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‘No. Asylum will be granted to a token few – the Handsmith and his son, the ace Tulpar, maybe two dozen passengers in all. Aces and nats, every one.’
‘And the jokers?’
‘Van Rennsaeler made a deal with the British PM – they’re sending them to Rathlin Island.’
Ray frowned. ‘That rock off the coast of Northern Ireland?’
‘It was once a joker colony. Pretty much abandoned these days.’
‘So they’re sending them to some gulag – out of sight and out of mind.’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘I can hear the but you left unsaid.’
The old man smiled wryly. ‘Very perceptive, Mr Ray. There are several buts. The Handsmith has refused the deal, as has Tulpar. There’s talk of mutiny aboard the ship – of taking it over and trying for Brazil, Africa, maybe.’
Ray snorted. ‘Yeah, Jesus, great idea.’
‘There’s more. A few of the refugees belong to a joker terrorist gang – the Twisted Fists. Others are starting to listen to them.’
‘To do what?’ Ray asked. ‘Go up against the US Coast Guard?’
‘They are desperate.’
‘It would be a bloodbath.’
‘Which is something your job is to prevent.’
Ray pulled the Escalade over to the side of the street and slammed it into park.
‘How’d this come down to me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t speak for the government. I work for the government.’
The old man looked at him, his lined face composed. ‘If not you, who then?’
‘Shit,’ Ray said.
‘But for the fortunate turn of the card, you and I could be one of those jokers.’ If he was a joker, Ray thought, it didn’t show. An ace, maybe? Ray had never heard of him, but that meant little. Your card could turn when you were seven or seventy, or maybe he had some crappy little power that attracted no attention in the wild card world. ‘If as a nation we turn our back on a handful of brothers and sisters whose only crime was to be born in a savage land, how long will it be before other ships are sent to Rathlin, packed with those of our own nation who some people still despise? What then, Mr Ray?’
‘Shit,’ Ray said again.
‘But,’ the old man said thoughtfully, ‘all is not entirely lost. The JADL has been in contact with a man who calls himself Witness. For a million dollars he’s offered to provide haven for the refugees in Cuba. That island isn’t exactly, uh, strict when it comes to immigration, and, uh, other laws. It could easily absorb a few hundred refugees, or act as a transit point once they acquire proper identification.’
But Ray’s mind had turned back a decade. ‘This guy calls himself Witness,’ he asked, ‘what’s he look like?’
♦
The Angel was still awake when Ray returned to their hotel room. She slept very little, ate very little, and never smiled. She was sitting on the bed, watching some Mexican talk show. Ray knew that she didn’t speak Spanish. It was all noise to her, like the rest of the world washing through her head but failing to distract her from the horrors she’d faced in Talas.
‘I’m back,’ he said, eliciting only a flicker of interest. ‘You’ll never guess who I ran into.’
Her eyes slid over to him, which was encouraging.
‘The JADL guy we met on the ship,’ he said, undressing down to his underwear and carefully hanging up his suit in the hotel room’s closet. The room was small, but neat, one of the lesser chains as SCARE didn’t have the budget to put its agents up at the really nice places with gyms and saunas and free breakfasts. But Ray didn’t much care as long as it was clean.
The night was hot and humid, but the Angel had cranked up the air conditioner until it was bordering on wintry in the room. Ray got into the bed next to her.
‘The small man? He seemed nice,’ the Angel said. There was a faraway look in her eyes.
‘Yeah.’ Ray looked at her thoughtfully. ‘But he’s in the fight, in his own way.’
‘What do you mean?’ the Angel asked.
Ray kept the smile off his face. At least he’d engaged her, aroused her curiosity. That was something.
‘He’s working with the JADL, trying to help the refugees.’ Ray relayed the information that’d been given to him, but when he was partway through the Angel turned her attention back to the television screen. ‘Only thing is, along with the nutjobs trying to keep the refugees off American soil, apparently there’s another problem festering behind the scenes. The Twisted Fists may get involved.’ That evoked no interest. ‘And a group headed by some guy who calls himself Witness.’
This captured the Angel’s attention. She turned her gaze back upon Ray. ‘The Witness?’ she asked.
Ray nodded. ‘He fits the description.’
Angel, looking thoughtful, relaxed, shifted against Ray’s chest, laying her head on his shoulder.
‘The Witness,’ she repeated.
He held her a long time as her breathing relaxed and her eyes slowly closed and at last she fell asleep. Moving slowly and carefully, he reached out for the remote and turned off the television. Now, finally, he could sleep, too.
