******
Hokkaido, Japan
It was two in the morning, about an hour and a half before the unsui would strike the sounding board with his wooden mallet, waking everyone for the start of the long monastery day, but Fortunato was already awake.
He’d been having trouble sleeping lately. Not even lengthy recitation of the Heart Sutra, which by virtue of its hypnotic repetitiveness was supposed to pacify the chanter by affording him a glimpse into his true nature, could lull him to sleep. It never had, and Fortunato was beginning to suspect it never would. He was having trouble sleeping because he was beginning to suspect that he had made a mistake.
I’m sixty-two years old, Fortunato thought.
The zendo, the hall where the monks practiced zazen and which also doubled as their sleeping quarters, was pitch dark. It was silent but for the various rustlings, snortings, and snorings of the other fifty-some monks who slept fitfully or soundly on their tatami.
He envied them their slumber.
He realized that part of his problem was physical. After sixteen years of a fairly rigorous vegetarian diet, Fortunato was even leaner than he’d been as a pleasure-loving ace in New York City. The temple’s harsh physical discipline helped keep him fit, but he’d developed arthritis a couple of years back, presumably from sleeping on a hard, cold floor on only a thin straw mat wrapped in a single blanket. It had settled in his neck and shoulders and was getting worse with every passing month. Now he was even occasionally feeling biting pain in his long, thin, fingers. Pain was something to be endured as part of monastic life, as there were few drugs in the monastery’s frugal medicine cabinet, except for aspirin for fevers and colds, tiger balm for sore muscles and joints, and Preparation H for the hemorrhoids brought on by hours and hours of sitting on a hard floor in the lotus position.
Worse yet, the brief Hokkaido summer had barely started and the season would turn again all too soon. Fortunato did not look forward to the change. In Hokkaido the winter came early and lingered long. The winter winds were razor sharp and the snowfall was measured in feet, not inches. He had a single quilted blanket from which the mice had already been stealing stuffing. He couldn’t in all good conscience blame them for taking the cotton batting to line their nests against the terrible cold.
Lately Fortunato had been beginning to suspect that this portion of his life, the ascetic self-denial of pleasure, was as much of a dead end as his earlier years spent reveling in Tantric sex, drugs, and the sheer gusto of life as one of the most powerful aces in the world, a life he’d turned his back on in a quest to find his true nature in the way of a Zen monk.
Dogen, his Zen roshi and head of the small monastery, had told him when he’d first asked to join, “If you want to live in the world you must admit your power. If you want to feed your spirit you must leave the world.”
Only, Fortunato thought as he lay staring into the indecipherable darkness, his spirit was as hungry as ever. Have I actually progressed down the Tao this last decade and a half, he wondered, or become petrified, congealed in an unbreakable lump of amber closed off from the world? Is that what I’d really wanted?
He wondered why.
There was a sudden disturbance in the zendo, as a fully-dressed figure made his way among the sleeping monks. Fortunato recognized Dogen’s secretary and chief assistant. Fortunato had disliked the man ever since he’d entered the monastery, and the feeling was mutual. He had a sour look on his face, as if he’d been up all night sucking lemons, as he nudged Fortunato with his tabi-covered foot.
“Wake up,” he said in a voice loud enough so that those next to Fortunato stirred, grumbling in their sleep. “Dogen wants to see you.”
Fortunato didn’t question him, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of offering useless answers. He rose silently on stiff joints, and followed him out of the room. They went wordlessly down dark and silent corridors, Fortunato wondering what Dogen wanted at such an unlikely hour. This wasn’t the first time he’d been summoned to the abbot’s private quarters. He’d gone there plenty of times for instruction, to receive a new koan to meditate upon, or even for conversation about his varied experiences in the outside world. He’d even been summoned into the abbot’s presence once or twice for disciplinary measures.
But, Fortunato reflected, not for the latter reason for years. The last time had been after Tachyon’s visit. Fortunato had gone over the wall after the little alien Fauntleroy had left and spent a week drunk in the village at the base of the mountain. But those days had passed. He couldn’t even begin to guess why Dogen wanted to see him now.
Dogen nodded as his assistant led Fortunato to the open doorway of his small, austere office.
“Leave us,” he said as Fortunato stared at the man sitting uncomfortably cross-legged on the mat before Dogen’s low desk. The man smiled up at him like they were long-lost friends.
“Hey, Fortunato,” Digger Downs said. “Long time, no see.”
Fortunato looked from the star reporter of Aces! magazine back to Dogen, mystified.
