The Baron breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Pushing someone to believe in wild myths was often the hardest part of convincing a secular or near-secular person to cooperate, at least without asking the Zombie to perform a magic trick. Now it was time to motivate Marco, to offer a portion of hope to assuage any grief or dread. “You won’t die,” the Baron said. “We’ll make sure that you walk out of this situation alive, and I promise you, there will be justice for your father.”
“Yeah?” Marco dropped his hands to his lap. “Who killed him?”
“Just some Communist goon,” Phyllis said.
Marco scoffed. “God damnit it woman—”
The Baron twitched, and Marco shut up before he earned himself a second slap.
“If you have a question, ask it,” the Baron ordered.
Marco rubbed the red of his right cheek with a thumb. “Who ordered the goon?”
“Why do you care?” the Baron asked.
“Someone has to pay. Pop always said, ‘It’s an eye for an eye or you’ll go blind,’ yeah?”
The Baron opened his mouth, then closed it.
Phyllis stage-whispered, “That’s really how he said it.”
“Was he joking?” The Baron glanced at Phyllis.
She shook her head.
The Baron returned his attention to Marco. “Revenge isn’t an option. If you get anywhere near the Soviets, they’ll kill you, see that you have the Cat, and then kill you again and again until you run out of lives.”
“Answer my question, man. Who killed my pop?”
“You can’t kill him,” the Baron insisted.
“Why not?”
“Because the man is a Soviet diplomat. If he dies, you’ll start an international incident, and he’ll just be replaced by another man who’ll have twice as many reasons to gut you and sift through your entrails. Taking revenge on him won’t help, and it’ll certainly make things worse.”
“You’re telling me I can’t avenge my pop because of somebody else’s problem?”
“It’s not somebody else’s problem. It’s everyone’s problem.”
Marco was clearly upset. “What, the end of the world or whatever?”
“Yes, the end of the world. The Soviets have a cult with a lot of power and prestige, and the only reason they aren’t fighting with magic is because they’re a divided house. The Bolsheviks—the faction that murdered your father—are stymied by the Orthodox, the original owners of the Cat o’ Nine Lives. If anything happens to the Cat except for its safe return to the Orthodox leadership, the Bolsheviks will win control of the Soviet cult, and the ball will start rolling on an occult war between the CIA and the KGB—one that the Soviets will almost certainly win if they aren’t threatened with a nuclear strike.”
Marco blinked, suddenly imagining what every sane person saw after hearing the word nuclear—visions of annihilation. When he opened his mouth, his question came out like a prayer for hope: “Are you saying people won’t fight ‘cause of the nukes?”
“No, Marco, it’s the opposite. The Bolsheviks aren’t afraid of the bomb; nor are Langley for that matter. As far as they’re all concerned, committing to nuclear war isn’t a question of if but when. Taking your revenge wouldn’t just end your life. It might end the world.”
Marco shook his head. “I’m sorry, I hear you, but I… Jesus, man, I don’t care.” He blinked rapidly to clear his eyes. “My pop is dead, and he’d tell me to kill for him.” He sniffed, flinching at some inner emotion, overwhelming his machismo and resolve. “It’s what a man would do.”
The Zombie grinned. “Kid, doing what we want is your revenge. What do you think happens when you fail the Kremlin? When you fail Stalin?”
Marco’s chest convulsed, but he took a deep breath to smother the sob. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “You get fired?”
The Zombie laughed. “If you own up to your mistakes, you die in a Gulag camp, cold and starving, and that’s a mercy. If you run, the KGB kills you in some remote corner of the world. They rip off your fingernails and cut out your tongue and make you suffer for failing them. They take pictures, record your screams—they make an example out of you.”
Marco swallowed and sniffed, but he couldn’t muster a reply, not even with seconds to reflect on the Zombie’s words.
The Zombie continued, “The diplomat’s name is Andrey Malik. The Kremlin is watching him, I guarantee it, and if he doesn’t find you and take the Cat, they’ll call him home for Stalin’s judgement. They’ll punish him for all that pointless murder, and all the risks he took.”
