A Creed for the Third Millennium Read online

  The glaze in his gaze cleared gradually; at first he did not seem to recognize her.

  'Shit!' he yelped suddenly, struggling to sit up. 'God! Oh, God, I feel awful! What time is it?'

  'Nine-thirty, sir. You were supposed to meet with the President at eight. He's still waiting for you, but he won't wait much longer. The March is due to end in a couple of hours, it's on schedule, and he'll be leaving on schedule.'

  'Shit! Oh, oh, double shit!' he whimpered, grinding his teeth. 'Get me coffee! Where is Helena?'

  'I don't know.'

  At precisely that moment John Wayne buzzed to tell her he had found Mrs Taverner, and in what condition.

  'Bring Mr Magnus some coffee, would you?' Turning, she leaned against the edge of his desk, folded her arms, crossed her ankles, and watched her boss ironically as he sat on the edge of the sofa, pressing his fingers into his fat stubbly cheeks so deeply their tips quite disappeared.

  'Didn't feel well,' he mumbled. 'S'funny! Just — passed out! Never done that before, even on ten drinks.'

  'Have you got a change of clothes here? Something suitable for the ceremony of the century?'

  'Think so.' He yawned enormously, eyes watering. 'Uh! Gotta think! Gotta think!'

  John appeared with the coffee.

  'How's Mrs Taverner?'

  'She's all right. Contemplating suicide. She's never collapsed on the job before, she keeps telling me.'

  'Tell her in this situation my sympathy is entirely with her, and no job and no boss are worth killing yourself over. Why don't you send her home?'

  As John went from the room Dr Carriol bore a mug to the sofa and handed it to Harold Magnus, who drank it down black and sugarless at a gulp in spite of its heat. He held out the mug.

  'More.'

  She obliged, pouring coffee for herself also.

  This time he sipped it. 'Oh, what a day! I still don't feel a hundred per cent well'

  'Poor old you!' said Dr Carriol, not sympathetically. 'I don't suppose you know that Mrs Taverner passed out too? With a damned sight more justification, I might add! You flog that good kind loyal woman to death.'

  Perhaps luckily, there was a tap on the door. Mrs Taverner appeared, looking bandbox neat; she had used ten minutes to best advantage.

  'Thank you, Dr Carriol, I will go home if Mr Magnus will give me permission. There's only one thing — what do you want done about the list of doctors and equipment you gave me last night, ma'am?'

  All the colour fell out of Dr Carriol's permanently colourless face, mocking at degrees. For a moment Mrs Taverner thought the chief of Section Four was going to have an epileptic fit, for she went utterly rigid, her eyes rolling up in her head and her lips drawing back from her teeth; she even made strange and horrible noises in her throat. Then she struck so fast Mrs Taverner did not see her cross the space between desk and sofa; she simply was there at the sofa. With one hand she lifted the bulk of the Secretary for the Environment clean off his behind, then put her other hand on his other arm, and shook him fiercely.

  'Pocahontas Island!' she said. 'The medical team!'

  Her words sank in. 'Oh — my — God! Judith, Judith, I didn't do it!'

  'Get John,' said Dr Carriol to Mrs Taverner. 'And you can't go home now. We've got work to do.' She brushed the Secretary away like a noisome insect and went back to the desk to pick up the phone, but before Mrs Taverner made it through the outer door she was summoned back. Helena, go outside and get me Walter Reed Hospital, the duty administrator.'

  Dr Carriol knew by heart the number which connected her with the President's helicopter squad. She dialled it. 'This is Dr Carriol speaking,' she said quietly. 'Where is Billy?'

  'Hasn't checked in yet, ma'am. Hasn't radioed either, and we can't raise him.'

  Her head was thumping. Or maybe it was her displaced heart? 'He went on a special job for me at six-thirty this morning, but he should have been back in Washington by eight-thirty at the latest. However, he did say he had to refuel.'

  'We know, ma'am. We understand his destination was classified, but he requisitioned charts and possible fuel depots between Washington and Hatteras and Raleigh. We've already gone the whole route and he hasn't checked in anywhere to refuel yet. But no one's reported a May Day even on the ham bands, so we kind of assumed he must be landbound at his destination with an empty tank and a bum radio.'

