Jade Sky (6 page)

"Neat piece. How long have you had her?" Garrett asked.

"I bought the shop thirty-four years ago, meant to open a vacuum-cleaner store. That was before this area became overrun with pirate mania, mind. I found her in the corner in a pile of broken furniture and other rubbish. She seemed so lonely I got her friends. Before I knew it I had this." He held out his hands to the cramped space.

"What do you know about her?" Matt asked. "About the symbol on her chest?"

His smile broadened. "An interesting question, but not as interesting as how your friend here knew about her." He turned, not just his head but his whole body, to peer down at Akash.

Akash put his hands in his pockets and shrugged at the man. "I saw it maybe fifteen years ago when I was visiting with my family." He looked at Matt and Garrett. "I remembered it the second I saw the symbol, thought you guys might want to see it."

"Symbol?" the man asked.

Akash pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it to reveal a close-up shot of the symbol, black marker on pale brown leather, taken from the discarded skin of the Alvarez boy. "It's the same as on the doll, isn't it?"

"Yes," the man and Matt answered simultaneously. Matt continued, "Do you know what it means?"

He nodded. "Yes. But no. No one knows what it means." His eyes fluttered closed. He licked his cracked lips. "To the Aztecs, it symbolized a great sundering, a separation of the Quetzalcoatl from himself. The ancient Greeks used a glyph like that to represent Nyx, the goddess of night who, content with the dark half of eternity, took no followers and coveted nothing of Earth for herself." He ran his tongue over his teeth. "But that thing there also represented the Henostic creation of Demiurge from Monad's overflowing and self-reflection. Heck, even the Zoroastrians, they used it to represent the eternal conflict between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, wisdom and destruction." He shrugged and opened his eyes. "You might say it means too much to too many, so it don't mean nothing to me."

Matt spoke before Akash could. "Does it show up in Judeo-Christian, um, lore or whatever?"
Shit, that was elegant.

Impossibly, the proprietor's lips stretched wider, revealing gums pockmarked with bleeding sores. "Not even once." The whispers entwined the words with malicious laughter as Matt watched that rotten grin.

"Does it have a name?" Akash asked.

"I've always called it Ul." The guttural syllable sounded something like "ool,” but throatier. For a moment, something slithered behind the man's eyes, the shadow of barbed tentacles.

Matt stepped back into Garrett, blinked, and the whatever-it-was disappeared.

"You're augmented?" the man asked.

The change of subject caught Matt off-guard. "Uh, yes. We work for ICAP."

The man stiffened, and his smile faded to a grimace. "And you encountered the Ul in your work?"

"Yes," Matt said. "Can't really talk about where." To deflect the man's curiosity he asked a follow-up. "Are you an expert on angels, then?"

He shrugged and crossed his arms. "I guess, as far as anyone can be. You won't find two books that agree on nothing, much less two religions or cultures."

"Are there any with wings of smoke and silver feathers?"

He sighed and gave a pointed look to the exit. "Look,
friend
," he emphasized the word so that it meant anything but, "there ain't nothing I can tell you that you can't find on Wikipedia. If you ain't buying, I got other things to do."

"Thanks for your time." Matt tried to walk out, but had to wait for Garrett. If he tried to sidle past, he'd knock a bunch of figurines over. The proprietor said nothing as they left one-by-one, but never stopped watching them. Once outside, Matt gasped in a breath of "fresh" air. Oddly enough, the stink of salt water, fish, and over-concentrated humanity made a welcome reprieve from the oppressive incense.

"That was weird," Garrett said as they walked back toward the car.

"There was something very . . . off about that guy," Matt said. He glanced to the side at a writhing, slithering shadow, but as his eyes focused on it the image resolved as flags flapping in the breeze.
Shit, I'm jumpy today.
He took a deep breath and tried not to think about PTSD.

"He freaked me out as a kid, too," Akash said. "But I thought maybe he'd know more than what we could find poking around online."

Garrett frowned as he got in the front seat of the SUV. "I can't even remember whatever gibberish he said."

"You're not eidetic?" Akash asked, his eyebrows raised.

Garrett shook his head. "Under the new guidelines, it was that or reflex enhancements. I know my strengths." Matt didn't bother to remind him that he'd chosen Garrett more for his tactical mind than his physical prowess; he saw no point in testing the man's modesty. "As it is, I sometimes feel this weird pressure . . . ."

Matt locked eyes with Akash through the rearview mirror. They looked away, but too late.

"What?" Garrett said. "I'm not saying I'm about to bonk or anything."

Matt started the car, and sighed. "You know I'm going to have to report that comment." He waited for a cab to pass, then pulled out into the light traffic.

Garrett shook his head. "No you don't. I didn't mean anything by it. It's just stress."

Akash leaned forward and clapped Garrett on both shoulders. "Yes he does, and if he didn't, I'd have to, eh? There's no policy tighter than that one."

"Give me a break, guys. I didn't mean anything by it."

Matt swerved to the right and jerked to a stop, one tire against the curb. He locked eyes with Garrett as the SUV behind them blew its horn. "You can be sorry you said it, but think about this. If you were me, what choice would you have?"

Garrett glared at him. "I'd be faithful to the men under my command. Always."

Knowing it wasn't what Garrett wanted to hear, Matt said, "I'm glad you understand." He put the car in gear and hit the gas.

*   *   *

When they got back to their temporary office
—
a two-room suite at the Best Western Miami
—
Matt searched the internet for "ool" and "Ul" and "Ewl" and every other spelling he could think of, and came up blank.
Well I'm sure as hell not going back to ask him.

He shivered and turned as a shadow blocked the light from the window.

Blossom Sakura nodded at the screen. "What are you looking for?"

