Word & Void 02 - A Knight of the Word (11 page)

He folded his arms across his chest. “We have thousands and thousands of people living homeless on the streets of our cities at the same time that we have men and women earning millions of dollars a year running companies that make products whose continued usage will ruin our health, our environment, and our values. The irony is incredible. It’s obscene.”

Wren nodded. “But you can’t change that, Simon. The problem is too indigenous to who we are, too much a part of how we live our lives.”

“Tell me about it. I feel like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.” Simon shrugged. “It’s obviously hopeless, isn’t it? But you know something, Andrew? I refuse to give up. I really do. It doesn’t matter to me if I fail. It matters to me if I don’t try.” He thought about it a moment. “Too bad I’m not really the Wizard of Oz. If I were, I could just step behind the old curtain and pull a lever and change everything—just like that.”

Wren chuckled. “No, you couldn’t. The Wizard of Oz was a humbug, remember?”

Simon Lawrence laughed with him “Unfortunately, I do. I think about it every time someone refers to me as the Wiz. Do me a favor, Andrew. Please refrain from using that hideous appellation in whatever article you end up writing. Call me Toto or something; maybe it will catch on.”

There was a soft knock, the door opened, and Stefanie Winslow walked in carrying the lattes Simon had sent her to purchase from the coffee shop at Elliott Bay Book Company. Both men started to rise, but she motioned them back into their seats. “Stay where you are, gentlemen, you probably need all your energy for the interview. I’ll just set these on the desk and be on my way.”

She gave Wren a dazzling smile, and he wished instantly that he was younger and cooler and even then he would probably need to be a cross between Harrison Ford and Bill Gates to have a chance with this woman. Stefanie Winslow was beautiful, but she was exotic as well, a combination that made her unforgettable. She was tall and slim with jet-black hair that curled down to her shoulders, cut back from her face and ears in a sweep so that it shimmered like satin in sunlight. Her skin was a strange smoky color, suggesting that she was of mixed ancestry, the product of more than one culture, more than one people. Startling emerald eyes dominated an oval face with tiny, perfect features. She moved in a graceful, willowy way that accentuated her long limbs and neck and stunning shape. She seemed oblivious to how she looked and comfortable within herself, radiating a relaxed confidence that had both an infectious and unsettling effect on the people around her. Andrew Wren would have made the journey to Seattle just to see her in the flesh for ten seconds.

She set the lattes before them and started for the door. “Simon, I’m going to finish with the SAM arrangements, then I’m out of here. John has your speech all done except for a once-over, so we’re going out for a long, quiet, intimate dinner. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Stef.” Simon waved her out.

“Nice seeing you, Mr. Wren,” she called back.

The door closed behind her with a soft click. Wren shook his head. “Shouldn’t she be a model or an actress or something? What sort of hold do you have over her, Simon?”

Simon Lawrence shrugged. “Will you be staying for the dedication on Wednesday, Andrew, or do you have to get right back?”

Wren reached for his latte and took a long sip. “No, I’m staying until Thursday. The dedication is part of what I came for. It’s central to the article I’m writing.”

Simon nodded. “Excellent. Now what’s the other part, if you don’t mind my asking? Everything we’ve talked about has been covered in the newspapers already—ad nauseam, I might add.
The New York Times
didn’t send its top investigative reporter to interview me for a rerun, did it? What’s up, Andrew?”

Wren shrugged, trying to appear casual in making the gesture. “Well, part of it is the dedication. I’m doing a piece on corporate and governmental involvement—or the lack thereof—in the social problems of urban America. God knows, there’s little enough to write about that’s positive, and your programs are bright lights in a mostly shadowy panorama of neglect and disinterest. You’ve actually done something where others have just talked about it—and what you’ve done works.”

“But?”

“But in the last month or so the paper has received a series of anonymous phone calls and letters suggesting that there are financial improprieties in your programs that need to be investigated. So my editor ordered me to follow it up, and here I am.”

Simon Lawrence nodded, his face expressionless. “Financial improprieties. I see.” He studied Wren. “You must have done some work on this already. Have you found anything?”

