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And if Kasabian’s boora?

My phone rings I thuuy" It’s Parker "I bet right about now you’re wondering where your friends are"

"How are you seeing me?"

"Look around you, shit for brains There’s eyes everywhere"

"The paintings"

"There’s this thing called ic Maybe you’ve heard of it"

"Where are Vidocq and Allegra?"

"Relax, sweetheart They’re fine In fact, we’re having a New Year’s party tonight and you’re invited"

"At Avila?"

"How do you walk around with that big brain? Yeah, Avila It’ll be a blast We’re gonna raise a little hell Get your ass there before ht"

"I’ll be there"

"This is a personal invitation No guests No plus ones If I see a cloud of dust behind you, Senor Frog and that little slice of cherry pie go right in the wood chipper"

"I’ll be there"

"Beforehand and the little hands are straight up"

"Either one of the to personally teach you the To Paddle"

"That another scary trick you learned in Hell?"

"No Wild Bill told randdad about it It’s where I take you down the river Sos You fingers and toes Your neck and back I dig a hole in the wet, soft ground, put you inside, and fill it back up Then I have a cigarette and wait for you to dig your way out"

"Before twelve," says Parker, and hangs up

IF I LEARNED anything Don, it’s this: the only real difference between an eneo back to where I abandoned the Jag, janition, and ai the saood sense of direction can get you into or out of a lot of trouble

Who’s higher on the food chain? The Golden Vigil or Ho up the tab for the operation, but that probably has ton control freaks and politicians ant their na to put Ran CIA or Busted terrorist cell on your resu people that you run angels and G-e of the universe help your political career or get you a syringe full of Thorazine and a lifetiil back in DC put on their quarterly work reports? At least, the people that person reports to ht coet fascists? "We need that extra billion for a gun that will turn va for Bavarian creahnuts" Who runs this sideshow and what do they want?

If what I’d read was right, it was all a joke anyway Before the , I looked up the Golden Vigil on an occult encyclopedia Web site The Golden Vigil has been around at least since the First Crusade in the eleventh century That’s when the Brits and the French started writing about it

According to soinal Hashishin, the frat-house assassination cult that was the Al Qaeda of its day While the regular Hashishin stuck to Dirty Harry jihadist political power-structure attacks, the Golden Vigil went after invisible eneil is ht actually explain how and why soame up and down the Fertile Crescent and settled down to build the world’s first trailer parks along the Euphrates If the Kissi have been here for as long as Aelita said, it il has been around for at least eight to ten thousand years Even longer, if the tribes were negotiating with the Kissi when they first wandered up out of Africa That would push the Vigil’s origins back to around seventy thousand years, according to another encyclopedia site

Which brings us back to the question of who’s the bigthis food chain, Hoil? Whoever controls the uys back eastthat if Washington pulled the plug, the Vigil couldn’t support itself You can stuff a lot of loot into the cookie jar over seventy thousand years

WHEN I PULL into the parking lot of the Vigil’s warehouse, a couple of G-men dressed like rent-a-cops hold up their hands for hly trained security professionals with keen powers of observation, they leap and lurch out of the hen they see that I’ down By the ti, six of them have surrounded me and each one of them has an identical Glock 9mm pointed at my head I hate Glocks Guys who love Glocks love Corvettes Not because it was a hot car, but because it was cool forty years ago and they once saw a picture of Steve McQueen in one Their dad probably had a Vette when he was young, but he was never cool But if they have a Vette, et the fat man who made them mow the lahen they should have been out with their friends sneaking into R-rated irlfriends Maybe their dad was the guy driving fast and locking lips with Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair Maybe their dad was cool after all and maybe that h-precision killingfierce, but no one seeet shot Lucky theht now I really want to hurt so into their sleeves, nodding to the air Another io Leone standoff and Wells coht to let these ht here, shitsack Did you, even for a second, think about whoyou?"

"Not even for a second"

He nods to hishim inside"

"I want to talk to you, not your Boy Scouts"

"I don’t want to talk to you at all out here Shut up until we’re somewhere secure"

I keep my mouth shut I don’t need any more enemies Well, any more enemies ant to see me turned into chuh the electric Jell-O interior barrier and the work floor appears It’s different inside Like Vegas on the Fourth of July All lights,sparks like fireworks Vigil uns Others are likearound their ar vehicles I don’t see Aelita, but then, there’s no reason she’d want to see ht now, so talk fast"

"I thought you’d like to know that a couple of civilians have been kidnapped and dragged up to Avila"

"Friends of yours? Then I doubt they’re civilians, in the true sense of the word I ives a rat’s ass about"

"You’re going to leave a couple of innocent people hanging because you have a beef with me?"