♥
The rest of the team arrived the next morning when Ray, the Angel, and Moon were eating breakfast in the motel’s coffee shop. The Angel was listlessly picking at her pancakes. Ray himself had almost as little appetite lately as his wife, but he managed to finish his omelet between feeding Moon cut-up bits of her breakfast steak. She was still a collie. She preferred a canid form for public appearances, and Ray was long used to dealing with recalcitrant waitresses and busybody onlookers. He handled their questions, usually, with patient explanations, but today he wasn’t in the mood and resorted to his best glare, sometimes reinforced by a flash of his official badge. It worked.
Two tall, thin, pale, well-dressed men approached their table, accompanied by another agent wearing fatigues, a camo T-shirt, and combat boots.
Ray nodded as they stopped before the table. ‘Harry, Max.’ He paused. ‘Colonel,’ he added dryly.
The ‘Colonel’ was directed at the newcomer in fatigues. He was young, as were the other two, but much more nondescript, with fair hair, a fair complexion, and light blond hair. His eyebrows were almost invisible against his pale complexion. He was a former army corporal from Fairbanks, Alaska, named Alan Spencer. He’d competed on the second season of American Hero, jumping several ranks by calling himself ‘Colonel Centigrade.’ After failing to win the game show he’d transferred out of the army into SCARE.
‘I hab a cold,’ he announced in a nasal, sniffling voice.
Ray exchanged glances with the Angel, but decided not to comment on the irony of Centigrade’s statement. Colonel Centigrade was a bit of a fuckup and his freezing powers weren’t the most reliable. He wasn’t exactly vital to the plan that Ray was evolving in his mind, whereas Harrison and Maximillian Klingensmith were. They were identical twins, down to the black eye patch each wore over his left eye and the sweep of inky black feathers that covered their scalps in lieu of hair. Their nicknames, derived from their joker aspect and from parents who had academic backgrounds in, respectively, ornithology and Nordic studies, were Huginn and Munnin.
‘You boys have breakfast yet?’ Ray asked.
‘No, sir,’ they all said in unison.
‘Take a seat,’ he said, moving closer to the Angel. He liked the Klingensmith twins. They were respectful, resourceful, and quite useful. They piled into the booth, Spencer’s ass half hanging over the bench’s edge. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do …’
♣
The zombie intervention between the JADL demonstrators and the anti – wild card protesters had the unfortunate effect of intensifying the conflict. The ensuing publicity brought out not only more protesters on both sides – many more on the anti – wild card side – but literally hundreds of curious bystanders who were determined to view the next scene in the drama unreeling before their eager eyes. The number of police officers manning the barrier keeping the opposing groups apart had also increased dramatically, but Ray could easily read the concern on their faces. Something had to be done to defuse the situation before real violence erupted.
Ray was hopeful that his talk with Hoodoo Mama had dissuaded her from further use of her undead hordes – at least for now – but the swelling numbers of participants on both sides of the controversy had him worried.
The pro-refugee faction had maybe doubled in size, but the numbers of those protesting against the Kazakh newcomers had swelled almost exponentially, both in numbers and in passion.
It was hard to say what looked angrier, the crowd waving their signs and screaming imprecations at the moored freighter, or the morning sky, which was black with thunderheads that threatened a cloudburst at any moment. It was not a happy morning, and Ray saw that the only thing that could possibly make it worse was about to occur.
Evangelique Jones arrived on the scene. She looked glad to see Ray, which immediately made him suspicious. ‘Well, Director Ray,’ she said with a smile that was smug and gloating at the same time, ‘word has come down from Washington. Their final decision, so to say.’
Ray flashed back to what he’d learned the night before.
‘They’ve decided on asylum? That was fast.’
Evangelique nodded. ‘Twenty-nine of them will be afforded political refugee status. The rest will be accorded sanctuary on an island off the coast of Northern Ireland—’
‘Rathlin,’ Ray interrupted.
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘How did you know?’
Ray shrugged. He didn’t want to give away his source of inside information. He should have kept his mouth shut, but it was too late. ‘Where else could it be? I mean – it’s been used as a joker sanctuary in the past.’
‘Yessss,’ the ICE agent said. Before she could add anything, a huge clap of thunder sounded and lightning streaked across the sky and it opened up to a steady fall of rain.
Ray looked up as the droplets pattered upon his face, soaking him almost instantly. ‘Maybe this’ll disperse the crowd,’ he said hopefully.
But the sudden downpour did nothing to break up the mob that was now surging back and forth in a wavelike manner. It served instead to seem to rile them up, make them even more convinced of their anger.
‘Hey,’ Ray suddenly said, ‘I know those guys!’
Jones frowned. ‘Who?’
‘Him,’ Ray said, and then corrected himself, ‘I mean them.’
