Private Demons

by Robert Masello

  She was coming around, he could tell, if for no other reason than that he had piqued her curiosity.

  “Then I need now to draw on you for help with a puzzle that I'm trying to put together.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the Garuda explosion, or anything else I've been covering in The Sentinel?”

  “I don't know yet. I honestly don't know. But it could. And if it does, it could be what I believe you reporters call a ‘scoop.’ “

  “Please,” Winifred said, dryly, “spare me the journalese. Just tell me what this is all about.”

  “At the last press conference,” Lucien said, “you were very interested in a possible connection between the Garuda and the Gold Prow shipping line. You were hinting that the accident might not have been an accident at all.”

  “It was more than a hint.”

  “How much do you know about Gold Prow?”

  Winifred shifted her bulk in the chair, as if she were physically trying to adjust herself to this change in her plan of attack; she wasn't used to playing on the same side as her subjects. “Probably as much as you do,” she finally said. “I know where they're based—Taiwan, Hong Kong—and I know what they carry. A lot of the same cargoes you do, though they've been doing it a couple of hundred years longer. I also know they haven't been doing so well in the last ten or fifteen years. And you have.”

  “And what do you know about Duncan Kwan?”

  “Duncan Kwan? Not much. He's the heir apparent, right? The one with the big block of shares?”

  “Yes.”

  She frowned, as if in thought. “He doesn't show up much in the financial press,” she said. “He's sort of a playboy, isn't he? Fast cars, fast women, all that sort of thing?”

  Again, Lucien agreed.

  “Then that's why I don't bother with him. He's strictly a peripheral figure in all this.”

  “Possibly,” Lucien replied, “and possibly not. Hallie met him a couple of nights ago, at a party at a nightclub called The Pleiades.”

  “I know of the place,” Winifred said, “but somehow they've never gotten around to inviting me in.” For the first time, she revealed the barest semblance of a smile. “Should I be sorry?” she said, turning to Hallie in what was clearly an effort to make amends.

  “Depends on what you like,” Hallie replied, not yet sold. “Champagne, a kinky little floor show, cocaine in the backroom afterwards.”

  “You hadn't mentioned that,” Lucien said, with some surprise.

  “I was getting to it, when Winnie here arrived. Don't worry—I was long gone before the drugs started going around. I'd already had all I could take of the merry Swinburnians.”

  “What are the Swinburnians?” Winifred asked, letting Hallie's little swipe at her name pass unnoticed.

  Lucien handed her the invitation card. “I was hoping you'd know.”

  “Are they talking about Algernon Swinburne, the poet?” she said, looking over the card.

  “Yes,” Hallie volunteered. “He went to Eton, and so did all the members of the Swinburne Society.”

  “As did Duncan Kwan,” Lucien put in.

  “Not exactly the role model I'd choose,” Winifred said. “You say they sponsored a kinky floor show?”

  Hallie nodded.

  “Lots of boyish hanky-panky?”

  “There were boys all right, but they were definitely into the girls. Spanking and whipping, with these little switches, seemed to be the order of the day.”

  “Ah, they never do grow up, do they,” Winifred said, “these little perverted countrymen of mine. One good birching in public school, and they're devoted to it for life.”

  “One good what?” Lucien asked.

  “A birching, they call it. As tradition dictates, the boys are beaten, for any infraction of the rules, with a switch made from the lady birch tree. I had a brother at Harrow—hard to imagine, I know, but I originally came from the right sort of people too—and he got it once or twice himself.”

  Lucien could hardly believe what he had just heard. His hand reached out to the intercom. “Simone . . . please pull the files on Duncan Kwan and Lord Sykes and bring them in here.”

  He could see Winifred's ears perk up at the mention of Lord Sykes, a name she no doubt recognized but to which, at the moment, she would see no connection. Was there one? Something beyond what Lucien had, up till now, imagined to be nothing more than Sykes's designs on the Gold Prow company?

