Cult

by Warren Adler

  Obediently, they turned and began to head back. “You can’t, Charlotte! What about Kevin?” he cried. But they did not react.

  “Charlotte!” Barney shouted. “Charlotte!” His voice was shrill. The camp remained quiet. Nothing seemed to stir as they nonchalantly walked away, paying no attention to Barney now. When they were out of earshot, he turned to Jeremiah.

  “How could you do this to people?” Barney asked. He could barely speak and his breath came in gasps. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “It was so nice your stopping by, Mr. Harrigan,” Jeremiah said.

  “Fuck you!” Barney yelled, grabbing Jeremiah’s jacket.

  “Barney don’t!” Naomi shouted.

  “Listen to her,” Jeremiah said. “People are watching. The Sheriff has been notified. No trouble, please. You are trespassing. You’ve seen your wife. She has found peace and security. She’s overjoyed. She’s a Glory now. Accept it, Mr. Harrigan. If you loved her you would be happy for her.”

  Barney continued to hold Jeremiah. After a few moments he let go and pointed his finger at the man’s chest.

  “You’ll be sorry. I swear it. You’ll be sorry.”

  “I would like to point out,” Jeremiah said, still smiling, shaking his head as if confronting a spoiled child. “These threats are actionable. It’s okay, though. I’ll overlook them. I won’t report you. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.” He looked at his watch. “I suggest you leave now.” He put out his hand.

  Barney looked at it and spat on it.

  “You haven’t seen the end of this! You’ve murdered her mind. You murdered my wife!”

  “It was so nice meeting you, Mr. Harrigan.”

  Jeremiah turned and began walking back toward where Charlotte and her two companions had gone.

  “Fuck you!” Barney shouted, starting up the car.

  For a brief moment, Naomi thought he might be heading the car in Jeremiah’s direction. He turned sharply.

  “I’ll get ’em. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get ’em.”

  “Calm down, Barney. Please. Don’t make it any worse than it is.”

  She did not speak again until the car had turned off onto the main highway back to Seattle.

  “You should never have threatened to kill them,” she said.

  “I meant it.”

  “It sounded like you meant it.”

  “I hope they got the message.”

  “I think he did. They might send her away.”

  They both grew silent. Despite all the forewarnings, reality had exceeded their grim expectations. What she wanted most was to still her thoughts, which, in any event, were muddled. She needed to put everything on idle, to collect herself. She was only moderately successful. Beside her, Barney said nothing, although his lips would occasionally move. She did not intrude on his inner dialogue.

  She now knew that this man beside her was not the Barney Harrigan of those serene fantasies and memories from the beginning of their relationship. She had no lingering obligation to this new Barney. This was not her affair. She needed to find the will to go home.

  Chapter 7

  They had checked into adjoining rooms at a Holiday Inn just outside of Seattle, but after what they had been through, she knew neither of them could bear to be alone. They opened the door adjoining their rooms.

  “I’ll order hamburgers from room service,” he said, attempting to force her return to the familiar, the prosaic.

  “That sounds fine.” The thought of food was revolting.

  In the bathroom of her room, she took a shower, alternating between hot and cold, deliberately testing her tolerance, as if to validate her physical presence. When she had rubbed herself dry, she pulled her hair back and put on a bathrobe and returned to his room.

  In his room, Barney was sitting at the desk, writing in his notebook. Their food had arrived on a rolling table. Their hamburgers looked waxy and unappetizing. He had pulled chairs over and poured a tall drink from a scotch bottle, which stood beside him on the table. When he finally looked, his demeanor was not as she had expected. He seemed inexplicably undefeated.

  “Drink?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  He got up, poured her a scotch, added soda and ice and sat down again at the table. He picked up his hamburger, taking big bites. She tried to do the same but could barely swallow. She washed it down with her drink.

  “Know thine enemy,” he said when he had finished eating. In the camp, he had been reduced to a pleading supplicant. His recovery seemed remarkable.

