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Chapter 4

 
"Suffering serves no useful purpose, but it does delight the eye."
—Conrad Bland

 

Jericho returned to each of his four rented rooms after the killing, disturbing the covers and making enough of a mess in the bathrooms so it would appear that they were actually being used. Then he went out, looted two more stores, and moved into the Talisman, a middle-class hotel. He slept until sunrise, breakfasted, purchased a better grade of clothing, disposed of the clothes he had stolen, and spent most of the morning and early afternoon watching the video set in his room. He concentrated on soap operas, hoping to glean more about the customs and habits of Walpurgis.

What he saw confused him. There were differences between Walpurgan society and the rest of the Republic worlds, but the differences were very subtle. He was not surprised to discover that an expression of "Gezundheit!" when someone sneezed was looked upon as an insult or a curse, since these people had no desire to wish devils out of their bodies. But try as he might, he couldn't understand why a prayer to Belial was a source of amusement while the same prayer offered to Baal was supposed to draw tears from the audience, or why a woman would submit to sexual ravishment at the hands of one black-cloaked figure and would take offense when another merely tried to hold her hand.

There was, for example, a Cult of Cthulu, a demon that he knew from his research to be a totally fictitious creation, but as far as he could tell no one worshiped or even mentioned Lucifuge Rofocale, who was supposed to be the commander of the armies of Hell. Some of the actresses dressed like an adolescent boy's kinkiest fantasy, replete with rubber, leather, whips, and spurs, while others covered themselves from head to toe, and he was simply unable to pinpoint any correlation between their behavior and their dress modes.

It was after watching a half-dozen video shows that he knew he would have to seek out Ibo Ubusuku, the Republic's undercover operative, and get a thorough backgrounding on the society that he was going to have to infiltrate. He hadn't wanted to make his presence known to anyone, not even a Republic agent, but he simply had too many areas of ignorance, too many wrong manners and habits to begin approaching Bland yet.

He checked the hour and decided that it was time to see how the police were progressing. He had given them all morning to come to the conclusion that they weren't dealing with any normal, run-of-the-mill murder. He had already given them a timetable: If they weren't looking for an obese redheaded drunkard by nightfall and searching through his four cheap motel rooms by late the following afternoon, they wouldn't pose much of a problem to him in the future. And if they ran ahead of schedule, well, it was best to know now what trouble they could cause him later.

Keeping the guise of a blond man in his mid-thirties, which he had assumed after the murder and had decided upon as his primary persona during his stay in Amaymon, he went out and began walking the mile or so to the first of the two taverns he had visited the previous night

He had gone only three blocks when he was accosted by a scarlet-robed man who carried a pile of leaflets and wore a distinctive jeweled amulet.

"Excuse me, citizen," said the man, "but can I offer you one of these?"

He waved a leaflet under Jericho's nose.

"Why not?" said Jericho with a smile, taking it from his hand.

"What's your position on Conrad Bland?" continued the man.

"I haven't any," said Jericho.

"But you've heard of him?"

"Vaguely, in passing."

"Our position—and the position of all the churches—is that Bland is the savior of Walpurgis," said the man passionately. "It's all spelled out in the leaflet."

"Who does Walpurgis need saving from?" asked Jericho.

"From the Republic. You know that they've demanded his extradition and that we've refused?"

"I don't read the papers," said Jericho.

"You won't find it in the papers," said the man. "The government—the civil government—isn't happy about it at all. They wanted to turn him over to the Republic, but the Council of Sects put enough pressure on them so they had to back down."

"Then what's the problem?"

"They've clamped down on the news media. Hell, a third of the people don't even know Bland's on Walpurgis, and those who do are like you, meaning no offense. We may someday have to go to war over Bland, so we're trying to educate the lay public about him."

"Then I'd better take this home and read it," said Jericho.

"That's all we ask," said the man, spying another pedestrian and heading off to give him a leaflet.

Jericho took a quick look at the handout. It told him nothing new about Bland; indeed, it was nothing but an impassioned tract praising him as the personification of evil, and neglecting to mention those deeds which might have supported the argument.

But while it told him nothing about Bland, it told him quite a bit about the political situation on Walpurgis. The theocracy wasn't as all-powerful as Mela had led him to believe, or else it wouldn't be trying to win the public over to its side by force of argument The civil government still held most of the reins of power, certainly they controlled the media, and they represented a real obstacle to the theocracy on this particular issue. But the most interesting finding of all was that the man in the street was not likely to be a devout advocate of saving or protecting Bland. Indeed, a lot of men in the street didn't even know who Bland was, which was borne out by the ignorance of the desk clerk at the first hotel he had visited.

He tossed the leaflet into the next garbage atomizer he came to, then continued on to the tavern. Nothing much was happening there, no police were visible, most of the evening crowd hasn't gotten off work yet, so he ordered a local brand of beer and nursed it slowly, his eyes riveted to the mirror above the bar, watching every movement on the street.

An hour passed, then another. Jericho was undisturbed; he had spent most of his professional life waiting in one manner or another, and he was used to it.

It was late afternoon now, and the streets began to get a little more congested with both people and vehicles. And then a tall thin man with a sparse beard entered the tavern.

The man walked up to the bartender and began conversing in low tones. The bartender listened attentively, shrugged once, then nodded. The man said something further, and the bartender shook his head vigorously.

Finally the man broke off the conversation and walked to the middle of the room.

