Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  Sutter and Harod left the set as soon as the red On-the-Air lights went off, before the applause had ended, and walked quickly through carpeted and air-conditioned corridors. Maria Chen and the Reverend’s wife, Kay, were waiting in Sutter’s outer office. “What do you think, dear?” asked Sutter.

  Kay Ellen Sutter was tall and thin, weighted down with layers of makeup and a hairdo that looked as if it had been sculpted and left in place for years. “Wonderful, dear. Excellent.”

  “We’ll have to get rid of that blame fool singer’s monologue when he started raving on about Jews in the record business,” said Sutter. “Oh, well, we’ve got to cut about twenty minutes before it’s ready to broadcast anyway.” He put on his bifocals and peered at his wife. “Where you two ladies headed?”

  “I thought I would show Maria the day-care and nursery over at married student housing,” said Kay Sutter.

  “Great, great!” said the Reverend. “Anthony and I’ve got one more brief meeting and then it’ll be time to get you good folks out to the airstrip for the hop up to Atlanta.”

  Maria Chen gave Harod a look. Harod shrugged. The two women left with Kay Ellen Sutter talking at a brisk pace.

  The Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter’s office was huge, thickly carpeted, and decorated in subtle beiges and earth tones in great contrast to the red, white, and blue decor prevailing elsewhere in the complex. One long wall was a curved window looking out on pastureland and a small patch of woodland preserved by the developers. Behind Sutter’s broad desk, thirty feet of teak wall space was literally covered with signed photographs of the famed and powerful, certificates of merit, ser vice awards, plaques, and other documentation of the status and lasting power of Jimmy Wayne Sutter.

  Harod sprawled in a chair and straightened his legs. “Whew!”

  Sutter pulled off his suit jacket, draped it over the back of his leather executive’s chair, and sat down, rolling up his sleeves and clasping his hands behind his head. “Well, Anthony, was it the lark you expected it to be?”

  Harod ran his hands through his premed hair. “I just hope to hell that none of my backers saw that.”

  Sutter smiled. “Why is that, Anthony? Does associating with the godly cause one to lose points in the film community?”

  “Looking like an asshole does,” said Harod. He glanced toward a kitchen area at the far end of the room. “Can I get a drink?”

  “Certainly,” said Sutter. “Do you mind making it yourself? You know the way.”

  Harod had already crossed the room. He filled a glass with Smirnoff’s and ice and pulled another bottle from the concealed cupboard. “Bourbon?”

  “Please,” said Sutter. When Harod handed him his drink, the Reverend said, “Are you glad you accepted my little invitation to come visit for a few days, Anthony?”

  Harod sipped at his vodka. “Do you think it was smart to tip our hand by having me on the show?”

  “They knew you were here,” said Sutter. “Kepler is keeping track of you and both he and Brother C. are watching over me. Maybe your witnessing will serve to confuse them a might.”

  “It sure as hell served to confuse me,” Harod said and went to refill his drink.

  Sutter chuckled and sorted through papers on his desk. “Anthony, please do not get the idea that I am cynical about my ministry.”

  Harod paused in the act of dropping ice chips into his glass and stared at Sutter. “You have to be shitting me,” he said. “This setup is the most cynical rube trap I’ve ever seen.”

  “Not at all,” Sutter said softly. “My ministry is real. My care for the people is real. My gratitude for the Ability God has granted me is real.”

  Harod shook his head. “Jimmy Wayne, for two days you’ve been showing me around this fundamentalist Disneyland and every goddamn thing I’ve seen is designed to separate some provincial moron’s money from his genuine K-Mart imitation cowhide wallet. You’ve got machines sorting the letters with checks from the empty ones, you’ve got computers scanning the letters and writing their own replies, you’ve got computerized phone banks, direct mail campaigns that’d make Dick Viggerie want to cream his pants, and televised church ser vices that make Mr. Ed reruns look like highbrow programming . . .”

