Grand Junction (40 page)

So, the next morning, they will leave. Yuri will leave the Territory behind him; he will leave Heavy Metal Valley and Link de Nova, Junkville and the man with the red Buick, Deadlink and its masses of refugees, the necro Triads and the organ sellers, Neon Park and the two dead men in Row 299, Sheriff Wilbur Langlois and his Law of Bronze. And the glass observatory with its occupant, the stars’ younger sister.

He will leave men susceptible to the Thing.

He will let the image of Judith Sevigny recede, slowly, in the rearview mirror.

Sainte-Anne-des-Monts.

Dawn plunges the landscape into the heart of a pink cloud. The city is appearing at the bottom of the butte where they have just stopped. The river is very wide here, in the estuary—that is, facing the ocean. The small city is a port, huddled beside the sea at the base of the Chic-Choc Mountains, the eastern counterparts of the Notre Dames. It features a true breakwater, structured around a dike and a large loading dock. There are several churches there, typical of the old Quebec from before the twenty-first century, with their silvery bells that gleam softly in the early morning light. A dozen windmills of all generations turn their helicoidal stars whose silhouettes are delicately sketched against the blue-orange background of the coming day.

No pirates control this city, and its local militia is reputed to be fairly easygoing. It is here, at the departure point, that everything can play out.

“There it is,” Campbell remarks. “We’re here.”

Yuri sends a message in plain English to the Chevrolet Silverado following two or three kilometers behind them. “Junction to Alberta. Junction to Alberta. We are in view of the goal. Repeat: we are in view of the goal.”

Then they wait calmly for the sheriff’s men to arrive.

Langlois watched over them until the very last minute, ensuring rigorous compliance with procedure. Yuri had said to himself at the time that they might be leaving HMV, but the Law of Bronze would follow them wherever they went—he also knew, though, that the sheriff wasn’t acting that way out of a simple, crazy obsession with order.

The Law of Bronze of the Territory will be their shield.

If they respect it, they have a chance. A chance to get back with the library. A chance, at least, to get back alive.

Five or ten minutes before their actual departure, the sheriff had gathered them all near the vehicles parked side by side, as if on invisible starting-blocks.

“Don’t ever communicate entirely in plain English. No proper names, no ranks, no places, no identifiers. Yuri and Campbell, you’re the ‘Junction’ group—after all, you are the ones who will be officially contacting the truck. So Junction-1 and Junction-2, individually. The tactical intervention group’s Silverado will be called ‘Alberta,’ for obvious reasons,” Langlois had said, indicating his huge deputy with a glance. “Once the connection has taken place, the truck will be ‘Convoy,’ with the same procedures, and that’s the minimum I ask of you. Also, go right to the target. Mr. Campbell, you are the titular head of the operation, but questions of security will be primarily decided by Slade Vernier. Let me be clear about this—as long as everything is going well, Mr. Campbell, you’re in charge. If any threat arises or you’re under fire, the tactical team takes over. Obviously, this is not negotiable.”

“With ten minutes to departure, Sheriff,” Campbell had said. “I don’t think I’m in any position to argue.”

The truck is waiting for them at the predetermined place. A bit to the east of the city, on a secondary street. The meeting has been planned for the early morning, before the city really wakes up.

And sure enough, the truck is there. At the appointed time. Orbital rendezvous 100 percent normal.

Yuri sees it as they round a bend, parked on the side of the road. A typical European truck, with its flat hood wedged vertically just under the wide windshield, the engine in the rear under the cab. Military green. He notes the arms of the Lombard army, a few examples of which he has seen printed on old duffle coats in the Djordjevic home and on Link de Nova’s shoulders, as well as a small gold-and-silver heraldic plaque he doesn’t recognize in the very center of the radiator grille.

The region is wooded, its flora nourished by the oceanic humidity, which creates a dense curtain hiding them perfectly from the city and the coastal road. Webs of purplish fog drift among the tree-covered buttes all the way to the banks of the estuary. An immense sparkling-blue mass,
touched with quicksilver sparks, extends far beyond the horizon, more than a hundred kilometers wide. This river is a piece of the ocean.

