Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (17 page)

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“As am I, Mr. MacNeal, yet I am a pragmatist as well.

Colonel Nagashita was too valuable to me then to let him die, and you are too valuable tome now to let him kill you.”

His hand returned to his lap. “I need your services.”

“I am flattered, but I already have an employer.”

“I know. I believe he would find my mission and whatever he has charged you with coincide in most important areas. After all, Michael Loring appeared to head up Lorica Industries after the former CEO, Nerys Loring, died amid a strange atmospheric disturbance. I know you are here in connection with that, and I know that storm has been linked with the appearance of a monstrous creature in Phoenix itself.”

The American laughed. “I am afraid I find it easier to believe Godzilla will rampage through Tokyo tonight than I do to believe a monster threatened Phoenix.”

“But if you thought Godzilla or something like it
did
threaten Phoenix or Tokyo or your family, you would do what you could to prevent it, would you not?”

Sin slowly nodded. “I would.”

“And thus I am doing.” The old man’s head came up.

”You have heard of Arrigo and Michelle El-Leichter?”

Sin nodded again. “Yes. They live in Kimpunshima and appear to have some sort of training institute set up there.”

“I believe they exercise an undue influence on my grandson.”

“Exile them, just like you did Erika.” Sin’s response came a bit hot, and Nagashita hissed behind him. “Forgive my rudeness, but it seems like a viable solution.”

The old man remained silent for a moment, then spoke again in a lower voice. “I cannot. They have powerful friends who protect them. Exiling my grandson will do no good. He must be shown that they are frauds and stupid so that he can make up his own mind to abandon them.

To do that I need someone inside their organization who can reach him and sow doubt in his mind. You are an American, and Colonel Nagashita’s disgust with you is well known. I could not manufacture a better agent to be inserted into their school.”

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“I understand your reasoning, but why do you need your grandson turned away from them? Can’t you just explain things to him?”

“There are two facts of life in Japan for the Imperial family, Mr. Mac Neal. The first is that an industrial shogunate has imposed itself and has, realistically, stripped away the last of the power the emperor ever had. This is especially frustrating for a virile young man who wants to shape the future of his nation. Because of his blood, he cannot enter industry and exercise power, yet because of his blood, he is the best choice to lead his nation.”

The little man’s voice picked up new power as he continued. The second fact, and it is a
fact,
is one of history. My father renounced his divinity as part of the settlement of the Great Pacific War. He paid that price to preserve his nation and its identity. Christians note their Jesus gave his life for his people. In the same way, my father made a supreme sacrifice. However, his renuncia-tion of divinity does not change the fact that blood of gods runs in our veins.

“You might think that curious, Mr. MacNeal, a relic of a past time, a myth. It is not. It is fact and, at once, both wonderful and terrible. The power that blood confers on the Imperial family is incalculable and, were it misused, could be disastrous.”

An uneasy shiver ran down Sin’s spine.
Blood of the
gods? This is as crazy as giant spiders invading Phoenix,
yet I find myself believing him.
“You think Arrigo El-Leichter is trying to use your grandson and his divine blood in some way that will hurt Japan?”

“Not just Japan, but the world.” The man’s hands came together into a black knot. “The El-Leichters are based in your Phoenix and operated out of Hawaii until indicted in an illegal phone credit-card scheme. They have many followers who are influential throughout the world. They claim connection with a brotherhood of space travelers, and we have no way of knowing how much of what they say is true.”

Something told Sin that no matter how bizarre this sounded, the El-Leichters were just as dangerous as the people Coyote had sent him to Japan to find. He dis-trusted any conclusion based on next to no information,

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but he’d also learned to trust his hunches. “All right, you want me to infiltrate the El-Leichter institution and dissuade your grandson from following them. I’ll do it, but on two conditions.”

“You will not find me ungrateful if you succeed, Mr.

MacNeal.”

“I believe you. First, I want Nagashita kept away from me and my friends. I need running room, and I don’t need a shadow right now. If I need him, I’ll call him.”

The man in shadows nodded. “Done.”

“Second, when this is over, I’ll need help finishing off the job my boss gave me to do. I would like your help in that.”

“This you will have,
if
you save my grandson.”

“I’ll do my best.” Sin nodded solemnly. “What if that isn’t good enough?”

The little man remained immobile for a second, then his head nodded forward. “Colonel Nagashita informed me you have a gun. I assume you know how to use it.”

“You want me to kill your grandson?”

“I do not desire his death, but it would be better to mourn at his funeral then to preside over the destruction of the world.”

Lost in his own little world, Mickey pushed a stamped tin car along the sidewalk in front of the box in which his family lived. The rear wheel supports scraped along the ground and left wavy white lines on the concrete. The wheels has long ago vanished, but Mickey didn’t mind. In that vehicle, he saw himself and his sister and father and Rajani all driving off to a place where they could be happy.

He did not hear the man walk up, but that came less because of his hearing loss from repeated ear infections than it did from the man’s stealthy nature. Instead, Mickey
felt
his presence and looked up. The man’s bald head eclipsed the sun, giving him a nimbus halo. Despite
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having to look up at the man and his having such a startling silhouette, Mickey saw he was small. Having met Rajani, though, he did not mistake a tiny physique for powerlessness.

