I had studied and observed when to elude the security guards. When I was ready, I made my way into the grounds through my secret entrance. To face my destiny, in the form of Adam Hale.
7
Trial by Spirit
New York, September 1, 2004
When Robert awoke, Terri was eating a sandwich. Horace was sitting with her at the dining-room table, sipping a glass of water.
‘Hey, sleepyhead,’ Terri shouted. ‘Ready for breakfast?’
‘What are you having?’
‘I’m having lunch. It’s noon. You’ve been out for eighteen hours.’
He stretched. His senses were especially sharp. He felt himself move with ease and grace.
As Terri walked away from the window to get coffee for him, he saw her flare with light against the dark wallpaper. Arcs and inverted Vs like the Chrysler around her head and shoulders. He blinked, but it didn’t go away. He sat down, spine straight, feeling his head balance perfectly on his shoulders. Thrills of energy coursed along his belly, his limbs.
The coffee was delicious. When he placed his hand on Terri’s back, she was electric. He felt animal heat, coursing power.
‘Your hands are hot,’ she said, smiling at him.
‘It’s the coffee cup.’
‘No, it’s you.’
Her transformation had been miraculous. As soon as Horace had taken her hand in the General Society’s lock room, her despair and fear had begun to melt away. He looked into her eyes. Felt her perceiving him.
‘Horace and I talked a lot while you were asleep. We may all still get through this.’
Horace brought him the newspaper, suggesting he catch up on events in their fair city since he’d last been conscious, and went into the living room.
There had been protests at the New York Public Library after they left, an attempt to attach a banner to one of the lions, a ruckus, arrests verging on the indiscriminate. Many more arrests down near Ground Zero. Running cat-and-mouse games between cops and various flavours of protester, most peaceful, a handful not.
Above all there was speculation about shots fired at police cars near the Lincoln Tunnel. A police sharpshooter was said to be under investigation. A protester who had scaled one of the light towers near by was not thought to have been involved in the incident.
Investigations continued.
No dead. No reports of injuries.
Horace returned. ‘We must leave. While we three are together, and while I have the core, the Malice Box, as you call it, Adam and the Iwnw will find it difficult to harm us. Where do you think the next waypoint is? It will be Number 121. The clue is as follows:
‘For endless sight, climb into the light
The fire and the gold await the bold
To beat the clock, you must scale the rock
Then sally forth, and telescope north
To rescue love – or kill
it Pass the Trial by Spirit
‘Any thoughts on that?’
Robert snapped out of his reverie. ‘If the pattern that I showed you yesterday holds, it would be somewhere around Rockefeller Center. Radio City.’
Horace nodded. ‘Things are accelerating.’
Robert could feel it too. A gathering impetus. The coming hours would resolve it. He felt ready.
‘We start where we left off yesterday, on the spine,’ Horace said. ‘That reminds me…’ He motioned for them to follow him and went into his study. Against one wall, in a glass case, was a three-foot-tall model, in bronze, of what looked like an ornate, Deco-style watchtower. Along the top were three coloured lights.
‘If it were lying down, it would look like a mummy case,’ Robert said. He saw there was also a framed drawing of it, a design plan, on the wall. Terri put her hands on bothand concentrated.
‘This is an architect’s model of the traffic towers that used to run along Fifth Avenue, seven of them, as I told you. Quite beautiful. They have all been destroyed, alas. Take a close look at the top, between the traffic lights.’
Robert leaned forward. ‘Good God. The spiralling snakes.’
‘Precisely. The caduceus.’
‘This keeps showing up, Horace, but what exactly is its significance? I get snatches of it – I half see it fitting into the trials, the city, the Tree of Life – but then it eludes me again.’
‘Myths record, sometimes in distorted ways, the clashes throughout time between the Iwnw and ourselves over the rightful ownership and control of the Path,’ said Horace. ‘The fact is, the motif of the snakes spiralling along the staff is an image of the Path, just as the Tree of Life represents it too, from another perspective. The caduceus is a kind of magic wand, carried by the Greek god Hermes, whom the Romans called Mercury – the interpreter of the gods, the guide to the underworld, the patron of roads and boundaries.’