  “I can’t believe what I saw. Charlotte wasn’t completely there.”

  “Seemed that way.”

  He ignored her lukewarm response.

  She remembered Barney’s earlier surge of hope. Could it have been self-delusion? she thought now. Charlotte was deep in a religious conversion, whatever else it may seem like. However it had happened, however it had appeared, wasn’t it still her right? The knowledge of her own doubt irritated her.

  After awhile she noted that he was staring at her. It made her uncomfortable.

  “Remember our moment?”

  God no, she thought. Was he trying to seduce her, find solace in sex? She had not the slightest inclination. Keep the memory going, she told herself. Keep talking.

  She searched her memory. Had there really been a moment? Perhaps. She’d grant him that. She smiled and tapped the table, not knowing what else to do. In a twisted way she envied Charlotte her bliss. No pressure. No doubts.

  “You remember those moments,” he said. “Charlotte and I had our moment, too.”

  She felt relieved and, oddly, also disappointed.

  “That’s still in there. I’ve got to shake her loose, get her out, remind her of those moments. If I could just get her away from there. That’s step one. Inside that camp, she’s dead in the water. They won’t let her think.”

  She shivered, drawing her bathrobe around her. It seemed too flimsy a shield and she took another deep swallow of her drink.

  “Can you believe how she’s changed?” he asked suddenly.

  “I didn’t know her before.”

  She had tossed it to him like a barbed arrow. Barney had never come after me like that, Naomi thought idly.

  “I met her on the beach, picked her up like a beautiful conch. When I talked with her, I heard the echo of myself, all that I wanted. She was so alert, so questioning. Her green eyes danced. She was an avalanche of questions. ‘Why this or that?’ ‘How come?’ That was her favorite. ‘How come?’ It used to exasperate me sometimes. But it never mattered. I liked to be around her. She only had a high school education. She wanted to be a model. Wasn’t thin enough. Yet, in my arms, she was as delicate as a flower. Sometimes when I looked at her at night, I used to say to myself, ‘How could such joy happen to me?’”

  He was lost in himself. So he had found this naive girl on the beach and he had sold her on himself, she thought with bitterness. It was actually what she had wished for him during those first days apart. She had wanted him to find someone just like Charlotte. Time passed as his voice floated in the air between them. She listened perfunctorily.

  “I’ll get her back,” he said again. And again.

  He picked up the notebook from the table. “It’s all in here. Bearing witness. No detail has gone unwritten. It all goes in there.” He pointed to his laptop on the desk. “Everyone must know what I’m going through, what others have gone through. Everyone. The world is going to know what these people do. Maybe then they’ll understand. Change the laws. Do something.”

  “I’d say you have your work cut out for you.” She heard her tongue slur the words.

  “You think I don’t know that.” He thumbed through the pages in the notebook. “We just didn’t make the sale on the first pass.” His face su
ddenly brightened. “But we got in, didn’t we? That damned Sheriff didn’t think we could do it, and we did.” He slapped his thighs. “We did that. Now we know what we’re up against.”

  His use of the first person plural galled her.

  “I’ve got a couple of bombs to throw.” He stood and balled his fist in his palm. “I’ll unload that bastard’s wagons.”

  He was getting up a full head of indignation.

  “And that fucking Sheriff. I’d like to kick him in the balls, teach him a little bit about America.”

  The image of him was becoming distorted. Naomi’s head was spinning. Still, she let him pour her another drink, hoping for her own oblivion.

  Chapter 8

  They sat in the reception room of the offices of Brown and Kyler, sedately decorated in oils depicting colonial scenes on polished cherrywood-paneled walls. The furniture was early American, too delicate to be comfortable but obviously authentic. On a glossy table, neatly sorted, were Architectural Digest, Antique Monthly, Town and Country, and various horse magazines.

