The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone

by George C. Chesbro

  “Afraid God is looking over your shoulder, Harry?”

  “Come on, Frederickson; I’m not like those other fools. I just figure it’s best not to take too many chances. After the Christmas Eve thing, even more money is going to be coming in. Something real big is going to happen; I can feel it.”

  I frowned. “What ‘Christmas Eve thing’?”

  “That’s right; you don’t know about it. Carling’s going to issue a press release tonight.”

  “What will the press release say?”

  “Garth’s going to make some kind of special announcement at midnight on Christmas Eve. Those fools think he’s going to pronounce himself the Messiah.” August paused, shrugged. “Maybe they’re right. Hell, maybe Garth is the Messiah. I have to admit he’d make a good one.”

  I felt a chill pass through me that had nothing to do with the weather. “Garth told you this?”

  “Hell, no. Nobody’s even seen Garth for days. He’s supposed to have gone into retreat to prepare for the big announcement. He’ll hold a press conference inside the bathhouse, with the public invited to attend. It’s going to be something; Carling plans to make some kind of satellite hookup so the whole world can hear what Garth has to say, when he says it.”

  “Who told you all this?”

  “Tommy Carling. He actually runs the whole operation, you know. Garth doesn’t care about anything but doing his own thing, so somebody has to take care of business. Maybe that will all change after Christmas Eve.”

  “And you don’t have any idea where Garth could be?”

  “No.”

  “Who does?”

  “Carling may know, but if he does he isn’t telling. He says Garth doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “What about Marl Braxton? Does he know where Garth is?”

  “I don’t know … I don’t think so. He’s been just kind of moping around the place, looking lost, since Garth disappeared. Braxton’s a tough man, but he spooks me. I think he’s crazy, and Garth is the only thing holding him together.” August paused, took a deep breath, then tentatively touched me on the shoulder. “Look, Frederickson, you’re picking on me—but I’m not the only phony hanging around there.”

  “Harry, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. You’re not the only con man, I’m sure, who smelled money in the thing growing up around Garth.”

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying. I may have made Garth famous, but I’m just a little guy in that organization; nobody pays any attention to me, and I don’t have any say in what goes on. I’m talking about a big shot.”

  “Which big shot is a phony?”

  “The nun.”

  “Sister Kate?”

  “Yeah. She’s good at keeping track of money, and I’d probably be a rich man now if she wasn’t; but if she’s a nun, then I’m Mickey Mouse.”

  “How do you know she’s not a nun?”

  “Because I am a con artist, and it takes one to know one—or even two. She and Tommy Carling are thick with each other, and I don’t believe they met for the first time at the bathhouse; I think they knew each other before. I keep my dark glasses on for effect, and I guess maybe people tend to forget that I really can see. Well, I do see things, and I say there’s something going on between Carling and that broad. They’re always schmoozing with each other, if you know what I mean. I think they’re planning to steal all the money eventually.”

  “Frederickson!”

  “Hello, Dane,” I said to the big teenager I’d found by himself, looking rather forlorn, staring out a thick Plexiglas window of the hospital’s recreation room. His eyes had lit up when he’d seen me.

  “What are you doing here, man?”

  “I came to say hello, Dane. Christmas can be a lonely time when you’re locked up someplace and you have nobody to share it with. I figured a lot of the other kids would be on home leave, and you might like some company.”

  The boy swallowed, looked down at his feet. “Yeah. The kids here miss you, Frederickson; I miss you. You’re a good teacher.”

  “Thank you. I’ll make it a point to visit more often. For now, how would you like to come out with me for the day?”

  The boy quickly looked at me, then averted his gaze as sadness moved in his eyes. “I’d love to, Frederickson, but I can’t. I’m DFY. I can’t go home, and I can’t go out with volunteers.”