“They’ll kill him because he killed my pop?” Marco asked.
“For that and more, he’ll die slower than you could imagine, ashamed and broken.” The Zombie grinned even broader. “Help us win, and Malik will suffer. Do you want that?”
“I do,” Marco said bleakly. “I do. He has to hurt before he dies.”
“We’ll make sure he knows,” the Zombie said. “I promise.”
“You’re a frightening man,” Phyllis said to the Zombie.
He cackled. “I’ve lived a long time and seen tyrants in every age. They’re all the same, paranoid, afraid of the world they’ve conquered. After a while, even failure and rebellion look the same. They’re both obstacles. They stand in the way of perfect safety.”
“I’m not letting you off the hook,” she said softly. “That’s just as creepy.”
“Who are you?” Marco asked the Zombie.
“That’s right. We haven’t introduced ourselves,” said the Baron.
Phyllis raised a hand for them to pause. “Allow me.”
The Baron looked to the Zombie, who nodded his assent.
Phyllis crossed her hands at her waist. “Marco, these are very old men. When I was a little girl, I read a book that changed my life, and some of my favorite stories were about them. The European gentleman is Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach. He was born more than two hundred years ago in Germany. His Asian friend in the ruined shirt is the Zombie. In the book, he was called the Golem, and he’s the oldest man alive. Nobody knows when he was born.”
“I have some theories,” the Baron said.
“I have stories,” the Zombie added.
“He has fiction,” the Baron corrected, “but it doesn’t matter. I won’t age, fall sick, or waste away from an injury, but I’m vulnerable. That’s why this man protects me. He’s absolutely invincible, and he swore an oath that if I died, he’d destroy everyone responsible. Marco, this includes you. I’m not threatening you. I don’t expect you to attack me. I just want you to know what’s at stake.”
“Okay.” Marco was already overwhelmed. The Baron could tell that he was ready to shut down, but they couldn’t afford the delay any longer.
“Marco, before we go, I need you to show me a phone.”
The boy stood up. He was a full head shorter than Phyllis and two heads shorter than the Baron. Compared to the Zombie, he was a squirt. “You need to make a call?” he asked.
“We need to reach our Orthodox contact. I don’t have the prestige to heal a stomach injury, and there are only two ways to remove the Cat. You either die for the last time and your corpse coughs up the stone, or someone cuts you open and rips it out. Since I’d rather you survived, we’re going to need a surgeon and a lot of prestige. Nobody has ever survived its removal without a wish.”
“You want to do surgery on me?” Marco asked bleakly.
“I don’t want to, but we have to. It’ll keep you alive. Phone?”
Marco pointed down the hall. “There’s a phone in the parlor. Private.”
“Show us the way,” the Baron said.
Marco led them down the hall to an excessively thick oak door with rubber weather stripping around the edges. It cracked open with a shuffle of cold air, and the smell of stale cigarettes smacked them in the face. One of the window units was chugging along, bringing the room temperature down to nearly fifty degrees. Phyllis laughed to herself.
The curtains were drawn and the lights were down. The Zombie held the door open while Marco led the Baron to a rotary telephone at the end of a bar. “Thanks,” the Baron said.
“Who are you calling?” the Zombie asked.
“Operator.” He rolled out the zero and waited.
“You don’t have a number for your contact?” Phyllis asked.
“We weren’t supposed to call him. We were supposed to walk into the Soviet mission in lower Manhattan and put the Cat in his hands.”
“We could take Marco to the mission,” she said. “Think about this. You’re calling the Soviets. The lines will be wiretapped for sure, and who knows who’ll be listening—Langley, New York? The CPUSA guys under Malik will probably get the message too.”
The Baron shook his head. The operator came on the line and asked how she could direct his call. He told her, “I’d like to contact the Soviet mission. The name is Baron d’Holbach. I just need the external number, front desk. Public contact. Yes, thank you.”
“This is a mistake,” Phyllis grumbled.
