The Great Pretender: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  “This is a kind of shorthand for telegraphing what the disc represents,” the professor said, “but it’s also vital for reading the map on the other side.” The professor pointed at the second impression, what Hector figured indeed comprised a map. “Please tell me precisely how these two images align, Mr. Lassiter.”

  Hector wasn’t sure about that nuance at all. He said, “It matters?”

  “Immensely. The image of Christ, the orientation his head on the original object, it indicates true north. It essentially gives the critical orientation for the map on the other side. But there’s more that is not here. Why wasn’t an accurate cast made of the sides of the medallion? Of its edges?”

  “That matters as well? There’s something on the sides, too?” Hector was furious with himself for not being more attentive to detail.

  “There are supposed to be subtle notches along the sides of the original,” the professor said. “They give the precise measurements between these various points here on the map. Without knowing true north, and without those measurements and the point of origin—which is also engraved on the rim, you have nothing useful here. In the end, these impressions are just tantalizing in the most terrible and frustrating way.”

  Hector stood. Reaching for the clay impressions he said, “Then clearly I’m wasting my time and yours.”

  That sound—a gun cocking out of view, under the academic’s desk. The professor leveled a revolver at Hector’s head. “We’re far from finished talking, Mr. Lassiter. Where did you come by this? How do we access the original? Please, tell me now, before…”

  Hector, even more furious at himself, said, “Couldn’t figure out how to best phrase that last, egghead? Where were you headed with that sentence? Maybe, ‘Please, tell me now, before my Nazi friends come barging through that door?’”

  Hector gestured broadly with raised hands at the door. As the professor’s eyes tracked his gesture, Hector rolled to the floor, then kicked the scholar’s desk with both feet. The ornate desk slid backward, tipping over the professor’s chair. A stray shot pierced the ceiling.

  Reaching over the desk, Hector got a grip on the man’s gun hand and peeled the revolver from his grip. He pointed the gun back at its owner and said, “So you’re goddamn sell-out, a turncoat for the worst kind of racists.”

  “Nothing about the Nazis coming to me should surprise you,” the professor said, managing to do so haughtily, despite being flat on his back and pinned under his own ostentatious, oversized furniture. “You came to me for my singular expertise, you hack. So did they. They anticipated you’d be coming. I managed to buy a few moments so we could perhaps reach a separate piece, so to speak. Let me come with you, and together—”

  “You pulled a gun on me,” Hector said. “So all trust is gone.” Voices down the hall; many feet, moving fast.

  Hector gathered up the clay impressions from the floor and shoved them in his coat pockets. Hector opened the man’s office windows and looked down. They were on the second floor, but an embankment halved the distance to the ground. Hector decided he could make the jump into a bush below without probable injury. Before taking that leap, Hector said, “For the record, you can tell those bastards about to break down your door I really don’t have the original and have no idea where it can be found.”

  Sneering, the academic said, “They won’t believe that anymore than I do.”

  Hector figured that was sadly so.

  As the professor struggled to get up from under his desk, Hector dropped out the window. He heard wood splinter in the professor’s office. Hector ran along the side of the building to avoid presenting an easier target for a bullet.

  Classes were changing. Hector drifted and mixed in with the students in their crush between sessions. He slid into a library and lost himself in the dusty, pulpy-smelling stacks.

  From an upstairs library window, Hector watched more than a dozen men comb the campus grounds. To his relief, the book burners consciously or unconsciously avoided the library.

  After an hour watching from the safety of his bookish perch, satisfied the frustrated Germans had at last abandoned campus, Hector phoned for a cab to pick him up at the library’s delivery door.

  CHAPTER 12

  NEVER TRUST AN HONEST THIEF

  “The romance is already over, Mr. Lassiter,” Cassie said. “You called the Feds on me, you treacherous bastard.”

  Hector sighed, then locked the door behind himself. When he turned, Cassie had a gun pointed at his heart. “How dare you call in Hoover’s gorillas on me?”

  He slipped off his overcoat and jacket. He saw his luggage had at last caught up with him after its profusion and confusion of hand-changes across New York City. “I’m truly sorry,” he said. “I was becoming paranoid and maybe overcautious. I’ve also not been a good judge of character these past couple of years. I suppose the good news is Mr. Hoover’s agency knows nothing about your current employers. Yet, clearly, word trickled back to your organization pretty quickly that I was making inquiries. Far as I’m concerned, staying off Hoover’s radar is further endorsement for your side’s skills.”

  “You’re not helping yourself,” she said. “Not even a tad.”

  Hector rooted through his suitcase. “I know,” he said. “There’s no worthy defense. It was a rotten thing to do. But if you were me, and had a resource like that to access, well, given what’s allegedly at stake, wouldn’t you have checked me out, too?”

  A short shrug. “Maybe.”

  “Not by way of defense, but as a simple point of fact, I also remind you that you already evidently read my FBI file, a document whose size and content I really don’t want to contemplate.”

  “It is surely hefty,” she said, “and you’re still only what, thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Looking for my razor and the like. Showering, shaving. Then I’m regrouping. Assuming you don’t shoot me first. Orson and family still in their room?”

