by Donn Cortez
“That seems like—” Wolfe stopped, then shook his head. “I don’t know what it seems like. A pretty unlikely coincidence, at the least.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s a coincidence at all,” Horatio said. “Any more than I believe Doctor Sinhurma has a direct line to the Almighty.”
“So what do you believe, H?”
“I believe,” Horatio said, “in the evidence. And right now, it’s telling me to take a very close, hard look at the methods of Doctor Kirpal Sinhurma….”
The place was called the Mental Freedom Foundation, and despite the lofty title it was only a small office on the third floor of a run-down building in Little Haiti. Horatio had found it online, and booked an appointment over the phone.
The neighborhood was colorful, to say the least. Horatio parked in front of a gigantic mural depicting some sort of voodoo ritual, was greeted by loud compas music blaring from the open door of a nearby music shop and nearly stepped on a chicken fleeing from a wildly barking yellow dog. The smell of frying pork mingled with that of rotting garbage, coming respectively from a restaurant and a heap of trash bags piled up a few steps from the entrance. Horatio found the address, a brick building that looked like it had weathered its share of hurricanes, and went inside.
The elevator wasn’t working, so he took the stairs to the third floor. In a small, sparsely decorated foyer with a wheezing air conditioner, he found a man with thinning brown hair sitting behind a desk and talking rapidly on the phone, scribbling notes at the same time. He didn’t stop talking or writing when Horatio came in, just nodded and pointed at the door to the inner office. “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he said. “That’s terrible. Yes, I know. Uh-huh.”
Horatio went in. The room was an untidy mess, filing cabinets lining two walls with stacks of papers and books piled atop them. The desk in the back held more stacks and had a small Asian woman seated behind it, framed by a large window. Outside, white clouds piled up against each other on the horizon like an immense field of mutant cauliflower.
She got up and extended her hand across the desk. “Lieutenant Caine? Sun-Li Murayaki.”
Her grip was strong and quick, no more than a brief squeeze and yank. She wore a black business suit with a white blouse, her black hair long and straight and her smile professional.
“What’s the problem, Lieutenant?” she said, sitting back down and motioning for Horatio to do the same.
“It’s Horatio,” he said. “And my problem is lack of information.”
“I can’t discuss any of the cases I handle,” she said. “Nor can I disclose the whereabouts of any clients that may be currently undergoing exit counseling.”
“Exit counseling? You mean deprogramming?”
“If you like. I understand you’re just doing your job, Lieutenant, but waving a kidnapping charge at me won’t impress me. I take what I do very seriously—”
“Whoa!” he said. “Slow down, Ms. Murayaki. I’m not here to charge you with anything—this has nothing to do with any of your clients. I’m here because I was hoping I could tap your expertise.”
She studied him for a moment. “I apologize, Horatio. Unfortunately, most of my dealings with law enforcement tend to be adversarial. It’s not that I have any antagonism towards the police—quite the opposite, in fact—it’s just the nature of my business. Usually when I get a visit from an officer it’s because some demagogue is accusing me of holding one of his drones hostage. What exactly would you like to know?”
“Anything you could tell me about cult methodology.”
She frowned. “That’s a pretty big area. Can you narrow it down a bit?”
“Okay. What about recruiting?”
“They like the college crowd, especially freshmen. There’s a common perception that only stupid people join cults, but that’s not accurate. They target people who are vulnerable emotionally, not intellectually—someone in late adolescence, away from home for the first time, is just about perfect.”
“So a person with self-esteem issues would fit that description as well.”
“Sure—anyone with a big void in their life is prime. People who’ve recently lost a job or had someone close to them die are often in the crosshairs. They prefer people with money or access to money, but slave labor is valuable too.” She shrugged. “Really, they’ll take anyone they can get. To them, followers are like livestock; young and strong is always best. Breeding is important too.”
“Breeding? How so?”
“Several reasons. The more attractive the recruit, the better he or she will be at attracting more recruits. The better the family, the more likely they have access to money. If they can’t get money, there’s always the ‘worldly goods are evil’ approach. Convince them to hock the jewelry, the car, even the clothes, and donate the proceeds to the organization.” She sighed. “Nobody ever seems to complain when the Glorious Leader owns a dozen Bentleys, though.”
Horatio nodded. “Of course not. So how does a cult go about converting someone with a brain into someone who follows orders without question?”
“Love bombing.”
Horatio’s eyebrows went up.
“It’s a technique where everything the target does is met with unconditional love—at first. No judgment, just acceptance. I had a former cult member describe it as sort of like being swarmed by golden retrievers. You cheat on your girlfriend? Not your fault. You have a drug problem? We don’t care. You steal from your family? They were asking for it. No matter how irrational, that kind of positive reinforcement is addictive. And they don’t let up, either; once a cult targets a potential member they stick with him every hour they can. They’ll show up where he works, where he hangs out, where he lives.”
“So the recruit does whatever he’s asked because he’s loved?”
