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Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Jerry started to feel a little uncomfortable under Barnett’s smiling scrutiny. Ray departed to go on this mysterious mission to pick up the kid and Fortunato excused himself as well, leaving only Jerry and Barnett alone in his office. Jerry cleared his throat and spoke, just to break the increasing sense of tension the inscrutable Barnett had been projecting.
“Nice office,” he said. “It looks familiar.”
Barnett nodded. “It’s a copy of the Oval Office in the White House. I felt very comfortable there.”
“Uh-huh,” Jerry said.
There was another long minute of silence until Barnett seemed to feel that he’d softened Jerry up sufficiently, and spoke again.
“I just like to get to know my friends, Mr. Creighton,” Leo Barnett said, “so I can tell them more easily from my enemies. It is Mr. Creighton, isn’t it?”
Jerry’s guilt for ragging on Billy Ray for lying to him returned, redoubled.
“Well,” Jerry said after a moment, “let’s say that’s my name for the purposes of this discussion.”
Barnett nodded after another a long moment of silence stretched between them. “I see that in your own way you’re a careful man. I can understand that. Even admire it. I’m a careful man as well, and I like to know whom I’m dealing with. I had you checked out by some of my connections, and you don’t add up. Your past is shadowy. The history that does exist is rather unusual. By the way—I hope you don’t mind my excluding your man Sascha from this little conversation. Though I’m willing to trust you to a point, I don’t like the idea of exposing myself to a telepath, even a low-grade one, for any length of time.”
“That’s all right,” Jerry said amiably, even though he detested Barnett’s pompous tones. “Why are you leaving Mushroom Daddy out of the discussion?”
Barnett raised his eyebrows. “Because he’s a complete flake? Because besides being an unknown goofball, he’s also apparently a drug dealer? He positively reeks of the marijuana smell.”
“How do you know what marijuana smells like?” Jerry asked him.
Barnett smiled, not prettily. “Enough. We have to lay our cards on the table. I’m afraid that although we’ve gathered John Fortune to our bosom, he’s not entirely safe. The Allumbrados will still come after him, and Cardinal Contarini—who is the head of that detestable organization—has aces working for him. The boy will be in danger when, not if, they discover we’ve got him here at the Peaceable Kingdom. Since it’s your job to protect him, and it is also totally in my interests that he remain safe, I suggest we join forces until we can break the back of the Allumbrados and they no longer pose a threat to the boy’s safety.”
Jerry was loaded with questions. “That’s all well and good,” he said. “I agree in principle, but somebody’s gotta explain some things to my satisfaction.”
“All right,” Barnett said.
“All right,” Jerry repeated. It occurred to him that he had only Nighthawk’s word on the Allumbrados. It would be nice to have another, although clearly not necessarily unbiased, viewpoint. “What exactly is your interest in John Fortune, anyway? And who in the Hell are the Allumbrados and what do they want with the boy?”
“They are tools of Satan and they want him dead,” Barnett said succinctly, “while we want him to stay very much alive.”
“But why, for Christ’s sake?”
“Because,” Barnett explained impatiently, as if this were the dozenth time he had to go over it, “he is Christ.”
“Christ?” Jerry asked, nonplussed. “You mean, like Jesus Christ?”
Barnett sighed. “Yes, of course. Are you a believer, Mr. Creighton?”
“A believer?” Jerry asked. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“There is no guessing, Mr. Creighton, when it comes to matters of faith. You have either accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, or you haven’t.”
“Well,” Jerry said. “I guess I haven’t.”
“Then I’m not going to bother to explain things that you can’t comprehend. No offence, Mr. Creighton.”
Jerry wasn’t feeling particularly gracious, but he didn’t want to argue theology with the ex-President. He grunted.
“I’ve written a tract that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Leo Barnett said, “that John Fortune is Jesus Christ, Our Savior, and that his coming will usher in the Millennium and the Kingdom of God on Earth. If we can keep the Allumbrados from getting their way.”
“Wait a minute,” Jerry said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with the boy over the years. He’s a nice kid and he might make a decent ace when he grows up, but he’s never given any indication that he’s divine.”
Barnett shrugged. “There are any number of reasons why you believe that. Perhaps you’re not particularly perceptive, Mr. Creighton. Or perhaps He’s not ready to reveal Himself as yet, as part of His Divine Plan. Perhaps He’s testing you, and us all. Or perhaps, just perhaps He Himself is not yet aware of His Divine Nature.”
Barnett flipped a hand with each reason. The longer that he knew him, the more glad Jerry was that he’d never voted for the bastard.
But that was then, this was now. Barnett did control some powerful—Would minions be the word?—yes, minions, who would be helpful in protecting the boy, especially if the crazies were still after him. “All right,” Jerry said, although reluctantly. “I guess Fortunato seems to think you’re okay. I can trust his judgement. For now, I agree that we should combine forces.”
“I applaud your wise decision,” Barnett said. “Are there any more aces in your organization?”
“Well, there’s Peter Pann and Topper and maybe Ezili. And Jay Ackroyd, of course.” Jerry thought about it for a moment. “Other than Jay, I don’t know if any of them would be particularly useful in a fight with these Allumbrados if they have goons like Butcher Dagon working for them.”
“Can you get Ackroyd here?”
Jerry shook his head. “He’s got a badly broken ankle. He’d be more of a liability than an asset, as much as he’d like to be here for the denouement.”
He was happy to see that he stumped Barnett with that last word.
“All right,” Barnett finally said, after puzzling over it for a moment. “Just as well, then. Let’s all get together again soon. I’ll let you know when John Fortune arrives.”
“Branson will certainly be safer if we take him someplace else,” Jerry said.
Barnett made a denigrating gesture. “Who cares about Branson? It’s John Fortune’s future that worries me.”
Jerry frowned. “There’s a lot of innocent people here. An ace battle of any size could cause a lot of casualties—”
“Not my concern,” Barnett interrupted. “We must do whatever will be best for John Fortune.”
Jerry stood. He was really glad that he’d never voted for this asshole. “All right,” he said tonelessly. He nodded and left the office, Barnett watching him with eyes as calculating as a cruising shark’s.
“How’d it go?” Sascha asked, standing as Jerry walked out of Barnett’s sanctum.
“Yeah, man, what’s up?” Mushroom Daddy asked.
“Remind me never to stand between Barnett and something that he wants, no matter how nutty it is,” Jerry said.
“He’s that bad?” Sascha asked.
“He’s worse,” Jerry said. “Much, much worse.”