an "...of ten travelers"/ Men In Black Dresses story

the ten travelers and all ancillary concepts © 1991 to 1995 by Megan Madison

the Men In Black Dresses and all ancillary concepts © 1998 by Valentina Smith

Please note that all characters described herein are the exclusive property of Megan Madison and/ or Valentina Smith. The use of any character or concept from this story, without their expressed permission, is forbidden by international copyright law.

 

Underneath It All

by M0rr1gan

 

Ben stood and wiped off blood - some blood - on the seat of his pants. He watched a tall, blonde woman step through the police line. She wore a long black velvet dress that she hitched up clear of the puddles of blood.

There were lots of puddles of blood.

Ben nodded at her and drawled to his friend Joe, "Lookit this, big fella."

Joe straightened up and scowled at the new arrival, "What's her story?"

Ben chewed his lip absently, "I say this with all honesty: I have no idea why a high society woman like that would wanna come...

He looked all around, at the human wreckage cooling on the sidewalk.

"...to Jack the Ripper's playground."

Ben and Joe stood their ground as she approached the largest identifiable lump, a look of distracted gravity on her precisely made up face. Still careful to keep her skirts from the blood, she hunkered down and probed at the mass with the handle of her comb.

Ben flickered his high energy stare over the milling police, and at the nauseated CSIs gathering up the once-human debris. The entire business felt wrong to him. He was sure that there was a lot more to the horror than he saw.

"Can we help you ma'am," Joe asked, in his 'anvils-going-'round-in-a-cement-mixer' voice.

She glanced at him, then returned to studying the crimson lump before her.

"His name's Arnold Carson, ma'am," Ben snapped, "And, until this afternoon, he was my best far east Asia man.

Ben's eyes were a particularly vibrant blue, and they grew very hard as they focused on the tall woman.

"What I don't understand, ma'am, is why he has a dress on."

She scowled some more and rose elegantly to a standing position.

Joe darted quickly to her side, his heavy boots splutching in the blood.

The tall woman looked at him like he was a bug, "This is a matter of national security, sir. Please step aside."

Ben and Joe looked sarcastically at each other. Using his shirt tail, Ben removed a leather billfold from the pocket of his jeans, which he flipped open to show the woman his identification, an identicard prominently emblazoned with the CIA's logo and shield.

"Do you really wanna talk about national security, lady," he sneered.

Both men smiled evilly as she paled.

Ben flipped the billfold shut, "Now, judging by your reaction, you know what my MAJIC clearance means, and, if you know that, then you're for real.

Joe closed his baseball-mitt hand on her biceps.

"So perhaps you'd be so kind as to shed some light on why my best analyst now comes unassembled."

"An' why there's a dress on what's left of 'im," Joe quipped.

"Not really," she shot, making to leave.

Joe's grip tightened. She produced a slender glass atomizer from her bag.

"Hey...!"

In the blink of an eye, a peculiar cloud had blossomed around Joe's slabby head.

"What the fuck," Joe moaned, feeling light-headed and pleasantly warm. He felt very well, despite the alarming tilt the ground had taken.

In no time at all, he had sunk onto his broad posterior into the bloody scum pooling about their feet, a happily stupid expression on his face.

In the split second it took Ben to rush to his friend's side, the woman was gone.

"Oh isn't this fun," he shot, helping Joe to his feet.

Joe's fiancee, Leah Morgan, was not at all impressed with the shape her paramour came home in.

"I thought you two were going to the hockey game," she screeched, staring into Joe's vacant eyes.

"We were," Ben explained, swabbing off Joe's cheeks where the spray had struck him, "We were almost to the Garden when we saw a woman across the street.

He frowned, "She looked so familiar. We were lookin' at her, tryin' to figure out where we knew her from, when she sort of shimmered, like the air above a hot road.

Ben stood, dropping the swabs he'd used into a sandwich bag, "All of a sudden, she started to scream.

He sealed the bag with a strip of masking tape, "Only, its not a woman screaming. It's a guy, and he is scared!"

"A transvestite," gasped their young friend Laura. She had been sitting on Joe and Leah's couch, eating popcorn and watching a "Seinfeld" rerun, but when the two men had wobbled in, the loopy melodrama of their lives became her preference.

Ben shrugged as he placed his sandwich bag of swabs into a manilla envelope, "I guess, but this wasn't some cross-dresser out for a stroll.

He perched on the kitchen counter, "Something we couldn't see was tearing him apart. We actually watched pieces the size of a pot roast get torn outta this poor guy.

Ben was a combat veteran. He'd served in the Marine Corps during the first Persian Gulf War, so he knew from blood and guts. He shuddered and continued, "Joe and I and a bunch of other bystanders went runnin' t'help...a few of the first ones t'get there were hurt pretty badly, too...god, there was blood and pieces of meat everywhere. Just as Joe an' I got there, whatever was killing this poor guy ripped his wig an' a big piece of his skull off..."

"And...?"

Ben's frown deepened, if such a thing were possible, "Turns out that she's Arnie Carson from the Station."

Leah gasped, "Your Far East Asia guy?"

"Yeah. How the heck's that work? I get paid pretty well by the Company t'find stuff out, but I didn't have a clue..."

"That Arnie was gay?"

Laura shook her head, "Transvestites aren't gay."

"I don't give a flyin' fuck up the ass if Arnie was or not, nobody deserves t'die like that...torn apart by some invisible monster on the streets of New York."

Laura had turned back to the television.

"Yeah," she drawled around a mouthful of popcorn, "You've got to be pretty bad to get a sanguinus astartes sicced on you."

Ben and Leah glared at her.

"Say that again," he snapped.

Laura gestured airily, not taking her eyes from the shenanigans showing on the screen, "Say what? Sanguinus astartes?"

"Yeah."

"A star vampire?"

"What?"

"All the old books talk about a monster from the stars which cannot be seen until it has slaked its thirst for blood."

It was Leah's turn to frown, "An invisible blood-drinking space monster? Just what sort of books are these, Laura?"

"Oh, you know. The Pnakotic Codex. Turner's Dissertation. The Maleficarum Tenebris. The usual stuff."

"Right," Leah groaned with a shudder, turning back to her stupefied fiancee, "I'd still like to know what happened to him. He looks like he's drunk."