The Baron covered the receiver with his palm. “There’s no other option. Malik already knows plenty, and there’s definitely been a shift in power since yesterday. Denisov might be under some form of house arrest. Contacting him will teach us a lot about the situation. Worst case, Malik learns that we found the Cat, and I’m sure he already expects that.”
“We might fail to contact him,” the Zombie suggested.
“One second,” the Baron said.
A woman with a clear Russian accent came on the line. “How may I direct your call?”
“Viktor Denisov. This is the Baron d’Holbach. He’ll be expecting me.”
“One moment please.” The secretary’s receiver went dead, but he was still on the line. After a few seconds, she returned. “Denisov is out of the office. Can I take a message?”
“It’s an important call. Did Denisov leave a forwarding number?”
Phyllis mouthed the words: Hang up.
The Baron shook his head. “Ma’am?” he asked.
The secretary seemed reluctant to answer. “He did.” She didn’t offer to help him. It wasn’t surprising. They’d probably switched someone else into the circuit, someone far too important to allow a mere secretary to make judgement calls in their presence.
The Baron decided on a gamble. “We have a message to give him about the Cat o’ Nine Lives. Tell the person listening over your shoulder that he’ll want to hear what we have to say, but we won’t say another word until Denisov is on the line.”
“Interesting,” the Zombie said.
“What’re you doing?” Marco asked.
The Baron shushed them both. Phyllis grimaced but stayed silent.
There was a long hesitation. “Yes sir,” the secretary finally said. “Switching you over now.” Another few seconds passed, a couple of clicks on the line, and then they were ringing in to another number. The phone rang ten times before anyone picked up.
“Denisov,” came the thick accent.
“I have a Baron d’Holbach on the line,” said the operator.
“Thank you,” Denisov said. “Go ahead, Baron.”
“Denisov,” greeted the Baron. “Where are you?”
“I’m at my office in the United Nations.”
So he had been moved from his office at the mission, even though he’d specifically instructed the Baron to return there with the Cat. “Has it been a busy weekend?”
Denisov chuckled. “The last time I saw the sun, I had coffee down in the village.”
So Denisov was under virtual arrest and had to stay on UN grounds. The Baron could work with that. “Do you have a lot of people helping you out?”
“I’m surrounded by many very helpful people. I’m glad you’re asking after my health, but you shouldn’t worry about coming to visit me. I’ll be fine on my own.”
The Baron felt Denisov was laying the double speak on a little thick, but image was everything. Denisov wanted to be able to deny his assistance with the Baron, even if everyone clearly knew what they were really talking about.
“Well, you’re in good hands,” the Baron said, carefully laying the groundwork for his next question. “Do they keep a good surgeon on site?”
“Of course. We have our own medical staff.”
“And anything they can’t handle, you can heal with prestige, right?”
“As you said, I’m in good hands, Baron. I’m ready for anything.”
“That’s good to know. About the Cat, Denisov, we haven’t found it yet.”
“The Cat?” Denisov asked as if confused.
“I’ll keep you updated if I have anything to bring you.”
“Good to hear,” Denisov said. “Keep me posted.” He hung up the phone.
The Baron hung up his end. This was the best result he could hope for. They’d learned where Denisov was stationed and the resources he could muster, while Malik’s listeners learned almost nothing new. “Denisov is at the UN. He’ll be ready for us.”
“What the hell was that?” Phyllis asked. “Nobody will be fooled by what you just said. The lady doth protest too much—”
“I know Shakespeare,” the Baron said, “but you’re missing the point. Malik already knew we were close to the Cat. We gave up nearly nothing in order to speak with Denisov, and if we can get to him before he moves again, we win. Malik loses. It’s that simple.”
Phyllis frowned. “Fine, that’s fair, but I’m still not happy with this.”
“Trust us,” the Zombie said. “We’ll make the best of a bad situation.”
“If you follow our instructions, I think we’ll be able to keep Marco alive.”