  “Anthony, Anthony,” said Sutter and shook his head, “you must look beyond the superficial at the deeper truths. The faithful in my electronic congregation are . . . for the most part . . . simpletons, hicks, and the born again brain dead. But this does not make my ministry a sham, Anthony.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Not at all. I love these people!” Sutter pounded the desk with his huge fist. “Fifty years ago when I was a young evangelist . . . seven years old and filled with the Word . . . going from tent revival to tent revival with my daddy and Aunt El, I knew then that Jesus had given me the Ability for a reason . . . and not just to make money.” Sutter picked up a slip of paper and peered at it through his bifocals. “Anthony, tell me who you think wrote this:

  Preachers . . . ‘dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live.’ ”

  Sutter looked over the top of his bifocals at Harod. “Tell me who you think wrote that, Anthony.”

  Harod shrugged. “H. L. Mencken? Madelyn Murray O’Hare?”

  Sutter shook his head. “Jefferson, Anthony. Thomas Jefferson.”

  “So?”

  Sutter pointed a large, blunt finger at Harod. “Don’t you see, Anthony? For all the evangelicals’ talk about this nation being founded on religious principles . . . this being a Christian nation and all . . . most of the Founding Fathers were like Jefferson . . . atheists, pointy-headed intellectuals, Unitarians . . .”

  “So?”

  “So the country was founded by a flock of fuzzy-minded secular humanists, Anthony. That’s why we can’t have God in our schools anymore. That’s why they’re killing a million unborn babies a day. That’s why the Communists are growing’ stronger while we’re talking arms reduction. God gave me the Ability to stir the hearts and souls of common people so that we can make this country a Christian nation, Anthony.”

  “And that’s why you want my help in exchange for your support and protection from the Island Club,” said Harod.

  “You scratch my back, boy,” said Sutter with a smile, “I’ll keep ’em off’n yours.”

  “It sounds like you want to be president someday,” said Harod. “I thought that yesterday we were just talking about rearranging the pecking order in the Island Club a little bit.”

  Sutter opened his hands, palms up. “What’s wrong with thinking big, Anthony? Brother C., Kepler, Trask, and Colben’ve all been foolin’ around with politics for decades. I met Brother C. forty years ago at a po liti cal rally of conservative preachers at Baton Rouge. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of putting a good Christian in the White House for a change.”

  “I thought Jimmy Carter was supposed to have been a good Christian,” said Harod.

  “Jimmy Carter was a born-again wimp,” said Sutter. “A real Christian would have known just what to do with the Ayatollah when that pagan put his hands on American citizens. The Bible says . . . ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ We should’ve left those Moslem Shee-ite bastards toothless.”

  “To hear NCPAC tell it, it’s the Christians who just put Reagan in,” said Harod. He got up to pour more vodka. Po liti cal discussions always bored him.

  “Bull-hockey,” said Jimmy Wayne Sutter. “Brother C., Kepler, and that donkey’s behind Trask, put our friend Ronald where he is. Dolan and the NCPAC nitwits are premature. The country is taking a turn to the right, but there will be temporary reversals. By 1988 or ’92, however, the way will be prepared for a real Christian candidate.”

  “You?” said Harod. “Aren’t there others in line before you?”

  Sutter scowled. “Who, for instance?”

  “Whatshisname,” said Harod, “the
Moral Majority guy. Falwell.” Sutter laughed. “Jerry was created by our right-wing friends in Washington. He’s a golem. When his financing dries up, everybody may notice that he’s a man-shaped heap of mud. And not very smart mud at that.”

  “What about some of those older guys,” said Harod, trying to remember the names of the faith healers and snake charmers he had flipped by on L.A. cable. “Rex Hobart . . .”

  “Humbard,” corrected Sutter, “and Oral Roberts, I suppose. Are you out of your mind, Anthony?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sutter extracted a Havana cigar from a humidor and lit it. “We’re talking about people here with cow flop still sticking to their boots,” said the Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter. “We’re talking about good old boys who go on TV and say, ‘Put your sick or ailing body part against the television screen, friends, and I will heal it!’ Can you image, Anthony, all the hemorrhoids and boils and sores and yeast infections . . . and the man who blesses all that biology meeting foreign dignitaries, sleeping in Lincoln’s bedroom?”

  “It boggles the mind,” said Harod, starting on his fourth vodka. “What about some of the others. You know, your competitors?”