"Yet with a pleasing aroma," Ben remarked, "That's the other thing. Of course the police were called to make heads and tails out of the slaughter..."

"And you used your CIA credentials to hang around?"

"Well, yeah, Leah. It was my man...woman...whatever that got torn apart. I felt I owed it to Arnie.

"Anyway, after about half an hour, this tall woman shows up. She's really pretty and really well dressed, an' she just barges through the police line to the biggest piece a' Arnie an' starts checkin' it out. Joe an' I tried t'quiz her about why she was so interested, but all of a sudden, she sprays some stuff at Joey, then takes off like a shot."

"She did this to him? What did she spray him with?"

Ben held up the envelope, "That's what I'm gonna find out. I'll overnight these swabs to Langley and see what they have to say."

Leah peered at Joe's swimming blue eyes, "Is he going to be alright?"

Ben helped her look, "I think so. His pulse is strong. Its like he's dazed or something."

"What could it be that she sprayed him with? Another of your MK-ULTRA specials," Leah asked.

Ben shrugged, "Anythin's possible, but I doubt it. 'Member, MK-ULTRA was all about LSD, not freak out spray bombs."

Laura clicked the television off and stood, "Well, I'll see you guys tomorrow."

Ben and Leah simply stared at her as she left.

As soon as her witch-ball festooned door had clicked shut behind her, Laura stopped holding in her shudders and nearly broke down in tears. With trembling hands, she began rubbing a candle made from the fat of a freshly slaughtered calf and drops of her own blood in intricate swirls on the hardwood floor. As she worked the waxen lines - frantically - she chanted in the lost Aklo tongue, a language thousands of years dead before the first human ever walked.

"Eye of Light and Darkness watch over me. Stand guard with a ready sword, o' all seeing eye, piercing the outer dark with a fiery sight."

Over and over again, she chanted until a vast, unseeing eye stared skyward from her floor. She sat huddled on the pupil, hugging her knees and trembling at every sound, lest it be the nightmare chattering of the blood-soaked specter from the black spaces between the stars, piping insanely as it swung to bear on its prey.

"A star vampire...hunting here..."

Then she wept the tears of the damned.

The next morning, a sleepy Federal Express courier was waiting for Ben as he stepped off the elevator outside the brand new CIA offices in New York - or, at least, the new offices for his part of the Company.

"Chief of Station Ferrin," the smartly dressed courier asked, stifling a yawn.

Ben absently flipped him the manilla envelope that held his swabs, along with a fifty dollar bill.

"Langley, Virgina, just as fast as yer little legs can carry you. Recipient's name's on the envelope."

Ben brushed past him into the offices. They still smelled new.

"Good morning, Chief Ferrin," intoned the tree-stump in a dress he'd been assigned as a receptionist.

Ben winced. He wasn't a 'Chief of Station'. He was a covert operative, far more enthusiastic about Saturday morning serial daring-do than running the new station in New York.

"Mornin', Berta," he replied dejectedly.

Berta stood and handed him a manilla envelope, "A very tall woman dropped this off for you."

Ben was six foot two, and Berta even taller, so someone that Berta said was tall had to be a WNBA center, at least.

"Did you check it out? Scan fer explosives an' stuff. Al-Quaeda'd be horny as a ten-peckered owl t'knock off a CIA station chief."

The title still didn't sound right to him.

Berta sat back down, "She flashed MAJIC clearance, Chief Ferrin, the same that you have. I shouldn't even be touching that envelope."

Ben felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

"Uhm, okay Berta. Thanks. Ya wanna hold my calls while I check it out?"

Berta nodded as Ben closed his office door. After hanging up his jacket, Ben rummaged in a desk drawer. One of the first things he'd done for the CIA had been to run an elaborate swindle on a Soviet metals company to secure a thousand tons of aircraft grade titanium. One of his fringe benefits from the job had been the single-edged sheath knife made from pure titanium which an unknowing Russian knife maker had made for him. Ben hung onto it as a memento of better days.

Using this knife, which he'd never had to sharpen in the ten years he'd had it, he slit the envelope open and shook the contents onto his desk.

Uppermost was a sheet of dot matrix computer print-out, a letter, which read:

 

"Chief of Station Ferrin;

I was as shocked as you were to learn of Arnold Carson's murder - well, perhaps not as shocked as you were, since I didn't have to watch him die. I lack the resources or the - institutional focus, let us say - to investigate his death myself, but I have the darkest suspicions that it had something to do with the circumstances by which Mr. Carson was known to myself, my co-workers, and our agency. Judging by your MAJIC clearance, I feel that you can be trusted of Mr. Carson's file, so I have forwarded it to you [enclosed].

"Please do what you can to determine why - and how - Mr. Carson died. Not only was he my friend, but I feel a professional responsibility to help bring his killer or killers to justice.

"Yours;

"Mary Risberg"

 

Ben fingered his intercom, "Berta, get me everything you can about Mary Risberg - R-I-S-B-E-R-G. If ya get any static about access, tell 'em who its for."

"Yes, Chief Ferrin."

Ben leafed through the accompanying materials - Arnold Carson's file with whatever agency Mary Risberg worked for - with a growing sense of creepy amazement.

Arnold Carson had led a double life.

Ben knew Arnold's story - or the public part of it, at least. He'd served on Westmoreland's G2 staff in Vietnam, and become something of an expert on Far East Asian politics. Like Ben himself would fifteen years later, Arnold had transferred right over to the CIA, and, after perhaps far too long, was on the verge of taking over the Agency's Far East Asia desk when the tragedy of September 11^th had struck.

Arnold's experience again paralleled Ben's own, as he was one of the Company stalwarts transferred to New York to staff its new station. Both Arnold and Ben were high profile - at least within intelligence circles - successful agents, and, to judge by the similarly heroic figures soon arriving in Manhattan after the dust had literally settled from those dark days, the reconstitution of the New York station had to be something of a public relations measure. Ben had toppled a government or two, and you didn't post someone like that to a domestic station, even one as important as New York, if you weren't trying to impress the powers that be in Washington. To judge by the materials that Mary Risberg had sent him, not only was Arnold one of the half dozen people most knowledgeable about far east Asian politics in government service, but he was also a transvestite. As a woman, Arnold Carson was known as Alice Crandle, and to Risberg's people as 'Shockwave'.

