Conspiracy Theory

by Jane Haddam

  “I think they think it was one of those conspiracist groups. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, I do, and I don’t understand why you think that’s going to make me feel better. Or make anybody feel better. Those people are nuts.”

  “I agree.”

  “They’re dangerous nuts.”

  “I agree with that too, but at the moment they’re beside the point. We’ve got to make some decisions on Price Heaven today. I’ve been over all the paperwork a million times. How could they possibly lose thirty million dollars in eighteen months and not notice it?”

  “Think of Enron,” Adele said solemnly.

  “Enron was fraud. This was not fraud, at least as far as I can tell. This was sheer stupidity and incompetence. Except you know what the regulators are like. They won’t like that. They’d prefer fraud. It makes them feel safer.”

  “Maybe you ought to do what you were talking about doing. Shut them down and close them out and stop throwing good money after bad.”

  “If we do, we’ll sink dozens of pension funds and hundreds of four-oh-one K’s. And Tony didn’t want to shut them down. Did you get the notes for the refinancing schedule I left on your desk?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good, let’s work with that. Let’s get copies of that out to everybody concerned by noon today, and then let’s call a meeting for tomorrow morning to go over it. Only I want to talk to Mark Corvallen before that. He was Tony’s closest ally on the board. Maybe I can convince him to back me on this so I’m not fighting an uphill battle against a bunch of vice presidents who are all scared to death that they’ll get tarred and feathered with a meltdown. Somehow or the other, there’s got to be a way to keep this company afloat.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so. It’s either that, or the bank takes a loss in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Which would you prefer?”

  “I’ll get Mr. Corvallen for you. But, David? Try to get some rest, will you please? You’re beginning to sound very tightly strung.”

  “I’ll calm down when this is over.”

  “You’d better calm down before noon, because you’re supposed to go on television at a press conference about all this. And don’t complain. They all want you to do it, so you’re going to have to do it.”

  “Hell,” David said. “All right. Never mind. Get Corvallen. Get copies of the rescheduling out to everybody who needs them. I’ll be in in another half hour.”

  “Right,” Adele said.

  David switched off. Any minute now, he knew, they would begin to see the small houses and low warehouse buildings that announced the approach into the city. Ages ago, he had been able to look out and see the twin towers of the Trade Center in the distance. If there was one thing he wished for, it was that he could go back to before that date and rethink everything he was doing in the six months that preceded it. He had no idea if he would change any of it. Nothing was ever that simple.

  At the very least, he wanted somebody to assure him that nobody else would die in that tight little circle in which he lived his life—not now, and not in the next few months, and maybe not ever, although he knew that was impossible. He was tired of the dying. He was more than tired of the nightmares he had of blood spreading out across the slate tiles of the walk in front of Tony Ross’s house.

  2

  Father Tibor Kasparian had come to a conclusion, over a long night of sitting in Bennis Hannaford’s apartment listening to a CD by a Portuguese neo-fado group called Madredeus. He could go on sitting by himself, feeling immobile and useless and hopeless and depressed, or he could get out and get on with his life, even if he didn’t yet know how he was supposed to get on with it. Looking back, he could see whole periods of immobility. When he had first made it out of the Soviet Union, he had spent nearly six months in Israel. He had nothing against Israel, but he had been there by accident. It was the place he’d been able to find a safe haven in when he’d been without all his proper paperwork and not yet recognized as a dissident by the United States. He’d known from the start he wouldn’t be able to stay there. He had felt so leaden, he hadn’t been able to move himself to do anything about finding another place to go. He hadn’t even been able to deal with the American embassy, where he had contacts dedicated to getting him to New York. If it hadn’t been for those contacts, he might have stayed in the Middle East forever, or been sent back to Armenia when his ability to stall ran out. He’d been lucky. The contacts had had other contacts. He might not be moving, but they were. They sent him to Paris, where he proceeded to vegetate for another four months, going out every morning for coffee in a little café at the end of the block where his dismal small hotel took up the center, reading newspapers, wondering what he was supposed to do now that he no longer had to worry about being arrested at every minute of every day. It was only after they had finally gotten him to New York that he had begun to snap out of it. Even then, it had taken him weeks, and that peculiar energy that was New York’s alone, coupled with the friendship of a very nice young woman in blue hair and safety pins. He wondered what had happened to her. He’d always worried that the safety pins would infect, or that the holes in her skin that they were stuck through would, but they never seemed to, and she never mentioned them.

  What he needed, Tibor decided, was to get back into a routine, and to begin planning his week in an ordinary way, including planning to celebrate the liturgy on Sunday. He was not sure what he would be able to do about that, but he thought there must be a way. They couldn’t use the church, but surely, throughout the history of Christianity there must have been many times when there was no church to use. There were a few large spaces on Ca-vanaugh Street: Lida Arkmanian’s living room; the first floor of Donna and Russ’s apartment. He would need permission from the bishop, but he thought he could get that without too much trouble. What he didn’t want was for the people of Cavanaugh Street to go looking for another church to celebrate in before this one was rebuilt. There was a very large Armenian community in Philadelphia. There were plenty of other churches. Tibor thought it would be the worst possible thing if the people of Cavanaugh Street had to go to them, instead of staying home, and behaving as if this nutcase did not exist.