Robert saw flashes of underground water, streams under Manhattan – impressions that had struck him throughout the trials. He remembered feeling water twisting and snaking under the city, saw the course of Water Tunnel Number One along the vertical spine of the Tree of Life pattern, remembered the Native American belief in the serpent Manetta who dwelled in the streams under Fifth Avenue.
‘How do the snakes represent the Path?’
‘They stand for the powers that you acquire as you complete the trials,’ Terri said, ‘ascending from below to above, climbing from the primitive energies – killing, fucking, the pursuit of power – to the higher ones – compassion, creativity, healing. In terms of your trials, from St Paul’s Chapel and Ground Zero up through Union Square to Radio City. You can think of the staff as your spine, and the energies as travelling up it from the base of the spine to the skull. The wings at the top represent the spirit taking flight when the Path has been completed.’
‘Why two snakes, though?’
‘The powers of earth, water, fire and air, of ether, mind and spirit, all have a shadow side,’ Horace said. ‘To complete the Path you must weave together at each stage the negative and positive aspects of each power. The raw force of the killing energy is destructive, for example, but you cannot walk the Path without it – you must yoke it to a higher purpose and draw strength from it. Without its power, you will not survive the rest of the Path. The spiralling snakes, switching back and forth on each side of the staff, represent the plaiting together of such polarities – good and evil, female and male, order and chaos. The central spine represents the balance between them.’
‘But what are they doing on those traffic towers?’
‘Hermes was the god of roads, so it would make sense to include his symbol on traffic towers along the city’s principal avenue. Consider too that when these beautiful towers were withdrawn, another figure was used to ornament the city stop lights.’ He pointed to a figure covered with an exquisitely embroidered cloth. Robert raised it to reveal a figure in cast bronze, about eighteen inches tall, wearing a distinctive hat and holding a winged wheel in his left hand.
‘Mercury.’
‘That’s right. Truly we follow the path of Hermes.’
As they were about to leave, Robert noticed photographs of himself, Adam and Katherine on the corkboard by Horace’s desk. ‘What are these, Horace?’
‘As I told you, I have been watching over you for many years, Robert. Over all three of you. I am your Watchman. Adam and Katherine have worked very closely with me at different stages to bring you through this experience. Now we must leave.’
Robert checked the GPS programme as he stood on the sidewalk. Terri and Horace waited for the car they’d ordered in the lobby behind him, under a great Seal of Solomon set in the ceiling. Twin pillars topped by shining orbs graced the monumental front of the building.
The Quad pointed south-east, less than two miles.
At the New York Public Library, Horace insisted they enter by the main steps. He took them left, along the main corridor to a door at the end on the left-hand side.
‘The Periodical Room,’ he announced and led them
quietly in.
Apart from a staff member at a counter, no one was there. The room, fitted in wooden panelling, was ringed with paintings of newspaper and publishing buildings of the early twentieth century, set in arches and frames as if they were windows. Robert saw the green-and-blue McGraw-Hill Building, the New York Times tower at i Times Square in its original stone facing, the old Newspaper Row opposite City Hall Park, when the World Building was still standing.
‘Take a few minutes before we begin and consider these paintings,’ Horace said.
They sat in silence for perhaps five minutes. Robert felt Horace holding them in his mind with great love.
He took a deep breath. ‘Horace, what is the seventh trial?’
Horace took both their hands and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he spoke. ‘The final trial will give you the potential – just a chance – of stopping the detonation of the Ma’rifat’. Without it, you will have none. The Trial by Spirit is a test of your capacity to forgive, to love, to surrender yourself entirely to the ocean of divine love in which you are both a single drop and the vessel holding the ocean itself.’
Robert would pass the trial if he demonstrated, in his actions and words, that he had utterly given himself over to the requirements of the Path – that he had developed a mind as calm as a mirror, a heart devoid of fear, a spirit brimming with love, Horace said. Anything less and he would die.