"Crandle? Shockwave," Ben groaned disbelieving, "Oh, he hadda get those from the Company 'book a' names'. Nobody thinks up stuff that lame on their own."

He fingered the intercom again, "Berta, call up Lieutenant Karpis down at Police Plaza an' pull up any records they might have on Alice Crandle."

"Yes, Chief Ferrin."

Ben hung up before she could sigh.

Maybe Arnie had been arrested for crossdressing or something.

"Jesus, Arnie, what the fuck've you been doin' with yourself?"

According to the information Mary Risberg had sent, Arnold had been deemed so important to America's strategic interests that, once his secret was known in Washington's corridors of power, he received protection from some secret government agency that she ran.

"This is incredible," he finally gasped, "Its like the secret service for cross-dressers."

He stood and scooped up his jacket.

"Berta, put that stuff in my box when it arrives. I'll be back in a coupla hours."

"Where are you going?"

"Columbia University."

Professor Raynard Smithers was in the midst of one of his better lectures on main sequence stars when a man in black beat on the lecture theater door. More than a little irritated, he bustled across the room and flung the portal open.

"Yes?!"

Identification was thrust in his face, accompanied by the snarled words, "Laura Ambrose, please."

"I'm in the middle of a lecture..."

"And I'm in a hurry. This is a matter of national security, Professor."

Ben allowed the import of his words t hang in the air.

"Just a moment."

Laura soon joined him, hissing "What?! I'm in the middle of a class here."

"We need to talk," Ben snapped, grabbing her arm. He steered her into an empty classroom nearby. He shut the door, then said, "The other night, you mentioned somethin'."

"So why are you bothering me about it in the middle of class?!"

Ben ignored her, "What was it you were talkin' about the other night...a 'sanguine us'...no, a sanguinus astartes.

Laura seemed shaken.

"What?"

Laura would not meet his eyes until he gently raised her chin.

"Laura, what's going on? I've hardly ever seen you scared like this."

Laura shook her head fiercely, "Its noth..."

"C'mon Laura! I saw something tear a man to pieces on the streets of Manhattan. You know what it was, doncha? You even said its name."

When Laura next met his eyes, a terror rare in the world of men dwelled there, a fear of something from which not even death was an escape.

"You know lots of things, Ben, and the CIA even more, but you've never heard of Ludwig Prinn, and you should be happy about that."

"Who...?"

Laura cut him off. Evidently, her story would not be stopped once begun, "Prinn was a Dutch necromancer that the Inquisition burned at the stake, after he'd lived for a hundred and forty years."

"Bullshit!"

Laura quieted him with a glance, "Prinn was supposedly attended by a swarm of ethereal beings - familiars and spirits and captive ghosts. These phantoms did his bidding. They spied for him, and they aided his dark research, and they killed for him. The Inquisition had to try very hard to keep those spirits from rescuing Prinn while he waited to die."

"What's this got to do with Arnie Carson getting mauled?"

"Because the invisible monster that did it," Laura spat, "Was one of Prinn's bugbears."

"Come on! Here? Today, in New York City, 2004 AD?"

Laura set her jaw, "Things like that don't just drop by for a beer and a Yankees game. They have to be called up.

Ben felt his stomach fall.

"Prinn knew how to call those things down from the stars, and he wrote down how to do it...in the spell book he wrote in prison.

Laura's eyes darted furtively about, "That spell book - De Vermis Mysteriis - is the rarest of the black books. All the copies were supposed to have been burned with Prinn, but if there is a sanguinus astartes hunting Manhattan, someone has a copy, or enough of one to preform the ritual."

Ben paced back and forth, "So someone used black magic to...to summon this ghost?"

Laura nodded, a savage light shining in her eyes, "That's exactly what they've done."

The stars overhead began to frighten Ben, as he wondered who could want Arnold Carson dead, and who would want him killed in such a away? It couldn't be any of the traditional enemies of the Agency. Why go to the trouble of summoning a demon when a bullet was so much cheaper and easier? No, someone wanted Arnold Carson to die, and die in the bloody way he had. Ben couldn't escape the feeling that Arnold was meant, by whoever had summoned the thing that had killed him, to die when and where and how he had, as a sort of message.

When Arnold Carson had died, and where and how.

It might have been Arnold Carson's blood that had run in rivers down the sidewalk, but it had been Alice Crandle's face that the world had seen shredded.

This had specifically to do with her.

From his desk, Ben dug up the anaemic dossier Berta had assembled on Mary Risberg. Ben knew of dead people that you could learn more about. Risberg was the director of an agency that was only identified as "the shop" or "the store". Berta's dossier was very clear that neither was its official name. Risberg's agency was the sort of agency that didn't have an official name.

Ben was getting tired of those.

He thumbed the intercom, "Berta, is this skinny shit on Mary Risberg all you could find?"

"Yes," came Berta's voice, tinny through the speaker, "Even your MAJIC clearance couldn't pry much loose."

"Fan-fucking-tastic. How do I get in touch with her?"

"As far as I know, you don't."

Ben fumed. Mary Risberg had answers he wanted.

That night, it was dinner at Joe's apartment, the HQ. A few short tons of Kentucky fried chicken and a case of beer easily fed Ben and Joe and Laura and Leah and their three or four other closest friends. Well, no Michelob for Laura, she being a minor and all.

Ben reclined with a plate of food on the couch Joe had rescued from a dumpster behind Macy's and refurbished, "Where d'ya go fer a night out if you're a transvestite?

Many pairs of eyes settled upon him.

"I mean, are there clubs or hang outs ya go to?"

Joe began speaking slowly, "Ben, we know there's parts of your life that you can't talk to us about, but something like this..."

"I'm not a transvestite, you putz," Ben snapped, "You remember that woman you an' me saw torn to pieces near the Garden the other night?"

"Remember? I've got about an hour's sleep in five days tryin' t'forget it."

"Well, that wasn't a woman. That was Arnie Carson from the Station."

"Your Far East Asia guy," barked another of Ben's friends, the tallest of them all, a lanky cracker named John Rearden.