  He was up too early, so he waited. He took his shower and got dressed and spent half an hour on the computer, answering e-mail from people on RAM wanting to know how he was and what the progress was in finding the people who had blown up his church. Then Bennis’s little clock chimed—it was a beautiful thing, all polished brass and crystal dome so that you could see its works moving if you weren’t in need of the time—and he got his coat and went out to the landing.

  He considered going upstairs to see if Gregor was coming to the Ararat for breakfast, but decided against it. Gregor always came to the Ararat for breakfast, usually with Bennis in tow. He could meet them both there. He listened for Grace’s harpsichord but didn’t hear it. Maybe she didn’t get up early. He was astounded at how fond he’d become of the sound of that instrument. It was much better for him than the neo-fado Portuguese group, and much less melancholy. He went downstairs and knocked on old George Tekemanian’s apartment.

  Old George must have been standing just inside the door. Tibor still had his hand in the air to knock for the third time when the door opened and George nearly hopped into the hall, all enthusiasm and morning vigor.

  “Father,” he said. “Father. I wasn’t expecting you. I thought Grace had come down and we’d go out to breakfast together.”

  “Is Grace coming down?” Tibor asked.

  They both looked toward the stairwell, as if it was normal to find apparitions on it. A second later, far above them, a door slammed open and then slammed shut again, and they could hear Grace humming something that sounded like a polka.

  “Does she play polkas, do you think?” Tibor asked.

  “I don’t think so,” George said.

  Grace clattered down the stairs. She came so fas
t, Tibor found himself anxious that she would fall. She didn’t. The closer she came, the less the song she was humming sounded like a polka, but Tibor wasn’t sure what else it sounded like. It was quick. It was lively. It was not rock and roll.

  “Father,” Grace said, as she reached the ground floor. “This is wonderful. Are you coming for breakfast? I bet you haven’t been eating right at all since you got back. They bring all kinds of food, but it isn’t breakfast food, if you know what I mean.”

  “I just wanted to get out of the apartment and move around,” Tibor said.

  “Well, come to the Ararat with us,” Grace said. “Gregor and Bennis probably won’t make it for another half hour. Gregor was gone half the night. I know. I heard him come in. I saw the news at eleven too. There’s been an FBI agent murdered, actually murdered a long time ago or something, and they just found his body. Decomposed.”

  “Ugh,” old George said.

  “In a vacant lot,” Grace said. “But I don’t know. That doesn’t seem right to me. Does it seem right to you? You’d think people would have found it in a vacant lot a long time before this. The news said he was probably out there for more than a week. Kids play in vacant lots. They’d just love to discover a body.”

  “I wouldn’t have loved to discover a body when I was a child,” old George said. “But maybe I’m being old-fashioned again. These days, children go to the movies and watch aliens blow up the White House.”

  “And dinosaurs eating San Diego,” Tibor said.

  They went out the front door onto the street. It was just starting to get light. Tibor truly hated the late fall and early winter, when it was dark until late in the morning and dark again early in the evening, so that the light seemed to be an intruder in something sinister. Now there was a small smear of pink just above the tops of the houses and the air seemed illuminated—but not illuminated enough—from within.

  Lida Arkmanian was just coming out of her own house, with Hannah Krekorian in tow. When Tibor saw them, he waved tentatively, not sure how they would respond to seeing him out. He didn’t want to be hustled back into Bennis’s apartment and told to rest.

  Lida and Hannah came over, the tall and thin and the short and squat, and fussed at him.

  “You’re getting out,” Lida said. “That’s a good thing. You can’t spend the rest of your life in Bennis Hannaford’s apartment.”

  “Especially not the way she keeps it clean,” Hannah said.

  “She has a cleaning lady come in,” Lida said.

  “It’s not a very good cleaning lady, then,” Hannah said. “Besides, you can’t trust cleaning ladies. They do the least work they can get away with for the money. And you really can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to clean somebody else’s house.”

  “I have a very good cleaning lady,” Lida said.

  Tibor cleared his throat. This could go on forever, and it was cold. “I was thinking,” he said. “We should find some place to have a liturgy on Sunday.”

  “We went to St. Paul’s last Sunday,” Lida said. “You don’t have to worry about that. We won’t be missing church.”

  “We won’t,” Hannah said. “But some people will. Not that I mean to speak ill of Sheila. She’s got her troubles just like I’ve got mine. But—”

  Tibor began to move purposefully down the street. They really could be here forever. “No,” he said, once he was sure he had them moving. “I mean we ought to find a place to have a liturgy here. Not go to another church. Be here.”