Wren shook his head. “Not a thing.”

“You won’t, either. The charge is ridiculous.” Simon sipped at his latte and sighed. “But what else would I say, right? So to set your mind at ease, Andrew, and to demonstrate that I have nothing to hide, I’ll let you have a look at our books. I don’t often do this, you understand, but in this case I’ll make an exception. You already know, I expect, that we have accountants and lawyers and a board of directors to make certain that everything we do is above reproach. We’re a high-profile operation with important donors. We don’t take chances with our image.”

“I know that,” Wren demurred, looking vaguely embarrassed to deflect the implied criticism. “But I appreciate your letting me see for myself.”

“The books will show you what comes in and what goes out, everything but the names of the donors. You aren’t asking for those, are you, Andrew?”

“No, no.” Wren shook his head quickly. “It’s what happens to the money after it comes in that concerns me. I just want to be certain that when I write my article extolling the virtues of Fresh Start and Pass/Go and Toto the Wonder Wizard, I won’t be shown up as an idiot later on.” He tacked on a sheepish smile.

Simon Lawrence gave him a cool look. “An idiot? Not you, Andrew. Not likely. Besides, if there’s something crooked going on, I want to know about it, too.”

He stood up. “Finish your latte. I’ll have Jenny Parent, our bookkeeper, bring up the records. You can sit here and look them over to your heart’s content.” He glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with some people downtown at five, but you can stay as long as you like. I’ll catch up with you in the morning, and you can give me your report then. Fair enough?”

Wren nodded. “More than fair. Thank you, Simon.”

Simon Lawrence paused midway around his desk. “Let me be honest with you about my feelings on this matter, Andrew. You are in a position to do a great deal of harm here, to undo an awful lot of hard work, and I don’t want that to happen. I resent the hell out of the implication that I would do anything to subvert the efforts of Fresh Start and Pass/Go and the people who have given so much time and effort and money in support of those programs, but I understand that you can’t ignore the possibility that the rumors and innuendos have some basis in fact. You wouldn’t be doing your job if you did. So I am trusting you to be up front with me on anything you find—or, more to the point, don’t find. Whatever you need, I’ll try to give it to you. But I’m giving it to you in the belief that you won’t write an article where rumors and accusations are repeated without any basis in fact.”

Wren studied Lawrence for a moment. “I don’t ever limit the scope of an investigation by offering conditions,” he said quietly. “But I can also say that I have never based a report on anything that wasn’t backed up by solid facts. It won’t be any different here.”

The other man held his gaze a moment longer. “See you tomorrow, Andrew.”

He walked out the door and disappeared down the hallway, leaving Wren alone in his office. Wren sat where he was and finished his latte, then stood up and walked over to the window again. He admired the Wiz, admired the work he had done with the homeless. He hoped he wouldn’t find anything bad to write about. He hoped the phone calls and letters were baseless—sour grapes from a former employee or an errant shot at troublemaking from an extremist group of “real Americans.” He’d read the letters and listened to the tapes of the phone calls. It was possible there was nothing to them.

But his instincts told him otherwise. And he had learned from twenty-five years of experience that his instincts were seldom wrong.

The demon gave Andrew Wren the better part of an hour with the foundation’s financial records, waiting patiently, allowing the reporter enough time to familiarize himself with the overall record of donations to Fresh Start and Pass/Go, then checked to make certain the hallway was empty and slipped into the room behind him. Wren never heard the demon approach, his back to the door, his head lowered to the open books as he ran his finger across the notations. The demon stood looking at him for a moment, thinking how easy it would be to kill him, feeling the familiar hunger begin to build.

But now was not the time and Wren had not been lured to Seattle to satisfy the demon’s hunger. There were plenty of others for that.

The demon moved up behind Andrew Wren and placed its fingers on the back of the man’s exposed neck. Wren did not move, did not turn, did not feel anything as the dark magic entered him. His eyes locked on the pages before him, and his mind froze. The demon probed his thoughts, drew his attention, and then whispered the words that were needed to manipulate him.