Likely against every Agency regulation on the books, there wasn't much about Ben's life in the CIA that his closest friends didn't know. There were some secrets - there had to be, for their safety - but Ben happened to agree with Richard Helms that the CIA sagged under the weight of the needlessly secret. Among the secrets that Ben saw no need to keep - well, it wasn't so much a secret as a pointless complication - was keeping his friends away from his co-workers. Joe and Leah and Laura and John and all the rest had free run of the CIA station.

So Ben nodded.

"Arnie's a drag queen," John's common law wife, Mary, blurted.

"Was," Ben said quietly, "Can you imagine goin' through life like that?"

Joe stared soberly at him, "Would you wanna tell people? I mean, I can't think of anythin' more socially awkward."

"But, I mean, how c'n ya hide something like that?"

Leah pointed at him with her fork, "Can you blame him for trying?"

"Hunh?"

"If anyone finds out, you lose everything. I mean everything. Nothing is the same ever again."

"I guess."

"'Sides," John offered, "Ol' Arnie was CIA. You guys know about hidin' stuff."

"Yeah, I guess that explains how Arnie lived with a secret like this."

"Mm. There's a difference between keeping a secret and living with it," Leah admonished around a mouthful of food, "Probably going out dressed up like that was how he coped."

Ben scowled, "How's that?"

"You know about keepin' secrets, Spooky," Joe explained, "An' how, sometimes, the pressure'n get t'be too much. Shit, I've heard you beatin' that punchin' bag a' your for hours at a time, workin' off stress."

"And every so often, you hear about a spook with a drinking problem," Leah offered again.

"Y'think that this was how Arnie blew off steam?"

They both shrugged.

"Prob'ly had himself a boyfriend, too," Mary offered, carrying a load of dirty dishes to Joe and Leah's kitchen.

This time, everyone stared at the woman from the Bronx and cried in unison, "Arnie wasn't gay."

Mary whirled on them, "Then why was the guy goin' around pretending to be a woman?"

Another of their friends, Hugh O'Donnell, spoke up, "When I first joined the seminary, I counseled a lot of young people grappling with gender issues. I saw lots of them, and not one was gay. It seems they're two different things. Sexually, this Arnie fellow was probably as normal as any of us."

Mary fumed quietly.

"Why d'ya wanna know where a transvestite goes on a night out," John asked.

Ben adopted his serious face, "Well, its kinda complicated, so bear with me. You remember that tall woman who showed up at the scene, Joe?"

The big redhead gagged on his food, "That ice queen who hosed me down with wacky juice?"

Ben laughed, "Well, it appears she's a spook, and a pretty serious one, at that. She runs some sort of secret service that protects cross-dressers."

"Yer kiddin'!"

"No."

"Why?"

"Like I said, it'd be pretty bad if someone found out that you were a transvestite. Now, imagine if you had some sorta vital position. You'd hafta be real careful, right? Maybe you'd need some sympathetic help to keep your secret."

"An' she does it?"

"Yeah, an' I've gotta learn more about this other life of Arnie's if I'm gonna find out who killed him.

Ben looked pointedly at Laura, "An' keep it from happening again."

"So what's the problem," Leah laughed, "Aren't you shadow land government types all very chummy?"

Ben sneered at her, "And I'm supposed t'go to one of the grey eminences an' ask him 'Can you tell me how to find the transvestite secret service?'. I'd get laughed right off fucking Capitol Hill!"

Leah picked at her food, "Well, then you've got a decision to make."

"What?"

Leah only shrugged. She didn't look up, "If you want to know what happened - if you really want to know - then you've got to ask that question. I mean, you're always going on about the important people that you know. Ask one of them."

So Ben did.

The hearing room of the House Select Committee on Foreign Intelligence was a crowded place, in these post-9/11 days, and even the ruggedly built man-in-black would have been easy for anyone to miss in the throng. That was sort of the point, but Peter wasn't just anyone.

You didn't stay at the top of the intelligence community food chain for forty odd years if you didn't have a few things, among them an eye for detail, going for you.

"...so in conclusion, distinguished members of the panel, I cannot say strongly enough that there has been no 'intelligence failure' in regards to the war on terror, or in the case of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The blame does not lie with the messenger if that information is ignored, or, even worse, misrepresented..."

The chairman shot back at Peter, "Those are strong words. Are you making an accusation?"

Peter's face was youthful despite his years, and the bland expression he adopted came easily, "Why no, Senator Hoxton. I am but a humble civil servant. It is not my place to speculate, but simply to report the facts I know, the same as it is for each and every man and women in the intelligence service of our great nation. It is up to others to draw conclusions based on that information."

Hoxton glared at his boyish adversary. Peter could remember when the bellicose Republican had first come to the capitol, in those tumultuous days after Vietnam, a fresh faced Representative from Iowa. Hoxton had shown such promise that Peter almost wept at how narrow minded the man had become. How he had sacrificed his ideals for the power and influence a good party man could have in reactionary times.

The gavel sounded to break the hearings. Peter felt a weight settle across his shoulders as he stood. Sometimes, the struggle threatened to drag him down. The man in black watched him, but did little else. He simply fell in step behind Peter as he left.

"Officer Ferrin," Peter offered over his shoulder, not bothering to look, "How does the day find you?"

"Just fine, Mr..."

"Peter's enough," the older man laughed, "We've known each other long enough, don't you think?"

"Okay. Uhm, I need to ask you about something, Peter."

Peter finally stopped and looked at Ben, "Of course. What would the consequences of this audience be?"

Ben looked sober, "Actually, you'd have a better idea than me."

Peter sighed, "Right.

He led Ben into a quiet reading room and locked the door, "What is it?"

Ben had no compunctions about divulging sensitive information to Peter. Peter was the one who had thought up the super-user Majestic clearance in the first place.

"You know just about everyone who has any real influence in Washington, right?

Peter nodded.

"I need to get in touch with Mary Risberg."

Peter's face remained stony, "Why?"

"It's a long story."

"I assume your reasons are good, though?"

"Aren't they always?

Peter adopted a sardonic 'give me strength' expression, making Ben sort of frown, fume, and eat his heart out all at once, "I know I've abused my official powers in the past, but things are different this time..."

