Having gone farther than he had expected, with the two old men smearing him with oil as they recited blessings that conferred priesthood on a long-deceased Jew while their busy hands descended toward Ben’s private parts under the soaked poncho, Ben was overtaken by a terrible urge to laugh. To masquerade the eruption of giggles from his belly, he began coughing violently. Rather than scare them off, the coughing only invigorated Pat and his partner, who raised their voices and used copious amounts of consecrated oil to finish off the lower part of Ben’s body—for and on behalf of Aryeh Leib Belinski, who must have been rolling in his grave—if he had a grave.
Pat offered him a towel while the officiating partner unfolded a set of undergarments, which Ben realized were intended for him, or rather, for the dead Jew who had just become a proud Mormon saint.
Ben quickly toweled himself under the white poncho and let the two old men dress him in the sacred garments—heavier than normal underwear, made of material that felt almost like plastic. The undershirt had the same markings as on Zachariah’s military-style Mormon undergarments. The underpants had an exaggerated slit with an over-flap at the genitals, creating a visual emphasis of the duty—and ease—of procreation at every opportunity.
While the two men declared the dead Jew to be endowed now, by proxy, with various godly powers as a priest of the True Church in the afterlife, Ben got his slippers back on, shook loose the wet shield over the undergarments, and with a muttered apology pushed aside the curtains and left the cubicle.
Chapter 57
There was no time to waste on plans that had clearly gone wrong. Triggering a fire alarm was not feasible, and he had to find another way. According to Dreyfuss, the temple offices were in a hallway off the main entrance. Ben headed that way as fast as he could without raising suspicion.
Taking the left turn into the hallway marked Administration, he glanced back at the reception hall. His eyes met no curious gazes, as those waiting at the processing counter had their backs to him. But among the group, Ben caught sight of a tall figure in a white motorcycle suit, white boots, and a white baseball cap.
The Ghost!
Ben kept walking, but his mind was swirling with questions. How had the Ghost found him? Was one of the ex-Mormons a traitor? Who? Powell? Streep? Dreyfuss? Or Rex? None of them had given Ben any reason for suspicion, but now he was under one roof with a killer!
He passed several open doors to busy offices. There were only men at the desks, some speaking on the phone, others typing at their computers. A large printer spewed papers, and in another office a TV set showed a bespectacled man giving a sermon.
At the end of the hallway he found a set of double doors. A sign said: Temple President.
Gently pressing the door handle, Ben peeked inside.
A man was standing at the other end of the office, feeding papers into a paper shredder, which made loud buzzing sounds as each bundle of documents was chewed up by the blades. It seems like a reception area, with a desk for the secretary, where the man’s jacket was draped on the back of a chair, and two waiting chairs under a large painting of white angels with wings.
Ben hugged the wet poncho to his body to prevent it from rustling as he tiptoed behind the man, opened a door, and slipped into an inner office.
It was large, plush, and empty of human presence other than the life-size oil portraits on the walls. He circled a mahogany desk and sat in a large, leather-upholstered executive chair. The wheels allowed the chair to travel back and forth on a plastic mat for easy reach to the bookcases and filing cabinets around it.
In the top drawer he found personal letterhead and envelopes embossed with the Mormon official whose office it was:
Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints
James R. Benson, Temple President
Washington DC Temple
Ben took one of the envelopes and scribbled on it in his finest handwriting:
To Brother Joseph Morgan
Hand Deliver – Personal and Confidential
Pulling a blank letterhead from the pile, he wrote the following note:
Dear Brother Joseph,
Please meet in private with the bearer of this note, Sampson Allard, who has an important testimony to share with you.
Brother James Benson
He folded the note and sealed it in the envelope.
At first he saw no computer. But pushing aside the sliding doors on a side cabinet revealed a Dell desktop. He moved the mouse, and the screen came to life.
It was a plain Welcome! window with blank spaces for the user’s ID and password. Drawing on his memory, Ben typed:
User ID: Zachiboy
Password: DCMTDBS
An hourglass appeared, and the computer made typical sounds of coming to life. But it was taking a long time, and in the outer office there were suddenly sounds of talking.
He tiptoed to the door and found that it had no key.
Back at the computer, Ben faced a blank screen. Had they removed Zachariah’s access already? When was the last time he had access to this system? The fact that Zachariah had left this code as a clue in the virtual treasure hunt for the incriminating floppy disk meant that he believed it would remain in effect.
The computer finally beeped, and a Windows Vista logo appeared on the screen.
Sitting back in the oversized leather chair, Ben pulled up a search window and typed in, again from memory, the file name Zachariah had left:
File: BFD111995
A picture folder appeared, and when he clicked on it, a photo opened.
Staring at it, Ben reached over his shoulder and pulled the key ring from under the bandages. He held the miniature statue of the Angel Moroni next to the photo on the screen. They were identical.
