Two Songs This Archangel Sings

I dug my hand into the pack, pushed it down through dirty clothes into the middle of my bedroll, where I had stuffed the yellow oilskin packet. 'Captain,' I continued, 'I have something here that I want you and Mr. Andrews to see. It's something that Veil Kendry had a friend bury for him up in the mountains a lot of years ago; a good forensic chemist will be able to tell us exactly how many. It will prove a link between Kendry and Madison that goes back to the war. Andrews, at the very least it will prove that Madison is lying through his teeth when he denies knowing Veil.'

Wriggling my fingers, I continued to search for the feel of the oilskin, but found nothing where I thought I had put it. Fighting a growing sense of panic, I upended the pack and spread the contents out over the surface of the desk. I sifted through the dirty clothes, unrolled the sleeping bag. The packet was not there.

'There was a small package sealed in yellow oilskin inside this backpack,' I said to McGarvey as I walked around the desk to stand directly in front of him. 'I know it was there when you brought us in. What the hell did you do with it?'

McGarvey said nothing, but he did not avert his eyes. There was a curious expression on his face, a mixture of sympathy, embarrassment, and not a little anger. He was a man of integrity and honor, his eyes and expression said, but there was only so much he could do for us. He'd already bent far under heavy pressure once, but he was afraid he would be broken if he tried to do it this time; he could not buck the wishes-or actions-of an official presidential emissary, especially when, as had almost certainly happened, the spectral issue of national security had been raised.

Burton Andrews had been allowed to search our belongings. He had found the packet, opened it, and examined its contents. Whatever had been in the packet must have proved all I'd said it would, because the presidential aide had felt compelled to steal it.

'Dirty pool, Andrews,' I said, turning to the baby-faced man with the large brown eyes who was sitting stiffly in his chair, steadfastly staring out the window. His hands were clenched tightly together on top of his briefcase. 'Tough bargaining is one thing, but stealing and concealing crucial evidence in a series of crimes including murder is something else again. Now, you get your skinny ass out to the car and bring that packet back in here so that Captain McGarvey can see what's in it.'

Andrews didn't move. Garth did. Deliberately, with disarming casualness, my brother rose from his chair and walked over to where the presidential aide was sitting. Sensing Garth's presence, Andrews turned his head back just in time to catch the full force of Garth's fist smashing into his face. Andrews' head snapped back as a crimson geyser of blood spewed from his shattered nose. Andrews and his chair flipped over backwards, while his attache case and the papers it contained went flying through the air.

'My brother almost died getting that package,' Garth said to the fallen man in a voice that was all the more chilling for its lack of passion, its cool, measured tone. 'Maybe you should die for taking it away from him.'

McGarvey and I reached Garth at about the same time, and while the trooper wrapped his arm around Garth's neck in a choke hold I went for my brother's legs, trying to trip him up. But an aroused Garth is something- or not something-to see. My brother swatted me to one side and, with McGarvey lifted off the floor and hanging on his back, bent over and cocked his fist in preparation for another blow that would really put Andrews' lights out, and possibly even kill him. I wished McGarvey would hit Garth over the head with his gun butt, but it was very obvious where the trooper's sympathies lay, and it was too late for that anyway.

'Garth, stop it!' I screamed as I pulled at my brother's belt. 'Don't hit him again! You'll kill him! It doesn't make any difference that he took the packet! I know what's in it! Nothing is lost!'

Garth's fist stopped in midair, and his arm dropped back to his side. McGarvey took his arm away from Garth's throat, stepped back and-like my brother-stared at me quizzically.

'You do?' Garth asked softly.

I looked down at Andrews. The presidential aide was holding both hands cupped over his broken nose, but in his eyes, plainer than either shock or pain, was the same question.