“Thanks?” Marco asked, not quite mustering the energy for sarcasm. The teenager could tell something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, and the Baron wouldn’t volunteer the facts. The truth was, keeping Marco alive was a luxury, and the easiest way to save the Cat was to cut it out of him here and now. Fortunately for Marco, the Baron didn’t want to take the easy way out, not when it doomed an innocent life.
The phone rang on the bar. Everyone looked at it. It could only be a coincidence unless someone followed them here and looked up the number in the directory, and in a building this size, there would surely be dozens of numbers. Yet for all this reasonable thinking, the Baron felt in his gut that the call was for him. Why? Because it was the middle of a Sunday, and they were the last people to make a call from the parlor. “Is this the only set for this phone line?”
“Yeah,” Marcos said.
The phone kept ringing. “Do you know who’d be calling about now?”
“Nobody.”
The Baron pointed to the Zombie. “Watch the hall from the door. We may have been followed, though I don’t know how.”
“That’s not possible,” Phyllis said.
“Maybe they could record the rotary pulses off the phone? I don’t know enough about phone switches, but I don’t think you can just call someone back.”
The phone continued to ring. Eight. Nine. Ten rings.
The Baron picked it up. “Hello?”
“Baron, I was afraid you’d already left,” Malik said.
The Baron laughed. “That’s ridiculous. How did you find this number?”
“I didn’t,” Malik said.
“Wishes for knowledge are impossible. You can’t know where we are.”
“Baron, does a good magician reveal his secrets?” Malik asked.
There had to be a way. What parts of the system were manipulatable? How could you exploit the nature of phones to return a call? Wait, Malik didn’t have to know—he simply had to ask for the call itself, and the gods would make him pay extra for his ignorance. “You wished for the phone to call this me back,” he told Malik, “and it cost you a great deal.”
“Correct,” Malik said, “a brilliant—”
The Baron hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Phyllis asked.
“It was Malik. He wished to have the phone system dial us back.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing yet, but I’m checking something. Give it a moment.” The Baron raised a hand. After a second, the phone began to ring, and he picked it up again. “You pulled the number off the callback somehow,” he concluded.
“I wrote down the number of pulses,” Malik said angrily, “so stop trying to waste my prestige and listen. Based on what I heard, I’m guessing you’ve found the person who swallowed the Cat, but you can’t cut it out safely without a doctor and years of prestige.”
The Baron refused to respond. He’d learned what he wanted from the second callback. Right now, one of Malik’s underlings would be connecting the parlor’s number to an address. Malik was more resourceful than the Baron had anticipated, and his ability to exploit the system of prestige and squeeze knowledge out of a standard wish was admirable. The Baron had been bested, and his supposedly safe behavior had exposed them. Soon, CPUSA would learn their location and their destination. The enemy would come soon. Still, he waited on the line, looking to squeeze a little more information from his enemy.
“You’re silent,” Malik said with great satisfaction. “You agree with me. I know it. You’re a moral man, Baron, the history books make it very clear. You care deeply.”
“Thank you,” the Baron said. “You’re a clever man.”
“No, thank you. You’ve done half the work for me. Because New York isn’t ripping the city down to the foundations, I’m confident that they don’t have the Cat. Since someone has already swallowed it, I’m guessing it’s in a neophyte. Someone this Barilla knew, eh? Family, friends—I’m sure he put it in an innocent person, yes?”
The Baron said nothing.
“What is he saying?” Phyllis asked.
The Baron shook his head. He mouthed: Wait.
“Of course he did,” Malik concluded. “A civilian sees an artifact and thinks only about power, not about consequences. He thinks it’ll save someone he loves.”
The Baron remained steadfast. Malik was blathering, and at this point, it was equally likely that he’d spill crucial information or hang up the phone.
“More silence! Baron, use your head. Talk to me! Give up! Where is the Cat, eh? I’ll send my doctors, my prestige. We’ll save your innocent man!”
That offer finally twinged the Baron’s frustrations, demanding a response. “I don’t trust you,” he replied. “I can’t. Not after you killed children to keep them quiet.”