"That guy Akash told you about? He said the symbol had a name, but I can't find it anywhere."

"Show me." She crouched next to his chair and turned the laptop so she could type. After a few minutes, she gave up, and they discussed the Florida operation. They had to postpone if they wanted Garrett in the field; he had to fly back to D.C. for a full psychological evaluation. In time, conversation again turned to the winged bonk.

Blossom gave him a short bow from her waist and dropped her gaze to the floor. "I can't say it any better. There's no such thing."

Matt sat down, his legs in as casual a pose as he could manage. "Aren't Kami angels?"

Blossom flopped down across from him. "No. Kami aren't angels. And they don't exist, either. Shinto is culture, not religion."

"Are you sure?"

She gave him a withering look. "I'm sure. Maybe some from Japan aren't sure, but I'm sure. There is no more evidence for Kami than for unicorns."

Matt smiled, conceding defeat. "So you don't believe in the supernatural. What do you believe in?"

Blossom froze for a split second, then disappeared. A moment later she sat on the edge of the couch next to his outstretched left foot, a framed picture in her hand. "Her. I believe in Kazuko, that she will make her mother proud."

A Japanese girl, no more than eight years old, sat on a swing, her innocent smile dominating the otherwise plain picture of a little girl in a white blouse and blue plaid skirt. "Beautiful name," Matt said. "What does it mean?"

"It means she is the only child I will have, and the debt I owe her is greater than her obligation to me."

Matt didn't know how to respond, so he nodded. She gave another curt bow and disappeared.

*   *   *

Two days later, the psychology department cleared Garrett for duty, and he flew back to Miami. Matt accepted his wounded, defiant looks with stoic indifference and planned the next phase of their mission. To his credit, Garrett's professional behavior didn't change a bit, though waves of resentment emanated from him.

That night Matt got a private memo, an addendum to Garrett's personnel file. Psyche screening maintained that he operated at safe levels, but empathy had dropped to borderline levels. They recommended that Brian keep Garrett's solo actions to a minimum, and flagged his file for further scrutiny over the next few weeks' tests.

"I don't understand why Rastogi's making the buy," Garrett said.

Matt didn't turn away from the computer screen. "Because Sakura, you, and I smell like bacon so hard nobody would ever sell to any of us, Conor can't act his way out of a paper bag, and Akash looks like a college student. Now hush."

Matt knew the real reason for Garrett's foul mood. The video and audio from the digital camera and parabolic microphone were excellent in all the ways that sweating in a van under the Miami sun wasn't. The drone hovered a hundred feet overhead, at that distance indistinguishable from a dragonfly. An uncommon insect for this time of year, but even if the city-bound Miami drug dealer noticed, he wouldn't know better. Or so Matt hoped.

"In position," Blossom's voice said in his headset. The playground at the end of the block bustled with children playing and hollering in the sprinklers, except for three youths loitering on bicycles, who paid too much attention to everything around them and not enough to each other.

"Hit it," Matt said into the microphone.

Akash rolled past the playground down the hill and pulled the Prius up to the curb, his arm out the window, forty dollars held between his index and middle finger. The dealer, a scrawny African American male in his late teens or early twenties, wandered up to the car and took the cash.

"What you want?"

"Hey there," Akash said, his voice too loud in the microphone. "I'm looking for something green."

"Yeah yeah yeah," the guy said, looking both ways down the street. "But it's sixty."

"Seriously?" Akash produced another twenty. It disappeared with the others.

"Times is hard, brother." The dealer leaned against the car, and the juvenile on the red bike coasted down from the playground, pulling up next to the car with a plastic bag the size of a Splenda packet. Akash took it and pulled away without another word. The dealer went back to his stoop while the kid rode around the block.

"This stuff is shit, eh," Akash said. "It's shit for forty bucks, it's definitely shit for sixty."

"Explain," Matt said.

"It's cloudy, and the crystals aren't even all green. This is low, low grade, probably cut with meth or crack. Or Pop Rocks."

"Or drain cleaner," Garrett said.

"Classic cartel," Matt said. "Get it to the lab so we can trace the chemistry, find out who Dawkins is buying from."

"How do we know that's one of Dawkins's guys?" Garrett asked.

"Miami Metro Vice," Matt said. "They arrested him four times selling Dawkins's product, on that playground, before the Keys bust. He's still there, so whatever's going on, it ain't an escalating turf war."

"So what do you figure?" Akash asked over the radio.

"I figure Dawkins is buying from someone else, someone who sells cheap crap cut with cheaper crap, so he can maintain his supply lines for when he's back in product. Given the volume, we're looking at the Chinese, the Russians, the Mexicans, or all of the above. The specific chemistry should tell us which."

"Based on this crap," Akash said, "I'll bet you anything it's Mexican, eh?"

"Be patient," Matt said. "In a week or so the lab guys can tell us exactly where it came from, and we can move up the chain of command."

"What do we do once we find them?" Garrett asked.

Matt sighed. "We make them an offer they can't refuse."

*   *   *

"Oh, what now?" Garrett asked as they pulled up to 801 Broadway in Nashville. The massive, blocky Estes Kefauver Federal Building and Courthouse Annex shared a parking lot with the First Lutheran Church, and together they occupied an entire city block. A crowd packed the church lot to standing room only, waving placards and hollering chants.

Red-on-yellow "Humans for Humanity" signs dominated, but "Legalize It," "No GMO Crops," and "Occupy Nashville" peppered the throng as well. Smaller knots of protesters dotted the sidewalk all the way around the buildings.

Matt rolled his eyes. "Apparently our presence at this fine facility has been noticed."

"Brilliant," Conor said. "Only took them what? A month? And us toting this giant sack of black around." He jerked a thumb at Garrett.