  They all sat in silence for a few seconds, waiting for Simone. When she came in, she was carrying two manila folders under her arm.

  Lucien burrowed into them, while Simone, without a word, returned to her anteroom. Skipping over the financial documents, which made up the bulk of each folder, he went straight to the biographical profiles of each man and pulled them out.

  “What are you looking for?” Winifred said.

  “This,” Lucien replied, as much to himself as to her, “this.” He looked up again, after comparing the two documents. “Lord Sykes went to Eton too.”

  “I could have told you that. And Cambridge after that.”

  “Where he was probably beaten with the lady birch whip.”

  “It's simply called ‘birching,’ “ Winifred reminded him, “though I can't see why you're taking such an interest.”

  Nor was he about to tell her—not yet.

  “And for five of his years there, Duncan Kwan was also in attendance,” Lucien noted.

  “So they're roughly the same age,” Winifred concluded, still wondering where all this was going.

  Hallie was sitting forward on the sofa, her hands clasped between her knees.

  “So perhaps Lord Sykes,” Lucien said, “is a member of the Swinburne Society too. Perhaps Lord Sykes and Duncan Kwan aren't business adversaries at all, but old friends from their days at school.”

  Lucien glanced back and forth between the two biographies again, but he couldn't find any other obvious similarities. But he knew he was right; it explained so much, from the secrecy and ease with which Lord Sykes had acquired his last block of shares in Gold Prow, to Duncan Kwan's patently artificial friendliness. They had both been playing him off against the middle, allowing him to chase the company while, together, with Duncan Kwan on the inside and Lord Sykes on the out, they had gradually secured unassailable control of a venerable old shipping line that had come to be far more valuable as a drug pipeline than a grain carrier. Before he even asked his next question of Winifred, Lucien knew what the answer would be.

  “Can you tell me what Swinburne's middle name was?”

  “Oh, Lord, you are asking me to go back; it's been twenty-five years since I had to study such stuff. But Algernon I'm sure of, and I think, unless I'm mistaken, that his middle name was Charles. But you'd have to check that if, for some reason, it's important.”

  “It is important,” Lucien said, “and I don't have to check it. Because it's just what I expected. His initials then were A.C.S.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Which meant the whole enterprise, from Lady Birch Farms to A.C.S., Limited, the export firm in Taiwan, had all been arranged by a couple of merry Swinburnians as something of a joke. A vast, and deadly, and dangerous joke, but one which they were prepared to play on the world nonetheless. The stakes were too high, and the profits too great, not to. But how far, Lucien still needed to know, were they prepared to go? In London, Sykes had insinuated the Garuda had been their warning shot across his bow. Would they have dared to do even that if they had known the evil ally that Lucien, if he chose to, could call upon?

  Would they have dared it if they had not enlisted such an ally themselves?

  Had he, Lucien thought with cold and mounting dread, sold his soul for nothing? Was he just a pawn in the endgame being played out around him—both Kwan and Sykes, he knew, would appreciate the gaming metaphor—and was he about to be swept from the board? He knew that he had to act quickly; and he knew that he had to see Mandy once more. If the battle was to be wage
d in two worlds—this one and the next—he would need all the help he could get.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The food and water—offerings, really—were laid just inside the massive stone gate, at the end of the bridge. It was as far as the villagers were prepared to go. Always, there were flowers, laid in wreaths around the wooden bowls and straw baskets, and sometimes a small carving or trinket. Sister Celeste never failed to gather them all up—not because she had any need of them—but because she knew that the villagers who had left them would be hurt, and possibly even frightened, if they were to discover them there the next day. They would think the prayer, or request, with which the gifts had been offered had been rejected by the holy woman who lived within the temple. They would attach some terrible significance to it, and suffer even more. So each morning, Celeste knelt beneath the shadow of the great stone heads and took up the day's offerings.

  Then she would turn back into the temple grounds, make her way through the ruins, and up the hill to the place where she had taken sanctuary.