I won’t find what I’m looking for here. Simon Lawrence is much too clever for that. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to let me look at these books if he thought they were incriminating. I have to be patient. I have to wait for my source to contact me
.

The demon spoke in Andrew Wren’s voice, in Andrew Wren’s mind, in Andrew Wren’s thoughts, and it would seem to the reporter as if the words were his own. He would do as the demon wanted without ever realizing it; he would be the demon’s tool. He would think that the ideas the demon gave him were his own and that the conclusions the demon reached for him were his. It was easy enough to arrange. Andrew Wren was an investigative reporter, and investigative reporters believed that everyone was covering up something. Why should Simon Lawrence be different?

Andrew Wren hesitated a moment as the demon’s words took root, and then he closed the book before him and began to stack it with the others.

The demon smiled in satisfaction. It wouldn’t be long now until everything was in place. Another two days was all it would take. John Ross would be turned. A Knight of the Word would become a servant of the Void. It would happen so swiftly that it would be over before Ross even realized what was taking place. Even afterward, he would not know what had been done to him. But the demon would know, and that would be enough. A single step was all that was required to change John Ross’s life, a step away from the light and into the dark. Andrew Wren would help make that happen.

The demon lifted its fingers from Andrew Wren’s neck, slipped back out the door, and was gone.

I
n the aftermath of San Sobel, John Ross decided to return to the Fairy Glen and the Lady.

It took him a long time to reach his decision to do so. He was paralyzed for weeks following the massacre, consumed with despair and guilt, replaying the events over and over in his mind in an effort to make sense of them. Even after he had reached his conclusion that the demon had subverted a member of the police rescue squad, he could not lay the matter to rest. To begin with, he could never know for certain if his conclusion was correct. There would always be some small doubt that he still didn’t have it right and might have done something else to prevent what had happened. Besides, wasn’t he just looking for a way to shift the blame from himself? Wasn’t that what it all came down to? Whatever the answer, the fact remained that he had been responsible for preventing the slaughter of those children, and he had failed.

So, after a lengthy deliberation on the matter, he decided he could no longer serve as a Knight of the Word.

But how was he to go about handing in his resignation? He might have decided he was quitting, but how did he go about giving notice? He had already stopped trying to function as a Knight, had ceased thinking of himself as the Word’s champion. He had retreated so far from who and what he had been that even the nature of his dreams had begun to change. Although he still dreamed, the dreams had turned vague and purposeless. He still wandered a grim and desolate future in which his world had been destroyed and its people reduced to animals, but his part in that world was no longer clear. When he dreamed, he drifted from landscape to landscape, encountering no one, seeing nothing of value, discovering nothing of his past that he might use as a Knight of the Word. It was what he wanted, not to be burdened with knowledge of events he might influence, but it was vaguely troubling as well. He still carried the staff bequeathed to him by the Word, the talisman that gave him his power, but he no longer used it for its magic, only as a walking stick. He still felt the magic within, a small tingling, a brief surge of heat, but he felt removed and disconnected from it.

He no longer saw himself as a Knight of the Word, had quit thinking of himself as one, but he needed a way to sever his ties for good. He decided finally that to do this he must go back to where it had all begun.

To Wales, to the Fairy Glen, and to the Lady.

He had not been back in more than ten years, not since he had traveled to England in his late twenties, a graduate student permanently mired in his search for his life’s purpose, not since he had drifted from postgraduate course to postgraduate course, a prisoner of his own indecision. He had gone to England to change the direction of his life, to travel and study and find a path that had meaning for him. In the course of that pursuit, he had journeyed into Wales to stay at the cottage of a friend’s parents in the village of Betwys-y-Coed in Gwynedd in the heart of the Snowdonia wilderness. He had been studying the history of the English kings, particularly of Edward Longshanks, who had built the iron ring of fortresses to subdue the Welsh in the Snowdonia region, and so was drawn to the opportunity to travel there. Once arrived, he began to fall under the spell of the country and its people, to become enmeshed in their history and folklore, and to sense that there was a purpose to his being there beyond what was immediately apparent.