Peter smiled wanly up at him, "Relax, Ben. I'm your friend, and, quite frankly, one of the few allies your cowboy self has here in Washington, but Mary Risberg and her people are a special case. I'll arrange a meeting between the two of you. Just promise me two things."

"What's that?"

"Keep the property damage to a minimum and tell me the whole story when its over."

"If I'm still alive when this is over, you'n carve it in stone."

"Alright then."

Ben found himself standing outside the armed forces recruiting kiosk in Times Square, suffering beneath an evil sun. He spotted his friends around the confluence of streets, and continued waiting for Mary Risberg, a meeting Ben was looking forward to. He felt that old energy zinging through his nerves, recalling heady days of furtive meetings and the adrenaline charge you felt as you feared discovery. Ben's game - the Great Game - was played for the highest stakes, and it had been far too long since he'd rolled the dice.

Of course the New York station had to be rebuilt. Good people - Ben's friends - had died on September 11^th, and something better, leaner, faster, was owed to their memory, and of course Ben, a highly capable agent already based in New York, was the best choice to do it, but he was no bureaucrat. In his heart of hearts, Ben was a man of action, and men of action did not sit behind desks.

It was just too bad that Arnold Carson had to die to shake him loose.

Ben imagined that Arnold had felt similar things, for just as Ben had played the Great Game in Johannesburg and Prague, he was sure Arnold Had played it in Kuala Lumpur and P'yongyang.

Ben's sparkling eyes picked Mary Risberg out of the crowd. They darted around the square, picking out Risberg's agents, tall women in black.

He knew who they were.

Who they really were.

Ben glanced from his friends to an agent of Risberg's. Each of them would follow one of the black clad maidens closely, shadowing their every move. The people on the ground were no longer a problem. Those electric eyes turned to the nearest roof tops. Ben doubted the 'the shop' or 'the store' or whatever Risberg's agency was really called made use of snipers, but any agency more secret than the KGB had to be taken seriously, so Ben went through his old spy shop shtick, all those old routines and habits he once tried to avoid doing, tried to slough off...

God, he felt alive.

Ben felt inside his coat for his .45 and watched Mary approach.

When he and Joe had first seen her, she'd evidently come from some formal affair, for the long black velvet dress and diamond jewelry she'd been wearing had made her the very essence of refined elegance. Although the tall blonde was no less regal now, her black suit - like those of her agents spotted throughout the square - was all business.

Ben was six feet two inches tall, and Ms. Risberg wore flats, yet she still towered over him.

"Mr. Ferrin," she intoned, putting that height to use, "Should we be meeting like this?"

Ben rolled his shoulders and looked all about, "I dunno. Place's as good as any. Public, lotsa people around...

He turned his eyes to the nearest rooftops, "...to get in the way of snipers."

Risberg strolled beside him, "I didn't mean that. I meant us.

She made the Hawaiian "shaka" or "hang loose" hand sign between the two of them.

"Chief of Station and Agency Director."

"I dunno. I kinda missed the action like this.

Ben wheeled on her, "And just what are you the Director of? I've got a security clearance some presidents never had..."

"Majestic? So do I."

Ben bore on, "...I can find out who really killed JFK, or the truth behind the alien landing at Roswell, but I can't find out sweet fuck all about your outfit."

Risberg smiled evilly, "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you."

Ben sneered at her, "Right. Look, I didn't get ol' Peter to put us together like this t'swap threats with you. You wouldn't a' sent me that dossier if ya weren't interested in a solution to Arnold Carson's murder.

Ben stopped walking and turned to face her with his arms folded across his chest, "That solution lies in Arnold's past.

He jabbed a finger at her, "The past he had with you and yours."

Mary's eyes were just as stony as Ben's were as she replied, "What makes you say that?"

Ben resumed walking, "Because I can trace every move he made since 1960, includin' his own experiments with crossdressing, and that includes friends, enemies...and even two lovers.

Ben turned his ninety kilowatt stare on Mary once more, making her feel as though lighting were flickering across at her skin.

"I know that all but a handful of crossdressers are heterosexual, so maybe you could explain that little tidbit to me?"

Mary frown down at him, "Is this a meeting for trivialities and chit chat?"

"It isn't. Arnold died because he was a transvestite. I need to understand how that gets a man killed."

"You mean besides violence perpetrated against the transgendered?"

Ben tried out his 'oh please' glare again, "Bigots use pipes and bats. They don't whistle up blood-thirsty demons from beyond time and space. The day the Ku Klux Klan starts using black magic is the day I hang up my spurs."

Mary shrugged, "A male to female transvestite like Alice..."

"Arnold."

"Whatever. She wants to have the experiences of a woman that are as complete and authentic as possible."

Ben looked - and felt - acutely uncomfortable, "Check me out on this. Arnold Carson..."

"Alice Crandle."

"...a heterosexual man with no interest in actually being a woman, only in feeling like, an' bein' thought to be one fer a short period of time, took two male lovers just to complete the experience?

Mary nodded.

Ben sighed, "Okay. Anyway, I need to know about associates he..."

"She."

"...had because he..."

"She."

"...was a transvestite and was under the aegis of your organization."

"Why?"

Ben sighed and looked around, "Didn't you hear me? Its not that busy here, y'no, and there's dead people that can hear me talk. I toldja, Arnold get killed because he was a crossdresser, by someone who came into his life after he started bein' looked after by you an' yours. If he's taken two lovers in the past, it could even be a jilted lover, y'see. Now, c'n ya help me or not?"

"Well, I..."

Ben rolled his eyes, "Is this gonna be about security clearances?"

"No, but I do take my responsibilities serious, Chief Ferrin, and frankly, I have no idea how you keep your MAJIC clearance, let alone why they gave it to you in the first place. I checked you out, you know. What do they call you down in Washington? 'The biggest smart aleck in the whole CIA'? Author of not just one but two international incidents and universally reviled by every agent of law and order in the Tri-State area. The man who single handedly maintains the CIA's fast and loose cowboy reputation..."

A tall man with limp brown hair and a defeated sort of hangdog expression on his long face surged through the crowd, his mind obviously a million miles away as he collided with Mary like the last moments of James Dean. They both sprawled across the grimy pavement, spraying the contents of Mary's purse hither and yon.