“Yii.”

“Yes, hello to you, too.” The man’s voice came softly, barely a whisper, yet Mickey heard it clearly above the roar of the crane piling more apartments onto the building.

«
How are you today, Mickey?»

«
You can brain-talk!»
Mickey smiled openly, for a half-second forgetting how such things had spawned revulsion and ridicule by others.

«
I
can
indeed.»
The man squatted down, and the sun briefly blinded Mickey. Reaching out, the man took Mickey’s lower jaw in his hand. Mickey pulled away, but the man caught him again. «
I will not harm, you, Mickey.

I have come to help you.»

The little boy blinked with surprise. “Hela?”

“Help, yes.” The man’s dark eyes seemed to glow with a light blue outline for a moment, and Mickey felt the flesh of his face and lips tingle. That ticklish sensation traced along the crack in his upper palate and on back through his sinuses.It contracted and shot off out both ears. “How could they have let you go for this long? This should have been repaired before you were out of diapers.”

Mickey stared at him with innocent eyes. “Hela?”

The little man nodded solemnly and stood. “Yes, I will help you. I will make you whole.” He extended his hand to Mickey. “Come with me.”

Mickey shot a glance back over his shoulder at the door of his house. “Orfey.”

“Give your sister not another thought, my child. You know she would do anything she could to see you made well.” The man’s voice surrounded him like one of his sister’s hugs. «
This is your chance to become what she
wants you to be, and you’re giving her back her life.»

«But, I should say good-bye.»

“When you return you can say hello,” the man said in a voice so compassionate that Mickey missed the lie in his

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words. “Come with me.”

Mickey stood and took the man’s hand. The fact that his flesh felt cool but dry did not strike Mickey as unusual.

Smiling his broken smile, he walked off with the small man and after 10 paces they had left Flagstaff worlds behind.

Rajani almost refused the ride from the ramshackle pickup truck that slowed and pulled off the road in a dust cloud. Most of the vehicles she’d seen in a similar condition had been burned-out hulks left beside I-17, and some of those had more parts than the truck stopping for her.

Big and boxy, it was missing the right front wheel-well panel, and the rusty front bumper hung lopsided like a madman’s grin. The grill might once have been a chromed grid, but enough pieces of it had vanished over the years to make it look like a crossword puzzle template.

The light of the single working headlight pinned her in place, and she contemplated darting back into the brush at the edge of the road. She reached out with her mind and sensed no hostility from the two occupants of the vehicle and, in fact, caught a reverent joy from the one on the passenger side.

The passenger door opened slowly. The old man climbed out, apparently stiff and sore. He turned back and looked at the younger man behind the wheel and said something to him in a tongue Rajani could not decipher.

Holding on to the open door so he would not slip in the gravel beside the road, he came around and smiled at her.

“Welcome. If you wish a ride, we will give you one.”

The opposite door opened, and Rajani instantly got a twin blast of concern and fear from the younger man getting out. She noticed that both of them wore their straight hair long, with the youth’s jet black and the old man’s steely gray. “Grandfather, stay away from her. She might be one of them.” The young man reached into the truck to pull a shotgun from the rifle rack over the rear window.

The old man frowned. “The young ones, they know
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nothing. Come with us, little sister.” The old man looked back at his grandson. “Will, this is a great day. Do nothing to spoil it. Leave the gun there.”

Will shook his head but did not free the gun from the rack. “Picking up a hitchhiking gangbanger on a lonely road. I can’t imagine what you would have done if I’d let you make this trip alone, Grandfather.”

Despite the younger man’s reticence, the warmth and happiness being radiated by the older man drew Rajani forward. She did not flinch at the gentle touch of the older man’s hand on her back as he guided her around the door and into the middle of the bench seat. She smiled as sweetly as she could at Will, and his frown lightened a bit, but he remained sullen as he pulled his door shut. His grandfather climbed into the cab, and Rajani found herself slightly uncomfortable on the crowded seat.

Carefully avoiding her left knee, Will jammed the truck into gear and started them off. “We’re heading to the reservation east of Phoenix. Okay if we drop you there?”

Before she could reply, the old man patted her right hand. “We will take you wherever you need to go, little sister. I am He Whose Antics Are The Light in The Eye of the Raven.”

“Raven’seyes are both glowing tonight,”Will grumbled.

“You may call me George, and this is my grandson, Will.”

The pure joy in the older Native American radiated out and stilled the apprehension given off by his grandson. “I am Rajani.”

“So, Rajani, what’s your story?” Will jammed the truck into a higher gear. “Have to run from a drug bust in Flag?”

She tried to think of a plausible story to offer them, but she knew that what had fooled children would not pass muster with these two. She glanced over at the older man, and once she looked in his eyes she knew she could safely tell him the truth. “My parents were born on another world, but I was born here. I was named Rajani after a Hindu goddess in honor of Dr. Chandra, my parents’ best friend.