Descent from Xanadu

by Harold Robbins

  Still unsteady on her feet, Sofia turned to the window and looked out as she made her way to the bathroom. Outside, she saw a long white expanse of beach, large palm trees lining the road beside it and white high-rise buildings on the curve of the road. She turned to the nurse. “Where are we?” she asked, only half in jest. “Is this Santa Monica?”

  The nurse’s speech was American, but the giggle was pure Japanese. “You’re a long way from Santa Monica,” she said, gesturing toward the window. “Does that look like Santa Monica?”

  “I don’t know,” Sofia answered. “I’ve never been to Santa Monica.”

  The nurse smiled, pointing. “That hill sloping out toward the sea is Diamond Head.”

  “Hawaii?” Surprise echoed in Sofia’s voice.

  “Honolulu,” the Japanese girl said. “Your room is practically in the center of Waikiki Beach.”

  Sofia stared at the beach for a moment, then turned back to the nurse. “How long have I been here?”

  “I’ve been on duty since seven this morning and you were still asleep.” The little nurse laughed. “According to the chart you were admitted at two in the morning.”

  “I don’t remember a thing,” Sofia said.

  “The night-duty nurse said that you were asleep when you were admitted.” The little nurse giggled again. “You must have had the bon voyage party to end all bon voyage parties, Mrs. Evans.”

  Sofia stared at her without speaking. Mrs. Evans? That was close enough in sound. Ivancich. “I think I need a shower,” she said.

  “It will pick you up,” the nurse agreed. “And meanwhile I’ll order some breakfast for you. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee, okay?”

  “Lots of coffee,” Sofia said. “Very strong.”

  The Japanese giggle sounded again. “We specialize in strong coffee, Mrs. Evans,” she said. “It’s Kona coffee, the strongest in the world, and it’s grown here in Hawaii.”

  “Will I have time before the doctor comes?”

  “Plenty of time,” the nurse answered. “Dr. Walton’s ten minutes is always closer to a half hour. You’ll find fresh bath towels and a lovely silk robe waiting for you in the bathroom.”

  ***

  She was on her third cup of coffee when the doctor’s knock sounded at the door. The nurse opened it. He was still outside the door as his voice came to Sofia. “You can take a break, Jane,” the doctor said in a half-familiar voice. “I’ll call you as soon as I have spoken to Mrs. Evans.”

  The doctor stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “Had a good night’s rest, Mrs. Evans?” he asked with a faint smile.

  “Brad?” she asked, surprised.

  “Dr. Walton,” he answered.

  “That was shitty of you,” she said. “I’m not a child. I could have been told.”

  “We thought you’d be more secure if we had you immobilized rather than moving around where even an accidental recognition could bring immediate trouble. The next best thing to being invisible is being a patient on a well-covered stretcher.”

  “We’ve not been bothered,” she said.

  “That’s because of our friend,” he said. “He’s the decoy. There were quite a few agents following him around hoping that he’d lead them to you. Fortunately, he was not the target, you were.”

  “Are you really a doctor, or a security agent?”

  “I’m really a doctor,” he smiled. “Moonlighting as a security man.”

  “Okay, now what happens?”

  “I’ll try to explain as simply as I can. The U.S. government has a special program administered by the departments of State, Defense and Justice cooperatively. Each for its own reasons often requires an exchange of old identities for new. Welcome to the program, Mrs. Marissa Evans.”

  She stared at him. “And our friend arranged that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how? That’s a government program.”

  “He has many friends,” Brad said. “And the government agrees with him that you’re completely qualified for the program’s services.”

  “Then you are a government agent?” she asked.

  “Not really,” he replied. “Let us say that this is just another job on which I moonlight.”

  She remained silent for a moment, then rose and walked toward the window. Without turning to him, she spoke over her shoulder. “Tell me more about this identity that you have planned for me.”

  “We change you entirely—physically, personality, environmentally. Changing you cosmetically is not enough. A gesture of your hand or the way you walk or talk could give you away to an expert. So we teach you other ways to replace your own habits. And finally, we place you in another environment in which you will make another life, one that will enable you to live safely and securely. Far from the dangers which now confront you.”

  She still didn’t turn to him. “Does that mean I could never go back? Not to anyone or anything I ever cared for?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  She turned to him, meeting his eyes levelly. “And what if I do not want to be someone else? What if I like myself the way I am?”

  “You’re not a prisoner,” he said. “You can walk out this door whenever you want. But remember, we guarantee your safety where others you might know endanger it.”

  She remained silent, watching him.

  “And of course you’d be entirely on your own. There is nothing or no one we could send to help you,” he said.

  “Even our friend?” she asked. “Does he say that, too?”

  “I cannot speak for him,” he answered. “I can speak only for the program.”

  She stared into his eyes. “I, too, am a doctor,” she said slowly. “All my life I have worked as a doctor, all my life I’ve tried to push back the frontiers of man’s existence. If your program doesn’t allow me to work at my dreams, then security means nothing to me. My life means nothing to me.”