Chrysler’s plan is working perfectly, thinks Yuri.

There it is; the “junction” worked. They are meeting the library from Rome and the men who brought it here.

Soldier-monks, Djordjevic had explained succinctly.

Soldier-monks.

Soldiers?

Monks?

He remembers Campbell’s intuition, his own questions. His acts, his thoughts, his nonthoughts. He remembers why they have come here. Them, and no one else.

If it took soldiers, soldier-monks, to escort this library, it is not only because the books are worth a lot—commercially or otherwise.

It is because they are an army in themselves.

Soldier-monks.

Two men. Fortyish. Dressed in black uniforms, long as dusters, with heavy hoods.

Soldier-monks. Shaved heads. State-of-the-art binoculars hanging from cords around their necks. On their shoulders, the same gold-and-silver emblem as the one on the truck’s grille.
They work directly for the Papacy; that’s all I can tell you because it’s all I know
, Djordjevic had said.

They stand face-to-face. The four men from the Territory and the two from the Vatican. Two worlds. Two worlds in full-on collision.

Above them, high-altitude clouds, light and quick like celestial racehorses, shingle the azure sky. The sun is pale yellow. Nature is waking; birds shake the treetops with an endless, ever-changing cacophony. The fog retreats slowly, in cottony wisps mingling with the clouds, sea spray, the Nordic wind. Blue-green lichen dangles from the branches of the maple trees and ancient surviving firs.

This universe is still beautiful.

Soldier-monks.

The library.

The Convoy.

We, the Escort.

We, the Secret Human Army.

This new morning, as sublime as yesterday’s, and that of the day before.

This universe that stubbornly remains so beautiful in the midst of disaster.

Organization: Follow the commandments of the Law of Bronze and the sheriff’s orders to the letter. Yuri and Campbell, “Junction,” drive two or three kilometers ahead of the convoy, as the advance men. Slade Vernier and Lecerf-le-Français, “Alberta,” are behind the truck for rear protection. In “Convoy,” the soldier-monks relieve each other at the wheel every four hours, with the passenger serving as copilot and especially as possible firer of 5.56-caliber NATO ammunition.

Introductions: Quickly dispensed with. Indication of names and functions. Rapid briefing on the situation. Exchange of certain vital information, the opening of a dialogue:

“Our real identities are secret. My name is Francisco Alpini, because I was a member of the Alpini division, the Italian mountain troops. We learned to march, ski, kill. To kill while marching, kill while skiing. To ski while marching.”

They realize that Brother “Francisco,” like all the members of his secret Order, lives constantly under various pseudonyms. Anonymity, the manipulation of information, ruses, and worse can be extremely efficient forms of combat against the Devil, the Papacy has admitted. Especially in these troubled times when He knows so well how to present Himself in guises of honesty, loyalty, frankness, friendship, and peace. It is the visible paradox of the Mission of these soldier-monks whose very names are known only to the Most Holy Pontiff and the High Council of the Order: they must remain totally secret within their very community; they must use trickery against their own co-religionists.
To remain invisible to the eyes of the Devil
, it is said in the secret Order,
we must remain invisible to the eyes of the Church itself
.

“The Holy Pontiff is aware of the dangers he himself faces: the Scriptures are very clear on this subject. The Devil would know how to lie in every possible way, especially by taking on the very face of the Savior, and thus his Temporal Body, the Church itself. ‘There is nothing to say he might not take my own place one day,’ he has said to us.”

“It hasn’t taken the Pope’s place, but it has taken possession of the
world,” answers Yuri without really knowing why, obeying an impulse that comes from the deepest part of his soul.

The man accompanying Brother Francisco Alpini on this odyssey is one Brother Friedrich Ostermann.
This guy’s been places
, thinks Yuri, observing his suntanned skin, the deep lines etched in his face by tragedy, the eyes tempered in a still-blazing forge. The secret Order knows how to choose its members. Yuri senses a powerful empathy between the two men, of the kind that rises between brothers in arms, well before the first problem, the first battle, the first killing.
They look out for each other, because each one knows the other is looking out for him. Basic doctrine of the Alpinis
, muses Yuri, as of all the elite corps that have existed for as long as there have been wars, as long as the world has not been able to impose a Pax Universalis using an instrument like the Metamachine, omniscient and invisible. Now, with the Metamachine vanished, the few regional conflicts born of the Grand Jihad have ceded their places to the multiplication of neotribal wars, microlocal wars, wars from before the existence of nations, religions, politics. Which is exactly what is happening here, in the American northeast.