  The Reverend Sutter linked his hands behind his head again and smiled. “Well, there’s Jim and Tammy, but they’re up shit creek half the time with the FCC . . . makes my troubles look pretty piddling’. Besides they take turns having nervous breakdowns. I don’t blame Jim. With a wife like that, I would too. Then there’s Swagger over in Louisiana. He’s a smart ’un, Anthony. But I think he really wants to be a rock ’n’ roll star like his cousin . . .”

  “His cousin?” said Harod. “Jerry Lee Lewis,” said Sutter. “So who else is there? Pat Robertson, of course. My guess is that Pat will run in ’84 or ’88. He’s formidable. His network makes my little Outreach project look like a tin can and a bunch of strings going nowhere. But Pat has liabilities. Folks sometimes forget that he’s supposed to be a minister and so does Pat . . .”

  “This is all very interesting,” said Harod, “but we’re getting away from the reason I came down here.”

  Sutter took off his glasses, removed the cigar from his mouth, and stared. “You came down here, Anthony, because your useless ass is in a sling and unless you get some help on your side, the Club is going to end up using you for one of its after-dinner amusements on the Island . . .”

  “Hey,” said Harod, “I’m a full-fledged member of the Steering Committee now.”

  “Yes,” said Sutter. “And Trask is dead. Colben is dead. Kepler is lying low, and Brother C. was embarrassed by the fiasco in Philadelphia.”

  “Which I had nothing to do with,” said Harod. “Which you managed to extricate yourself from,” said Sutter. “Dear God, what a mess. Five FBI agents and six of Colben’s special people dead. A dozen local blacks killed. A local minister murdered. Fires, destruction of private and public property . . .”

  “The media still buys the gang warfare story,” said Harod. “The FBI was supposed to be there because of the black militant group of terrorists . . .”

  “Yes, and the repercussions are reaching all the way to the mayor’s office and beyond . . . to Washington even. Did you know that Richard Haines is now working privately— and discreetly— for Brother C.?”

  “Who gives a shit?” said Harod. “Precisely.” Jimmy Wayne Sutter smiled. “But you see why your addition to the Steering Committee comes at a . . . sensitive time.”

  “You’re sure they want to use me to get to Willi,” said Harod. “Absolutely,” said Sutter. “And then they’ll dump me?”

  “Literally,” said Sutter. “Why?” asked Harod. “Why would they take a murderous old psychopath like Willi?”

  “There’s an old desert saying that was never included in Scripture but was old enough to have been recorded in the Old Testament,” said Sutter.

  “What’s that?”

  “ ‘It’s better to have a camel inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in,’ ” intoned Sutter.

  “Thank you, Reverend,” said Harod. “You’re welcome, Anthony.” Sutter glanced at his watch. “You’d better hurry if we’re going to get you to Atlanta in time for your flight.”

  Harod sobered up quickly. “Do you know why Barent called this meeting for Saturday?”

  Sutter made a vague gesture. “I presume Brother C. called it because of this Monday’s events.”

  “Reagan’s shooting . . .”

  “Yes,” said Sutter, “but did you know who was with the president . . . three steps behind him . . . when the shots rang out?”

  Harod raised his eyebrows. “Yes, Brother C. himself,” said Sutter. “I imagine we will have lots to talk about.”

  “Jesus” said Harod.

  Jimmy Wayne Sutter scowled. “You will not take the name of the Lord God in vain in this room,” he snapped. “Nor would I advise that you do it in the presence of Brother C.”

  Harod walked to the door, paused. “One thing, Jimmy, why do you call Barent ‘Brother C.’?”

  “Because C. Arnold does not care for it when I call him by his Christian name,” said Sutter.

  Harod looked amazed. “You know it?”

  “Of course,” said Sutter. “I have known Brother C. since the nineteen thirties when both of us were little more than children.”

  “What is it?”

  “C. Arnold’s Christian name is Christian,” said Sutter with a smile. “Huh?”

  “Christian,” repeated Sutter. “Christian Arnold Barent. His daddy believed even if Brother C. does not.”