“It’s not that simple. Once the target is hooked, the love becomes very conditional. It’s withheld as punishment for breaking any of the rules of the cult. Those break down into two main categories: the standard ones, like ‘no unauthorized contact with strangers,’ ‘no questioning the decisions of the leader,’ ‘only the cult loves you’; and the ones specific to a particular group, which can be pragmatic—‘no sex,’ or bizarre—’You must never say the word “yellow”. ’ Breaking any of these results in the love being cut off, sending the addict into emotional withdrawal.”
“Or to put it another way, they gorge on approval then get put on a diet,” Horatio said. “Leaving them literally starving for affection.”
“Splurge and purge?” Murayaki said. “That’s as good a metaphor as any. Emotional bulemia—except it’s your mind being ravaged, not your body.”
“So they prey on the unloved,” Horatio said. “Who else?”
“The idealistic. A lot of cults masquerade as volunteer organizations, doing community work for free. Idealists,” she said flatly, “tend to be naïve.”
“I sense that doesn’t apply to you,” Horatio said drily.
“Oh, I’ve elevated cynicism to an art form,” she said. “Anyway, once the cult has them working it doesn’t let up. Someone who’s busy and exhausted doesn’t have time to think. And of course, the ‘community project’ always winds up being something directly beneficial to the cult.
“Those are general approaches, but cult recruiters can be a lot more focused. They’re salesmen—they have a whole bag of tricks, and they pull out whatever seems appropriate for a particular subject. If you’re a complainer, they’ll give you an outlet for your grievances. If you’re socially conscious, they’ll talk about politics. They don’t just put together a profile of you—they put together a profile of what the ideal friend for you would be, and then they manufacture that identity. Sometimes it’s the recruiter themselves, sometimes they assign someone else in the cult to become that person. Either way, that person’s job is to put you in a position to be receptive to the cult’s ideas.”
Horatio had been studying Murayaki while she spoke. She was obviously passionate about what she
did, but there was a cold, objective intelligence at work too.
“And sometimes,” Horatio said, “the recruiter is an attractive member of the opposite sex.”
“Absolutely. But so far, all we’ve talked about is bait—how they get potential members interested. The techniques they use once they have your attention are far more sophisticated.”
“Such as?”
“Hurt and Rescue, for one. Put the potential recruit into a dangerous or uncomfortable situation, then ‘rescue’ them. Properly done, you can even get the recruit to ask for help. Gratitude leads to trust, which leads to manipulation. Or you can involve the recruit in a trust exchange, where you do something for them without asking, and they feel obligated to do something for you in return, building an artificial bond which can then be played upon.”
“Don’t all these games become transparent after a while?”
She leaned back, picked up a letter opener shaped like a tiny Japanese sword and began toying with it. “You have to remember that at this stage, nothing that questionable has happened. You’ve made some new friends. They pay a lot of attention to you. They do nice things for you. They seem to share the same values you do…and all they’re asking for is a little bit of your time.”
She made her eyes go big and her voice soft. “Just come to a meeting, okay? Really, it would mean a lot to me….”
He grinned. “Okay, I get it. And once you agree to go to said meeting—”
“—it often turns out to be in a remote or isolated place. An evening can quickly become a weekend. Little or no sleep, food with no protein, lots of group activities like singing or chanting. No privacy—a member of the cult is always there, talking to you, touching you. When they think you’re ready, they start the last stage.”
She paused, her eyes distant, then took a deep breath and continued. “It’s called breaking. Basically, they destroy your personality in order to build a new one—one that will do whatever the cult says. They’ve already laid the groundwork; by this point the recruit believes the cult’s values parallel his own, and the leader of the cult has been portrayed as the living embodiment of those values. A more perfect version of the recruit has been created in his mind, the kind of person that he could be if he wanted to.”
“A more popular person?” Horatio ventured.
“Never heard it put that way before—but yeah, sure. More popular, more attractive, happier—just better in every way. That’s the carrot…and then they hit you with the stick.
“It starts with confessions. Everyone’s feeling emotional, so it’s not hard to get the recruit to admit to something. Then the accusations start—you shouldn’t have done that, you have no ethics, you’re a terrible person. It’s the last thing the recruit expects; having been pushed up this emotional ladder, they suddenly have their support yanked away.”
“It sounds brutal.”
“You have no idea. It’s like having your emotions gang-raped. People that have carefully portrayed themselves as trustworthy are now calling you garbage. Reducing the recruit to tears isn’t enough; they won’t stop until the subject is curled up in a fetal ball on the floor. At that point, the subject is filled with such self-loathing they’ll do anything to escape…but it’s not as simple as just running away. Aside from the fact that they’re probably in the middle of nowhere, it’s not that easy to get away from yourself.”
“Except,” Horatio said, “to become a different person.”
“Exactly. A senior member of the cult—someone the recruit has come to respect—comes forward and embraces them. They offer forgiveness, redemption. All the recruit has to do is reject the person they used to be—which, at that moment, is all they want to do anyway. They seize the opportunity to become a new person—and the cult has another member.
“Even then, it’s not over. The new recruit is in his most malleable state, and they capitalize on that. This is when the false front the cult has put up vanishes and their real ideology comes out. The new personality soaks it up like a sponge—having rejected his old values, he needs something to replace them. The new structure is kept in place and reinforced by keeping the member busy, exhausted and overloaded with supercharged emotion. Disobey or question the smallest rule, and the love is immediately replaced by intense disapproval. To someone in the cultist’s state of mind, it feels like being rejected by God himself.”