"Hey," Mary shrieked, trying - and failing - to roll with the impact and remain on her feet.

Ben, for his part, tried to accomplish about a dozen things at once. He faked after the fleeing man, snatched a few of Mary's things up from the ground, offered her his hand, actually helped her up, dropped her back down, drew his pistol, put it away, shouted, swore, and wound up not budging an inch.

They both watched the tall man vanish into the crowd.

Mary clambered gracelessly to her feet, noting that Ben's hand still lingered on his hidden firearm.

"Relax, Chief Ferrin. My people will find him."

Ben slowly relaxed. He scratched his ear bashfully, "Uhm, so what about..."

"One of my people will bring information on Alice Crandle's known associates from my half of her life to you at the CIA station. Because of the extreme...

Mary went to pains to emphasize the world 'extreme'.

"...sensitivity of this information, I must insist that one of my people assist you in any investigations it leads to."

Ben rolled his eyes at her cop show melodrama, but nodded.

A spunky little brunette with an air of punkishness or Goth spirit, or maybe simple riot grrl enthusiasm, and who called herself Paula Novak, or Black Bird, delivered Mary Risberg's secrets. Ben had puzzled out the truth behind Black Bird, but she still made him grin from ear to ear. She was full of zest for life, and seemed to savor every minute she was alive.

To Paula Novak, every drop of rain was a miracle.

As Ben described Mary's rough and tumble encounter with the tall man in Times Square, Paula had literally squirmed with laughter, finally braying, "Serves Mother right."

"'Mother'?"

"That's how she's referred to in the Shop," Paula sniggered.

"And she has something like this coming," Ben asked, chuckling himself.

Paula rolled her black-limed eyes, "She's got a boot up her ass about something, I don't mind telling you."

"I've noticed that. What's her story?"

Paula waved dismissively with a delicate snort, "Lotsa things, I guess. She takes the job sooooo seriously."

"Yeah?"

"Oh sure," Paula laughed, arms thrown wide, "We run into so many people who mourn being transgendered. Its this big, horrible...thing, and they're all sad and ashamed."

"But not you?"

Paula wrinkled her snub nose, "Why? Its about being free and expressing yourself and not being what everyone tells you to be."

"And Ms. Risberg's one of these sad sacks?'

Paula pointed at him and winked, "You know it.

She gestured at Ben, "I mean, you deal with secrets all the time, right?"

"Sure."

"And likely meet all sorts of people who take those secrets way too seriously.

It was Ben's turn to roll his eyes, "Oh you have no idea! You should see some of the planning meetings down at Langley..."

"Aren't they the worst?"

Ben sobered abruptly, "How's that?"

There was still laughter in Paula's voice as she answered, "Oh, I was Agency before I went over to the Store."

Ben leaned on his elbows, "No shit?

Paula shook her head, making her midnight bob flutter like raven's wings.

"Where were ya at?"

Paula made a show of thinking, "My first posting was to the Paris station. That was in '87, until '92."

"You were with the Company before I joined, then."

Paula blinked melodramatically at him, "Why Chief Ferrin...would you be pumping me for information?"

Ben flushed and dissembled, "Well, I...that is...uhm..."

"Relax, Paula laughed, "Let's get back to Alice's friends."

When Paula Novak took her leave of the CIA station for the day, Ben's sides hurt from laughing, and he felt like the featured guest at a riot. Still grinning, he removed a litter of electronic parts from his desk drawer. If a person used their imagination - a lot - the debris could sort of be called a cellular telephone.

Actually, it had, until the previous afternoon, lain in Mary Risberg's purse.

Ben teased the fragments to life with a pair of probes. Evidently, Risberg and her people used these disguised communicators to keep in touch. They connected to something called the Secure Electronic Network. Ben was rather curious to hear what Paula Novak had to say about him. He flipped on his reel to reel and began pouring over the list he and Paula had worked up from Arnold Carson's past associates while the tape recorder whirred away, recording all traffic sent to Mary Risberg's address over the Secure Electronic Network.

They'd been able to throw out over half the names in Paula's information for various reasons. All that there remained to do was to run down those who remained...

Berta knocked and let herself in, "Here's your fax, Chief Ferrin."

...but Ben knew a few tricks that could shorten the list even more.

"Thanks, Berta," Ben sighed, taking the sheaf of papers from her, "Boy, she's a livewire, isn't she."

"Who? Novak?"

Ben nodded.

"Yes, she's a real panic."

After Berta had left, he turned to the new list.

Once he and Paula had narrowed all those names down to a manageable dozen and a half or so, Ben had faxed the list to his friend Dan Baer at the FBI, who spun the mess through the National Criminal Information System. From his fax, Ben discovered that Dan had been able to throw out another half dozen names, the names of people who were known to be in jail or out of the country or something similar at the time Arnold Carson had died.

Those who remained would be easier to run down

Laura could thin things out even more when she got a look.

"Hey Berta?"

"Yes Chief Ferrin," came her reply. Ben absolutely hated piloting a desk, but the intercom could be fun.

"There anything I gotta take care of thisarvie?"

Berta sighed, "You do know that being Chief of Station means that you actually have to be in the station."

"Yeah yeah yeah. What's on deck, Bertie baby?"

Berta sighed again, "Nothing. Your afternoon is free."

"Cool", Ben laughed. He made two quick phone calls, then left.

"So, Kaleigh O'Connor was able to rule out these guys," Laura called to Ben as he further emptied Joe's refrigerator.

Ben's head popped out of the kitchen, "Those four at the top, yeah, and your man Bodge did the same for those three blue names in the middle."

"So that leaves...four?"

"Yeah," Ben answered returning with most of a five pound sausage and a block of cheese.

"Well, I can rule out two...

Ben peered over her shoulder as she pointed.

"...this guy here..."

"Taylor Parsons?"

"Uhm-hm. He spontaneously combusted about four months ago."

"No shit?"

Laura nodded, "They found his hand stickin' out of a pile of ashes in Ozone Park that were inside a pentagram. He was trying to summon something, but I guess things didn't work out."

Ben sat down across from her, "So Laura...this shit is for real?"

