Empire of Dust (33 page)

Laika asked Ezekiel, "Is there anything else you can tell us about the church? What kind of land is around it?"

Ezekiel kept his eyes closed. "Canyons. Many canyons. High, narrow. Water close. Lotta water." He opened his eyes, but he appeared still to be seeing what he was talking about. "And Divine. In the ground."

"Anything more?" asked Laika, but Ezekiel Swain only shook his head. "I've got one more question. The sand drawings . . . are you or the Divine responsible for them in any way?"

Ezekiel looked at her, and she thought his ignorance was unfeigned. "Sand drawings?"

"Giant designs in the sand—Indian designs." He shook his head. "Don't know. Nothing."

"All right, then. It's time to get back into the car, in the trunk. You cooperate with us, and we'll be with the Divine tomorrow, understand?"

Ezekiel looked at Laika and smiled, looking like the most repulsive Toby mug imaginable. "I'll be . . .
good
boy. . . ."

Laika could only imagine.

T
hey came across a motel just a few miles north, near Round Rock. When they got out of the car, Laika went back to the trunk and leaned down to the crack. "We'll stay here until morning," she said. "Will you be all right?"

The voice came out as round and as wet as an echo in a well. "Much bigger . . . than a grave." Laika shuddered and headed for the office.

The motel had only six rooms, but they needed only three. Laika thought it wise to have Tony and Joseph room together. She didn't want Tony spending another night with Miriam and put her own room between the two men and the girl.

She told Miriam that they would be staying there that night and leaving the next morning at sunrise. Laika had asked the Indian desk clerk about public transportation when they'd checked in, and he'd said a bus passed through every morning around eleven, heading south to Gallup.

After Miriam was in her room, Tony and Joseph went into Laika's through their adjoining door. Joseph plugged his laptop into the phone jack and made the proper connections, while Laika tried to answer the questions that had been boiling within Tony for the last hour.

"The guy in the trunk—who the hell is he?"

"His name is Ezekiel Swain. And he seems to be the wild west version of Peder Holberg. Just as Holberg was given certain knowledge by the prisoner, so the prisoner speaks to Swain."

"Which is how we got the information about the mission that I'm trying to find," said Joseph, hitting the laptop's keys.

"Swain is, to all intents and purposes, dead," Laika said. "He's showing two wounds, either of which would have been fatal, but he still got up out of his grave and walked from somewhere on Route 40 up to Canyon de Chelly. He received an order from the prisoner, and by God, he obeyed it, dead or not. He even seems to have found a way to . . . revitalize himself by drawing fluids out of the living and using them to fuel himself."

"Is he susceptible to injury now?" Tony asked.

"I'm not sure," said Laika. "Why?"

"Because according to the tracker, whatever sucked out Gary Chee's insides might have fallen down into the canyon on that rock slide and then walked—make that
shuffled
—up to the road again."

"That wouldn't surprise me," said Joseph. "His body would have been lighter and less prone to damage when he fell in." Joseph shook his head and frowned. "I wonder what the hell leached it in the first place. It may have been the soil he was buried in. We'll never know what the content of that soil was, but it sure wasn't friendly."

"So he got up and walked, because of a command from the prisoner," Tony said. "I wonder if it was the same kind of force that apported Peder Holberg several miles to become one with his sculpture."

"It was certainly something we don't understand," Laika said.

"And," said Joseph, tapping the keys on his laptop, "we don't understand how it did what it did. It just drained every drop from that Damon character. And as for Swain, he just puffed up with Damon's fluids. Instant Jabba the Hut just add water."

"Is it processing yet?" Laika interrupted.

Joseph nodded. "I fed it the vector with a ten-mile margin of error to either side, the topography, and as good a description as we could get of the church. I asked for all Spanish missions within the parameters." The laptop beeped softly, and Joseph read the ghostly letters on the screen.

"We're in business," he said. "Only one match. The Mission of San Pedro. It's up in Utah, near Canyonlands National Park, out in the middle of nowhere . . . wait, I take it back, there was a ghost town called Hadley close by that nobody's lived in for over fifty years. Same with the mission—it went nonoperational back in 1939."

"That's pretty far north for a Spanish mission," Laika said.

"An outpost of progress, I assume," said Joseph. "It makes sense. Where more convenient for the Catholic Church to hide him than in one of their own deserted properties, whether it's in the middle of a city, like that abandoned office building, or the middle of the desert in an abandoned mission?"

"
Near
an abandoned mission," Laika said. "Swain said he was in a hole in the ground. How easy is this place to get to? Accessible by road?"

"It's not on any
major
route, but if you could get there sixty years ago, I'd guess you can still get there on dirt roads."

Tony shook his head. "Not necessarily. The desert takes back roads pretty quickly."

"But they had to get the prisoner in there," Laika said. "And they had to go in first and prepare the place for him. I'm betting there'll be roads, and if there are, Ezekiel Swain can get us there."

"What about the sand paintings?" Tony asked. "Is there any way they tie in?"

"Not that I can see," Laika said. "Swain seems to have no knowledge of them, or that's what he wants us to think. But it's been damned strange that wherever there's a killing there's a drawing not too far away."

"There wasn't one when Swain killed Damon," said Joseph.

