Gabriel's Stand (41 page)

“Hilda Traumen?” The Swiss Attaché for Environmental Policy looked up from her Washington D.C. desk, peering over her reading glasses with bright blue eyes. Hilda was a distinguished woman of seventy-five years. A bald woman with dead eyes looked back.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Traumen asked sharply, putting aside the morning's recent courier delivery.

“Sorry to intrude,” Berker said. “You might remember me from a meeting in Bremen ten years ago.”

Traumen's eyes narrowed. “Berker,” she said. “The G-A-N. Of course. But, the American authorities. You are—”

“Wanted.”

Traumen nodded gravely. “I suppose you are seeking sanctuary?”

“Not exactly. What I really need is your identity.”

Traumen's face turned ashen.

——

It was a crisp, sweater-and-coat day; and the sky roiled with gray clouds, broken with slivers of blue. Luminaries filed quietly up the path on Mount St. Alban, stopping fifty yards from the towering Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Washington National Cathedral. The flow of Washington's elite political figures and bureaucrats had backed up at the Secret Service screening points. Gabriel, Alice, Snowfeather and a small Gabriel's Native American Honor Guard, selected by Dornan—vetted by Secret Service—and led by High Tree, had been pre-seated near the President in key aisle positions. Except for a handful of Secret Service officers, no firearms were permitted inside. Gabriel's honor guard was permitted ‘traditional ceremonial weapons' only.

“It's such a lovely cathedral,” Hilda Traumen said to the Secret Service agent outside the door. “Just like the ones in Europe.”

“Yes, ma'am,” the young man said to the lady he assumed was the Swiss Attaché. “It's the sixth largest in the world.”

“You must be very proud,” she said. The agent was dressed in a neat navy blue suit. Except for the bulge under his jacket and an inconspicuous flesh colored ear piece, he could have been a parishioner greeting honored guests.

“May I examine your purse, please?”

Berker smiled, unsnapped the heavy leather purse, and held it up, so that the agent could look directly into the contents. “Just an old woman's things,” she said, trying not to betray any strain from the bag's extra weight.

“Thank you, ma'am,” he said, then turned away. Berker heard a hearty, “Hello, Senator!” spoken to the person next in line behind her.

I will need a seat toward the front
, Berker thought, picking up her pace. She nodded benignly at the Very Reverend Darcy Stack, Dean of the Cathedral, who stood at the doorway, then hurried past the woman, making her way into the Nave. As she entered, Berker found herself in an uncomfortably huge space.
The belly of a whale
, she thought, glancing up at the rib arches that soared overhead. She strode up the aisle, passing the still empty rows. She selected a narrow spot on the center aisle, about seven rows back from the front. She smiled benignly as an elderly gentleman slid toward the center to accommodate her. Then she sat, still as a statue, white gloved hands neatly folded on her lap. She would be invisible for a while.

Senator Jacobs of California joined Senator Taft Castorini, President Pro-tem of the Senate, on the front row, to the left of the center aisle. President T. S. Smith, his wife, and Snowfeather were already seated on the front row, left of the aisle. Secret Service agents sat on either side and directly behind the President. Several more stood to the left of the pews, hands free at their sides, eyes relentlessly scanning the crowd.

President Smith's father, Thurston Senior, sat next to Alice Canyon Hawke, and Gabriel Standing Bear. Dr. John Owen, looking pale but determined, sat to Gabriel's right. The four of them were just behind the President and Snowfeather. Sitting on the aisle next to them was Roberto Kahn.

Four sturdy men, members of Gabriel's “Honor Guard”, sat in separated pairs conspicuously wearing their tribal gear. They bracketed two aisles behind Gabriel, Alice and Thurston Smith. At the very rear of the cathedral seating, on the very last pew, nearest the exit, sat a distinguished looking Navajo man, his arms folded, a heavy satellite phone at his side. Fred Loud Owl had been tasked to get news to Elisabeth on New Kona.

The immense organ, whose pipes were visible in the choir section ahead, finished playing Bach, and began a rendition of
America the Beautiful
while the last of the guests found seats on the remaining rows. Silence gradually took hold as President Smith got up, and invited Gabriel Standing Bear and Dr. John Owen to join him at the front. Together, the President, Dr. Owen and former Senator Standing Bear proudly escorted Snowfeather to the right side of the transept.

