Steal the Lightning Page 8

  There was movement out there in the dark, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

  Silverman dug me in the ribs. “Get ready.”

  The crowd began to moan. A woman just across the aisle let out a wail that sent the chills right through me. Somebody yelled, “Glory! Glory! Glory!” on and on. A frenzy seemed to take the crowd. There was tension in the air. I felt the hairs rise on my arms. I felt the electricity. I knew that feeling. I knew it from my job . . . There were voices, sounds of people moving in their seats, and more—a kind of white noise, a hiss that made it hard to think, impossible to concentrate. I had a taste of metal in my mouth . . .

  “God knows you!” Cleary yelled. He was screaming to be heard. “He knows you, each and every one of you, He is with you, He is with us all, behold, behold—” He raised his arms over his head. “The glory of the Lord!”

  And then the lights went up. Not in the tent, but in the dark beyond, scattering the shadows, flooding them with silver light.

  I could see treetops. I could see something shining, leaping, falling . . . Rising, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty feet into the air, then slipping sideways, tumbling down—

  The water.

  The water was alive. The still, flat pond we’d seen less than an hour before—it bucked and swayed like an ocean in a storm. It reared up, gleaming, rainbows flashing in the spray, then veered off, and fell. It was as if the liquid were a skin below which some immense and violent force lay trapped, something alive, or near to it, thrusting and heaving in its efforts to break free.

  Everyone was on their feet now. Silverman held his phone over his head. The noise rose, formless, wordless, people howling, screaming, stretching forwards, reaching out, and I noticed several big guys on security had stepped into the aisle to hold them back. The mood was frenzied—and the force outside responded to it, changing, taking on solidity, and shape.

  We were looking at a wall of rain, but it was rain that didn’t fall. It hung, twisting in ribbons, its strands forever folding in upon themselves, creating figures, images, brief flickers that seemed half-familiar in that stark, white glare. Faces and hands appeared and flowed away, one face merging with another, forming a third, a fourth, and the faces growing more distinct—here, a man with heavy jowls, and there, a woman in a wide hat, and a couple dressed for a wedding—the crowd gasped with each new iteration. They saw themselves. They saw their loved ones. They saw enemies—they saw anyone who had ever been of any great significance to them. They shouted names. They shouted messages. And I got the feeling that all of them saw something just a little different, reading meaning into abstract forms, patterns that were gone in moments, changed to something else. I saw a woman drop down as if dead, and the security staff race in and carry her away. I saw a man shaking his fists in the air, trembling in some kind of a seizure.

  “It’s mirroring the audience,” I said, but even then, I knew that wasn’t it: the audience were mirroring themselves.

  The place was in an uproar. Some guy lost his footing and his whole row went toppling, spilling out into the aisle, and right away security were there, getting everybody back in place fast as they could. I could feel the excitement, like magnetism, drawing me forwards, pulling me towards the lights, the rain, the ever-changing shapes—

  I knew that it was time to go.

  I took Angel’s arm, nodded to the exit. I had Silverman move to let us out, thinking he’d stay, but he followed us, still trying to capture it all on his phone, walking backwards, panning to and fro across the crowd.

  All went well, until we reached the way out.

  There were two guys standing there. Neither was the guy we’d met before, when we were sneaking round the back, but they weren’t your run-of-the-mill security, either. Both wore suits. One wore a Panthers cap, incongruous with his jacket, shirt and tie. I thought we were going to be herded back to our seats, but they ignored Angel and me, and homed straight in on Silverman.

  “Phone, please.”

  Silverman pocketed his phone. The guy with the cap grabbed his arm. They tussled for a moment. I wasn’t really pals with Silverman, but even so, this rubbed me the wrong way. So I leaned up close and yelled into the Panther-guy’s ear. “Don’t you recognize the reverend here? Don’t you know to whom you’re speaking?”

  “Reverend! He’s no more reverend than—”

  His friend held up the tent flap for us.

  “This way please. Sir. Ma’am.”

  “No. Not this way. I demand that you release this man immediately. Is that clear?”

  I was play-acting. If it worked for Angel, it could work for me, too.

  The guy with the cap leveled a finger.

  “Brit, right?”

  “I certainly am.”

  “I been to Britain. Lakenheath. You know it?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  Lakenheath is a US Air Force base in southeast England. This wasn’t just a friendly chat. He was laying out credentials, just in case I felt like tackling him.

  To Silverman, he said again, “Phone, please.”

  I kicked him in the shins.

  I caught him by surprise. He let go of Silverman. The other guy came in to block us and we barreled through him, knocked him sideways, and the three of us were running, straight across the lawns, past the other tents, and then we had to stop because I couldn’t work out where I’d left the car. And in the moment’s pause, we realized, nobody was following us.

  We weren’t worth the effort.

  I bent over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

  “You,” said Angel, “are out of shape.”

  I gasped.

  I could see her, already calculating some appalling exercise regime for me. She said, “And that was some stupid shit you pulled in there.”

  “Worked, though, didn’t it?”

  She looked at Silverman. To me, she said, “You know this guy?”

  “Sort of.”