“Indeed,” he said, and entered the room, bowing to the abbot. He looked back at Downs. Downs was a small, lean, brown-haired, brown-eyed man pushing a well-preserved fifty. Fortunato hadn’t seen him since he’d entered the monastery. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by,” Digger said with a smile much too bright for so early in the morning.
“You were in the neighborhood at two o’clock in the morning?” Fortunato asked in disbelief.
“Well,” Digger allowed. “It did take me awhile to get here from Tokyo. I left as soon as the news broke. I wanted to be the first to get your reaction, and,” he added with some satisfaction, “it looks as if I am.”
Fortunato sighed and closed his eyes. He had no reason to like Digger Downs. The man was, at best, an obnoxious pest. But over the years he’d tried to learn how to put such feelings away. He opened his eyes to see Dogen observing him with silent reproof. His master knew that he was letting himself get caught up in a swirl of unpleasant emotion. Yet again.
“Digger,” Fortunato said patiently, “pretend that this is an isolated monastery on a secluded mountain top in far north Japan.”
“Man, I don’t have to pretend,” Digger said. “It was Hell getting here.”
“We don’t get much news about the outside world.”
“Excellent!” Digger beamed. “Then I can get your exclusive reaction to the news regarding your son.”
“My son?” Fortunato asked. Suddenly, his stomach felt as if it had dropped out of his abdomen. He had never seen his son. The last time he’d seen Peregrine, weeks before entering the monastery, she’d been heavy with their child. Up until then he hadn’t even known that she was pregnant. He’d told her that he’d be there for her and the child. And then he’d gone into the monastery. Not even Tachyon, who’d come in person begging for his help, not even the telegram announcing the death of his mother, had induced him to leave his sanctuary.
And now...
He looked at Digger. The man was smiling, but that didn’t mean he was the bearer of good news. He cared for the story, not the implications the story might have for those caught up in it. It seemed unlikely that he’d travel all this way to impart good news... whatever that could possibly be.
Fortunato had a sudden premonition that had nothing to do with the powers he’d left behind so long ago, but had everything to do with being a wild carder. And the parent of one.
“Has,” his voice suddenly went raspy and he swallowed hard, “has his card turned?”
Downs nodded. “Yes—and,” he added quickly as he saw the expression on Fortunato’s face, “don’t worry. The boy lucked out. He turned over an ace.”
“An ace!” Fortunato felt a sudden rush of relief underlain with pride he quickly realized was unjustified. The boy had come unscathed through the most dangerous moment in a wild carder’s life. The expression of the virus was the ultimate crapshoot against horribly-stacked odds. Everything after that was just living. But the boy had had to experience it without Fortunato’s help. Not, he realized, that he could have done anything but watch the boy die if he’d pulled a Black Queen. But still...
“Yeah,” Downs continued, “and he immediately used a healing power of some sort to save the life of a Las Vegas performer who’d been mauled by a tiger.”
“Tiger?” Fortunato asked, having trouble focusing on what the reporter was saying.
“It’s big news,” Downs said. “Flashed all over the world. I’d like to get our interview in the can, because half the media in Japan is hot on my trail. Not to mention the plane-loads of reporters from other countries heading here to get your reaction to the story. But, “ he added triumphantly, “as usual, I’ve scooped them all. Lucky for me I just happened to be on Tokyo to interview the new ace, Iron Chef—”
“Plane loads?” Fortunato interrupted.
Downs nodded. “Of course. Like I said, big story. Beautiful ace mother, mysterious ace father. Kid beats the odds, becoming a hero overnight—”
Fortunato looked at Dogen, who looked back calmly.
“This is a monastery,” Fortunato said to Downs. “They can’t swarm all over it with their camera crews, mobbing the place. Think of the disruption it would cause.”
Downs shrugged. “Think you can stop them?”
“I—” Fortunato knew the answer as well as the reporter did. He looked again at Dogen. “I can’t allow the entire monastery to be disrupted because of my presence. What should we do?”
“What we must,” the ageless abbot said calmly.
Fortunato nodded. There was only one solution to the problem. “Then I must take the cause of disruption elsewhere. I must leave the monastery.”
“Leave?” Downs asked, suddenly frowning. “You’re not going to leave before I can interview you?”
Fortunato looked at him. “I don’t care about your interview,” he said. He paused, frowning. “But I have nowhere to go.”
It was true. He’d turned his back on his own country, his own society, his own identity as the most powerful ace of his time, to make this monastery his home. But the rest of Japan was as foreign as the far side of the moon.
