He burst through the press of debarkation crew members at the base of the gangway, but the St. John’s stevedores and RCMP officers who had been called in to assist were not to be trifled with. They blocked his way, and when he resisted they slapped cuffs on him and took him aside.
“Get your hands off me!” came the man’s shout. “How dare you! I manage a twenty-five-billion-dollar hedge fund in New York! What is this, Communist Russia?”
He was promptly bustled off to a waiting paddy wagon and shoved inside, yelling all the way. His fate seemed to have a salubrious effect on anyone else thinking of making a scene.
With effort, LeSeur tuned out the voices raised in complaint and outrage. He understood why they were upset and sympathized with them, but the bottom line was that this was the fastest way to get them off the ship. And there was still a serial killer to be found.
Kemper came up alongside him and leaned against the rail, watching the flow of people from a broader vantage point. They shared a moment of exhausted, silent commiseration. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.
LeSeur’s thoughts turned to the board of inquiry hearings that lay ahead. He wondered just how he was going to explain the bizarre . . .thing he had witnessed attack Mason. It had been like a demonic possession. Ever since it happened, he had been going over the sequence of events in his mind—dozens of times—and yet he was no nearer understanding what the hell he had seen than when he first witnessed it. What was he going to say?I saw a ghost possess Captain Mason? Now matter how he couched it, they would think he was being evasive, or that he was crazy—or worse. No, he could never tell the truth about what he saw. Ever. He’d say, instead, that Mason had some kind of fit, an epileptic attack perhaps, and leave out the rest. Let the medical examiners figure out what happened to her limp, deflated body.
He sighed, watching the endless files of people shuffling along in the drizzle. They sure didn’t look so high and mighty now; they looked like refugees.
His thoughts kept returning obsessively to what he’d seen. Maybe he hadn’t seen it at all; maybe it had been a glitch in the CCTV feed. It could have been, in fact, a speck of dust trapped inside the camera, magnified a hundred times, joggled about by the vibration of the ship’s engines. His stress and exhaustion had led him to see something that wasn’t there.
Yes, that was it. That had to be it.
But then he thought of what they’d found on the bridge: the bizarre, sacklike corpse of Captain Mason slumped on the floor, her bones like so much mush . . .
He was shaken from his thoughts by the approach of a familiar figure: a portly man with a walking stick and a white carnation on his spotless lapel. Immediately, LeSeur felt his guts turn to water: it was Ian Elliott, principal director of the North Star Line. No doubt the man had flown here to preside personally over his public keelhauling. At his side, Kemper made a small, strangled sound. LeSeur swallowed—this was going to be even uglier than he’d imagined.
Elliott strode up. “Captain LeSeur?”
LeSeur stiffened. “Sir.”
“I wanted to congratulate you.”
This was so unexpected that, for a moment, LeSeur didn’t understand what he’d heard. Perhaps it was all a hallucination—God knew he was tired enough to be seeing things.
“Sir?” he asked in a very different tone of voice.
“Thanks to your courage, seamanship, and level-headedness, the Britannia is still afloat. I don’t know the whole story yet, but from what I do know, things could have turned out very differently. I wanted to come here and thank you personally.” And he stuck out his hand.
With a sense of unreality, LeSeur shook it.
“I’ll let you get on with the disembarkation. But once all the passengers are off, perhaps you could fill me in on the details.”
“Of course, sir.”
“And then there’s the question of the
Britannia
.”
“Question, sir? I’m not sure I understand.”
“Well, once she’s been repaired and fitted out, she’ll need a new captain—won’t she?” And then, giving him a small smile, Elliott turned and walked away.
It was Kemper who broke the silence. “I don’t frigging believe it,” he murmured.
LeSeur could barely believe it either. Perhaps this was just the spin the North Star public relations people wanted to put on things—to paint them as heroes who saved the lives of over twenty-five hundred passengers. Perhaps not. In any case, he wasn’t going to question it. And he’d be happy to tell Elliott everything that had happened—at least,almost everything . . .
His thoughts were interrupted by the approach of an RCMP officer.
“Which of you is Mr. Kemper?” the man asked.
“I’m Kemper,” the chief of security said.
“There’s a gentleman here from the FBI who wants to speak to you.”
LeSeur watched as a thin man stepped out of the shadows of the superstructure. It was the FBI agent, Pendergast.
“What do you want?” Kemper asked.
Pendergast stepped forward into the light. He was dressed in a black suit and his face was as gaunt and corpselike as anyone coming off the ill-fated ship. Tucked under one arm he carried a long, thin mahogany box. Next to him, linked in the other arm, was a young woman with short dark hair and dead-serious eyes.
“Thank you, Mr. Kemper, for a most interesting voyage.” And with that, Pendergast eased his arm from the woman’s support and slipped a hand into a valise he carried.
Kemper stared at the man in surprise. “There’s no need to tip the ship’s officers,” he said curtly.