"Excuse me," he said in a loud voice, holding up a small golden emblem for any interested bystanders to see. "I am Langston Davies, assistant to Chief of Detectives Sable, and I'm looking for a heavyset man with red or brown hair who was in here last night. Does anyone recall seeing him?"

There was general murmuring of negatives. Jericho considered speaking up and laying another false trail, but decided against it. Sooner or later they would realize they had been lied to, and since only one person would have any reason for lying, he would have revealed his ability to move into and out of identities at will.

"He would have been very drank,'' continued Davies, looking hopefully around the room. "He either came here from the Devil's Den or else went there directly after leaving this place. We've posted a reward for any information that anyone may have."

"How big a reward?" asked a woman who was sitting alone at a table.

That depends on how useful the information is," said Davies. "I'll leave my card here in case anyone decides to get in touch with me."

There was no response, and Davies paused for a moment and then left.

Jericho checked the clock on the wall.

Right on schedule. Davies would check the Devil's Den and the restaurant before dark. Possibly he'd find someone who had actually seen him; probably he wouldn't. Midafternoon habitués of bars and coffee shops usually weren't around at midnight.

Davies would report back, and they'd realize that hunting for witnesses was a dead end. By early evening they'd be staking out all the hotels in the area, and by midmorning at the latest they'd realize they were following a cold trail. Then would come the methodical checking of every recently rented hotel room and a search of those rooms. They'd find his four rooms by late afternoon tomorrow.

Par for the course. Efficient but uninspired. Jericho allowed himself the luxury of a tiny, unseen smile.

He paid his tab and walked out the door, almost bumping into Davies, who was gesticulating wildly and arguing with what was obviously a colleague.

"But what in blazes does he want us to do?" Davies was demanding.

"I don't know," came the reply, "but he says we're wasting our time, that there isn't any fat guy."

"And he doesn't want to start checking out the hotels?" insisted Davies.

Jericho wanted to listen further, but even dropping something on the ground and pausing to pick it up might be too obvious. So, frustrated, he continued walking.

He didn't know who the "he" was that the two detectives were referring to. Probably this Chief Sable. But whoever it was, he'd caught on a little too quickly for comfort.

He made his round of the four rooms again, making each look lived in, then returned to his headquarters hotel and took out the disc containing the information on Ubusuku.

What he learned wasn't all that encouraging. Ibo Ubusuku had been a minor functionary in the diplomatic corps who had accepted the assignment on Walpurgis merely to jump up a couple of notches in his job rating and pay scale. He was a tall black man of Zulu heritage with an excellent academic background but no training in espionage, undercover work, or covert operations of any kind—nor, for that matter, was there anything in his record to imply that he knew the first thing about cults and covens. He had applied to the Walpurgis Immigration Bureau, had been one of only twenty secular applicants accepted during the past two years, and had reported back to his superiors only once.

The gist of that report, short and simple, was that he had seen no trace and heard no mention of Conrad Bland, and that any operative who wished to get in touch with him could take out an ad in the classified section of the Amaymon newspaper stating that he wished to purchase a Red Letter facsimile edition of the Compendium Maleficarum in the original Latin. Ubusuku would reply to the advertiser's box number and a meeting could be arranged.

Jericho put the disc away and considered his situation. Someone had already seen through his disguise, and without doing the necessary legwork. It was not unreasonable to suppose that that same man would be waiting for him to make contact with an operative who was already in place. He couldn't know that the operative was Ubusuku; or, if he did, Ubusuku would already be in custody and beyond Jericho's reach.

Jericho had to proceed on the supposition that Ubusuku was at large and free from suspicion. Now, if his adversary didn't know how to waylay the incoming messages at Ubusuku's end, it made sense to try to stop them at their source. The police couldn't very well tap every vidphone in the city, but Jericho had already checked and discovered that Ubusuku had either no vidphone at all or an unlisted one. This Sable didn't figure to be a fool; he'd know he was starting off a couple of steps behind, and wouldn't waste his time with vidphones and the mails. He'd proceed on the assumption that Jericho was in the dark about Ubusuku's whereabouts, just as Jericho had to assume that Ubusuku's whereabouts didn't include a jail or an interrogation camp.

Jericho lay back on his bed, staring at the somewhat inexpert rendering of a Black Mass on the ceiling, and tried to extrapolate Sable's next move. The detective would keep a watchful eye on all means of public contact, of course, and that would include personal ads. There was nothing in the message to arouse suspicion, but now that Sable had figured out that he could alter his appearance, any stranger placing an ad would be suspect.

Still, he couldn't proceed any further without some kind of backgrounding, so he hit upon a compromise: He would place an ad, but not the one that would trigger a response from Ubusuku. If it sparked no official interest, he would place another within the next day or two.

He stood before the mirror, giving himself a head of thick, bushy gray hair. When this was done he inserted lifts into his shoes. The end result was to add the illusion of between two and three inches to his height. He didn't know if it would help much, since they were looking for a faceless chameleon, but there was at least an outside chance they'd be looking for a somewhat shorter man, and he hadn't gotten this far by not being thorough and cautious.

His new disguise in place, he walked six blocks to the paper's local office, inserted a personal notice to the effect that he was searching for a blond woman he had met at a party two weeks ago, paid for the ad in cash, gave the address of a hotel across the street that he could observe from his window, and returned to his own room. He shaved, showered, took a brief nap, and reclaimed his standard identity.

Then he pulled a chair up near the window, sat down, and kept a watchful eye on the nearby hotel. And as he waited for any sign of discovery, he put himself in Sable's shoes and tried to figure out what he would do next.

 

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