  “Well I’ll be goddamned,” said Harod and hurried out of the room before Sutter could say a word.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Caesarea, Israel Tuesday,

  April 2, 1981

  Natalie Preston landed at the David Ben-Groin Airport near Old on the El Al flight from Vienna at 10:30 A.M. local time. Israeli Customs was calm and efficient if not overly courteous. “Welcome back to Israel, Miss Haps haw,” said the man behind the counter as he checked her two bags. It was her third entry into the country on the false passport and her heart still pounded as she waited. It was only slightly reassuring that the Mossad, Israel’s own intelligence agency, had forged the documents in the first place.

  Once through Customs she took the El Al bus to Tel Aviv and walked from the bus station on Jeff Road to the ITS/Avis outlet on Hamster Street. She paid the weekly rate and left a four-hundred-dollar deposit for a green 1975 Opal with brakes that pulled to the left every time she stopped.

  It was early afternoon by the time Natalie left the ugly suburbs of Tel Aviv and drove north along the coast on the Haifa Road. It was a sunny day, the temperature was in the high 50s, and Natalie pulled on her sunglasses as midday glare reflected off the highway and the Mediterranean. About twenty miles from Tel Aviv she passed through Netanyahu, a cluttered little resort town set on cliffs above the beach. Some miles beyond that she saw the sign for Or Alive and left the four-lane highway for a narrower asphalt road that wound through sand dunes toward the beach. She caught a glimpse of the Roman aqueduct and the massive ramparts of the Crusader City, and then she was following the old coastal road past the Dan Caesarea Hotel with its eighteen-hole golf course secured behind a perimeter of high fence and concertina barbed wire.

  She turned east onto a gravel road and followed a sign for Kibbutz Meagan Michael until another, narrower lane intersected it. The Opal bounced its way a quarter of a mile uphill through stands of carob trees, around thick clusters of pistachio bushes, and past an occasional pine tree before stopping at a padlocked gate. Natalie got out of the car, stretched her legs, and waved at the white house on the hilltop.

  Saul Laski came down the lane to let her in. He had lost weight and shaved his beard. His thin legs protruding from baggy khaki shorts and his narrow chest under a white T-shirt should have made him look like a parody of a prisoner from The Bridge on the River Kwan, but the effect was more of deeply tanned skin over lean muscle. Hi
s bald spot was more pronounced because of sunburn, but the rest of his hair had bleached grayer and grown longer, curling down over his ears and the back of his neck. He had traded his broken horn-rimmed glasses for a pair of silver aviator-style glasses that darkened in the bright sun. The scar on his left arm was still a raw red.

  He unlocked the gate and they hugged each other briefly. “Did it go well?” he asked. “Very well,” said Natalie. “Simon Wiesenthal says to say hello.”

  “He is in good health?”

  “Very good health for a man his age.”

  “And was he able to direct you to the right sources?”

  “Better than that,” said Natalie, “he did the searching himself. What he didn’t have in that strange little office of his, he had his researchers bring from the various Vienna libraries and registries and such.”

  “Excellent,” said Saul. “And the other things?”

  Natalie gestured toward her large suitcase in the backseat. “Filled with photocopies. It’s terrible stuff, Saul. Are you still going to Yard Vase twice a week?”

  “No,” said Saul. “There is a place not far from here, Loamed HaGeta’ot, built by Poles.”

  “And it’s like Yad Vashem?”

  “On a smaller scale,” said Saul. “It will suffice if I have the names and case histories. Come drive through, and I will lock the gate and ride up with you.”

  There was a very large white house on the summit of the hill. Natalie followed the road past it, down the south side of the hill, to where a small whitewashed bungalow sat at the edge of an orange grove. The view was incredible. To the west, beyond the groves and cultivated fields, lay sand dunes and ruins and the serried breakers of the blue Mediterranean. To the south, shimmering in the heat daze of distance, rose the forested cliffs of Netanya. East lay a series of hills and the orange-scented Sharon Valley. North, beyond Templars’ castles, fortresses old in Solomon’s time, and the green ridge of Mount Carmel, lay Haifa with its narrow streets of rain-washed stone. Natalie was glad to be back.