“I think you’ll want this tip,” Pendergast replied, extracting an oilskin-wrapped package from the valise. He extended it toward Kemper.
“What’s this?” Kemper asked, taking the package.
The man said nothing more. He merely turned, and then he and the woman melted back into the early-morning shadows, heading toward the moving masses of people.
LeSeur watched as Kemper untied the oilskin.
“Looks like your three hundred thousand pounds,” he said, as Kemper stared in silent astonishment at the soiled bundles of notes.
“Strangest man I ever met,” Kemper said, almost as if speaking to himself.
LeSeur didn’t hear him. He was thinking again of that demon-haunted shroud that had engulfed Captain Mason.
Epilogue
SUMMER HAD FINALLY COME TO THE LLÖLUNG VALLEY. THE Tsangpo River roared over its cobbled bed, fed by melting snows in the great mountains beyond. Flowers mortared the cracks and hollows of the valley floor. Black eagles soared above the cliffs, their high-pitched cries echoing from the great wall of granite at the valley’s head, mingling with the steady roar of the waterplume leaping off its rim and feathering down onto the rocks below. Beyond rose up the three massive peaks, Dhaulagiri, Annapurna, and Manaslu, swathed in eternal glaciers and snow, like three cold and remote kings.
Pendergast and Constance rode side by side up the narrow track, trailing a pack pony on whose back was tied a long box wrapped in a canvas manty.
“We should be there before sunset,” Pendergast said, gazing at the faint trail that wound up the granite face.
They rode on for a while in silence.
“I find it curious,” Pendergast said, “that the West, so advanced in many ways, is still in the dark ages when it comes to understanding the deepest workings of the human mind. The Agozyen is a perfect example of how much more advanced the East is in this area.”
“Do you have any further thoughts on how it might work?”
“As a matter of fact, by coincidence I read an article in the
Times
that might shed some light on it. It was about a recently discovered mathematical object known as E8.”
“E8?”
“E8 was discovered by a team of scientists at MIT. A supercomputer, running for four years, had to solve two hundred billion equations in order to d
raw an image of it—an admittedly very imperfect image. There was a crude reproduction in the newspaper, and when I saw it I was struck by its resemblance to the Agozyen mandala.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s quite indescribable, an incredibly complex image of interlocking lines, points, and surfaces, spheres within spheres, occupying nearly two hundred and fifty mathematical dimensions. They say E8 is the most symmetrical object possible. Even more than that, physicists think that E8 may be a representation of the deep inner structure of the universe itself, the actual geometry of space-time. Incredible to think that, a thousand years ago, monks in India somehow discovered this extraordinary image and committed it to a painting.”
“Even so, I don’t understand. How could just looking at something like that alter one’s mind?”
“I’m not sure. The geometry of it somehow lights up the neural networks of the brain. It creates a resonance, if you will. Perhaps on a deep level our brains themselves reflect the fundamental geometry of the universe. The Agozyen is a rare intersection of neurology, mathematics, and mysticism.”
“Extraordinary.”
“There are many things the dull Western mind has yet to appreciate about Eastern philosophy and mysticism. But we’re starting to catch up. Scientists at Harvard, for example, have just begun to study the effect of Tibetan meditative practice on the mind—and to their amazement they discovered that it actually causes permanent physical changes in the brain and body.”
They reached a crossing of the Tsangpo. The river was shallow and broad at the ford, running merrily over a shallow bed of cobbles, the rushing sound of water filling the air. Gingerly their horses stepped into the torrent and picked their way across. They came out on the far side and continued on.
“And the smoke ghost? Is there some kind of scientific explanation for that?”
“There’s a scientific explanation for everything, Constance. There are no such things as miracles or magic—only science we haven’t yet discovered. The smoke ghost was, of course, a tulpa, or ‘thoughtform’—an entity created through an act of intense, focused imagination.”
“The monks taught me some of the tulpa-creation techniques, but they warned me of the danger.”
“It’s extremely dangerous. The phenomenon was first described to the West by the French explorer Alexandra David-Néel. She learned the secrets of creating a tulpa not far from here, near Lake Manosawar. As a lark she tried it out and, it seems, began visualizing a plump, jolly little monk named Friar Tuck. At first, the monk existed only in her mind, but in time he began to take on a life of his own, and she glimpsed him at odd moments, flitting about her camp and frightening her fellow travelers. Things went downhill; she lost control of the monk and it began to morph into something bigger, leaner, and far more sinister. It took on a life of its own—just like our smoke ghost. She tried to destroy it by reabsorbing it into her mind, but the tulpa strenuously resisted and the end result was a psychic battle that almost killed David-Néel. The tulpa on board theBritannia was the creation of our friend Blackburn—and itdid kill him.”
“So he was an adept.”
