William H. Hallahan - (34 page)

In his hand he held the faded blue ribbon he had taken from Eve's
hair. By the light of the flickering torches, his green eyes danced
with excitement and anticipation.

Every demon who could push and shove his way into the Hall now
stood shouting conversation with others. They all pointed at Satan.
Many scouting groups came and went, fully armed. Beelzebub and his
staff stood holding unrolled charts of the fortifications of hell.

Demons were sharpening their weapons everywhere. Someone had set
up a forge and sparks were jumping with each hammerblow on the molten
sword blades.

"So!" the demons were shouting at each other. "It's
come to pass. Timothy finally won. We're all in for it now."

Now no one was paying any attention to the damned in the torture
chambers. Many of them had wandered off into other caves and tunnels,
stunned and aware only that the pain had stopped. Down at Charon's
ferry, the latest shipment of dead souls had arrived from earth, and
they stood on the dock, terrified and weeping, milling about,
wondering what was going to happen next. They watched the great din
in the Hall with awe.

Beelzebub's eyes were enormous with fear, anger and anticipation
as he approached the throne. He held forth the chart "We'll have
an extraordinarily difficult time defending this place, Satan,"
he said. "I've been telling you since early days that we need
better defenses."

"Put your charts away, Beelzebub," Satan said.

"Away! Minutes count! Possibly seconds!"

"I understand. But that is not our battle plan."

Beelzebub snorted. It was the closest he had ever come to
insubordination.

Satan cast the chart aside. It rolled down the steps and was soon
trampled by the scuffling crowd.

"What are your orders?" Beelzebub asked.

"There will be no final defense. No Thermopylae."

"I'm not submitting without a fight!" Beelzebub cried.

"None of us are. We'll fight. But not here."

"Not here?"

"No. Sound the call for assembly."

It took Beelzebub a few minutes to find the bugler and a few more
minutes to lead him to the dais. Satan nodded at him and the bugler
raised his horn and sounded assembly. The incredible din of voices
died slowly away and the chamber was filled with complete hushed
silence. The bugler sounded assembly once again. This time a great
shout went up and the demons hastened to their assembly places.

Satan looked at them with satisfaction. He had taken them up, a
battered band of defeated, humiliated, frightened fallen angels and
wielded them into this tough, disciplined, fighting force that now
stood silently watching him.

"Hear me," he said to the assembly. "This is the
day we always knew would come. But this is not the day of your
destruction." There was a moment of hesitant silence, then a
great shout went up. They brandished their arms and shouted his name.

"We are not going to die like hunted animals here, scurrying
through these caves and tunnels. No. We are going to fight to
victory!"

He watched their overjoyed faces. "We are going to fight to
victory up there. In heaven!"

The troops went wild. They waved their weapons and shook their
helmets in air and shouted his name.

"Hear me," he went on. "This is the moment we have
waited for, the moment we have trained so hard and long for. We
should have done this a very long time ago. We are invincible."

Another prolonged shout went up.

"We'll have our revenge! And we'll have it right now. Victory
or oblivion. Follow me!"

With a multitudinous roar in his ears, Satan rose, and with him
rose all his legions. He led them to the passageway out and up. They
streamed heavenward, rank on rank, column by column, freighted with
enough arms and hatred to last a dozen wars. And every one of them
had his eyes fixed on Satan. In a short time the place was empty. The
underworld had not one fiend left in it.
 
 

Up through the firmament they rose, up into the skies they had
fallen through so long ago. They flew for days. They ascended through
whole galaxies, moving on a fixed course, exultant, determined,
hurrying eagerly to the final battle. Each day's password was the
same: revenge.

Satan kept his eyes fixed ahead, alert for his first view of the
great gates. This time he would conquer or be destroyed. If he
failed, he would welcome oblivion.

Heaven: How humiliated he had been there. All that loyal service
he had devoted to the Lord. Then disgraced by demotion in front of
all the hierarchy. He still burned with shame and fury every lime he
remembered the defeat and the Fall and the beating while chained to a
wall. And the eternity in the burning lake that had seared off the
last traces of goodness from his charred soul. And the Lord's parting
shot, the last thunderbolt that scarred his leg.

He looked ahead. There would be no turning back: By now the
angelic host must have been alerted. Satan pictured the alarums and
trumpeting going on up in heaven, the hasty assembly, the seeking for
weapons long ago laid aside, golden angels trying to recall the
drills and military commands that hadn't been used in tens of
thousands of years.

He had the advantage. He had the troops, with the muscle-hard
training, he had the plan of battle and he had the advantage of
surprise. This time there would be no Timothy to fail him.