  I still had my master key from the clinic, and I’d been pleased, if not surprised, to find that it opened the doors in the children’s hospital as well. I’d been prepared to spring Dane Potter illegally, if necessary, but I’d found a better way. “A special dispensation from the director here, Dane. It seems you’ve been displaying some very positive changes in behavior and attitude, and your therapist thinks it may have something to do with the relationship between you and me; she thinks I’m a good role model—which you and I know is nonsense, Dane, but we won’t tell her. I have permission to take you into the city for a few hours to check out all the decorations and lights. If it works out, they may let me take you out again.”

  “I’d like that very much, Frederickson,” the boy said quietly. “I won’t cause any trouble.”

  “Oh, I know you won’t—because I’ll kick the shit out of you if you try.”

  Dane Potter laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

  “It looks like you could use some clothes. Maybe we’ll do a little shopping after we check out Rockefeller Center.”

  “You don’t have to buy me anything, Frederickson. It’s enough that you’ll take me out of here for a couple of hours.”

  “Buying you slacks, sneakers, and maybe a sweater would be my pleasure. Dane. It would be a Christmas present, but it would also be a little payment for something I’d like you to do for me.”

  “What do you want me to do, Frederickson?”

  “I’ll let you know. You ready to roll?”

  Dane Potter grinned. “Yeah, man.”

  Traffic was heavy with last-minute Christmas shoppers, and it took almost two hours to get into the city and down to the Bowery. I left the car in a garage, and walked with Dane Potter the three blocks to the bathhouse. I steered him around the traffic circle, took up a position across the street. There was a crush of people around the bathhouse, but most of them looked like tourists—with the needy now being cared for in various caring houses around the city. Police barricades had been set up, and the lines of people were being greeted by green-jacketed members of Garth’s People, who were also handing out free coffee, doughnuts, and cookies. Above the bathhouse, the new glass dome gleamed like a diamond in this coal-mine neighborhood.

  “What is it you want me to do, Frederickson?”

  “Just be patient, Dane. Any time we spend here, I’ll make up to you later, or on another visit.”

  “What are all those people doing over there?”

  I said something about Christmas shoppers as I kept scanning the crowds in front of the bathhouse. There was no sign of Garth, but after about half an hour Tommy Carling and Sister Kate, both wearing green jackets, emerged from inside the bathhouse to talk with the people. My hands trembled slightly as I removed the binoculars I was carrying from around my neck and handed them to Potter.

  “Dane,” I said, “I want you to scan the people over on the sidewalk and let me know if there’s anyone you recognize.”

  Dane Potter put the binoculars to his eyes, slowly moved his head back and forth. Suddenly he stiffened, reached out with his right hand and clutched at the sleeve of my parka.

  “That’s Marilyn—the woman I was telling you about! What the hell is she doing in a nun’s outfit?!”

  “Are you sure that’s her?” I asked tightly. “You told me that the woman who helped you escape from the hospital and took you home with her had blond hair. That woman’s hair is red.”

  “Then she must have been wearing a wig,” the boy said breathlessly as he continued to stare at Sister Kate through the binoculars, “or she’s wearing one now. That’s her, Frederickson!
I’m sure of it. I’m not about to forget the face of the best piece of ass I’ve ever had just because she turns out to be a nun.” He lowered the binoculars, looked at me. His eyes were wide. “She wasn’t all in my mind, Frederickson, was she?! Marilyn’s real!”

  18.

  “Nine-six-seven-forty.”

  “This is Robert Frederickson. I must speak with Mr. Lippitt immediately. This is Valhalla priority.”

  There was a whir, a click, another whir, and then Mr. Lippitt came on the line.

  “What is it, Mongo?”

  “Tommy Carling is a K.G.B. officer, Lippitt. He was Slycke’s controller, and maybe the man who entrapped the good doctor in the first place. The man’s a virtuoso spy, and he’s been playing me like I was the entire Guarneri Quartet.”

  There was a pause of a beat or two. “You’re certain of this, Mongo?”