  Set pieces, she thought. They screamed out Ivy League, DAR, old money, deep American roots, WASP. A beautiful blonde woman, immaculately groomed and coiffed with a simple Junior League wave sat behind a gleaming antique desk. She wore a wire headset and ignored them with an air of carefully rehearsed intimidation. This was Brown and Kyler, old-line, patrician. Naomi felt diminished.

  They had come through heavy double doors, replete with colonial knockers. Lettered on it discreetly were the names of an army of partners. The elevator had whisked them to the 39th floor, about which she had made a lame joke about “The 39 Steps,” wondering aloud if Hitchcock would pass them in the corridors, if only to break the spell of gloom and despair that hovered over them. It didn’t have the desired effect.

  Barney was in no mood for jokes. The horror of the waking nightmare going on in his mind was sucking up all his energy, all his focus. On top of everything, she had a slight hangover. She had had three cups of coffee and felt her stomach burn.

  Sitting now in the lawyer’s reception room she thumbed through a copy of Architectural Digest, hardly paying attention to the lush pictures and contrived settings.

  In the car, she had asked, “Where are we going?” She felt like she was drifting now, an irrelevant and reluctant observer. Above all she wanted to go home.

  “You’ll see,” he had told her. She hadn’t expected the visit to the lawyer’s office. So far Barney had only communicated with him by phone.

  “Mr. Holmes will see you now,” the woman at the desk said cheerfully.

  “I’ll wait,” Naomi said.

  “No. I need you with me.”

  “So I’m a witness, am I?” Was that his purpose from the beginning?

  “That, too.” Too? She wondered what he meant.

  They followed the woman’s directions down a long carpeted corridor. Bradley Holmes was waiting for them in a large office. A window wall offered a magnificent view of the Golden Gate Bridge that spanned the pristine bay. It was a clear, cloudless day. She could see all the way to Oakland. Soothed by the sight, she sat down primly on a Chippendale chair. A tall clock swung its pendulum in a corner.

  The lawyer had stepped in front of his polished desk to greet them with an eager handshake, warm and friendly. Barney, spruce and slick, in a neat three-piece suit and with a smile pasted on his face, slid into a chair as Holmes went behind his desk, sitting down on a high gleaming brown leather chair.

  His office was a mass of wood and leather. On his walls were three diplomas. Stanford, LLB; Harvard, LLD; another announcing admittance to the Supreme Court. Bookshelves under glass held leather-bound classics. In a nook were duck decoys. On the walls were photographs. Holmes with Ronald Reagan, suitably inscribed. Holmes as a young man in crew cut holding a lacrosse racquet. Holmes and a pert, scrubbed woman, he in full resplendent uniform of naval lieutenant, she in a wedding dress. Pictures of children, neat, graceful, handsome. Two pretty girls and a lovely-looking boy. On his desk was a picture of a baby in an old-fashioned pose, pinkly naked on a pillow. He wore a charcoal gray suit, a red striped tie, a pinstriped shirt on a field of blue, perfectly matching his eyes.

  His life was, she decided, like the reception room, like his name—patrician, comfortable, old money, old family, impeccable. Barney, on the other hand, like an actor in a drawing-room comedy, shanty black Irish, swathed in an Ivy League costume, his pain carefully tucked under his vest, exchanged pleasantries. She, the neurotic Jewess, here to bear witness, looked on, ten times removed, a bit player.

  Through the window, she could see the life of the city. Up there on the 39th floor they heard nothing of the turmoil below. She listened as both of them dodged around the main point, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He had not explained to her why he had come, and she did not ask.

  “You really should have waited for permission,” Holmes said, his voice stentorian, dripping with authority. “And you did threaten them, which was a big mistake. You can’t go around threatening people, Mr. Harrigan. We could take action, you know.” She had seen his eyes drift to his appointment book open on his neat desk.

  “Maybe I was over the top,” Barney admitted pleasantly.

