The Sons of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page A

mistaken, this particular spot once had an angelic visitation. Wasn’t it here? It was a movie location before it became a graveyard, I remember.”
    Victor accessed briefly. “You’re referring to D. W. Griffith’s films? Angels hovering over a battlefield or some such nonsense?”
    “Yes.” Labienus waved a hand. “It was filmed on this very spot. Just picture them here now, blowing their trumpets, dangling above the crypt lids.”
    “Hilarious,” Victor told him, and sat down. “You seem happy about something.”
    “It’s been a successful day,” said Labienus. “Two celebrity corpses.”
    “Really!” remarked Victor. “Who were they?”
    “Bette Davis and Stan Laurel,” Labienus informed him.
    “Have we got buyers?”
    “There are enough parties interested in Davis to put her up for auction. There’s only been one response on Laurel, but it’s the collector who owns Oliver Hardy and is trying for a complete set, so I think the Company can name its own price,” said Labienus, grinning. The sale of human remains was of course strictly illegal, but there were wealthy cinephiles who were willing to pay handsomely for the ultimate in private shrines to the celebrated dead.
    “A neat bit of business,” agreed Victor.
    “And we’ve located three more Company caches,” Labienus continued, referring to the hermetically sealed coffins that had been filled with loot and buried to preserve them. “Mostly full of mid-to-late-twentieth-century goods. One’s full of first editions of books. The others seem to be paintings and canisters of film.”
    “Films, eh? How appropriate.” Victor looked idly at his chronometer. “Care to join me in a gin and tonic before I assail that mountain of correspondence?”
    “Yes, thanks,” said Labienus, and stretched luxuriously. He transmitted:
Something else, too. Quite a little St. Valentine’s box turned up today
.
    Victor felt a wave of nausea, but his face showed nothing as he stepped inside the office and opened the refrigeration unit.
Found something special, did you?
    Oh, yes. AIDS victim named Jason Smith, went to his eternal reward in 2007. He was in our loving hands his last six months and sealed in a biogen box immediately postmortem. The virus had mutated in him, you see, become something really wonderful. It’s been percolating away all this time and ought to make quite a splash
.
    Victor fished out the gin and tonic and after a moment’s further search found a fresh lime. Methodically he pulled on transparent sanitary gloves over his white ones. Quite calmly he mixed the drinks and replied:
I suppose you’ll need me to escort him somewhere
.
    China, of course. Again. Population density’s jumped up unacceptably in the last three years. Can’t have that, after all
.
    Even this close to our conquest?
Stolidly Victor cut slices from the lime.
    Especially this close
.
    I suppose I’ll be working with a local operative in the area?
    One of our best men: fellow named Hong Tsieh. He’ll do most of the work, actually. You’ll have but to deliver the merchandise
.
    Easy enough
, Victor transmitted, and stepping back out on the deck, handed a drink to Labienus. “Here you are. Cheers, old man.”
    “Here’s to health,” said Labienus, snickering at his own joke as he lifted his drink in response. Victor smiled and drank, holding in his mind the image of Labienus’s severed head rolling off the deck and down the hill, perhaps not stopping until it bounced into the river and tumbled away over stones to the sea …
    But Labienus’s head did not go down the hill until the rest of him went with it, strolling away to his car, which took him off to his comfortable quarters in the walled enclave of Old Hollywood. Victor retired to his desk in the office and set about answering Labienus’s correspondence, covertly recording everything he found.
    There was little of interest to the Company in his communications, nothing to directly implicate Labienus in