Moving the mouse, Ben ran the curser over the photo, causing it to change focus. The view expanded, revealing that the statue was positioned in the corner of a large hall with white walls, luxurious furnishing, and crystal chandeliers. Judging by the size of the furniture, the statue was about the size of a child, perhaps ten or twelve years old, but the long trumpet made the statue taller, almost the size of an average adult.
Another move of the curser over the photo caused the Angel Moroni to turn on its side, resting flat on the marble floor, its base visible. Glued to the bottom was an object. Peering closely, Ben realized it was another floppy disk.
By moving the curser again across the photo, he made the Angel Moroni stand up.
Concentrating on the hall, Ben realized how beautiful it was in a cleansed, other-worldly way. Zachariah must have assumed that whoever followed his clues would be familiar with that room. But Ben wasn’t, and he wanted to yell in frustration. Where the hell was this room?
Suddenly it hit him! The style of the walls, windows, furnishings, even the floor, was reminiscent of the room he was sitting in! Not identical—this large office had colors by virtue of the portraits, books, and cabinets. But the feel of the place was similar, which meant that the Angel Moroni statue in the photo must be somewhere in the temple!
Sticking the memory flash drive into a USB port, Ben saved the file. Returning to the search window, he typed:
Zachariah Hinckley
After a few seconds of searching the temple’s database, to Ben’s utter amazement a folder came up in the search results list:
SCMC/Zachariah Hinckley/Trial Evidence and Proceedings
It took him a moment to figure out that SCMC stood for Strengthening Church Members Committee.
It was a large data folder. When Ben placed the curser on it and right clicked to find the send order, a voice startled him.
“You’re a hard man to find.”
He looked up.
The Ghost was closing the door behind…her!
There was no mistaking the tall figure and white riding suit. It was the Ghost
. But her Nordic face was almost beautiful, marred only by a red scar that divided the right cheek. Her blue eyes were cold, and her blond hair was tucked under the white baseball cap.
Ben forced his finger to move the mouse and click save. The tiny light on the memory flash drive blinked as a copy of the folder was saved on it. He turned to her and said, “How did you find me?”
She smiled—not a friendly Mormon smile, but a frosty one. “Your black bitch must’ve been happy to see you.”
The rage flooded him, yet he realized the Ghost was trying to unsettle him, make him reckless, easier to handle. He took a deep breath. “It’s love,” he said. “But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”
“True. Hot niggers aren’t my thing.” The Ghost stepped toward the desk, but stopped when the door behind her opened.
The male secretary poked his head in. “Excuse me, but what’s going on here?”
“Please,” the Ghost said, “come in.”
Foolishly, he obeyed.
She kicked the door shut, chopped him on the side of the neck, and ripped open his white buttoned-down shirt. She peeled it off his shoulders and used the sleeves to bind his wrists behind his back. It was all done rapidly, without hesitation, not one second wasted. Next the Ghost pulled a green belt from her pocket—similar to the one Ben had seen among the temple garb he had been given. She looped it around the stunned secretary’s neck, tightened a knot, and fastened the other end to the door knob, causing him to sit up with his back to the door, immobilized and suffocating.
The computer beeped to signal completion of saving the folder to the memory flash drive.
The Ghost turned to him.
“A real living, breathing Danite!” Ben pulled the flash drive from the USB port. “Never expected to see one.”
She approached the desk. “Feeling lucky?”
“Blood atonement isn’t how I’d like to get to heaven.”
The secretary made gagging sounds. He jerked, rattling the door, but it only tightened the noose around his neck.
The Ghost reached the desk.
“Killing is a sin,” Ben said, rising to his feet. “Joseph Smith’s last words.”
“It’s only business, kid.” She flexed her hands and smiled. Up close, her teeth were yellowish. “Nothing personal.”
“Business? What about God?”
“Who?” She circled the desk.
Ben nudged the executive chair, making it turn on its wheels, the backside blocking the Ghost. He clenched the Angel Moroni in his fist and felt the long trumpet sticking out between his fingers. With the other hand he pointed at his forehead. “Barely a bruise from your kick. I should have realized it was girly.”
She paused, surprised that he had the capacity to joke when his life was about to end.
“Next time,” he said, “try to give it your all, like this!” He placed his foot on the edge of the chair and pressed with everything he had. At first, the heavy chair hardly budged, but then its wheels gained momentum and its back hit the Ghost in the stomach, propelling her backward and throwing her against a bookcase.
Ben knew he had only a second or two before this female assassin recovered from the shock of being knocked back by an odd-looking, sickly reporter wearing a wet white poncho.
Leaping forward, he mounted the chair and brought his fist pounding at her face. He felt the Angel Moroni’s trumpet penetrating through the flesh and facial bones next to her nose, below her left eye. He pulled it out just as she moaned, her hands rising to her punctured face. But she wasn’t disabled yet, and he knew that her killer instincts would soon cause her to shift from defense to deadly attack. There was no choice for him but to attack again, which he did, still perched on the padded chair, throwing a hook punch to the side of her face, where Angel Moroni’s trumpet speared her again through skin, flesh, and delicate bones.