  “You can say that again. We may, indeed, decide to take action.”

  “I was angry and upset.”

  “You might have been better informed on what to expect.”

  “Probably. It came as a shock, seeing Charlotte,” Barney said with an air of exaggerated calm.

  “Yes,” Holmes agreed. “It always does. It is quite understandable. You see, Mr. Harrigan, your wife has had a profound religious conversion. It’s not my religion or yours. We can only understand it in context.”

  “Yes. I see that now.”

  “She is an adult woman. She has made her own choice. Believe me, I know how you feel. I would feel the same way if my wife or any of my children had taken that road.” His eyes moved to his family pictures. “But in the end, I would respect their decision. Indeed. I would have no other choice.” His voice was soothing, in keeping with his persona and his surroundings. “No legal choice.”

  “She wasn’t very communicative,” Barney said. He paused and Naomi felt his peripheral glance toward her. “There are lots of issues here. We have a child.” Barney cleared his throat. She could tell that some plan was emerging. He hadn’t discussed it with her.

  “Yes. I understand.”

  She wondered where he was heading, alert to nuances, her mind suddenly cleared. He had said he had more bombs to throw.

  “They have nothing to fear from me,” Barney said unctuously.

  “Perhaps not from you, Mr. Harrigan. But you surely can understand their paranoia. There is an army of unscrupulous people out there. Deprogrammers bent on destroying this experience. They kidnap the convert, subject him or her to beastly experiences, cut away the spiritual root. It violates not only our moral sense but the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects every American’s religious liberties.”

  “I understand perfectly.”

  “Do you?”

  She could sense the hard suspicion behind the imperious facade.

  “Certainly, in terms of the legalities and its consequences.”

  “You don’t think she was brainwashed, then?”

  Holmes had leaned back on his chair, making a church steeple with his fingers, a fat cat playing with a tortured mouse. There is no contest, she wanted to cry out at Barney, watching him squirm behind the contrived facade.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Barney said. He was surprisingly up to the mark, not missing a beat.

  “There is no legal definition. A religious conversion is a religious conversion.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You saw no physical coercion at the camp. No attempt to keep her there by force.”
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  “No,” he said, appearing thoughtful and attentive. “Nothing like that.” He paused. “But I had to see for myself. Anyone would do the same when their life blows up in their face, not knowing the cause.” He looked pointedly at the Holmes family pictures.

  “Anyone would do the same,” Barney said.

  “So you’ve seen it. I would have arranged the visit with less of a trauma on yourself.”

  “I know that now. You’re not exactly given a road map on how to react.” Watching him, Naomi saw a nerve palpitate in his cheek. He must have felt it and lifted his hand to hide it, shamming an itch.

  “There is no such thing as brainwashing,” Holmes said. “There is even some doubt about its being possible even when it is allegedly present, although there has been much written about it in connection with the Chinese communists who, when Mao was alive, attempted to put a stop to any aberrant behavior by what they deemed was reeducation. In the Korean War, books were written to explain what had happened to our prisoners. All of these so-called prison converts eventually returned to the States. This does seem to indicate that brainwashing is not really credible.”

  She was surprised at her own reaction to his words, which transcended her defenses and natural distaste. He seemed perfectly reasonable, articulating what was, despite what she had seen, one of her doubts. He was obviously pressing the point home.

  “I have seen nothing, nothing in law, nothing in psychiatry, or anything that passes as science to offer a different view. In other words, I do not believe that brainwashing actually happens.”

  “I haven’t studied the subject with that much thoroughness, Mr. Holmes,” Barney said, picking up the lawyer’s cadence. She could see why he was such a good salesman, as he struggled to parry Holmes’ suspicion.

  “Believe me, Mr. Harrigan, I have studied all aspects of the matter, researched many cases, tried some myself.” He looked toward Naomi, perhaps for approbation. “We are a country of laws, not men.”

  The pedantic platitude severely tried her patience.