  “Yes, still. But rebelling, loudly. Seems to be berating his theater troupe by phone. My God, the tirades that arrogant man is capable of.”

  Hector found his shaving kit. He said, “Tell me, Cassie, have you ever heard of a fella name of Adam Lindscott?”

  Cassie put down her gun and opened a closet. She hung up his suit jacket and coat. “As it happens. Why on earth do you ask?”

  “Credential-wise, he struck me as a potential resource for us,” Hector said, watching for a reaction.

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Why do you know about him?”

  “Result of research and just casting around for expertise.”

  “You have me for that,” Cassie said coldly. “Or you had me. Anyway, Lindscott is an opportunist of the worst stripe, or so I’m told. He thinks only about himself and ways to enhance his own shot at tenure. Worst of all, he’s a Thule stooge. Everything he’s done in the past four years is secretly underwritten by the National Socialist Party. He’s secretly an occultist. He’s something worse than Thule, if I hear right. You see, Thule is kind of like, DeMolay. You start there and move up to the Masons. Above the Thule are the Vril. They sacrifice children for more occult power. They take their crazy ideas from this novel written last century by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, called The Coming Race. Trust me, we do well to steer clear of the professor.”

  “So noted,” Hector said, freshly cursing himself. He stripped off his shirt. “Again, I’m sorry, believe me about that.”

  She held up a hand. “Talk is cheap. Keep it a lonely act of idiocy, and maybe we can yet get beyond it.” Cassie followed him into the bathroom. “Orson told me about your close call. By now, they probably realize you fooled them with that costume jewelry. They’ll be doubly angry you know.”

  “Sure,” Hector said. “But I simply wasn’t spoiled for options in the moment.”

  “Your actor friend still has no idea where the real medallion is, you know.”

&nbs
p; “I know,” Hector said. He began to draw the water, then parked his butt on the side of the tub as he untied his shoes. “Let’s say for a moment I could make that big leap of faith and accept this ancient Roman spear is everything you believers claim. If so, we’ve got plenty of dubious characters on our side that from my perspective who are also a worry in terms of wielding the power you describe. Take prissy little J. Edgar Hoover for example. You rightly think little of him. He’s almost Hitler without the funny moustache. Hell, I’ve yet to cast a vote for F.D.R. in this lifetime because what little politics I have run completely counter to that bastard’s character and philosophy. I despise Roosevelt’s arts and character destroying federal schemes. So I’m not crazy about even our current president having the power you describe. Candidly, more I think on it, the more appealing it seems this damned relic remain rusting in limbo, or maybe better still, destroyed.”

  Cassie watched him undress. “Ever read any Yeats, Hector?”

  “As a matter of fact, some, yeah. If I have a favorite poet, I suppose either he or Byron is the one.”

  “The best lack all conviction,” Cassie recited, “the worst are full of passionate intensity. The Thule, the Nazis and the Vril are fully committed to discovery. Even considering Hoover, FDR—warts and all—better that we get there first, wouldn’t you say?”

  “The only way to do that is with the medallion though, right?” Hector had this sudden compulsion to hurl the real chunk of metal into Hudson Bay.

  Cassie crossed her arms. “The medallion is crucial to discovery, yes. But, of course, accidental discoveries are made. Anyway, the medallion was last known to be in yours and your friend’s hands. You and Orson don’t strike me as men to disappear into the mist, just like the spear or the medallion. You both lead large public lives. So as long as the medallion is missing, and you two aren’t, there’ll be no peace for either of you. You both could end up dead protecting these items you don’t really have an investment in. Do you really think the Germans will hesitate to use Virginia and Christopher in the most violent and cynical ways to motivate you and Orson?”

  Hector didn’t doubt that for a moment.

  Cassie said, “Do you want me to describe to you what Mr. Rosenblum suffered at their hands before giving you two up to that giant of a Thule?”

  Hector had finished undressing. Naked, he fiddled with the taps, drawing a hot bath. He usually preferred to shower, but this one time, he wanted to soak. “No thanks, Cass. I’ve got enough imagination to supply the bloody details.”

  “I’ve read a novel or two of yours, you know. I suppose your imagination can do that very dark thing.” She shook her head. “The man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives. That’s what the press people call you, right?”

  “Afraid that’s so,” he said. He tested the water, then stood and settled in.

  For the first time, Cassie candidly surveyed the back of his body in good light. Shuddering, she said, “What in God’s name caused all those scars on your upper back?”

  “A whip of sorts. It was Paris, the winter of 1924. Someday I’ll write about that bit of living, too, I expect. I always seem to get around to putting it down on paper. Some things just take longer to endure living again, that’s all.”

  “You’re a white man. In Paris of all places, why would anyone take a whip to you?”

  “Just cruel and crazy cultists, a little like your Thule or Vril. They were fanatics.”

  Cassie sighed and began to unbutton her blouse.

  Watching her undress, Hector said, “I guess, however, I can take solace in the fact you’ve already told me I’ve got a long life ahead of me.”

  Cassie unzipped and peeled down her skirt and the last of her lacey under-things with it; the faint impression of garter straps on bare thighs. Nude, she stared him down, hands on hips. “Sure you do. And that’s a true thing. But I said nothing about guarantees of a happy life.”