  “Your work will be one of the first things that will have to go. It’s a dead giveaway. And I mean, dead.”

  He paused for a moment. His voice was soft. “I understand you, Doctor. But please, think about the program before you turn it down. There are many other beautiful things in life.”

  There was definiteness in her voice: “Not for me.”

  “Okay, it’s your decision,” he said. “But, at least, let me help you. Perhaps I can give you a little edge.”

  “How?”

  “Looking as you do now, they’d pick you up within three days after you showed up in public. I suggest we perform some slight cosmetic changes. A mini face lift, touch up and a little on your eyes and nose. We’ll cap and shorten your front teeth. After that we’ll disguise the eyes with brown contact lenses, cut your long blonde hair into soft curls and color it chestnut brown. We’ll teach you to use a completely different makeup to complement the darker hair and eyes.” He paused for a moment. “It’s not perfect, but it’s an edge for you. At least, they’ll have to look more than once to recognize you. Especially as you become accustomed to your new identity. All the I.D. we’ll get for you will help, too. Passport, old credit line at a good bank, store credit cards, driver’s license, the works.”

  “Are you allowed to do that for me even if I don’t agree to join the program?”

  He hesitated a moment. “Not officially.”

  “Then why?” she asked.

  “I know a little about the work you’ve done,” he answered. “I respect you. You’re a real doctor. It would be terrible if all the knowledge you’ve gained were wasted.”

  She looked down at her hands. “Thank you, Brad,” she said gratefully. “How long will all of this take?”

  “Ten days. Maybe less. It depends upon how quickly you heal,” he answered.

  She took a deep breath. “Okay. When do we start?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  14

  There is a small beach called Paradise Cove on the Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu. On weekends and hol
idays the small dirt road leading to the beach is loaded with cars and vans searching for surf and sun. A small restaurant serves the more affluent, hence most of the people in it are middle aged. The greater number of visitors are young and more interested in surf and sun than food. They bring baskets of food or throng around the hotdog and pizza stands near the unofficial parking lot.

  It was three o’clock on Saturday, and the sun, beginning to move into the west, was glaring on the beach and the cooking bodies. There were not too many surfers because the rollers came in slowly on the calm sea. To the north, in a small rock formation leading to a bluff two hundred feet perpendicularly straight up from the water, gays and lovers found tiny places of privacy for their own worlds. Occasionally the shrill voice of the gulls searching for scraps rose above the humming voices of the bathers and the breaking waves rolling across the beach.

  Another sound came from the sky. The rotors of a helicopter. The nudies grabbed their bikinis, and the topless girls slipped into bras as they gazed upward at the sky. A muttering of disappointment arose from the beach as the lettering on the copter’s side became evident: CHURCH OF ETERNAL LIFE. Speakers boomed their message to the beach, as the copter banked toward the two-hundred-foot-high rock bluff. “THE CHURCH OF ETERNAL LIFE BIDS YOU PEACE!” And the copter slid beyond the bluff out of sight.

  The beach scene returned to normal. The nudies were nude again, the topless girls turned young breasts up to the sun. An invisible voice chimed shrilly from one of the rock shelters. “Damn!” the boy’s voice complained. “You came all over my face!”

  “Shmuck,” said a deeper voice. “You shouldn’t have turned your head.”

  “But I thought it was the police copter,” the voice whined.

  An open-handed slap echoed among the rocks. “Aw, shut up,” the other voice answered. Thus the beach began to resume its normal sounds.

  What no one on the beach noticed or heard was a blimp floating in the sky, shielded by the hot afternoon sun glaring behind it.

  ***

  Judd, Fast Eddie and John sat in a circle around a fifty-inch television screen. Beneath their feet were the cables leading to the video camera and its telescopic zoom lenses; a directional microphone coordinated the picture beside it.

  The video camera operator called to them over his shoulder: “The copter’s landing. Shall I cut it in?”

  “Go ahead,” Judd said. They all studied the screen.

  The sound of the rotors roared through the speakers as the copter slipped slowly to a ringed concrete target a hundred feet from the edge of the bluff; very little dust blew up from the downdraft of the blades. The motor was switched off and the rotors slowed to a stop. The sound of young voices singing reached the microphone as the small ladder from the cabin angled to the ground.

  Two tall young men dressed in long gray robes appeared first and proceeded down the steps. They turned and knelt, forehead touching the ground, facing the copter door. A moment later the Maharishi himself emerged. Even taller than the two men, his gray hair and beard whipping in the breeze around his regal face, he stood silent, listening to the young voices sing.

  “Open up the picture,” Judd called. “I want to see the girls.”

  The picture widened on the big screen. There were fourteen girls, all in violet chiffon saris. All had white blossoms woven into their long hair, and each was holding a basket of flowers. Their soft voices were chanting and the lyric wafted gently in the air. “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.”

  The Maharishi, still framed in the copter door, looked down at them, his outstretched arms held over them. His voice was soft and rich. “I bid you peace, my children.”

  In unison the girls knelt, bending their foreheads to the ground before him. “All peace comes from the Father,” they intoned. “All love comes from the Father.”