"What 'shit'," she asked, raking long mousy hair from her eyes.

"This...black magic an' sorcery and stuff."

Laura was usually nearly as full of life as Paula Novak, so the gravity of her reply left Ben a little shaken, "More real than you could guess. Sometimes, I think that the only thing that keeps humanity sane is the simple fact that it can't understand everything is sees or hears. Some people do understand, and go mad."

"People like you?"

"No. I don't get a lotta this stuff, but if you sat down and talked with someone like Silas Bodge or Kaleigh O'Connor, they could tell you about things that'd scare you so bad your heart'd stop."

Ben shuddered, then asked, "Is Taylor Parsons the only one?"

Laura ignored him and pressed, "What I wanna know is how Arnie got to know hoodwinks like these guys."

Ben commenced processing sausage into excrement, "What d'you man?"

She gestured at the list, "Well, these people are hard core sorcerers. They can really do things...really work the mojo."

"Yeah?"

Laura turned to face him, wearing her serious face, "The transvestite bureau of the American intelligence community just supplied you with a list of the known associates of an influential CIA foreign analyst, a list which, now that you've washed it through every criminal records database you can find, is comprised almost entirely of actual, no fooling black magicians. You mean that none of this wigs you out?"

Ben calmed abruptly, "Oh."

Jesus this place gives me the willies," Ben shivered.

Their search had led them to a spooky neighborhood near Red Hook in Brooklyn, and to an old Federal mansion that stood apart from the street and was separated from the nearest buildings, which themselves seemed abandoned to the eerie fetor of the place, by a square of weeds that could only be called a lawn in a technical sense.

The old mansion looked like it was ready to topple into those incestuous weeds any instant, but it was clear that an attempt had been made to forestall that fate, and that attempt betrayed the remnant of occupancy in the haunted old place.

Laura held a piece of broken purple glass before her eyes, and studied the house intently through it.

"What are you doing," Joe snapped.

"Getting a read on the welcoming committee."

"With a broken piece of bottle," he rumbled from the backseat.

"The Glass of Leng is not a piece of broken bottle," she replied primly.

"And just what are you doing," Ben asked his gargantuan friend.

Whatever the big man was doing made a sharp 'swing-krink' noise. He raised his head from his labors and slapped the battered metal engine casing, festooned with queer, witchy symbols, of his pride and joy, Black Betty, a twenty horsepower hot competition chainsaw.

"If even half a' what I s'spect's in there actually is, then I want Black Betty 'tween me an' them. An' the ol' girl's in a bad mood.

He smiled moronically at them and added, "I can tell."

Laura sneered at him, "These are spectres from the blackest rim of the cosmos. I seriously doubt that a chainsaw - even that one - will be much use."

Joe toyed with a cluster of Indian wampum tied to one of the monster saw's handles, "Don't you listen to her, Betty. She's just jealous."

Laura turned away from the post-modern Paul Bunyan in the back seat with a huff.

"Everything about this place screams 'go away'."

Ben shoved the driver's door open, "Then lets go in."

In the blink of an eye, Ben and Joe were halfway to the house.

"Those two are going to get themselves killed," Laura muttered, rubbing the blood-colored glass fob on her key chain, "And probably take me with 'em."

As a condemned man trudges to the gallows, Laura trailed after her friends, murmuring a catechism of words of power in a half-dozen dead languages. They were at the front door before she'd caught up.

"Guys," she hissed, trying to run, spot them, and study the house through the Glass from Leng all at once.

She finally caught up within the house, outside a musty study.

"What are you doing?"

"Shhh!"

"He's in there."

"Who is?"

"The guy from the list. Gunter Garson."

Joe frowned down at Ben, then gestured at the interior of the study with his titan chainsaw, "Wait wait wait. That's his name?"

"Mm hm."

Joe rolled his eyes, "Well that explains it."

"Shhh!"

"Explains what?"

Joe peered inside, "If this guy's named 'Gunter Garson', no wonder he's traffickin' with dark forces an' trawlin' gay bars fer girlfriends..."

"They're not gay," Ben and Laura bellowed as one.

The world exploded in a flash of boiling yellow-green fire, that licked and lapped around the door frame and clung to the thresh hold like a living thing. Laura watched it leap and lunge up her arms, blackening and bubbling her flesh, incinerating her clothes and filling the air with a stench beyond imagination.

A crackling, ripping nosie stabbed through her screams as Ben's spare ammunition cooked off.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he screamed, tearing his bandoliers off to get the maelstrom away from him.

"I have no idea who you people are," came a nasal and weaselly voice, "But you'll not leave here alive."

"Ahhh," Ben screamed, blazing away with his .45, each shot a blazing white star.

"Ben," Joe bellowed like an angry bull. The licking tongues of sickly fire had all but burned his shirt off, along with every hair and two disgustingly large patches of skin on his buffalo chest.

"Ben, stop shooting," he thundered, "You'll set this whole fucking place on fire."

"And he won't," Ben screamed back.

But the spy did stop shooting.

Joe tore the remains of his shirt off and wrinkled his nose at his friend, "Christ Ben, I'n see yer muscles."

Ben's blue eyes swam into focus, "I think I'm gonna go inta shock soon..."

"Check Laura," Joe roared, thumbing the electric start to his chainsaw.

Black Betty roared to gasoline powered life and Joe charged into the study.

"Joe," Ben shouted as he crouched over Laura, "Laura!"

"Stop shouting," she moaned.

"Lor, your hands..."

Laura looked at her blackened extremities, "Never mind me, we've got to look after Joe."

"Why," Ben shouted. His knuckles were white, he gripped his gun so hard.

Laura climbed painfully to her feet, "Stop shouting! His fucking saw isn't that loud."

"Why...what..."

Laura slapped him, leaving a smear of ashes and blood across his stubbly cheek.

"Joe is in there fighting lord knows what with that damn saw of his, and he's gonna get himself killed..."

Black Betty roared like a dragon, roars mixed with blood curdling screams.

Screams that came from no human throat.

Ben stole up on the study, "What the fuck...?!"

Laura joined him in beholding the latest in an evening's worth of unbelievable sights.

With his skin and clothes hanging in noxious rags around his herculean form, Joe stood jousting with his mammoth chainsaw.