"Do you think," Beelzebub asked, "the Lord has
foreseen all this?"

"If He has, then He has foreseen His own defeat!" Satan
answered. "I will have Him! I will humble Him! I will make Him
pay for every moment." He looked down at the vast army that
followed him.

"Invincible!" he shouted. "Invincible!"

And the hordes of demons shouted back to him, filling the
firmament with their cries. Satan nodded grimly at them. He had made
them the terror of the universe.

Scouts had been sent ahead, the fleetest demons on point, watching
lest the Lord sent an army to meet them in midair. Satan wanted to
join battle in heaven itself, inside the great gates.

But strangely, no angels were encountered. No watches had been
posted by heaven. And soon Satan's scouts came streaming in to report
that the great gates of heaven stood wide open.

"Don't stop," Satan commanded. "Full speed ahead.
Before they shut them. Charge! Charge for victory!"

The hordes of hell raised their weapons and shouted their war
cries. They increased their speed and roared toward the great gates.

There were no guards, no advance parties of angels to challenge
them. Satan was the first to rush through the gates and into heaven.

In spite of his vivid memory, it was far more beautiful than he
remembered. But there were no angels. There were no challengers
anywhere. And the terrain was changed: the pavilions, the flowers,
gone; the fields of Elysium, fallow, the streams, dried up.

His legions poured through the gates with murderous shouts. Arms
clanking, swinging swords whistling, they quickly spread out.

"Search," he ordered. "They're hiding somewhere."

Satan gathered his lieutenants on the hill where the Lord's
pavilions had stood. He took out the pale and faded blue ribbon and
pressed it to his face. Faintly, almost beyond recall, the last whiff
of the perfume of apples entered his nostrils. Soon now, he told
himself. But now in the silence they all heard the voice of the wind.
Its whine was unbearable, a chilly and lonely cry that would forever
haunt the place, forever make heaven uninhabitable.

Satan stood stony-faced as the last of the scouts came in from the
most distant reaches of heaven. The place was long empty, abandoned
ages ago.

He felt the eyes of his lieutenants on him, seeking an
explanation. How could they not see what was so obvious? They had
been completely and finally defeated.

They waited expectantly, suppressing smirks--victory without a
stroke.

He raised his eyes and looked out over the galaxies. He could
wander forever in those great wastes, searching for God, who could
forever elude him. This was his final punishment.

The Lord had taken Eve and all the angelic host and gone away
beyond his reach forever. And Satan was left abandoned, revenge
forever denied him, Eve forever withheld from him. He was unable to
die, unable to stop suffering, punished for eternity, a living death
of no hope.

In his breast unrequited love struggled with unappeasable hatred.
Satan in love; love in Satan. Oh, terrible irony. Instead of finding
Eve, he had found despair.

"No!" Satan cried. He shook a
fist at the indifferent stars. "No! No! No!"

It was spring. The sky was filled once again with migrating birds,
moving north, following ancient instincts, eager to reach their
destinations to mate, breed, rear young.

Nations of snow geese, continents of Canada geese, multitudes of
warblers in their countless hues, varieties, breeds, and
configurations, clouds of robins, marauding bands of jays, great
flapping tribes of crows, starlings, grackles, small bands of rufous
towhees, tight flights of purple finches sailing like buckshot, and
predators--the falcons, the hawks, the eagles, the buteos--all raced
northward.

And the great black hawk saw them all. She flew higher, she flew
faster, she gloried in her undiminished strength and dared the sun.
She soared, she wheeled and somersaulted.

At mid-morning she felt hunger and from a towering height dived on
a flock of mourning doves and took one in a single pass, exultant in
her prowess.

On the white branch of a dead sycamore
at the end of a lake near the Delaware Water Gap, she tore open her
kill and scooped out the red meat inside. When she was finished she
preened her feathers and groomed her breast and flew aimlessly away,
her life, now and forever, without hope or purpose.

"A MILE-A-MINUTE TALE OF

ARMS SALES, REVOLUTIONS,

SEDUCTIONS AND

ASSASSINATIONS"

The New York Times Book
Review
 

THE TRADE
 

WILLIAM H. HALLAHAN
 

An ex-CIA agent involved in the international arms trade is led
from Cologne to Paris to London to Amsterdam in search of his
partner's killer. Instead he falls into a neo-Nazi conspiracy leading
to World War III--and into the arms of a seductive, lethal beauty.
 
 

"Hallahan graduates to the Ludlum-Follett class
of writers with this crackling good thriller."

Publishers Weekly

"A dandy thriller... keeps the reader's interest
right to the end."

Detroit Free Press