  'Very likely, as he seems to have decided to do my job before refuelling. If he did run out of fuel in midair he could get down safely, couldn't he? I seem to remember that actually happening in Wyoming a few months ago, when he was coming to pick us up.'

  'Oh, sure!' said the phone heartily. 'That's the great thing about those birds, they can land anywhere. And he'd have enough warning to get down, ma'am.'

  'Then we must assume he's stuck at his destination rather than somewhere en route. There's not a soul where he was going and no telephone either, so if his radio isn't working he'd have no way to contact us.' She glared across at Harold Magnus sourly. 'Thank you. If you hear anything, let me know at once. I'm with the Secretary for the Environment in his office. No, no, don't get off the line yet, man! I need one helicopter big enough to carry about eight to ten people and several hundred pounds of medical equipment. Top priority. Hold it for me until I give you the word.'

  'Can't do it, ma'am,' said the phone. 'All available craft have been earmarked by the President himself for lifting VIPs down to the Potomac for the ceremony.'

  'Fuck the ceremony and fuck the VIPs!' said Dr Carriol. 'I want that helicopter.'

  'I'll need the President for this one,' said the phone laconically.

  'You'll get him. So start moving now.'

  'Yes, ma'am!'

  Another line was flashing. 'Yes?'

  'Walter Reed, Dr Carriol, the duty administrator.'

  She held the phone out to Harold Magnus. Here, you take this one,' she said curtly. 'It's your mess.'

  While Harold Magnus spoke to the duty administrator at Walter Reed, huddling with Mrs Taverner and John Wayne over the list Dr Carriol had dictated some hours earlier, Dr Carriol went into the outer office and asked to be connected with the President himself.

  'Trouble, Judith?'

  'Big trouble, Mr President. We have an emergency situation. Dr Christian apparently is stranded on Pocahontas Island in Pamlico Sound without the medical attention he should have had hours ago. Your helicopter squad can't provide me with a suitable craft to get this medical attention to Dr Christian without your personal okay. The ceremony has swallowed all the craft in the area. Please will you get in touch with your squad HQ and okay my request for priority?'

  Hold on.' She could hear him relaying instructions to someone, then he came back on the line. 'What's up?'

  'Mr Magnus had a slight heart attack just after I left him in the early hours of this morning. I'm afraid it happened before he organized the medical attention I had arranged with him to be sent to Dr Christian. God, that's about as clear as mud, but I guess you know what I mean. I'm going down to Pocahontas Island with the medical team immediately. There is definitely some kind of problem down there, because his helicopter pilot hasn't made contact with base since he left Washington at six-thirty this morning.'

  'So Harold had a heart attack, huh?' Was it her imagination, or did the President sound ever so faintly satirical?

  'He collapsed in his office, sir. I've got an ambulance coming from Walter Reed.'

  'Poor old Harold!' This time the Presidential voice was blatantly sarcastic. 'Keep me posted, will you? It's good to know there's someone in Environment with a level head.'

  Ouch, Harold! 'Thank you, Mr President.'

  Back into the inner office, where she waited for her chief to conclude his arrangements with Walter Reed.

  'There, that's done!' he exclaimed, mildly jaunty now that things were getting back under control. 'I can leave this mess with you from here on in, can't I? I've got to get changed for the ceremony.'

  'Oh, no!' said D
r Carriol with steely calm. 'I have just covered your great bare ass with the President by informing him you had a heart attack — minor only, of course — this morning. So you are going to look very sick, and be taken by ambulance to the Walter Reed Hospital as soon as I can spare someone to get it organized.'

  He did turn green and he did look very sick. 'But I'll miss the King of England!' Then his expression became dangerous. 'What did you want to run off at the mouth to the President for?'

  'I didn't have any choice. There isn't a helicopter to run the medical team down to Pocahontas, so I had to have an executive order. That meant he had to know about the fuckup. Sorry, Mr Magnus, but I did not create the fuckup. You did. So no ceremony, that's your punishment.'

  And never again, she thought, walking out to leave him and Mrs Taverner and John Wayne gaping after her, never again will Harold Magnus be in a position to send my transportation away and leave me to wait ill clad in the snow for a bus.

