American Craftsmen Read Online Free PDF Page A

moved quickly from malice to surprise, and then added a dash of confused fear. Just traces of expression, but enough for Endicott to read.
    “You are Casper?” asked the old man. What the hell? Who had given this guy code names?
    “I’m your contact,” said Endicott.
    The man nodded, smiling with his remaining cigarette-stained teeth. “Not Casper. OK. I am Macha.” He pointed to a dusty seat snagged from the antiques upstairs. “Please. We talk, then we go to USA.”
    “Not quite.” Endicott placed his hands on the chair, but remained standing. “You’re old enough to know how this game goes. You tell me things that are worth my government’s time and resources, and you get a nice life in Florida or wherever you like. You tell me shit, you get shit. Understood?”
    Macha nodded and didn’t smile.
    “Good,” said Endicott. “Now you sit, and we’ll talk.”
    Macha told his bio, and he didn’t mess up any of the details that Endicott already knew. He spilled about American spiritual ops that had gone bad, and gave the preliminaries on the real reasons they had gone bad. Though these were old files, it was interesting news, and might be worth the cost of making this man’s remaining years comfortable.
    Endicott took pages of notes as Macha went on, describing Russian ops, East German ops, Czech ops, Russian ops again. Yes, the old man was talking enough, perhaps too much. He seemed to have forgotten his part in the negotiation—to hold something back until he was on U.S. soil.
    Endicott wiped the sweat off his forehead. Macha’s yammering was giving him a headache. Maybe that explained the feeling that the room’s hostility had grown. How could the old man stand it here?
    Endicott didn’t have to take it anymore. “Enough!”
    Macha smiled and stood up. “We are done? We go?”
    Endicott wanted to say, Yes, let’s get the hell out of here, but realized he had one more question that, no matter how absurd, he was ordered to ask.
    “Just one more thing. What do you know about the Left-Hand Mortons?”
    “Left-Hand?” sputtered Macha. “Nothing. Absolute nothing.”
    But Endicott was no longer listening. He stared at the door behind the old man. It glowed with the black light of very bad craft.
    “What’s in the back?” asked Endicott, trying to keep his tone even.
    “Not your business.”
    “Yes, my business.” He pushed by Macha.
    “I’m working for you,” said Macha. “USA! USA!”
    The door was shut but not locked. In spiritual warfare, this was a bad sign—it meant that mundane protections were superfluous. But how bad could it be, Lord?
    The back room was long and narrow, with two rows of benches running from end to end. The stench of chemicals familiar and strange made Endicott’s eyes water. On the benches nearest the door, body parts, mostly heads, some in jars, some not. Some desiccation, but no rot. No blood, not a drop. OK, pretty bad. But Endicott had seen death before. If Macha was a serial killer, it wouldn’t be the first time that Uncle Sam had sheltered a sociopath.
    Further down the benches, the news got worse. Conventional formaldehyde gave way to alchemical vats, bubbling above gas jet flames and humming with craft. In the vats, attempts at homunculi. Not good, but their failure was comforting.
    But what did these alchemical experiments have to do with the dead heads and limbs all around him? Lord, help me understand.
    A sound like butterfly wings. The eyelids of the nearest head fluttered open. A groan came from mouths without vocal cords. Arms bent at their elbows, reaching for him.
    In a flash, Endicott had his revelation. No, not dead, nor truly alive, these potential golems of flesh and bone. Macha was trying to assemble a deathless body with no soul, a prospective vehicle for another’s spirit. The Left Hand had always striven to defy death, but even Endicott’s father hadn’t dreamed that anyone could go so far.
    “Abomination!”
    With a few reflexive