He pointed to a large figure at the head of the JADL contingent. He – they – were a large joker bifurcated from the waist up with two torsos, two sets of shoulders and arms, and, of course, two heads. Each held a sign in a brawny arm. One read Welcome refugees!, the other, Foreigners go home! They seemed to be arguing with each other. Their argument quickly evolved into a shoving match that a couple of cops moved in quickly to break up, then stopped, stumped.
‘I used them as an informant back in the day – Rick and Mick.’ Ray sighed. ‘They could never get along.’
The onlookers and both batches of protesters were enjoying the show, shouting encouragement at them and egging them on. They started swatting at each other with their signs. The pair overtipped and crashed into one of the segments of waist-high fencing that separated the two groups. Their weight crushed it to the ground, bringing down a section of fence maybe ten feet long.
For a moment there was silence, then an angry surge forward by the larger anti – wild card faction, who saw a clear path to the JADL demonstrators.
‘Crap,’ Ray muttered. He realized that he was saying that a lot lately. He looked almost desperately at his team. They were too few to do much against the hundreds surging forward to take out their frustrations on the smaller number of joker counterprotesters. If only Washington had supplied him with some heavy hitters they could at least—
‘Centigrade!’ Ray suddenly barked. He couldn’t make himself add the man’s self-appointed rank.
Spencer stepped forward, a little uncertainly. ‘Sir?’ he asked in a more hesitant than military manner.
‘Do your stuff.’
‘Sir?’
Ray gestured at the scene before them. ‘Make it snow. Make it snow like it was fucking Christmas.’
It finally dawned on the colonel. ‘Yes, sir!’ He stepped away from the others.
‘What in the world?’ Jones asked as Spencer’s face froze in a mask of fierce concentration. A minute passed, then she angrily turned to Ray. ‘If you don’t tell me what that man—’
Ray pointed his right hand at her to shush her and pointed to the sky with his left.
You could just barely see it against the dark thunderheads and the streams of rain as the first snowflakes formed. A cool breeze swept down over them as in an area maybe a hundred yards across and directly above the heads of the demonstrators, sleet started to fall among the raindrops.
When the first bits of ice hit the protesters an uncertain note rumbled through the crowd. Some looked up unbelievingly at the sky. Some pointed, some cried out loud. As the rain fell it was turning to snow about fifty or sixty feet above their heads. Snow. In New Orleans. In the summer. It was … unnatural …
Within moments the surging crowd had stopped. Everyone, the bystanders, the demonstrators on both sides, the cops standing gallantly between them, looked up at the sky, mixed wonder and fear on their faces.
Ray and the others, still getting soaked by the warm rain, could nonetheless feel the chilling breeze blowing from the pocket of extraordinary weather that was now pelting down on the demonstrators as a mix of big, fluffy snowflakes and freezing sleet.
Ray looked from the sky to Colonel Centigrade. His teeth were clenched now, his face was white. Cords stood out on his neck and he was shaking. He looked about ready to collapse.
‘Hold on!’ Ray barked. ‘Concentrate! Another minute—’
The demonstrators had withstood the muggy heat, the harsh sun, even zombies, all of which were to be expected in New Orleans. But a snowstorm? No. That was freakishly grotesque. Voodoo of the worst sort. And goddamned cold.
The mass of demonstrators broke and ran, streaming away through various cross streets, along with the crowd that had gathered to watch the show, leaving only the puzzled and shivering police still manning the barricades.
‘All right, Centigrade,’ Ray snapped, ‘at ease!’
Spencer swayed on his feet and would have collapsed if Maximillian Klingensmith hadn’t grabbed him. Or maybe it was Harrison. Ray wasn’t sure.
‘He did that?’ Jones asked unbelievingly.
Ray nodded, smiling at Spencer, who was grinning weakly as he leaned on his fellow agent.
‘Yes, he did,’ Ray said proudly.
She barely, Ray noted, suppressed a shiver as a flicker of – what? – disgust, perhaps, flashed across her face. ‘All right.’ Jones looked up at the sky. It was still raining. ‘I suppose he can’t stop that?’
Ray shook his head. ‘Not part of his powers.’
‘No. Of course not.’ Jones ran her hand through her hair, which had collapsed in soggy ringlets around her face, pushing it back. ‘Well, rain or shine, it’s my duty to serve these papers.’
Ray hazarded a guess. ‘Max?’
The agent keeping Colonel Centigrade from collapsing with weariness nodded.
‘Take the colonel back to the motel.’ He’d earned that with his heroic efforts, Ray thought. ‘Get him whatever he needs – food, drink, dry clothes.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Max said, and Spencer managed a tiny sneeze.