Robert would recover a seven-sided or seven-pointed key.
‘And then you will be on your own. Though we will be with you, there will be little more that I, or anyone else, can do to help you face the Iwnw and their creature, as you must. Now let us begin.’
He got up and walked briskly to the door. As they tried to keep up, he led them back along the corridor, through the entrance hall and then left down a staircase to the library’s exit on to 42nd Street.
Directly across the street as they came out of the library was a white stone arched gate, carved with figures of the zodiac. At the bottom of the left-hand column, Robert inspected the Gemini twins. They looked unearthly.
‘Think of this as a sacred gateway or passage leading you to the final trial,’ Horace said. He took them under vaulted Guastavino arches into the ornate lobby of the building, the Salmon Tower, where even the mailboxes were small works of art in bronze, and directly through on to 43rd Street. Looking back, Robert saw an identical carved arch in white stone, with the same zodiacal figures.
‘Onwards,’ Horace boomed.
They walked to Fifth and swept past the corner of 44th Street, where they had met Terri the previous afternoon.
Pressing on northbut not stopping, Horace pointed to a brightly coloured frieze in deep reds, greens and yellow atop a tall building on the east side of Fifth. ‘On top of the French Building up there,’ he shouted. ‘Griffins, in a faience sunrise! See? Body of a lion, wings and head of an eagle, tail of a snake. Known for finding gold and buried treasure! On the west face at the top, a head of Mercury, the Messenger, set in a gold bursting star! The gate is inspired by the Ishtar Gate. Ishtar is Inanna, Robert.’
‘I am the creature of light. I remember.’ He saw. He understood. He felt power surging through his body.
Horace charged ahead. ‘Keep moving!’
They quickly came to 47th Street, where, on the west side, at the entrance to the Diamond District, two light towers rose in the form of stylized octagonal diamonds set atop criss-crossing metal spars.
‘Robert, it’s just like the light tower at the Lincoln Tunnel! Want to climb it?’
‘Keep moving, Horace.’
He heard Terri suppress what might have been a laugh.
Bronzed Art Deco footings set into the sidewalk around the trunks of trees signalled that they had arrived at Rockefeller Center. Up ahead, on the opposite side of the street, soared the octagonal coned steeples of St Patrick’s Cathedral. On the left, they passed the Maison Française, its façade embellished with sinuous female forms in bronze, and came to the promenade that led directly west to a sunken plaza – the site of the ice rink in winter – guarded by a gleaming gold statue of Prometheus, eternally stealing fire from the gods. At the end of the promenade, framed by the surrounding buildings, reared the main skyscraper of Rockefeller Center, the GE Building, or 30 Rock, its steepling setbacks sharply shadowed by the blazing sun overhead.
‘I can’t get a signal for the GPS,’ Robert said, wiping sweat from his forehead. ‘But I’m sure it’s here. We need to go down.’
As they descended, Robert saw on the right a gilded figure of Hermes set into the facade of one of the buildings, a golden caduceus in its hand.
In front of the GE Building the signal returned. ‘It’s here,’ he said. But something was odd. He looked again at the altitude reading: over 800 feet. That had to be at the very top of the tower.
He showed it to Horace. ‘The old observation deck. That’s the only thing it can be. But it’s been closed for twenty years.’
‘It wouldn’t maybe be the Rainbow Room? That’s pretty high up.’
‘No, I don’t think so. The Rainbow Room – where many years ago I proposed to my darling late wife, I might mention – is on the 65th floor. The observation decks were on the 69th and 70th floors. They were stunning. Designed to feel like an ocean liner. There is a photograph taken from there, in the old days, of Manhattan lost in clouds… just the tips of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State and a couple of others piercing the sea of mist… it was breathtaking.’
‘What happened?’
‘Access was cut off when they expanded the Rainbow Room. A tragedy.’