  “‘Sort of.’” She sighed. “Car’s that way, if you’re asking. I memorized the landmarks.”

  It was a beautiful Midwestern night, the insects buzzing, and the moon riding the treetops.

  The distant congregation, howling in the dark.

  “You,” I said to Silverman, “have some explaining to do.”

  But Silverman was busy with the replay on his phone.

  “I can use this, maybe. If I clean it up. See? What d’you think?”

  Chapter 23

  Idiot or Genius?

  “They probably remembered me from last time.”

  “You mentioned ‘last time.’ Want to start with that, then? ‘Last time’?”

  “I tried to get a camera in. A real one, not my phone.”

  “And how did that go?”

  “Hm. Badly, I suppose.”

  The bar was out of town. It was empty. A large dog of no specific breed lay on the countertop, watching us from one eye. The barman had just slipped out for a smoke, he’d said. We hadn’t seen him in a half an hour. The tables had been set and polished for a crowd that clearly wasn’t coming in.

  Angel said, “One thing’s clear, at any rate. We can’t go back,” and she looked at me, her head on one side. “Thanks, Chris.”

  “It worked,” I said again.

  “In the sense of . . . what? No one called the cops? No one kicked the shit out of us? What, exactly?”

  I said, “They don’t like outsiders.”

  “Uh-uh.” Silverman shook his head. “They’re happy with outsiders. The more the merrier. As long as they control the narrative. They’re like politicians—fine till you start digging where they don’t want. But that’s when it gets interesting.”

  I said, “You didn’t even ask them, Can I bring a camera . . . ?”

  “And be told no? Officially? Besides—first commandment: ‘Ask forgiveness, not permission’.”

  “That’s not in the Bible.”

  “Werner Herzog. He, um, he told me Rikers was the greatest prison mov
ie ever made.” He grew bashful, suddenly, shy of his own boast. “He, ah, he said that to me. To my face. I met him,” he added.

  Then the barman came back, and we bought more beer.

  From pity for the guy, if nothing more.

  “Here’s why they’d have told me no.” Silverman grew talkative, just as he had that morning in Manhattan. “I’ve done some checking into Richard Cleary. ‘Clear-eye,’ they call him. These days, you can use your home computer. It’s all public record.”

  “Let me guess. It’s either money, or it’s sex. And from the operation here . . . I’d go for money.”

  “‘Financial irregularities,’ it’s called. He did six months for fraud. There’s a piece on YouTube where he talks about ‘the war against Christ.’ In his version, he was being persecuted.”

  “I bet.”

  “After which, he happens upon this. Whether by accident or design, I don’t know. Turns out it’s God’s gift. Literally.”

  “And you’re—what?” said Angel. “Making a movie about him? Investigating him?”

  “Well . . .” Silverman rubbed the back of his neck. “At the moment, I’m probably trying not to get sued. But, ah—the real subject of my movie, if you don’t mind, is . . .”

  And he nodded to me.

  “What?” She seemed to find that very funny.

  “I’m actually quite photogenic,” I said.

  She found that funny, too.

  “I got you sent here. Or, I helped.”

  Silverman was drunk. He’d got drunk very quickly, and he’d kept on drinking.

  This latest snippet, though, was just a little bit too much.

  I said, “So you’re—what? Some big deal at the Registry now? News to me.”

  “No, no. But I talk to people, lots of people, it’s what I do, and I was telling someone, talking about what was happening here. And other places, too. Vegas, I’ve heard stories about Vegas—”

  “We’re not in Vegas. Not going, either.”

  “Big Hollow, though. They had it marked already. I mean, you couldn’t miss it, but I let them know the full . . . extent of the activity, and I sort of said, if you were heading this way . . .”

  “And we—what? Arrived at the same time? Just by coincidence?”

  “Um, no. Obviously not. But the Registry, see, it can’t keep track of everything. And if I can help out—”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “Mutual interest. You do your job, I get my movie. Now—” He pushed his chair back, stumbled to his feet. “My round, right? You want more drinks, don’t you? I’m buying . . .”

  “He’s an idiot. Or he’s a genius. I don’t know which.”

  We were alone, back at the motel. Alone, and drunk.

  She said, “I sort of like him.”

  “Oh, he’s likeable, all right. Sort of.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “I don’t think he knows what he’s messing with. And when people don’t know what they’re doing, they should leave it to the ones who do.”

  “Which is you, I suppose?”

  “In this case, I suppose so.”

  I lay back on the bed.

  “You,” she said. “Not me.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “That wasn’t rhetorical,” she told me.

  “I didn’t say not you.”

  “But you meant it.”

  Her voice was small and hard, and she was staring straight at me.

  I knew the danger signs. And I remembered what her dad had said.

  Melody was wrong: if anything was going to drive a wedge between us, it wasn’t culture, and it wasn’t race. It was Angel’s own damn stubbornness, and her willingness to batter down whatever obstacles she thought were in her way.

  Including me.

  I said, “We can’t do this one.”

  I said, “I’ll phone it in, explain what’s going on. No big deal. It happens.”

  I said, “There’ll be others. Something different. You know?”