  “I’m certain there’s a woman posing as a nun in this operation who’s been working with a most unholy devotion at having me killed from the moment Garth began to respond to stimuli. I say that makes her K.G.B., just like the two operatives who’d been planted at Prolix. She had to be plugged into everything that was happening up in the clinic—but she wasn’t actually there. Someone else was.”

  “Slycke.”

  “Sure, Slycke; but he’d been set up from the beginning to be the fall guy in order to mask the real spider up there. I hear from someone whose opinion in these matters I trust that Carling and this woman are close buddies, and have been for some time. I say that makes Carling K.G.B. too. When you start to noodle that possibility, a lot of very scary things begin to fall into place.

  “From the very first time Garth began to show any signs of awareness, Carling planned to cut me out so that he’d have Garth all to himself, without any interference from me. He certainly knew about Mama Baker’s pathological hatred of dwarfs, and on the very first day I walked in there he set up the situation where Baker would know who—and what—I was, and kill me if he ever got the chance. But first Carling tried to kill me by having his girl friend manipulate a psychotic kid from the children’s hospital. When that failed, and when I countered his move to have me barred from the clinic by filing a seventy-two-hour notice for Garth’s release, he set up the trap in the clinic, with Slycke as the sacrificial bait. He’d removed Garth the night before, along with Marl Braxton—probably for the reason he gave me: Garth wouldn’t leave without Braxton. It was Carling who doped up the patients before forcing Slycke to call me. Then he let everybody loose, ambushed me, and left me up in the clinic to die. The way he figured it, he’d be able to observe Garth’s behavior at his leisure—and maybe run a few drug experiments of his own—without any interference from anyone. He fooled me good, Lippitt.”

  “Us, too—if you’re right.”

  “I’m right. He knew you’d get the goods on Slycke, and assume that was the end of the matter. Incidentally, the phony nun I mentioned—”

  “I assume you’re talking about Sister Kate,” Lippitt interrupted in a somewhat distant tone.

  Stunned, it took me a few seconds to react. “How the hell do you know she calls herself Sister Kate?!”

  Again, there was a pause. I’d known the answer to my question almost as soon as I’d asked it. Lippitt was thinking about something else—probably the same thing I was thinking about. When he finally spoke, I could hear the tension—and a trace of fear, for Garth—in his voice.

  “We began monitoring the situation as soon as we found out where Garth, Braxton, and Carling were, Mongo.”

  “You’ve got a man in there.”

  “Yes. The circumstances of Garth’s illness and behavior have always had national security implications, as you’re well aware.”

  “Sure. But you might have told me you had somebody keeping an eye on him.”

  “Perhaps you’re right—although I’m not sure what difference it would have made. The two of you were obviously estranged from each other. I care a great deal for Garth personally, but he didn’t appear to be in any danger. The D.I.A.’s concern was professional.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I paused, shook my had as I recalled Tommy Carling’s words when I had asked him about financing for the reconstruction of the bathhouse. “God provides, bullshit,” I continued tightly. “It’s the K.G.B. which has been providing. I love it; Russian taxpayers have been paying to help feed New York City’s hungry and homeless. We’ll probably never know for certain how much of this business that’s grown up around Garth was spontaneous, and how much was engineered by the Russians. Do you think the K.G.B. knocked off those two TV preachers, just to get the ball rolling a little faster?”

  “It’s quite possible, maybe even probable. We both know there are assassination techniques that will mimic strokes, or cause them. I don’t see that it makes any difference, or why they bothered—if they did. Even before those sanctimonious cretins kicked off, the K.G.B. had everything going for them. At the beginning, they were able to monitor firsthand the effects of a new and potentially very powerful mind-control agent. Tommy Carling observed this closely, and then improvised brilliantly—I wish he worked for me. Now he and this woman have virtually complete control of a worldwide messianic religious movement which has its roots in the United States.”

  “Carling also picked up on a few very sensitive secrets along the way.”

  “Indeed,” Lippitt said distantly. He was thinking again.

  “How tightly wrapped is the cover story about Orville Madison dying in a hunting accident?”