  “But where?” Lida said, bewildered. “We’re not supposed to go into the church, even though there’s a lot of it left. The police came and gave us all a warning about how dangerous it could be because the structure isn’t stable—”

  “I know the structure isn’t stable,” Tibor said, and suddenly he did know, immediately and unmistakably. They had reached that part of the sidewalk directly across from the church. They could all see it for themselves, the gaping hole where the facade used to be, the roof beginning to cave in toward the center far in near the altar. “It is clear we are not able to use the church. But we do not have to use the church. The Christian community has often not had churches. We have celebrated the liturgy in fields, in caves, in living rooms. Where Christians are persecuted, where Christianity is outlawed—”

  “But Christians aren’t persecuted here,” Grace said. “And Christianity isn’t outlawed. Could you just—what—say Mass—”

  “Celebrate the liturgy,” Hannah said.

  “The Catholics say celebrate the Mass,” Lida said. “My son’s girlfriend said—”

  “Stop,” Tibor said. “We need only a space large enough to fit in all the people who want to come. Possibly we will have more than usual, since it will be the first time since the explosion, unless people are worried about there being another explosion—”

  “I’m not worried about there being another explosion,” Lida said. “We could use my living room. I get nearly everybody in the neighborhood in there at Christmas. I mean, granted that’s a buffet, but—”

  “Well, we’re not exactly looking to stage a sit-down dinner, are we?” Hannah said. “Honestly, Lida, the fuss you can make over the simplest—”

  “I’m just saying we could use my living room,” Lida said. “It would be a good thing. And then, because it’s the first time, we could have a potluck. I could make some finger food and people could bring what they liked and then after the service we could spread out over the whole house and everybody could eat—”

  “You’d better not forget the children will be there,” Hannah said. “If you’re going to hold a potluck afterwards, you’re going to have to do something serious about all that china you keep all the hell over the place. Although what you want with china eggplants and china lily pads is beyond me. Really, some people don’t have enough to spend money on—”

  “What’s this?” Sheila Kashinian said, coming up from the other side of the street.

  They were almost at the Ararat. Old George and Grace looked shell-shocked, the way people got when they were suddenly exposed to the women of Cavanaugh Street in full swing, planning something. Tibor hung back for a while and then retreated, up the street, across the little intersection, to that place on the sidewalk where he could stand directly in front of the church. Eventually, he thought, you realized it was only what it was, a building, made of steel and mortar and brick. Buildings came and buildings went. They were destroyed by fire and earthquake and flood and time. They were not important in themselves.

  He looked up over the sagging roof to the rest of Philadelphia, beginning to come alive with the arrival of the sun. Then he turned away and went back up the street to the Ararat. Old George and Grace were waiting for him on the sidewalk. Lida and Hannah and Sheila Kashinian had gone in and taken a table. Tibor could see them through the Ararat’s big plate-glass front window, writing things down on napkins.

  “They’re discussing coordinated serving silver,” Grace said. “Are they always like this?”

  “Worse,” old George said morosely.

  Tibor pushed the Ararat’s door open and shooed them inside.

  3

  It wasn’t that she had been laid off that bothered Kathi Mittendorf. She had expected to be laid off, all the way back to the day she had first heard what was going on with Price Heaven. It was so hard to figure out what was happening with the Illuminati at any one time. Even really brilliant people, like Michael, got confused. She was more and more aware these days that she was not a brilliant person. She would very much like to be, but in the end she was just herself. She could man the blind end of a wire without too much difficulty, and do the scut work of buying and storing and hiding weapons, but when it came to tactics and strategy, she was hopeless. What was worse, she had no real self-control. She couldn’t appear passive on the outside. She only managed glassy-eyed and tense. She couldn’t appear calm in a crisis. She was never calm, even when she should be. In the middle of a major action, she was a mass
of raw emotion, excitement and hysteria, fear and bliss. Sometimes she wished she had learned to do crafts when she was younger. Maybe it would be some help to her if she could knit.

  What bothered Kathi Mittendorf was that, because she had been laid off, she had nothing to take her mind off what she had to do in the next twenty-four hours, and nowhere to go to get away from the house and all the potential it held for her to make a really serious mistake. She was fretting, and along with fretting she was fussing with too many of the details on the edges of the project she had committed herself to carry out. She was in the same state of mind she had been in just before the night Tony Ross died and that satanic church had been blown up. If she breathed in the wrong direction— if she so much as twitched at an inopportune moment—she would destroy them all and everything they’d worked for, but she couldn’t stop breathing and she couldn’t stop twitching. She also couldn’t stop hating the sight of Susan in her living room, sitting on the couch with a big glass of Diet Coke in front of her on the coffee table, looking smug. She would rather have left Susan out of it. She would rather have left everybody out of it except herself and Michael, but that was the kind of thing she never said with full clarity to herself, even just inside her head.

  “I still say we ought to be careful,” Susan said, flipping her blond hair from the front of her shoulders to behind. She had had the top of it cut short and curled into ringlets. She reminded Kathi of Tonya Harding at her worst. “I know Michael is a genius, and I know he’s in charge of this operation, but we’re talking about a serious weapons charge here—”

  “There won’t be any weapons charge,” Kathi said. She was trying to sound patient. She only sounded panicked. “There won’t be any arrests. We’re not supposed to be arrested. We’re supposed to end up dead.”

  “Then maybe the smartest thing for us to do would be to run,” Susan said. “Let’s take off. We’ve got those fake identities—”

  “What if they’ve been found out?”