Today, thinks Yuri, is their first day in New Jerusalem, not yet born but already threatened.

“Our organization is legally clandestine, even in the eyes of ecclesiastical institutions. Our Order as such has been decreed
in pectore
. We are the secret service of the Papacy. We answer to no one but the sovereign Pontiff.”

Then:

“Our Order has transmitter-receivers in working order; we are able to communicate with our Superior Fathers, or with Opus Dei in the Vatican. This library just crossed the Atlantic during the worst part of the winter; now it will have to pass through a new terra incognita of which we know almost nothing, but we do know that this cargo is not only vitally important for its intended recipients—meaning yourselves—but that it is at high risk of attracting lusts of all sorts. We were warned that acts of maritime piracy would be standard during the crossing, but now that we are on land we really have no idea what is in store for us.”

“Where we’re going,” Vernier replies simply, “the acts of piracy you refer to are child’s play. Welcome to America.”

Alpini takes the opportunity to emphasize the situation on the other side of the ocean. “In Italy, the neo-Islamist offensive has begun again in the northwest. They’ve launched a huge operation against Genoa, and people say powerful naval forces are massing in the Balkans to retake Trieste and attack Venice again. This time, the Lombard army might not be enough. Naples hasn’t yet fallen in the south, but Puglia and almost all of Calabria did in just a few weeks … not to mention Sicily, which is now their sanctuary, just as it was centuries ago.”

“Do you really think the Holy City is in danger?” Yuri asks.

“Yes. We all think so. It is the most redoubtable warning in the Scriptures, the Mystery of the Holy Iniquity: during the End Times, the Church itself will be crucified. We just barely escaped the catacombs. Obviously, this mission
has to
be a success.”

“Heavy Metal Valley County will dedicate all its resources to it, I assure you.”

The Law of Bronze is with them
, Yuri thinks.
It will be the armor that protects the convoy and its contents. It will be the deadly steel in the service of these books from another world
.

Control: Observation of the truck. Thirty-eight tons, militarized Iveco, with seven-millimeter Kevlar armor on its vital parts—engine, lateral walls and rear door of the container carrier, cab doors. Assault-infantry model uncrushable tires. Securimax Plexiglas windshield. Container carrier solidly riveted to the platform; khaki base with green-brown-black camouflage paint. Inside: Two levels, separated by a horizontal aluminum wall. A main level that contains four rectangular containers lacquered with ultramarine paint, with the insignia of the Italian Aeronautica. Second level, narrow, less tall: other containers, smaller, green in color, marked “Evergreen,” boxes of steel-gray metal with a black cross imprinted on each side; jerricans, spare tires, suitcases, and duffel bags crammed with various objects. The library is distributed among the main containers on level one. The rest, above it, explains one of the Vatican men, are personal effects, necessities, gasoline reserves, ammunition, tools, mechanical parts, and a second complete, dismantled engine, as well as around twelve hundred Jerusalem Bibles, which weren’t planned
to be included at the outset, but which Opus Dei insisted on adding at the last minute.

Planning: The group is organized, given the main axes of the route to be followed and a rapid description of the Ameri-Canadian Northeast. Warned of the principal risks. The final goal is stated. A map is taken out, and passage points and access routes indicated.

Strategy: They will pass through the Notre Dame Mountains; they will not go back down by the coastal road. They will avoid all the seaboard cities—Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, to begin with, but also Matane, Rimouski, Rivière-du-Loup, and Quebec, obviously. They will be driving at around a thousand meters above sea level; it will be mountainous, desolate; the roads have not been maintained for at least twelve years.

It will be very tough.

Chrysler never allows the slightest illusory hope to remain.

That, he always says, gives reality a bit of a chance.