  It was, she knew in her heart, the focal point of the evil that had made this temple its home. And that was why she had chosen it.

  Here, where she had first found the little boy Ranji, and killed the monstrous king cobra, she slept a few hours, in the middle of the day, on a rush mat by the side of the circular pool. The air in the temple was always cool and damp, and the light of the sun never fully penetrated the gloom. By nightfall, she would make sure to awaken, along with the serpents who crept out from under their rocks, or out of their burrows, to renew their own claim on the temple. In the darkness, she could feel them, and sometimes see them, watching her with glazed and unblinking eyes, and waiting, she sensed, for the return of their own power there.

  With each day that passed, she felt the end of their vigil drawing closer.

  Tonight, like every night since she had come to the Temple of Kaliya, she drew her mat out of the enclosure, and onto the parapet that overlooked the flat, black lake below. It was from this direction that she knew the challenge would come, though she had no idea what shape it would take. The lake was always smooth and undisturbed, and even in the daylight black as pitch. She had never seen a lotus blossom floating on its waters, or a hungry bird swoop to its surface to snatch up a silver fish. Nor did she know how deep it might be.

  Sometimes, looking down at it in the moonlight, she felt its waters must descend to the very bowels of the earth. And that was why she must keep watch over it.

  Because something was coming, something borne on the water, and it expected to find her there.

  CHAPTER

  20

  The birds greeted him with a wild chorus of song, and flitted from one end of the pool to the other. Lucien wasn't accustomed to such noise down here, and had to stop for a second to get used to it. Their singing echoed around the walls of the room and seemed to make the green air shimmer. He hoped that Mandy took some joy from it.

  He was much earlier than usual tonight; he'd come straight from his office the moment he'd finished with Winifred and Hallie. By the end of the session, Winifred had been positively intrigued by the many clues Lucien had let drop, and which he was content to let her follow. He knew as much about the financial scheme as he needed to—for the present—but if Winifred Flint was able to uncover other connections, or information, that might prove useful, he was only too glad to allow her. If nothing else, it would give her something else to do besides aiming vast broadsides at L.C. Carriers, Inc., on the front page of The Sentinel once a week. Newton wondered why he bothered with her; so, he suspected, did Hallie. But Lucien knew that the truth could turn up in the oddest places, even a muckraking little journal like The Sentinel, and the truth—in this case so complex, so improbable, and so dangerous—was something Lucien always liked to keep firm control over.

  That was why he needed to solve the mystery of the nun. As he assumed the lotus position at the end of the pool, he clutched the letter from Father Brendan in his hand. He closed his eyes, and consciously slowed his breathing. He blocked out thoughts of everything that had transpired that day—the visit from Hallie was the hardest to expunge—and concentrated instead on entering the state of higher tranquility, in which his mind was best able to rest . . . and to receive.

  The birds perched, silently now, atop one of the sandstone reliefs.

  Lucien waited, in the warmth and stillness of the room, for Mandy to speak to him. He opened his mind to her . . . but nothing came.

  Perhaps he was trying too hard; perhaps he was so anxious to communicate with her that he was inadvertently blocking her access. He tried to calm himself, but that in itself was an act of volition that ran contrary to the need for passivity. He let the letter from Brendan slip into his lap, and opened his palms toward the ceiling. Without meaning to, he allowed his eyes to open just a crack.

  And there, in the center of the pool, so pale she was more of an outline than an actual presence, was Mandy.

  He opened his eyes further.

  She was coming toward him, but very slowly, her arms moving in the water. Her face was too pale for him to make out any expression. Her body was just a flickering of light beneath the surface of the pool.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, in a whisper.

  She nodded, then wearily rested her forearms on the edge of the pool. It was several seconds before she spoke, and even then in a tired and distant voice. “Yes, Lucien . . .”

  She seldom spoke his name.

  “. . . I'm all right.” She raised her head, and now he could see a sad and wistful smile on her lips.