‘They don’t let the public up to the Rainbow Room until five o’clock,’ Terri said. ‘We don’t have that kind of time. We’ll find a way. Follow me.’
Dazzling glass-brick and polychrome sculptures representing Wisdom, Sound and Light loomed above the entrance in contours of deep maroon, blue, beige and gleaming gold, above a passage from the Book of Isaiah: Wisdom and Knowledge Shall Be the Stability of Thy Times.
As they entered, Terri dialled a number on her cell phone. ‘Jay? Hi. It’s Terri, from… yes, you remember? How are you? Well, I’m in a predicament here…’ She turned away from them so they couldn’t hear. After two minutes she returned, beaming. ‘Jay’s a comedy writer. He works upstairs,’ she explained. ‘He’ll be down in a minute.’
‘And he remembers you from – ?’
‘Never mind. It was a Boîte à Malice job. Just think of him as a very tall man with a sense of adventure.’
They waited by the elevator banks, which were clad in polished black granite and bronze. Turnstiles and security staffin green uniforms barred their passage.
Jay, who looked very amused to be visited by Terri and her friends, came down and took them through the formalities of guest access. He was indeed very tall.
‘I can take you up as far as the 65th floor, then it’s down to subterfuge,’ he said as they waited for a car to descend to the lobby. ‘There were supposed to be police sharpshooters on the roof for the Republican Convention, but I heard they didn’t show up.’
They emerged into the Art Deco twilight of the 65th floor lobby. A backlit abstract design of waveforms and circles cast a ghostly wash of light from their left. Black-and-white floor tiles reflected zebra bands of darkness and subdued lighting around the columns. Voices suggested staff were working in the bar-and-grill area in preparation for the evening shift.
‘There should be emergency stairs,’ Jay whispered. ‘If it’s anything like our floor, they’ll be this way.’
They found the fire stairs and made their way quietly up as far as the door to the 69th floor, whichwas padlocked. ‘It’s closed up there, no need for regular access like the occupied floors,’Jay said. ‘You’re a great woman, Terri, but I’m not breaking a padlock.’
Horace elbowed him gently aside. ‘If I may be allowed…’
He removed a jeweller’s loupe from his pocket and examined the padlock. Then he took a small
leather wallet from his pocket and selected two long, thin metal tools. ‘My days in the OSS were not entirely wasted,’ he said, as the lock gave a deep click and opened. ‘Nothing broken. Up we go.’
They came out into the open air and stopped in awe. The whole city was laid out at their feet. The skyscrapers and towers of downtown formed an island in the distant haze, bisected by the needle of the Empire State Building and, beyond, the ocean. To the left, peeking from behind the Met Life Building, glistened the arcs and spire of the Chrysler.
‘Keep going up, it’s better from the 70th,’ Horace hissed, and led the way up a staircase that took them one floor higher.
They emerged on to a narrow deck, just radio antennae above them and waist-high, arched iron railings between them and the deck below. Lengths of dismantled scaffolding and construction bric-a-brac lay stacked against the door of a disused elevator shaft. To the north lay the receding expanse of Central Park, the great Reservoir shimmering at its furthest extent.
All around, they could see for miles and miles. It seemed they could see for ever.
Horace whispered: ‘Do you have the clue, Robert?’
He read it out:
‘For endless sight, climb into the light
The fire and the gold await the bold
To beat the clock, you must scale the rock
Then sally forth, and telescope north
To rescue love – or kill it
Pass the Trial by Spirit’
‘There are no telescopes,’ Horace said angrily, looking along either side of the deck.
‘They’ve been ripped out.’
‘It says telescope north,’ Terri said. ‘Can you find where the north-facing ones used to be? Maybe there are holes where their moorings were?’
Jay looked on, entirely bemused. ‘So is this what you do for fun, Terri?’
‘Honey, I so entirely do other things for fun.’
Horace let out a whoop of discovery. Robert rushed to his side. ‘There are several places where they used to be, you see? Check them. Check them.’
The Malice Box Page 35