As soon as the President, her father and John Owen had returned to their seats, Snowfeather made her way up to the Canterbury Pulpit—the ornate structure stood to the right of the aisle and rose ten feet tall. On both sides of the transept, media mavens bustled, jostling their cameras, mikes and earpieces, while the Secret Service kept a watchful silence. Snowfeather stood for a moment, looking down the full length of the Nave where the President and a good portion of the Washington elite were gathered. As she began the invocation, Snowfeather's voice was strong and clear.

“This is how the twentieth century Russian Poet, Yetvushenko, wrote about the dying Soviet tyranny: ‘How sharply our children will be ashamed, taking their last vengeance for these horrors…'”

At Snowfeather's first words, all remaining audience sounds fell quiet. Only a single muffled siren could be heard over her voice. It was as if the audience of bureaucrats and politicians who had come to honor this renegade activist and the occasion could somehow repair their damaged integrity by the force of silence.

Snowfeather continued with Yetvushenko's words, “‘remembering how in so strange a time, common integrity could look like courage.'” Snowfeather looked out—the irony was lost on most of her audience. “We are gathered here not for vengeance but renewal, and to honor both the integrity and great courage of all the fallen.”

Eight thousand miles away, wind kicked up tall whitecaps outside a bedroom window. A large storm was brewing. Dr. Elisabeth Owen-Larson Wang awoke to the sound of the wind whipping the palm trees along the ridge above the house—almost, but not quite sonorous, almost but not quite blending with the distant crash of waves outside. From the open window, she could see a man pacing on the deck outside, just visible in the faint blush of the pre-dawn. It was Ken, who had arrived late the previous night.

She slipped on a robe and stepped into the hallway, noticing that the wind was louder there. One hurried turn to the right at the end of the hall and she was in the common room. The room was dark and sparsely furnished, but opened directly onto the large extended deck that hung over the Pacific below.

A yellow light glowed in a kitchenette recessed in the wall adjacent to the deck. Near the far edge of the deck, Elisabeth could see Bill, standing with Ken next to a suspended television screen. As she walked out on the deck, Dornan turned to her. “Good morning, Elisabeth. It has started.” He turned to the kitchenette. “Ken, you might want to get your wife some coffee.” Ken hugged his wife, kissing her on her neck, then disappeared.

On the screen, Snowfeather was looking out over the audience. “Oh, I knew them, all right. They were born human, but they rejected their humanity and the human life-affirmation and compassion that bind us all.”

The camera panned back to show Gabriel, Alice and Elisabeth's father—all were sitting directly behind the new President. “Humanity has won a victory… for the moment.” The camera panned the rest of the crowd. “In just a moment, Dr. John Owen will speak to us.” Snowfeather paused.

“Ken, hurry up with the coffee! You're missing this!” Dornan shouted.

Ken Wang emerged from the shadows in flower shorts and tee shirt, carrying two mugs of coffee. “Hey, sleeping beauty,” he said, kissing his wife again, bowing and handing her the cup.

Snowfeather continued. “Dr. Owen and his family have suffered great losses, but they ask us to remember with our thoughts and prayers all those who have fallen in these days of anguish, heroism, and sacrifice.” Snowfeather looked into a forward camera, a tiny remote operated unit, discreetly suspended over the crowd by wires. “Dr. Owen?”

Little Josh padded out on the deck in his pajamas just as his grandfather was walking from pew to podium. “Hey, tiger,” Ken said, and tousled his stepson's hair.

“Is Grandpa John on TV yet?”

“Look,” Ken said, pointing at the screen. “Keep watching.”

John Owen was standing next to Snowfeather below the pulpit. She smiled and pointed to the steps to the lectern.

One of the screens in the transept showed an image that was not part of the feed—the camera had framed an elderly woman sitting in seeming reverential attention on the seventh row seat aisle. A bearded man from the press corps stood directly in front of the monitor, staring the picture. Reporter Jim Schlier turned and noticed the bearded man peering at the monitor. Jim stopped.

“
Max
,” he whispered, “is that
you
?”

“Get out of here, Schlier,” the man said. “I'm working on a story.”

Jim Schlier, grinned, slapped his old friend on the shoulder. “Damn. Cahoon, we all thought you were dead,” he said.

Max Cahoon just smiled, still glued to the picture, until the image shifted away from the woman. “I just smell dead. Got out of the hospital last week,” Max Cahoon said.