The unbelievable part was that, while whatever he was cutting was invisible, the gallons of blood each roaring slice spilled were not. Each gory gout splashed and sizzled on the threadbare carpet.

"What on...," Ben began.

"...Earth," Laura finished, "Th-that shouldn't be happening."

"Why?"

Had most of it not been burned off, Laura would have angrily tossed her hair.

"Because this goddamn place stinks of transcosmic entities. They're not made of the same stuff we are, and a chainsaw should not be able to hurt them."

Then Laura fainted.

"Laura," Ben shrieked, trying to ignore the awful pain he felt and help her.

Joe's initial charge must have stunned the enigmatic Gunter Garson, for a thin, Satanically featured man rose from behind an overturned desk to watch, unbelieving, as Joe methodically carved gelid slabs of fetid flesh from the unseen horror, a malign spectre that bleated now, not with inhuman hunger, but with the awful, stunning fear of the soon to die, for Joe had indeed killed whatever tittering obscenity Gunter Garson had called down from the black gulfs of the cosmos to attend him. Ben could see it now, or enough of its pulsating, gelid form, at least, to know that the stalker from the stars was lean and a-thirst no more.

"You - you killed Volkoun," Garson gasped in his whining, nasal voice, "My guardian! Its dead!"

Joe rested his mammoth chainsaw on the end of its blade and wiped the foulest of ichors from his butcher block forehead. Ben found himself on more familiar ground, and trained his pistol on Gunter, its laser sights painting a third, scarlet eye in the middle of his forehead.

"How quickly you join that dear departed booger depends on how informative you are," Joe growled, adopting his best Clint Eastwood 'man-with-no-name' stare.

Ben frowned and snapped, "Relax, big fella. We've got our man."

"We do?"

Ben gestured, "Ol' Gunter here sent that spooky fucker you just rubbed out t'kill Arnold Carson."

"Who," Garson whined.

Ben grit his teeth and explained, "Alice Crandle.

Gunter blanched.

Ben glanced at Joe, "Y'see?"

Joe shifted in the extracosmic muck he'd authored, grimacing at the gooey strings of ichor that clung to his bootsoles, "So...you c'n just send this creepy fucker t'kill people?"

"How - how did you..."

"Kill it," Joe laughed. He rubbed an assortment of occult symbols enameled onto the bar, handles, and engine casing of his chainsaw, "Power signs an' veves aren't just for voodoo. We know how to channel the mojo in the Craft, too."

Ben and Gunter both gaped at him uncomprehendingly, "The Craft?"

Joe shrugged bashfully, "Yeah. Y'no, Freemasonry?"

Ben looked back from his singed friend, shaking his head, "And I catch hob for keeping secrets."

Garson was gone...

"Hey!"

...running for his life out the front door.

"Who are they," he gasped.

A figure loomed out of the shadows before him.

"Malkuth? K'Nath," he called.

"Not exactly," a spunky little brunette with an air or riot grrl audacity growled, spraying a cloud of pungent and astringent blue mist in his face.

"Come over here," she commanded, tugging Gunter into the shadows that dwelled beneath the eaves.

She lifted an expensive looking compact from her blazer pocket, "Mother, this is Black Bird. I have the demonologist."

"And the Man In Black," Mary Risberg asked sharply.

Paula watched a shaft of ruby light - the laser sights of Ferrin's monstrous pistol - play across Garson's yard from the second floor window.

"He's nearby, but not a factor."

After a beat, Risberg replied, "Very well. Confirm our suspicions and execute the option."

Paula frowned, "Affirmative, Mother.

She clicked her compact shut and turned back to Gunter, who was staring vacuously into space.

"You're Gunter Garson?"

"Yes."

"You met a transvestite named Alice Crandle socially?"

"Yes."

"But you were unable to develop a relationship with her?"

"She said that I wasn't her type."

"And that upset you?"

"A woman like that...she should be grateful that I was interested in her at all."

"So you killed her."

Garson's face remained vacant. The Gas was working as it was supposed to.

"I did. I sent my attendant Volkoun to wet the ground with her blood."

"Who is Volkoun?"

"A sanguinus astartes I have bound to my service."

"And who are Malkuth and K'Nath?"

"Other attendants of mine."

"And where are they now?"

"Between worlds until I have instructions for them."

Paula sighed and removed her atomizer of Gas from her pocket a second time. She sprayed a concentrated stream of the psychoactive stuff directly into Gunter Garson's face. He grew even more still.

"Alright then. Gunter, can you hear me?"

"Yes," came a muzzy reply. Garson was almost unconscious and highly suggestible.

"I want you to do some things for me, Gunter."

"Whatever you command, mistress."

Paula sighed, "First, I want you to tell Malkuth and K'Nath and all your other attendants never to return to the Earth again."

"Of course, mistress," Gunter replied, then began speaking in harsh, sinuous vowels of some forgotten language.

When he was done, Paula instructed him again, "Now, Gunter, I want you to die."

So he did.

Garson had just slumped to the ground when Ben, carrying Laura, and Joe, bearing his colossal chainsaw, emerged from Garson's home, nearly tumbling over the dead body. All four eyes locked onto Paula Novak before she could flee.

Ben sighed, "We meet again, Black Bird. I assume that we have you to thank for the sorcerer's demise? Y'know, we messed around with psychotropics like that in MK-ULTRA, but we couldn't make 'em work.

He stepped over Gunter's body, wordlessly taking possession of it.

"Expect we'll have 'er figured out soon enough...

He stared levelly into Paula's eyes.

"...Perry."

Paula raced off.

"Who's Perry," Joe asked as they trudged back to Ben's car.

"That woman," Ben explained, gently settling Laura into the back seat, "Her name...her real name...is Perry Nolan. Paula Novak...Perry Nolan. Get it?"

"Yeah yeah yeah."

"You okay to drive, big guy?"

Joe shrugged, "Sure. I mean, it'd be a good idea to see a doctor pronto, but I'll make it. Why?"

Ben collapsed onto the passenger seat, white as a ghost, "'Coz I've pretty well gone into shock here. Wouldn't be good t'drive."

"Gotcha."

 

END

  

  

  

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