian?”
“She knew we’d see all her guards.”
“Of course.”
“And she knew we’d be able to get by them.”
“Equally true, Johnny.”
“Too much show, Blainey. She is making this too easy.”
“Then what do you say we take her up on her invitation?”
At ten-thirty, with the building residents settled in for the morning, Patty Hunsecker
drove the van up to the main entrance of the underground parking garage.
“Go right on through,” the guard told her, and just like that she was in.
The van belonged to the Virginia Air Filtration and Conditioning Company and had been appropriated by Sal Belamo the previous night. The building containing the Gap had permanently closed windows, relying totally on its internal system for proper air flow. Accordingly, the Virginia Company’s vans were common enough sights on the premises and, of course, anyone wearing the proper overalls would have easy access to just what Blaine needed.
Sal had obtained the overalls, too, although Johnny’s fit only as well as could be expected.