'I do,' I said defiantly, staring hard at Andrews. 'After the Operation Archangel abort and Veil's banishment from the army by Madison, he eventually learned to control his madness through painting. From the beginning, Veil's style and technique had been to compose massive, realistic murals comprised of smaller, surrealistic canvases that appeared abstract when viewed singly. I've seen many of those murals myself-surreal landscapes, peaceful, and without people. But I realize now that his work wasn't always like that. When he first started, his style- but not his technique-was different.

'When I spoke to Viktor Raskolnikov, Veil's dealer, he told me that Veil's style had been different when he first started to paint; the colors were richer, more vivid, and many of the shapes in the individual canvases more pronounced. Those first shapes were fragments of portraits of people, and the subject of his first mural, or murals, was the story of what had happened to him-his assignment in Laos, his conflicts with Orville Madison, his replacement by Colonel Po, the Archangel plan, the incident with the pimp in Saigon, his defection, and, finally, his banishment and the sentence of death imposed by his ex-C.I.A. controller. All of it was included in his first work, in fine detail. You can bet that Orville Madison's face is all over the place, along with Colonel Po's, and Veil's.

'What had happened to him had to have been eating up Veil inside, but he couldn't talk about it to anyone. What he did was to paint it, after almost self-destructing, and that got it out of his system. Eventually he began to sell his work, but before he sold any painting he would photograph it, number the photograph, and probably record the name of the person or institution that had purchased the painting. The packet contained a photographic record-probably slides-of all the Archangel paintings, along with a number key for putting all the individual canvases back into their original sequence to form the larger mural. There would also be a list of people and museums that had the paintings. In fact, I had number one, the very first painting in the first sequence. I had it hanging on my bedroom wall, but it was lost in the fire that Madison's men started when they tried to kill me. But the rest of the paintings still exist, scattered all over the country.' I paused, smiled thinly at Andrews. 'How am I doing, you amoral son-of-a-bitch?'

Andrews, dripping blood all over the front of his shirt and vest, rolled over on his side, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and pressed it to his nose. 'How could you know?' he said, defeat in his voice as well as his body. 'The package was sealed.'

McGarvey's breath came out of him in a small explosion, and the big trooper reached over and gripped my shoulder. 'Goddamn,' he said, a huge grin on his face.

'I'm tired of you, sleazeball,' I said, leaning over Andrews and fairly spitting the words at him. 'I'm also tired of your sleazeball boss, the president of the United States. I can't believe I voted for the bastard. Damn, you're small men.'

'Frederickson, listen-'

'Shut up. I've already listened to everything I want to hear from you, or anybody else in this administration. All the people Madison has killed and the lives he's destroyed… and you treat us like criminals. You didn't think that Garth and I were concerned over the impact this information might have?! You didn't think Veil was concerned?! Yet, you would have destroyed Veil Kendry and us, and sent Madison into a cushy retirement someplace, just so that your administration wouldn't be embarrassed. You helped to save our lives, and we appreciate that, but it's not enough; nothing you seem able to do or propose is enough. Too many other people have died at the hands of your secretary of state. All we ever wanted and want, all Veil wants, is justice. You knew what we'd been through, and still you couldn't come here and deal with us in good faith.' I paused, sucked in a deep breath to try to tamp down my rage, turned to McGarvey. 'Are Garth and I free to go, Captain?'

'You certainly are, Frederickson. The sergeant out at the front desk has your guns. Tell me where you want to go; one of my men will drive you, or we'll get you plane tickets-courtesy of New York State, of course.'

Garth walked over to me, put his arm around my shoulders, and gave me an appreciative pat. 'Is it the Times or the Post, brother?'

'Let's start with the New York Times. Captain, may we use your telephone?'

'Certainly,' McGarvey said, picking up the telephone on his desk and moving it to the edge closest to me.

'I know a few reporters on the Times, Andrews, and I'm going to begin by talking to one on the phone; that's just in case something happens to us after we leave here. Once the story gets going, our deaths won't make a difference; the reporters will have Veil's paintings to look for and piece together to verify that story. You may have the sequence key and catalog of owners, but that's fine. Keep them. Even if you've