  “That’s certainly so,” he said. Hector held out a hand. She took it and he steadied her as she stepped into the tub, crouching and wrapping her legs around his waist. “You’re doing wonders for my morale and confidence,” he said.

  “In some ways it feels like I’m doing just that,” she said. “And just returning the favor, I suppose.”

  He debated then confessing his discovery of the medallion to her. Her cautions about a lifetime of Thule harassment also resonated—that was all too undeniable in terms of cold-light logic.

  Still, it struck Hector there must surely be some third alternative.

  Cassie said, “They will be much more ruthless next time. This goes to the very top. Himmler, Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann. That last one is an avowed devil worshipper.”

  “I do know that,” Hector said. “I go forward with little else but those happy thoughts uppermost in fevered mind, believe me.”

  ***

  At two a.m., Hector awakened with an inspiration.

  He untangled himself from Cassie’s arms, dressed, and slid from their hotel room.

  Hector hit the lobby and found a pay phone. The young woman on the other end of the line, an artist in her own right, said, “Mister, do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “I do. And time is getting shorter. They tell me you have remarkable skills with metal. I have the money to make it worth your while to use those skills, but time is truly wasting, even at this wicked hour, darlin’.”

  CHAPTER 13

  A SAFE PLACE

  Saturday, eleven a.m. and an uneasy lunch.

  Orson, Hector and Cassie sat at one table; Virginia and Christopher were at a small table, far enough away to keep the child out of earshot of hearing talk of stalkers or the potential bloody consequences of their discovery by German occultists.

  Orson said, “I will avoid the theater tonight—we’ll keep it closed a while longer for the sake of cast and crew’s safety—but I have to complete Sunday’s broadcast, at bare minimum. I have to do that.”

  Hector said, “We’ll see what we can do about making that one happen safely. Really, I want us both out from under this, and I mean yesterday. I want us both to go on with our lives, buddy. I’ve never been one to look over my shoulder for any time at all. Not happily.”

  ***

  After brunch, as Orson retreated to his hotel room with his family to continue taming the scripts for Danton’s Death, The War of the Worlds and three other prospective projects for stage and radio, Hector and Cassie wandered the rain-kissed streets, coat collars turned up and hats pulled low, a shared umbrella held low and angled against the rain.

  A half-an-hour into their walk, the rain picked up and the wind gusts threatened to turn their umbrella inside out. They sought refuge in an old Catholic church.

  Hector lit a single candle, then he and Cassie took their seats in a rear pew. She said, “May I ask you who that was for?” The single lit candle flickered in the slightly chilly church.

  He thought about it, then told her about Brinke. Maybe the story went on too long, but hell, Cassie had asked.

  When he finished she took his hand and said, “I read an interview you gave. You confessed to writing in churches and cathedrals. If I didn’t already know you, if I hadn’t looked at your palm, I’d be drawn to you for that admission all on its own.”

  Writing in churches was a practice that accidentally started shortly after Hector had met and become romantically involved with Brinke. But Cassie surely didn’t need to know that detail. A man had to keep some secrets from subsequent lovers, some even from his readers.

  This church’s priest, old and portly, made his cautious way down the middle aisle in a wine-stained cassock, steadying hand moving from pew back to pew back. He eyed them, his gaze lingering longer on Cassie. He raised his eyebrows and said to Hector, “Is there something you’d like to confess, sir?” His racist implication was clear enough.

  In that moment, Hector despised the priest. He thought about calling the padre out on a
ll those burst capillaries in his nose and the gin blossoms at his cheeks.

  Instead, Hector wrapped his arm around Cassie’s shoulders and said, “Just to confess my love for my beautiful intended, here.”

  That elicited a frosty smile from the cleric. The old man made his way back toward the altar, Cassie chastely kissed Hector and said, “I warned you about us together. There’s no place, I guess, where we can be together without being confronted, or at least looked at like that.”

  “There are places,” Hector said. “Paris—anywhere in France—plenty of other places in Europe. We’d be just fine over there.”

  “All war zones, or soon to be so, for one thing. But also places that are anywhere but in this country, you’re saying.” She stood and offered a hand. “Let’s get out of this so-called church, my warrior bard. Let’s go find a book shop.”

  ***

  They were leaving Scribner’s Bookstore, Cassie armed with a couple more of Hector’s novels she hadn’t yet read. She said, “We should head back to the hotel soon. I want a few hours with you alone, between the covers, figuratively and literally, before things go completely crosswise and maybe even bloody on us.”

  Hector stopped her walking and pulled her close. “That simple intuition speaking or something you truly see in the cards or in my hand?”

  Cassie pressed her hand to his heart, studying him. “You want an honest answer to that?”

  He bit his lip and said. “Now I suppose you’re warning me that I don’t?”

  Cassie said, “You don’t need a crystal ball to predict terrible trouble ahead, Hec. You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way this wicked wind means to blow.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him. “But you surely know that by this point in your storied life.”

  There was something there in her eyes and sad smile he couldn’t quite read. She said, “You’ve been to and fro in the world, yes? Been some places and seen some things?”