  By the time the big Army chopper took off from Walter Reed Hospital bearing Dr Judith Carriol, Dr Charles Miller (a vascular surgeon), Dr Ignatius O'Brien (a plastic surgeon), Dr Samuel Feinstein (a general physician), Dr Mark Ampleforth (a specialist in shock and exposure), Dr Horace Percy (a psychiatrist), Dr Barney Williams (an anaesthetist), Miss Emilia Massimo (a general nurse) and Mrs Lurline Brown (a nurse specialist intensive care), it was eleven-thirty. All of the medical team held high service rank, and all had top-flight security clearances.

  Before the helicopter took off, Dr Carriol briefed the team, thanking them for giving up their time, and assuring them that while Dr Joshua Christian was extremely seriously ill, she very much doubted that more than two or three of them would have to remain with the patient longer than twenty-four hours. For those obliged to remain, she said with a smile, there would be a flight to Palm Springs and a few weeks in the southern California sun to compensate. All food and other supplies for Pocahontas Island would be flown in by Presidential helicopter, as domestic staff could not be engaged. The pilot of the Army craft which flew them down could be relied upon to start the diesel generator up. With them they carried a day's rations of food and drink in thermal containers, a large amount of medical equipment, including a hospital bed, and several drums of diesel fuel in case the fuel on the island had gone off.

  They flew over the same terrain Billy had negotiated some hours before, the pilot and Dr Carriol watching the ground closely for evidence of a crash. As they left Washington well behind, the sky began to cloud over until a general overcast existed, but it was stratus cloud and not dangerous for a helicopter at routine altitude. And by the time that Pocahontas Island came into view, it seemed fairly certain that they would find Billy and his bird on the ground.

  Then the shock; circling the house and buzzing the whole strip of land revealed no sign of Billy or the helicopter. Dr Carriol's pilot shrugged.

  'Beats me, ma'am, but it sure looks as if they never got this far,' he said, hovering over the precise spot where Billy had landed.

  'Go down anyway. I want to have a look.'

  It was by now after twelve-thirty, for the big Army machine was a slower, more conventional helicopter than Billy's bird.

  'I'd bet the generator will be in that shed under the edge of the trees,' said the pilot, pointing to a spot about four hundred yards away from the house. 'Generators make a racket, especially if there's no wind, or it's blowing from the wrong quarter. I'd rather have you all out before I go take a look, because the ground's swampy and I don't have pontoons.'

  'Thanks for waiving the rules about carrying diesel as well as passengers.'

  'The President asks, I waive.'

  The medical team disembarked and got their equipment out quite handily; the pilot lifted his machine a few feet into the air and idled on over to the generator shed.

  Everyone was standing around looking to her for a lead, so Dr Carriol took the initiative and moved to the double gate in the courtyard wall, tugged the plank bolt back and gave both leaves of the gate a push. They swung inward without a squeak until they bounced against stop bolts in the ground.

  'Man, this place must have been riddled with malaria in the old days!' said Dr Ampleforth. 'Why build a house here?'

  'From what I remember, the whole of the east coast even up as far as Massachusetts was riddled with malaria,' said Dr Carriol. 'And I guess they coped. I for one think it isn't a bad place to build — you'd be king of all you surveyed.'

  She led the way inside. All seemed quite normal, for the grey man on his grey cross hung in the dense noonday shadows plugging up the mouth of the tunnel to the front door.

  Still leading, Dr Carriol walked briskly into the open space of the courtyard and headed for the house, the team in a clump behind her, unsure of themselves, unsure of this peculiar and sudden mission.

  About halfway, and her mind finally grasped what was in the archway. She stopped abruptly.

  'Oh, my God, my God!' came from someone.

  She started to walk again, her feet groping feebly after traction on the grey paving of herringboned railroad ties that heaved and shifted in great undulating waves from one wall to another and another.

  About eight feet away, and she stopped again, extending her arms sideways to prevent anyone behind her from moving forward. 'Stay where you are, please.'