  He paused, then said, “Are you going?”

  “I think so . . . it's getting harder all the time to hang on here.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  She put her head back down on her arms, like a child resting from play. “Let's just say,” she mumbled, her face turned away, “I'm ready to accept it. There's nothing here for me anymore . . . nothing except you.” She looked up at him again. “And you and I aren't exactly going to get married.”

  He smiled, ruefully—but what could he say? He felt badly enough that he needed again to ask for her help. He wondered if each time he did so, he taxed her remaining strength, and made it harder for her to make her exit in her own good time. He hardly knew how to broach the subject now.

  He didn't need to.

  Mandy said, “You want to show me something.”

  Sometimes he forgot how effortlessly she could tap into his thoughts.

  “Do it now . . . while I'm right here.”

  “Can you handle it?”

  “Do it,” she repeated, and this time he took her at her word. He closed his eyes, and called up the vision of the black-robed nun. Only this time he attached the name that Father Brendan had provided him with—Sister Celeste—and tried to make that a part of the vision too.

  “Oh, so we're going back to my algebra class,” Mandy said.

  Lucien concentrated on holding the image as he remembered it.

  “And you're giving her a name,” she said. “Sister . . . Celestina.”

  He thought the name again.

  “Celeste,” she corrected herself. “Sorry.”

  Does it help you? he thought.

  “Yes.” And then: “You want to see her face. I've never been able to show you her face. What else have you learned, besides her name? Tell me everything you know. I need anything you can give me.”

  What more did he have? He touched his fingers to Father Brendan's letter, and communicated to Mandy all the rest of the information it contained—Sister Celeste's forced exodus from Phnom Penh, the massacre in the killing fields, her sanctuary in the temple that the local villagers so feared. It was all he had; he gave it all to Mandy. And waited.

  The image in his mind gradually seemed to darken, like a photograph developing in the acid bath. But unlike a photograph, this image was alive, and it moved. He saw the figure stirring softly, on a woven mat much like
the one he was sitting on. She appeared to be lying inside a stone structure of some kind—the temple?—and sleeping. Her face was concealed in shadow. If only she would turn over onto her back . . . if only she would turn her face to the dull sunlight that seemed to be slanting in from some unseen source. He wanted so desperately to talk to her . . . to find out who she was and what role she was to play in his life.

  “This isn't much help, is it?” Mandy said.

  “Not if she stays like this.”

  “Let me see if I can do something.”

  Lucien opened his eyes to see what she meant, and watched as Mandy put her arms out straight against the side of the pool, and lowered her head as if in devout prayer. But he knew that it wasn't praying she was up to.

  “Hold on tight,” she said. “I'm not even sure if I have the strength left for this, but I'm going to try.”

  “Try what?”

  “Try to let you speak to her.”

  “How?”

  “Let me worry about that. I'll act as the bridge. You just repeat something clear and simple . . . maybe just her name. Don't try to get fancy.”

  Mandy's body grew very still in the water, her arms rigid, her long blond hair hanging down as straight as a knife. Lucien closed his eyes again.

  And devised, as Mandy had suggested, a simple message that he could recite like a mantra, over and over, until it worked. “Celeste,” he thought, “look at me. Look at me, Celeste.” If he could make her open her eyes, she would awaken, sit up, and face the light. “Look at me, Celeste. Look at me.”

  The figure in his mind remained asleep, stretched out on the mat, on the cold flat stones. Around her, but just outside his field of vision, he sensed there were bars of some sort, or possibly weapons, whose blades and shafts cast vertical stripes of shadow across the floor. Not far from her head, he glimpsed a low circle of stones, which he presumed made up the lip of an ornamental pool.

  But her body remained still, breathing deeply.

  “Look at me, Celeste. Look at me,” he thought. He didn't dare open his eyes to look at Mandy; he was afraid it would break the connection somehow. “Look at me, Celeste.”