“Ah, Baron—you poor man! I preferred when you were silent.” A cough, clearing his throat. “I don’t need to know the location of the Cat, but I can’t leave any survivors until I have it in my hands.” A long pause, waiting. When the Baron didn’t respond, he continued with more verve: “I don’t like killing, Baron—I don’t!—but I had to be sure that the mob, that New York, Langley, the Vatican—I had to be sure that everyone but you stays away!”
“Everyone but me?” the Baron prodded.
“Oh, yes! I can handle you, and you think you can handle me, but neither of us can win a war against the world, yes?” He giggled. He’d probably snorted a line of cocaine before making the call. “I could trail you, or I could wait for you to deliver the clues to me. You’ve lost, you see. I know where you are.”
“I know,” the Baron said. “You’ve worked back to this location.”
“Then we’re…” Malik laughed to himself. “What’s the saying? We’re on the same page of the book? You have an innocent, and he has the Cat. You won’t make it to Denisov with him alive, I promise you that much, and you can’t go to any other occult doctor without losing the Cat to a third party. There’s no solution to the dilemma, don’t you see?”
“Why are you telling me this?” the Baron asked.
“Because I’m a tidy man, Baron, and I don’t want to kill anyone else on American soil. My offer stands. If you bring me the innocent, I will cut the Cat out and heal him, and you will be paid twice Denisov’s fee. Nobody else will have to die, and the details of Soviet politics will be worked out on the far side of the Atlantic. We’ll leave you in peace.”
“I don’t betray my client for a higher fee. I’m a mercenary, not a traitor. If I want work, I have to stick to my principles.”
“Pfah!” Malik made a long snort. It might’ve been another line of cocaine off the table in front of him. He coughed and sneezed, then said into the receiver, “Don’t refuse on a technicality. You were hired by the Soviet cult, and I am their ranking officer in America. If you give me the Cat, that’s it! Contract done. But if you refuse?” A snicker, another cough. “You’re making a choice to kill an innocent man, Baron. You can’t use your principles to weasel your way out of this decision.”
The Baron scowled. “My principles are mine. Do you know the saying, ‘History is written by the winners?’”
“Of course. Orwell. Englishman.”
“If the Cat ends up in your hands, you’ll treat Denisov as a traitor, and the Orthodox faction—who hired me—will be destroyed. That will be my fault. I will be a traitor. If it ends up in Denisov’s hands, then I’ll have completed my work, and the decision to send Nagy to New York will be undone. It’ll be as if the Cat was never here.”
“Hm. So you’re suggesting that only the Orthodox hired you?”
“That’s what I heard in Denisov’s office.”
“And you think the Orthodox faction will last long enough to pay you?”
“Yes! They have the Apples of Perun. If there’s an occult war, they’ll slaughter you. In any case, this isn’t just a single day for me, Malik. My reputation will continue long after you’re dead. People will talk about what I did here a century from now. Two centuries from now. If I’m going to stay in this line of work, I can’t betray my clients. In view of those coming decades, an offer for a lesser evil isn’t even tempting.”
“You assume you’ll live for decades,” Malik said softly.
“The Zombie is right here,” the Baron replied, words like lead.
“Try to save this unknown innocent.” Malik was unhappy, but his rising high was interfering with his ability to maintain focus. “Just remember, when it seems as if he has no lives left, the offer stands. We will save him, whoever he is. Just give me a call.”
The phone clicked, and the tone buzzed in the Baron’s ear.
“What did he want?” Phyllis asked.
The Baron hesitated. If he told Marco about Malik’s offer, it might drive a wedge between them. It all depended on whether or not the teen’s desire for revenge overwhelmed his survival instincts. However, if he didn’t tell Marco, and Malik later referred to this conversation, Marco might realize the Baron had been holding important information back.
“He wanted you to do something,” Phyllis asked, “about Marco, I assume.”
She’d brought it up first, just by guesswork. Smart woman. That made the decision easy. “He was offering to cut the Cat out of Marco,” the Baron said. “I refused for now, though the choice is ultimately Marco’s. If you’d prefer to throw in the towel and give Malik what he wants, I won’t stand in your way, though I think there are better alternatives.”