"True. Or maybe there is one and we're just not aware of it yet." Laika sat down on the bed and put her hands on her knees. "There's another problem we've got, whether we find this prisoner or not. Ezekiel Swain."

"Mmm." Joseph nodded. "Jolly boy himself. Apparently he needs to keep drawing fluids from other people to keep functioning."

"And that makes him murderous," said Laika. "There's no way he can ever go free. But what do we do with him?"

"Could we turn him over to . . . some other agency?" suggested Tony. "Or the Company itself?" He shook his head and answered his own question. "I guess not, because Skye would find out about the prisoner. He'd know we didn't give him all the information we had."

"
'Oh, what a tangled web we weave,'
" quoted Joseph. "Not to be too brutal about it, but why don't we just cut off Swain's supply of sheep after he takes us to San Pedro? Put him in restraints and leave him that way until he dries up and blows away."

"If he does," Laika said. "He dried up in his grave, but he didn't blow away. It's probably our best bet, though—imprison him somewhere." She smiled. "Maybe where they're keeping the prisoner—if we free him."

"Let's not count our chickens," said Tony, but Laika could see that he was excited at the prospect. "I think there's another problem, though. What about Swain's sister, Jezebel? What if she talks?"

"Who's going to believe her?" Joseph said. "'Oh officer, this guy killed my brother, but he came back from the dead and killed
him
and sucked all the blood and everything else wet from his body.' Okay, and where's the body? 'I don't know.' And where's your brother? 'I don't know, but he went to look for the Divine.' Yeah, right."

"Won't they listen to her story a little more carefully when Yazzie tries to bring us back to testify at her trial and can't find us?" Tony said.

"We'll be on confidential government business," said Laika. "Unavailable. Just like for real." She stood up and walked over to the laptop. "Before we get some sleep," she said, "download all the maps you can of the area. . . ."

M
iriam Dominick removed the small pair of earphones and pulled away the tape that had held the contact microphone to the motel room wall. Though the conversation had been two rooms away, the door between Laika's room and Joseph and Tony's had been left open. The microphone was highly sensitive and had picked up the sound vibrations, converted them into an electronic signal that ran through a miniature amplifier which filtered out extraneous noise, and then entered Miriam's earphones. She had heard the entire conversation.

She placed the earphones, the mike, and the amplifier into the small false bottom of her backpack and slowly opened the door of her room. There was a phone booth across the parking lot, hidden from the rooms the agents were in by a cattle truck with high, slatted sides. Miriam ran to the phone, pushed in a quarter, and dialed.

She spoke quickly, telling everything that she had heard, including the general location of the Mission of San Pedro. The voice on the other end repeated the information, then said, "The final contingency goes into effect now. Everything will be ready. Understood?"

She hesitated for only a moment, then said, "Yes."

"God be with you."

"And also with you," she responded, but spoke into a dead phone. The other party had hung up.

She hurried back to her room and saw that the two doors down from hers were still closed, the curtains still drawn. She slipped into her room and closed the door behind her.

She lay on her bed for a long time, while the night came on and the sky grew dark. She did not sleep. She thought about Vincent Antonelli and Florence Kelly and Kevin Tompkins. She thought about what the Bible said and what she had been taught. She thought about her part in all this.

And then she thought about Vincent Antonelli some more.

T
ony Luciano didn't sleep well, either. He wanted to see Miriam again, to be with her alone before they parted. He didn't even allow himself to think that it could be forever.

But with Joseph in the next bed, turning fitfully from time to time, Tony could not bring himself to get up and walk out of the room and knock on Miriam's door. The sense of disapproval he received from Joseph made him feel like the time he was a kid and his father had forbidden him to see a Jewish girl he liked. One Saturday night he had crawled out his bedroom window to see her, only to find his father waiting for him on the ground.

No, he couldn't see her tonight. He had jeopardized his career enough, not to mention jeopardizing Miriam by drawing her into things about which she should know nothing. Maybe they would get a chance in the morning to say goodbye, and he could tell her how he felt then.

A
t 3 A.M., the approaching lights stirred Agent Daly from the semi-catatonic state of restfulness in which he was able to place himself. He called it sleeping with his eyes open, relaxing with all his senses alert.

"Hey," he said softly. "Lights." The man in the passenger seat and the other one in the back woke and cleared their throats. Daly patted the weapon in his lap and knew the Indian in the backseat would have his ready as well. The approaching vehicle was coming down the mountain, from the west. As it drew closer, Daly could hear the whining of springs, the thud of abused shocks. It sounded like some damned beat-to-shit pickup, not the operatives' car.

Finally it passed in front of them, and that's what it was, all right, a pickup with three or four Navajos sitting in the back, their arms resting on the sides, probably heading off to some early morning work on the other side of the mountain.

Daly eased back in his seat and let the weapon rest on his lap again. He knew they hadn't seen his Blazer, no matter how good their eyes were. Nobody would have seen it even in broad daylight, with the cover they had. And when somebody finally saw them, well, it would be just a little too late.

The Indians went back to sleep and Daly looked out into the dark. It was a clear night, and through the trees ahead he could see the lights of a few stars. Though he glanced at the rearview mirror, he couldn't see his face, only the darker shadow of his head against the blackness. It was just as well. He was sick and tired of looking at that long white scar running down the side of his face.