  He hung with the bones poking out of his tattered toes, just barely clear of the ground, all his weight yearning for contact with that ground, only his head with the rope cut into its neck just beneath the jawbone and his hands with their fingers still tightly clutching onto the rope loops around his wrists preventing his weight from achieving its aim. His face jutted far forward over the noose, which had cut so deeply into his neck in trying to help his body reach the ground that it was level with his ears. So he looked not up, not straight ahead, but downward, his eyes half open. All the cruellest work of the rope had been done after he died, for his face was no more congested than the rest of him, his tongue was inside his parted lips, those lips were not swollen, and his eyes did not start out of their orbits. The respiratory arrest which had killed him had simply starved his tissues of oxygen, and so all of him had gone the colour of weathered wood. The bruises, for instance, hardly showed.

  It would be many weeks before Dr Judith Carriol would be able to face the emotions the sight of him had aroused in her, let alone catalogue those emotions. During the time when she did physically stand there gazing on him, she felt only an extraordinary sense of fitness, of inevitability, of a pattern completed save for a few final strands which would add satisfying but quite unnecessary finishing touches.

  'Oh, well done, Joshua!' she said, smiling. 'Beautifully and perfectly done! A better end to Operation Messiah than I could ever have dreamed of.'

  The white nurse was weeping, the black nurse on her knees keened thin and mournful, the doctors were shocked to silence.

  Judith Carriol was the only one with a voice. 'Judas!' she said, turning the word over on her tongue in wonder. 'Yes, some things are immutable. I did indeed give you up for your crucifixion.'

  In Washington it was all over too. The March of the Millennium concluded amid a Roman holiday, two million people spilling through the streets and parks of Washington and Arlington, holding hands, touching each other, weeping, singing, dancing, kissing.

  The President was waiting on the banks of the Potomac to welcome the Christian family, the U.S. senators, the Mayor of New York, the governors and the service chieftains and all the motley rest. He spoke from the white marble platform raised on high where Dr Joshua Christian should have been, after which the King of Australia and New Zealand, the Prime Minister of India, the Premier of China and a dozen other heads of state all spoke, just a few graceful words each that were too brief to bore and too well phrased to offend anyone. They thanked Dr Joshua Christian for giving new hope to the people of the world, they marvelled at the human spirit behind the March of the Millennium, they praised various versions and professions of God
, and they praised each other.

  About one o'clock, when all the prominent heads of state, politicians, movie stars and other dignitaries were gathered in a specially erected marquee near the Lincoln Memorial to refresh themselves after the ceremony and before they went to rest up for the night's Millennial Ball, an aide approached President Tibor Reece, drew him a little away from the King, and whispered in his ear. Those who were watching him saw him stare at his aide in obvious shock, part his lips to say something, then think better of it and just nod his thanks. After which he went back to his conversation with His Majesty, but as soon as possible he excused himself and quietly slipped out of the marquee. He went back to the White House, and he waited there for Dr Judith Carriol.

  She arrived not long after two o'clock, in the fastest of the Presidential helicopters; after he received her message in the marquee, Tibor Reece had dispatched it to Pocahontas Island to fetch her.

  When she entered the Oval Office the President's initial reaction was to think that she appeared remarkably calm, considering the magnitude of this calamitous event; but then, as he had grown to know her better, he had decided she was the most admirable kind of woman, incapable of panic, incapable of emotional excess, warm without being effusive, and above all one who esteemed her intelligence far ahead of her looks. So he had come to like her enormously, contrasting her with the very different Julia perhaps more often than he realized.

  'Sit down, Judith. I can't believe it! Is it true? Is he really dead?'

  She passed a hand over her eyes; the hand shook. 'Yes, Mr President, he is dead.'

  'But what happened?'

  'Due to Mr Magnus's illness, the medical team was not sent to Pocahontas Island. As far as we can gather, the helicopter which took Dr Christian down there early this morning dropped him off without realizing nobody was there. It must have taken off again, because it isn't anywhere on the island, but it and Billy and the soldier who acted as Dr Christian's escort have literally vanished off the face of the earth. The Coast Guard, the Navy and the Air Force have been searching for it now for two hours, and there isn't a trace. It's as if it had been — spirited away.' She shivered uncontrollably, the first time he had ever seen her unable to discipline herself.