Dream of a Falling Eagle

this silly report of yours is going to do? You can't touch us. They could fire everybody at Langley-every clerk, secretary, director, analyst, and field operative-and blow up the building, and it wouldn't matter to us. We can't be rooted out, only transplanted. We're not listed on any budget; we pay our own way. The CIA is our host body of choice, but there are others.'

'Interesting that you should compare yourself to a parasite.'

'Ugly, but curiously accurate. Ever try to kill a tapeworm, Frederickson?'

'Hey, I'm giving it my best shot.'

'It was an exercise in futility, even before you ended up here as my guest. We're the people you're really after, and, until now, you didn't even know we existed. We're invulnerable. Only a handful of people buried deep within the agency make up our organization, and none of these individuals has ever been a political appointee or a director, not even a director of Operations. So you can reorganize the CIA any way you like, and it won't affect us. Put the CIA out of business, and we'll just pack up shop and move elsewhere. After all, we only have a dozen other intelligence agencies to choose from.'

'I should bite my tongue for saying this, Professor, but it sounds to me like you're whistling in a graveyard. I think you're full of shit. If you weren't worried about the report, you wouldn't have been sending out your boys of summer to butcher potential witnesses and informants.'

He shrugged. 'Moving is inconvenient. We prefer that things remain as they are. Incidentally, I enjoyed your remark about whistling in a graveyard. Your dossier describes you as occasionally witty, and I'm glad I've had this opportunity to appreciate your wit firsthand.'

'Why the hell did you kill Thomas Dickens, Fournier? That didn't even make the halfwit mark. It made no sense at all.'

'You killed him, Frederickson. You killed him the moment you decided to try to use him to further the cause of people of your political persuasion.'

'I wasn't planning to use him for anything at all.'

'That's not the way I heard it. I received information that at some opportune time in the future you were going to use Mr. Dickens to try to severely embarrass a friend of ours. The act of plagiarism itself was, of course, very trivial, but the lapse in ethics could have been used not only to tarnish Mr. Kranes's personal reputation, but also to damage his credibility and thus his political career. That would not be trivial. He's very important to our plans, and we weren't going to sit around and wait for you to drop that shoe.'

'Your fucking information was wrong, Fournier!' I snapped. 'That plagiarism business was strictly between Dickens and Kranes. I was just acting as a go-between. It was business, and the deal was done. Dickens never even asked the real name of the man who'd been stealing his poems, and I didn't tell him. You killed that man for nothing!'

'It seems I was misinformed,' Fournier replied in a flat, uninterested tone. 'Pity.'

'And why that way?! For Christ's sake, couldn't you have just shot him?!'

I wasn't sure the lean, white-haired killer was going to answer, but he obviously enjoyed hearing himself talk, and after a few moments of reflection, he said, 'I will grant you that the method of execution was perhaps inappropriate, Frederickson.'

'Inappropriate?!'

'It doesn't make any difference now, but it could have complicated matters. One has to use the tools at hand, and some tools are blunter and less flexible than others. You can't carve scrimshaw with a chainsaw.'

'What the fuck does that mean?!'

He smiled thinly, but there was no humor reflected in the black pools of his eyes. 'Be patient,' he said softly. 'I promise you an answer.'

Guy Fournier was making me very angry, and I couldn't afford to deal in any emotional currency, particularly not the very debilitating coin of anger. I took a deep breath, slowly let it out, then yawned. 'Look, Professor, this has all been very interesting and informative, but I'm getting sleepy. I think I'll head home now.'

'I think not. I have a surprise for you.'

'I hate surprises. I don't mean to sound impatient, Fournier, but if you're not going to let me go home, tell me what the hell we're waiting for. What happens next?'

'We are waiting for my associates to be brought to me. They don't live as close by, and their modes of travel are somewhat restricted. The sequence of events after that will depend on your attitude.'

'Right now I have a very bad attitude.'

'I know. That can be changed.'

'Now that would really surprise me.'

'You will be taken to my place of power.'

''Place of power'? What the hell is that?'

He cocked his head, and once again the corners of his mouth curled up ever so slightly. His eyes seemed to gleam a little brighter. 'You might call it my personal house of worship.'

'It sounds kinky. I'll bet it isn't Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Don't tell me you actually believe your own voodoo bullshit.'

''Believe' isn't the operative word, Frederickson. Voodoo isn't really a belief system, like Judaism or Christianity. It's not a religion at all-not for adepts. The fact that it is considered as such by so many people is precisely what makes it work for true practitioners.'

'True practitioners like yourself.'

'Yes.'

'So the fact that it's a belief system for hundreds of thousands of people means that it's not really a belief system for voodoo hotshots like you at the center of the web. Your students must have to take a lot of notes.'

'There isn't time for a complete lecture.'

'If voodoo isn't really a religion, what is it? I mean for true practitioners like yourself.'

'A means of gathering and exercising power, of course.'

'Then it's no different from any other religion-for its professional practitioners.'

'Well, yes. But the voodoo priest is not so much interested in making religious career choices in order to make a living as in focusing concentration and will.'

'You mean scaring the shit out of other people in order to get them to do what you want them to do.'

'Exactly. Voodoo does have that in common with organized religions. The difference is the lack of attending hypocrisy. The voodoo priest makes no claim to saving souls.'

'Far be it from me to defend organized religions, Fournier, but they don't serve up horror as the main course.'

'Your naivete surprises me, Frederickson. Your dossier would have led me to believe that you would appreciate the horror of the Mass, where men, women, and children delight in eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a crucified Christ.'

'Of course I appreciate the horror of the Mass, but in the end it's just folks drinking wine and eating biscuits while they gawk at a statue of a man nailed to a cross. It's not the real McCoy.'

'I am a voodoo master, Frederickson. You should feel honored to be. . attended by me.'

'Well, voodoo still sounds like a religion to me, and it makes my heart flutter to think that you-'

I abruptly stopped speaking, my words clogging in my throat, when my heart really did begin to flutter. A man in a gray suit, gray turtleneck, and dirty sneakers had suddenly appeared next to Fournier in the doorway, and his appearance was startling. He was over six feet, but slightly stooped, as if there was something wrong with his spine. He was either bald or his head had been shaved, and his eyes were lifeless, vacantly staring into some abyss in front of him. He was black, undoubtedly Haitian, but his flesh was ashen, virtually matching the color of his suit. He was slack-jawed, and spittle ran out of both corners of his mouth. He moved forward and was followed into the room by two other men. They were slightly shorter, but were dressed in identical gray suits and turtlenecks, and sneakers. All were hairless, ashen-skinned, vacant-eyed, slack-jawed, and drooling. The three of them looked like nothing so much as extras in some old Boris Karloff movie. Fournier said something to them in a language I recognized as Creole. Then the three shuffled forward, slowly wending their way around the piles of books and magazines, spreading out until they formed a semicircle in front of me. They stopped when they were about six feet away.

The voodoo master's chainsaw had arrived.