Cahoon studied the audience, until his attention was fixed on the woman on the seventh row—he could see that she was visibly tense. Her credentials said she was an Attaché with the Swiss Embassy, but with a better angle of view Cahoon might have noticed that she was clutching an unusually large purse in her lap and that her face was more heavily made up than was the custom for the woman he knew as Hilda Traumen.

While Snowfeather spoke, Louise Berker hunched forward, staring at her white gloves. The real Hilda lay dead in a janitor's closet a mile away.
My final disguise
, Berker thought.
And my small contribution to Gaia's Revenge.

“No one is beyond the reach of God,” Snowfeather said.

No one here is beyond the reach of Gaia's Kiss,
Berker thought. Berker's hands closed around a metal canister in her purse.

John Owen was next. He remained standing at the lectern with Snowfeather.
A first for me
, he thought, composing his thoughts. He looked out at the audience, took a deep breath, and began almost as if he were talking to a close friend.

“It was strange to read the correction published in last week's New York Times acknowledging that I am still alive. I was happy to learn that I made it.” John paused for the chuckles to subside. “Unlike Sam Clemens' famous quip, the reports of my assassination weren't exaggerated—they just omitted to mention a miracle.

“By trade, I am a physician. I am able to stand here with all my body parts more or less intact because of two medical miracles: automated trauma care and the latest limb regeneration technology.

“We can all be grateful for the gift of the angels of life, the thousands of men and women who have labored for years to bring the blessings of modern medicine into the world.

“I'm a plain-spoken man, and I'm not all that comfortable inside a church.

“But, I have recovered my missing hand. And we have recovered our country. Yet each death leaves a hole in each of us. Where is Josh Senior, my grandson's father? A thousand and more gone in a flash. Murdered. Where are Senator Lance McKernon and his young son? Where are the countless others who fell in this struggle? Where is my wife?” John paused involuntarily. He winced, struggling for composure.

“Their murders, their unnecessary deaths, their deeply felt
absences
, leave huge wounds in our lives. These painful memories haunt us. Such good men and women lost to us. We must never forget.

“Someone said recently to me that this whole nightmare was just one of history's colossal bad ideas, like all the other discredited ideas and ideologies. ‘Yes', I said, ‘that is true'. The most dangerous of bad ideas are the product of bright, warped minds. Few things are more deeply terrifying than the grave lunacy of the unbalanced genius. But this is why the really, really bad ideas never die. They just go into remission. This is why Thomas Jefferson counseled eternal vigilance.

“Some well-meaning people have counseled me to forgive and forget. I respect their generous spirit, but I'm still having trouble with that.

“If you can forgive, do forgive by all means, but never forget. And please forgive me as I mention the hardness of reality in this sanctuary. The authors of this particular nightmare are still active. Their purposes are truly evil. They must never ever be allowed to succeed.

“As you know, I was kidnapped by deluded, dangerous people. For a time, I was tethered to a wall in the darkness. If I had really been alone in my desperate prayers while I was imprisoned in that dark Seattle warehouse, I don't think I could have made it out. As I said, I'm not often seen inside a church. But I am so very grateful to be in this place now. Every day, I give my thanks for the gift of life, for the gift of good people—and for the gift of memory. We will always remember those whom we loved. We will never forget.”

——

On a damp wooden deck on a small island, Elisabeth was crying, watching her father on a glowing screen, suspended on the railing. “That's Grandpa,” Josh said proudly.

Elisabeth tousled her son's hair and smiled. “Yes. Grandpa did good.”

Ken Wang poured everyone—except Josh—a fresh cup of coffee, while continuing to stare at the image of the National Cathedral. “Are they really safe in there?” he asked.

“Safe enough for the President,” Dornan said. “The Secret Service is there in force.”

“I should have gone,” Elisabeth said.

“Don't tempt fate, Elisabeth,” Dornan said. “I tried to talk John out of it.”

“That doesn't help now.”

“Nope,” Dornan said. “But I did add a bit of protection.”

“Really. How?”

“I insisted on having some security in there that John and I can really trust. Gabriel came up with a brilliant idea: He got the President's permission for a Native American ‘Honor Guard', dressed in traditional tribal kit, including some old fashioned weapons. They trained under the supervision of a former Army Ranger, Gabriel's cousin, High Tree.”

“Indians? Old fashioned weapons? Really?”

“Don't underestimate them. Custer did.”

“Can I have some chocolate?” Josh asked.