  “I’m training, Chris. It doesn’t matter what it is. I need to do it. Right?”

  “There’s people. There’s people here—”

  “But you’ve done jobs like that. You told me so.”

  “Plus, it’s water. That’s tricky. Rare, as well. Chances are you’ll never need to know . . .”

  “And if I do? What then? Oh, this is the bit Chris wouldn’t show me?”

  “It’s not good to train on. Water and electric—”

  I was drunk, stumbling over words, trying to explain to her. But I could see it all: every pitfall, every danger, every chance for things to fall apart. Even laying cables was a problem. How could we see what we were doing? Or get a sense of where the god was weak and strong? In water, everything was mobile. Everything changed. And if we laid the cables, the moment that we sent a charge through, the water would just spread it out, in all directions. Maybe favoring the surface. Maybe not. Any hidden object—a drainage pipe, or an old chunk of wreckage—anything could act as an earth, and change the whole dynamics. There were too many unknowns. Too much that couldn’t be predicted.

  And I doubted Cleary’s mob were going to want us near the place, just to make it harder.

  I said, “One misstep, anywhere—one little accident. If it goes wrong . . .”

  “Well then,” she said. “Best make sure it doesn’t, hadn’t we?”

  Chapter 24

  The Limo

  The crows out in the field were laughing at me.

  Angel handed me a coffee, one of those tiny motel cups that’s gone in just a couple of gulps.

  “Feel rough?” she said.

  I felt like someone, sometime in the night, had taken out my brain to use for football practice.

  “You were there, too,” I complained. “How come you’re so chirpy?”

  “’Cause I stopped, didn’t I? While you and your pal were going at it.”

  She pulled a shirt on.

  “But I do know a cure,” she said.

  “This isn’t that banana thing, is it . . . ?”

  “Uh-uh. Better.” She picked up her purse. “Taco Bell. Right across the parking lot. Cure any hangover, I swear.”

  “Right now,” I told her, “I’ll try anything.”

  The parking lot was a hundred yards in sharp, fierce sun.

  Even with my dark glasses, I wasn’t sure that I could make it . . .

  “This is the best fake Mexican that you will ever eat,” she said, ordering breakfast burritos, cheesy potatoes, coffee, and snatching up a dozen packs of hot sauce while I slumped at a table by the window. “It’s a cuisine all of its own. There’s nothing like it.”

  “Well—not in Mexico, I bet.”

  And that was when the limo pulled up, right by our motel.

  “Posh neighbors,” I said.

  “If they’re staying here, this really is a one-horse town.” She gestured to the meal. “Good, huh?”

  “Not bad. Weird texture . . . like, pre-digested . . .”

  “Hey. Food of the gods.” She stopped herself. “I’m going to have to stop saying shit like that, aren’t I?”

  A man got out of the limo, and went into the motel.

  Then she said, “We can do this, Chris. You know that, don’t you?”

  I grunted.

  “You’d do it. You’d try, for sure. All the tales you told me.”

  “I wanted to impress you. I was trying to chat you up.”

  “You were bullshitting, you mean.” She smiled over her coffee cup.

  “Let’s say . . . exaggerating for dramatic effect.”

  “What happened in Iraq, then. You ‘exaggerated’ that, then?”

  “Iraq was different. There was this Russian guy. It was sort of personal.”

  “And this one’s personal. Because it’s me, right?” She saved me the embarrassment of lying by going straight on. “And that’s touching, you know? It really is. Even all that BS you were coming out with last
night. Shit, I’m glad you’re protective. I’d be pissed if you weren’t. But I’m supposed to be learning here! How’m I gonna learn if I don’t get to do it?”

  I took a sip of coffee.

  “Look.” She put her hand on mine. “Say I qualify. I’m out on my own. I get a job like this. What do I do? See what I’m saying?”

  “That’s . . . blackmail.”

  “It’s graymail, maybe. But it’s right, and you know it’s right.”

  The guy came out of the motel. He was stocky, broad, dressed all in blue, and had an easy, rolling kind of walk, like nothing in the world could make him hurry. I watched as he got back into the car, and I watched as the car just idled there, and then I said, “You might be right. But, even so . . .”

  “So?”

  The limo started up. It pulled out, paused a moment by the exit, like a predatory eel checking out the swarms of fish. Then it slid out into traffic, slipped into the current and was gone.

  I said, “We’ve got the revival thing, for a start. They’re not exactly going to let us walk off with their star attraction, are they? Plus, it’s a water retrieval. I keep saying that, but, you know—we’d be working blind. As good as. They’re tricky. And I’ve never done one.”

  “Ah! Now we get to it!”

  “No, I’m serious here.”

  “So, Mr. Expert.” She put her head on one side, trying to keep the grin off her face. “I thought you’d been everywhere, done everything. Am I wrong?”

  “I know the theory. And I know people who’ve done it. I’ve just never had to do one myself. They take preparation. It’s not running water, at least, so that’s a good thing, but it’s all that is. And if we have to do it undercover, too . . .”

  “And avoid the guy you kneecapped.”

  “I did not!”