“Yes. He traveled and studied in Sikkim as a young man. He realized immediately what the Agozyen was, and how it could be used—much to Jordan Ambrose’s misfortune. It was no concidence it ended up with Blackburn; there was nothing at all random in its movements through the world. You might say the Agozyensought Blackburn out, using Ambrose as a medium. Blackburn, with his billions and his dot-com savvy, was in a perfect position to spread the image of the Agozyen across the globe.”
They traveled a moment in silence. “You know,” Constance said, “you never did explain to me how you sent the tulpa after Captain Mason.”
Pendergast did not answer immediately. Clearly, the memory was still extremely painful. At last, he spoke. “When I freed myself from its grasp, I allowed a single image to form in my mind: the Agozyen. In essence, I implanted that image in the tulpa. I gave it a new desire.”
“You changed its prey.”
“Exactly. When the tulpa left us, it sought out the other living beings who had gazed on the Agozyen—and, in the case of Mason, somebody who was, indirectly at least, bent on its destruction. And the tulpa annihilated them both.”
“And then?”
“I have no idea where it went. Things having come full circle, as it were, perhaps it returned to whatever plane it was summoned from. That, or it simply vanished with the death of its creator. It would be interesting to hear the views of the monks on this question.”
“So it was an agent for good in the end.” “One could say that—although I doubt goodness is a concept that it would either understand or care about.”
“Nevertheless, you used it to save the
Britannia
.”
“True. And as a result I feel a little less mortified at having been wrong.”
“Wrong? How?”
“Assuming all the killings were the work of one person—a passenger. In point of fact, Blackburn only killed one person—and he did that on dry land.”
“In the most bizarre of ways. It seems that the Agozyen lifts the lid, as it were, unleashing the most buried of a person’s violent and atavistic impulses.”
“Yes. And that’s what confused me—the similar M.O. I assumed the murders had all been committed by the same person, when I should have understood that there were two different killers under the influence of the same malevolenteffect —the effect of the Agozyen.”
They had reached the base of the trail going up the cliff. Pendergast dismounted and, in a gesture of prayer, placed his hand upon the hugemani stone at the base. Constance followed, and they proceeded up the trail, leading their horses by the reins. At last, they reached the top, passed through the ruined village, and finally came around the shoulder of the mountain, spying the pinnacled roofs, towers, and sloping ramparts of the Gsalrig Chongg monastery. They passed the scree slope covered with weathered bones—the vultures had departed—and arrived at the monastery.
The gate in the outer stone wall opened almost before they had reached it. Two monks met them; one led off the two riding horses while Pendergast unpacked the cargo from the pony. He tucked the box under his arm, and he and Constance followed the monk through the ironbound doors into the monastery’s dark interior, fragrant with sandalwood and smoke. Another monk appeared with a brass candleholder and led them deeper into the monastery.
They came to the room with the golden statue of Padmasambhava, the Tantric Buddha. The monks had already gathered on the stone benches, presided over by the ancient abbot.
Pendergast placed the box on the floor and seated himself on one of the benches. Constance sat next to him.
Tsering rose. “Friend Pendergast and Friend Greene,” he said, “we welcome you back to monastery of Gsalrig Chongg. Please take tea with us.”
Cups of sweet buttered tea were brought out and enjoyed in silence. Then Tsering spoke again.
“What have you brought us?”
“The Agozyen.”
“This is not its box.”
“The original box did not survive.” “And the Agozyen?”
“Inside—in original condition.”
A silence. The ancient abbot spoke, and then Tsering translated. “The abbot would like to know: did anyone look upon it?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Five.”
“And where are they now?”
“Four are dead.”
“And the fifth?”
“I was the fifth.”
When this was translated the abbot rose abruptly and stared. He then walked over to Pendergast, grasped him with a bony hand, and pulled him to his feet with astonishing force. He stared into his eyes. Minutes passed in the silent room—and then the abbot finally spoke.
“The abbot say this extraordinary,” Tsering translated. “You burn off the demon. But you remain damaged, because once you
experience ecstasy of the pure freedom of evil, you can never forget that joy. We will help you, but we can never make you whole.”
“I’m already aware of that.”
The abbot bowed. He bent down and picked up the box, handing it to another monk, who carried it off.
“You have our eternal thanks, Friend Pendergast,” said Tsering. “You have accomplished great feat—at great cost.”
Pendergast remained standing. “I’m afraid it isn’t quite over yet,” he replied. “You have a thief in your midst. It seems that one of your monks thought the world was ripe for cleansing and arranged for the theft of the Agozyen. We still must find that monk and stop him from doing it again—or the Agozyen will never be safe.”
Once this was translated, the abbot turned and looked at him, his eyebrows slightly raised. There was a hesitation. Then the abbot began to speak. Tsering turned to translate. “The abbot say you are correct, it is not over. It is not the end, but the beginning. He ask me to tell you certain important things. Please, sit down.”
Pendergast seated himself, as did the abbot.
“After you left, we discovered who released Agozyen into world, and why.”
“Who?” “It was the holy lama in the wall. The ancient one.”
The Wheel of Darkness p-8 Page 38