“Like what?” Marco asked.
“We take you to Denisov, as planned, and you get your revenge on Malik. Right now, we still have the advantage. He doesn’t know who you are, and we’ll be moving you through public transportation. There’ll be too many witnesses for the enemy to make a move.”
“You mean New York cultists?” Phyllis asked.
“Langley too. They have at least one agent in the city. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were just waiting for the Soviets to trip over themselves before they made their own move.”
“Malik is using CPUSA members,” Phyllis noted.
“Just for plausible deniability. There’d be no doubt for a Langley cultist. Have you met one? Everything in their world is about the war on Communism. We’ve already had to face them down back at the Biltmore Hotel. Thankfully, they don’t know about the Cat.”
“Langley cult? What’s that?” Marco asked.
“Special Operations Group,” the Zombie called from the door. “Occult patriots.”
“Who?”
The Baron answered. “It’s the paramilitary branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. They’re mostly incompetents, but they contain a cult whose roots stretch back to the American Revolution. Those few are dangerous. Real dangerous.” Marco had a confused expression, so the Baron asked, “Do you know what a cult is?”
“Not really. Pop said New York has a cult.”
“It does. A cult is a group of people who share a single set of beliefs and rituals. All cults of prestige believe in roughly the same mythology and cosmology, but they have their own rules, loyalties, and philosophies that separate them from one another. The New York cult is deeply pagan and utilizes a lot of classical Roman ritual in their worship. They’re feudalistic. Your father was a member of a vassal cult recruited out of the Cosa Nostra, and he paid a yearly tithe of his prestige to the New York nobility in exchange for their protection.”
“They didn’t protect him,” Marco said.
“They’re a sleeping giant. Give them time, they’ll fight back. An influential man named Schuler fought CPUSA at the factory. New York will know what happened very soon, and they’ll be very angry. We just have to keep them from learning about the Cat.”
“Why? If they were supposed to protect my father, wouldn’t they protect me?”
“New York is the most powerful cult in the West, likely the most powerful on Earth. Their feudalism pays for an army of cultists almost ten times larger than what any other power can muster, a veritable battalion of well-armed civilians with prestige. Nobody will win in a fight with New York, and they won’t accept the Cat going back to the Soviets. If it’s in their territory, in the son of one of their members, they’ll take it for themselves.”
“That sounds fine,” Marco speculated.
“That’d be bad for the good half of the Soviet cult,” the Zombie said softly. “Then there’d be no revenge. No dead Malik. We shouldn’t let that happen. We should kill for your dad.”
Phyllis frowned at the Zombie’s brazen methods of persuasion.
“Is that so?” Marco asked the Baron.
The Baron nodded. “If we lose it to New York, then the man you want dead takes control of the unified Soviet cult. He starts using the occult to win the Cold War, or he tries. Langley fights back, and sooner or later, someone important dies. Then it becomes a secular war, and we already told you how that ends.” He didn’t have to say anything more. The gloom of nuclear armageddon passed over them like a shadow across a window, blotting out the open sky.
Marco shuddered. The fear of atomic fire haunted even the most indifferent men. “So you want me to go with you to meet with this man, Denisov?” he asked.
“Yes.” The Baron glanced at Phyllis.
Marco took the non-verbal suggestion and asked her, “What do you think, uh, ma’am?” Everyone could hear the force of will it took to respect Phyllis’s word, but at least he was asking. One slap and one glare had extracted at least fifteen minutes of respect out of the boy.
She pursed her lips. “It’s the right thing to do, Marco. It’ll save your life. For your momma.”
“Okay, okay.” Marco seemed to steady himself mentally. “I’m with you, Baron.”
d’Holbach grinned. They could get moving, and just in time. “Follow my instructions, and we’ll see you through this. Stay with us until the Cat is out of you, and I promise, you won’t die.”
Marco put a hand over his stomach. “Until it’s out.”
Author’s Note:
There is nobody on this Earth who has a better chance of pulling Marco through the fire than the ageless philosopher and his invincible man.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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