Now she screamed—a long, agonized, primal scream.
As he jumped off the chair, the Ghost collapsed. Something fell out of her pocket—a pack of cigarettes with the logo of the House of Prince and the Danish royal crest. And while she was still down, he grabbed the side of the bookcase and pulled hard, causing it to fall over on top of her.
Ben ran to the door. The secretary’s face was blue, his tongue sticking out. There was no time for fiddling with the knot, which had likely tightened with the man’s dying struggles. Instead, Ben forced the door open until there was enough room for him to squeeze through.
In the outer office, rummaging through the secretary’s desk, he found scissors, which he used to cut the green belt at the secretary’s neck. The man dropped to the floor, his first breath shrieking through constricted airways. His hands were still bound behind his back, but he was alive. Ben turned and ran.
Chapter 58
The white slippers had been lost in the struggle, and a barefooted Ben reached the end of the hallway only to see the reception hall as peaceful as it had been before. Word had not arrived yet of the violence that had bloodied the fanciest office in the temple. He wished it was possible for him to cross the reception hall and leave through the main doors with the memory flash drive in his hand. But walking out while dressed in the white poncho would draw as much attention as dragging the bleeding Ghost across the marble floor.
Instead, he turned right and headed to the locker room, only to run into Pat, whose creased face seemed more bewildered than angry. “Brother Sampson! Where have you been?”
“I got lost,” Ben said breathlessly as he kept going. “It’s a big place.”
“The House of the Lord is commensurate with His greatness.” Pat kept up with him. “You need to change now and come to the Creation Room for the communal part of the endowment ceremony.”
“Sure,” Ben said, entering locker room. “Creation Room next.”
“I’ll wait for you here.”
“Thank you, Brother Pat. God bless.”
As he pulled his stuff from the locker, Ben’s hands trembled and his panting was rapid. There was blood on his arm and he wiped it off with the white poncho, which he tossed away. He got out of the sacred underpants and undershirt, which were oily and wet. He forced the white suit pants onto his sticky legs, buttoned down the dress shirt, and slipped the white tie back on, tightening it around his neck. There was a dull ache in his shoulder, either from the old injury or from the fresh wound that had replaced his beautiful tattoo.
He unhooked the memory flash drive from the bloody Angel Moroni key ring, which he washed in a sink, wiped thoroughly to remove any fingerprints, and dropped in a trash bin. The memory flash drive went in his pocket, together with the keys to the GS.
With the unlaced white shoes on his bare feet, Ben left the locker room. He ignored Pat and headed left toward the main exit, but as he looked up, through the flow of white-dressed men and women, all the way at the other end, he saw the tall figure of the Ghost. She had a towel pressed to her face, but her eyes were focused.
Ben turned and grabbed Pat’s arm. “Where’s the Creation Room?”
They went down the hallway and entered a large hall. It was decorated with beautiful murals of glorious nature vistas, roaming wild beasts, and glowing angels. Men and woman sat separately in rows of chairs on each side of the room, all wearing white clothes and shoes. All of them had ceremonial green belts and white hats draped over their arms, ready for the next part. Ben pulled his from the plastic bag and did the same. Some of the women were very young, dressed in modest wedding gowns with no trains. On a large screen up front, a movie was playing,
Pat made him sit among the men on the right side of the room.
Ben watched the door, trying not to be too conspicuous. Part of his mind absorbed the ongoing drama on the wall-sized screen. It was apparently the story of the creation of the world according to Mormonism. There was little similarity to what he remembered from bible study.
To begin with, there were many gods. Elohim was the Father, and Jehovah, who was also called Jesus, was his physical son. The third god, Michael, later became Adam and roamed the Garden of Eden with Eve.
At this point, the men put on the green belt with the fig leaf dangling before their genital area, just like Adam did in the movie.
The chief god, Elohim, asked Eve—as well as all the Mormon women seated on the left side of the Creation Room—to make an absolute vow of obedience to their husbands. The women took the vow with loud voices, promising to abide by the Law of Obedience and serve their husbands unquestionably as the only way to achieve their own spiritual exaltation in this world and in the afterlife. The men then followed up with a vow to obey God’s commands as communicated through the prophet, seer, and revelator in Salt Lake City and down the line through the Church leaders.
Next was a vow to sacrifice anything—even life itself, yours or someone else’s—die or kill in the defense of the True Church. Ben was too shocked to recite the violent words. They seemed to belong in another era, or a different reality, not in the contemporary American world that existed just outside the temple walls.
Brother Pat leaned over and whispered, “‘That which is wrong under one circumstance may be, and often is, right under another, as God said: “You shall not kill” and at another time He said: “Thou shall utterly destroy!”’ Remember who said that?”
It was an easy guess. Ben whispered back, “Joseph Smith, the true prophet of God.”
The Mormon Candidate - a Novel Page 27