“Which is the point,” Horatio said. “You know, I get the feeling none of this is purely academic for you.”
“What?” She looked taken aback.
“I just mean that you seem to be drawing to a certain degree on firsthand experience—”
Now she looked unbelieving. “Excuse me? Are you trying to say I’m some sort of unbalanced ex-cult member myself?”
“No, no, I—”
“Because that is a very hurtful thing to say.” She looked on the verge of tears—and then, abruptly, her voice and face settled into an easy, blank expression. “Hurt and Rescue,” she said. “See how easy it is to yank somebody’s chain? I had you on the verge of apologizing for doing your job. Another few minutes and you’d be thinking what a swell person I was for forgiving you so quickly.”
Horatio shook his head ruefully. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you learned how to do that from talking to clients.”
“No, I learned how to do that by apprenticing to a master. He taught me how get inside anyone’s head and push their buttons, without ever feeling a flicker of remorse or guilt about it. I used to think of nonbelievers as machines; they looked like people, but they didn’t really have souls. It was my job to get the machine to the workshop, where it could be given a soul. Anything I did or said to get the machine there was justifiable.”
“You were a recruiter?”
She nodded. “One of the best. I belonged to the Divine Order of Enlightened Thought and Wisdom, headed by a woman who called herself Boddhisatva Gaia. Her real name was Irene Caldwell.”
“I wasn’t aware there were cults with female leaders.”
She snorted. “What, you think only men have charisma? Women play the game just as well. If I hadn’t been physically taken away, I’d still be working for them.”
“And now you perform that service for others?”
She looked at him blankly, and said nothing.
“Right, you can’t discuss that,” he said, smiling. “No problem.”
She hesitated, then said, “Do you understand the concept of retroactive consent?”
“I think so. Usually applied to mentally disturbed people who’ve stopped taking their meds, correct? The argument being that you can force someone who can’t make rational decisions into treatment that returns their ability to choose.”
“Right. That’s the principle we work on—the person may disagree violently with what we do initially, but afterward they’re very grateful.”
“That,” Horatio said, “is a very slippery slope, Ms. Murayaki.”
“That it is, Lieutenant Caine. But after all the people I’ve pushed down it, I feel somewhat obligated to try and haul a few people the other way.”
Horatio stood. “I can appreciate that. I hope they do, too.”
“So far, I have a recidivism rate of less than five percent. Not perfect, but—” She shrugged. “I’m only mortal, right?”
“Aren’t we all?” Horatio said.
The Vitality Method Clinic was at the edge of Northwest Miami, out where suburbia shifted to swampland and local residents had gotten used to finding the occasional alligator in their swimming pool. The Hummer’s big tires crunched their way up a driveway of pulverized white seashell, through wrought-iron gates set into stone walls painted a soothing shade of blue. A security camera tracked Horatio as he drove in.
He parked in the center of the turnaround in front of the main building, a sprawling structure that looked more like a mansion than a clinic. Horatio got out, took off his sunglasses and looked around. Late-afternoon sunlight shone down on a well-tended expans
e of lawn and thick hedges bracketing the house. The driveway branched off and around the building on the right.
The man that came out to greet him looked like his natural environment was poolside, his natural activity handing out towels. He wore neoprene sandals, white pants and a T-shirt the same aquamarine as his eyes. He was young, tanned and muscular, with wavy, shoulder-length black hair and a broad white smile that reminded Horatio of a gleeful time-share salesman.
“I’m sorry, you can’t park that there,” he said, his smile turning apologetic.
“Sure I can,” Horatio said with a smile of his own. “It’s an official police vehicle and a Hummer. I can park pretty much anywhere…and you are?”
The man’s eyebrows went up, but his smile didn’t falter. “Randolph. Is there anything I can help you with?”
Horatio resisted the urge to ask him for a towel. “Yes, you can,” he said. “I’d like to see Doctor Sinhurma.”
“I’ll see if he’s available,” Randolph said. “Follow me.”
Horatio let himself be led inside, through an immense, double-paneled door that would have looked more at home on a courthouse. Or a church, Horatio thought.
The foyer reinforced his first impression; a stained-glass skylight painted the marble floor with stripes of crimson and deep purple, while the high, polished wood island in the center of the room seemed almost like a cross between a sergeant’s booking desk and a pulpit.
The blond woman behind it wore a T-shirt and smile that matched his guide’s. “Hi!” she said brightly. “Welcome to the Vitality Method Clinic!”
Horatio stopped, returned her smile with one of considerably less wattage and put his hands on his hips, casually pushing aside his jacket to show the badge clipped to his belt. “Hi yourself,” he said.
“Marcie, can you tell Doctor Sinhurma a police officer is here to see him?” Randolph said.
“Sure,” Marcie said. “Just a second.” She picked up a phone.
Horatio took in details while he waited. Two more security cameras, in either corner of the roof. Motion detectors over the door. Large windows with almost-abstract patterns of iron rebar overlaying them, armor disguised as art.