  “Pretty tight. What they’ve learned about Madison or the Valhalla Project isn’t important right now.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Do you know about Garth’s disappearance, and the announcement he’s supposed to make tomorrow night?”

  “Yes. I had a lengthy chat with Harry August—which is how I got on to Carling and the woman.”

  “Could Harry August be K.G.B.?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’m aware that August’s claim that Garth healed him really kicked off the whole thing, but he had his own reasons. He’s just a very sad human being, not a K.G.B. plant.”

  “Mongo,” Lippitt said tersely, “you must make every effort to find Garth and take him out. Before tomorrow night.”

  “My thoughts exactly. You agree that he’s in danger?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “This business about Garth going into retreat to prepare himself for some announcement that he really is the Messiah is bullshit; it’s contrary to everything Garth has said and done up to this point.”

  “Precisely.”

  “It’s why I called; I was hoping you could help me. Does your man have any idea where Carling could be keeping Garth?”

  “No—and he’s not in a position to find out, even if it were a good idea for him to risk exposure by pressing for information. He started off as just another guy on an air mattress, and now he wears a green jacket.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Mongo, because of who you are and what we’ve been through, I’ll tell you—but only if you insist.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “No. The information won’t help you. He’s doing everything he can do right now to find out where Garth is being kept, and for him to be seen talking to you might totally destroy his effectiveness. It might even be a death warrant for him. I also think it could be extremely dangerous for you even to go there. Whatever the K.G.B. is planning, it’s very close to the witching hour; Carling and the woman will be extremely watchful to make sure their plans aren’t upset at the last moment. He’s already tried to kill you twice before; this time, if you show up out of the blue after so many weeks and he even begins to suspect that you’re on to him, he might decide to kill you out of hand. What excuse could you give for going there?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lippitt,” I said, feeling my frustration and fear winding up like a mainspring, “Carling and the woman are pr
obably the only people who know where Garth is! How the hell am I supposed to find my brother if I don’t confront them?!”

  This time there was a very long pause, and I could hear the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency breathing heavily on the other end of the line. He was thinking again … to no avail. “I don’t have an answer for you, Mongo,” he said at last in a very low voice. “Your death would upset me.”

  “I appreciate your thinking about me, Lippitt, but that still isn’t an answer. I was thinking of walking in there and sticking a gun in Carling’s ear.”

  “It wouldn’t work, Mongo—and after you’ve given it some thought, you’ll know it won’t work. Both Carling and the woman are K.G.B., which means they’re as tough as they come. Neither one will tell you what you want to know—and that’s assuming you could get one or both alone, which may be a false assumption at this point.”

  “I’ll get them alone—and I’ll blow their brains out if they don’t tell me where they’ve got my brother.”

  “In which case, you’d almost certainly end up blowing their brains out—and that wouldn’t get Garth out of danger. You don’t know how many K.G.B. soldiers Carling and the woman may have around them in there, and you don’t know what contingency plans they may have. At the very least, you’d tip your hand. I’ve told you I don’t know what way you should go, but I’m sure that isn’t it—not yet. We still have a little over twenty-four hours to try other ways.”

  I screwed my eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, slowly let it out. “You think they plan to kill him, don’t you, Lippitt?”

  “After hearing what you’ve told me … yes.”

  “But, damn it, why would they want to kill him now? Like you said, they have control of a global religious movement. Talk about … killing … the Golden Goose!”

  “But they’ve never had control of Garth, Mongo. Also, if I read my history correctly, the death of the central figure in any messianic movement always solidifies that movement. Even after Jesus’ crucifixion, it was a whole lot of years before Paul produced the writings that would form the basis of Christianity. I don’t see the Russians being that patient. The K.G.B. may be thinking of solidifying their gains right now, taking over the whole operation by removing their one potential threat—Garth himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if Harry August was also on their hit list. I think a more interesting question is why they felt Garth had to disappear days before this supposed announcement.”