“Go?” Downs asked. He suddenly snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Come back to America! On me. Well, on Aces! anyway. It’ll be great.” His eyes focused outward as if reading an imaginary headline. “PRODIGAL SON RETURNS. Or something like that. It’ll play great with the kid becoming an ace and all!”
Fortunato frowned. It didn’t exactly sound appealing. Besides, there was as little for him in America as there was in Japan. His mother was dead. His girls were all gone. There was nothing but Peregrine, married to another man these fifteen years or more. And his son...
He looked at Dogen, who smiled his gentle smile.
“Perhaps Mr. Downs is right. You can’t deny that lately you’ve been restless. Perhaps it is time that you walk in the world again, to get a fresh perspective on what you’ve given up and what you have now.”
Fortunato smiled wryly. There was no way to hide anything from Dogen. The old man knew Fortunato’s mind perhaps better than the ace did himself.
“Perhaps you’re right.” Fortunato said.
“Right? Of course he’s right,” Downs said, looking from one to the other and smiling broadly. “Cripes, what a story! I can see it on the cover of Aces!: “Fortunato’s Return to America.”
“Do you think anyone will care?” Fortunato asked thoughtfully.
“They will when I get done with it,” Downs promised.
Fortunato, though, wasn’t so sure.
J ohn Nighthawk waited patiently at the baggage carousel for his luggage to arrive. If there was one thing he’d learned over the years, it was patience. Usher stood to his right, a silent monolith. Magda, dressed in a traditional black and white nun’s habit, a uniform which she habitually wore when they weren’t on a mission, stood to his left as baggage was disgorged onto the meandering belt. They all watched for the black satchel with the faded Vatican coat of arms decal on its side.
“I miss Grubbs already,” Usher complained as the bag they’d been waiting for finally appeared. He reached down and picked it up as it glided by. Toting and carrying had always been Grubbs’ job.
Nighthawk said nothing. Their stop at customs was expedited by their Vatican diplomatic passports. If the customs agent was dubious about the old black man, the bruiser who looked like a heavyweight champion, and the hard-eyed nun traveling under the auspices of the Holy See, it didn’t show on his bored expression. They carried no other luggage besides the diplomatic pouch, which of course went unexamined as they breezed through arrival formalities and exited Tomlin International.
A limo with Vatican diplomatic plates and two occupants was waiting for them at ground transport. The silent driver had the proper degree of unassuming servitude. The man with him was the handsome blonde man Nighthawk knew only as the Witness. He was one of two Witnesses who worked for the Cardinal. They were brothers. Nighthawk differentiated them in his mind as the Asshole and the Bigger Asshole. This one was the Bigger Asshole.
“Any problems?” the Bigger Asshole asked.
“We lost Grubbs,” Nighthawk said.
The Witness shrugged. “I’m sure he’s gone on to his proper reward. But, you got the Mandylion all right? No problems with that?”
Nighthawk shook his head. “No. No problems with that.” He gestured at the bag emblazoned with the Vatican crest.
“Put it in the trunk,” the Witness said.
Usher did, after the driver popped it open from where he sat behind the wheel. Usher slammed the lid and came around to the limo’s back door, but the Bigger Asshole shook his head.
“The help takes taxis,” he said.
Usher looked at Nighthawk, who nodded briefly. The big man sauntered over to the line of taxis at the nearby cab stand, followed by a stoic Magda. The Witness looked at Nighthawk, who looked back. The Bigger Asshole pursed his lips, but said nothing as Nighthawk opened the limo’s door and slid into the seat. The Witness got in, sat next to Nighthawk, and the limo pulled away from the curb.
“Is everyone else in town?” Nighthawk asked, more to pester the Bigger Asshole than because he was really interested.
“Everyone was,” the Witness said briefly. “Dagon and my brother left yesterday on a mission.”
“Where to?”
“Gomorrah,” the Witness smiled, “to fetch the Anti-Christ to cower in chains before the throne of Our Lord.” His smile turned to a frown. “Although there’s talk that others will join them soon via Blood’s tunnel. It seems that the Anti-Christ has his own cadre of aces.”
Nighthawk was startled. Despite the fact that he and his team had been sent to fetch the Mandylion, he hadn’t really believed that after all these years the Cardinal’s plan had finally been set into motion.
“It’s starting then,” Nighthawk said.
“Oh yes,” the Bigger Asshole said with a broad and glittery smile that looked more malevolent than cheerful. “And nothing or no one can stop us now.”