  The Maharishi acknowledged the salutation and bade them rise. He began to descend the copter steps. The girls ran before him, strewing flowers from their baskets in his path. The two young men followed him.

  “Is she there?” Judd asked John.

  “She’s there,” John said. He called to the cameraman. “Zoom in tight on the middle girl on the right line.”

  A girl began to fill the screen. She was a pretty girl, but looked just like the others.

  “How do you know for sure?” Judd asked. “They all look alike to me.”

  “Watch,” John said.

  They watched for a moment as the girl seemed to stumble slightly. One of her flowers fell from her hair and, as she knelt and picked it up to fix it in her hair, she half-turned as if she sought deliberately to face the camera.

  “There she is,” John said without expression. “I knew she’d be there. Alana is probably the best girl we have.”

  Judd stood watching her. “Where did you find her?”

  “She was in the New York Police Department, street undercover agent. They wanted her to take a desk job that she didn’t want. She likes action. She came to us.”

  “She’s young,” Judd said.

  “Not as young as she looks,” John said. “Twenty-five.”

  “That’s young,” Judd said. He picked up the telephone to the pilot. “Let’s take it back to the base.”

  John looked at him. “You don’t want to look over the retreat and the property?”

  “We already have that on tape, haven’t we?” Judd asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s look at it in the office. It’s got to be more comfortable there than here in this sardine can.”

  ***

  The offices were on the eighteenth floor of a new green, all-glass building on Century Boulevard, near the entrance to the Los Angeles Airport. The conference room was an interior room without windows. In the center of the room was a large table covered completely with a papier-mâché bas-relief map of the Church of Eternal Life and the entire surrounding area.

  John gestured with a wooden pointer. “The scale of the map is one inch to the quarter-mile. The red line shows the boundaries of the property, from the bluff against the sea down to the gates closing the private road from the Coast Highway.

  “You’ll notice two circles of yellow. The larger one indicates the boundary of the bluff where the copter landed. The smaller is the boundary of the open area around the road gates. The yellow lines are our drop targets.”

  “Why can’t we just blow through the gates?” Judd asked.

  “Not that easy. There are three tracks of rolled hardened steel bars, twenty feet high, each gate opening in the opposite direction from the next, one to the right, next to the left and so on, finally to the right again. They are all electrified, connected to barbed wire at the top of the stone fence around the property. They are also tied to the police and fire departments of Malibu and fire departments of Malibu and Trancas. The Maharishi has made sure that everything is legally correct at the retreat. Needless to say, his relationships with the local authorities are cordial.”

  “How do you plan to get in then?” Judd asked. “Parachutes?”

  “No,” John answered. “First, the planes would be heard, second, we’d need at least a two-thousand-foot drop to maneuver the chutes onto the targets. We have to go in low and silent.”

  “Okay,” Judd repeated. “How?”

  “Hang gliders.”

  “Good idea,” Judd said.

  The pointer touched a peak across the Coast Highway slightly north of the retreat. “There’s a plateau at the top of this point that’s some eight hundred feet above the bluff,” John went on. “I have ten flyers who tell me they can do it.”

  “But they need the right wind,” Judd said. “First they’ll drop, but if they don’t catch the wind, they won’t get up.”

  “I have two catapults already set up there. We’ll catapult straight out, like a plane on an aircraft carrier. They’ll get up all right.” John nodded, pleased. “The next problem is the Maharishi’s security. We’re fortunate in one respect. He allows no fire
arms or other weapons. But all his men are black belts and masters of the martial arts. In addition, he has approximately twelve to fifteen Doberman guard dogs patrolling the grounds at night. But even the dogs are taught not to kill, only to hold and immobilize.”

  “Those’re the pluses,” Judd pressed. “What are the minuses?”

  “Clear skies,” John said. “We could be seen easily. What we need is either heavy fog or a low cloud cover. More than force-four winds from the sea would blow our asses to the ground, far away from the target. Lastly, if we don’t silence the dogs and the guards at the very first moment, they’ll blow the alarms and we’re fucked.”

  “How do you expect to silence them so quickly?” Judd asked.

  John brought out a curious, long-barreled handgun. “This fires twelve darts automatically. Each dart knocks out man or beast on contact. They’ll sleep about four hours and wake up with a hangover that will last another two.”

  Judd looked at the security man. “Suppose everything goes well, then what?”

  “You’ll be in the car about one hundred yards down the road. We open the gates and you come in like the President himself.”

  “When do you plan to do this?”

  “It’s up to the weather,” John answered. “The five-day weather forecast isn’t great for us. Clear skies all the way. But this is the Pacific. Anything can happen. At most any time.”

  “Can you give me a one-day advance notice?”

  “Probably,” John said. “Why?”

  Judd looked at him. “It’s about ten days since Sofia took her vacation. I thought I’d run over and see her.”

  “She never went for the program,” John said.

  “I know,” Judd nodded. “She said she doesn’t want to be anyone else. She likes being herself.”

  “You got to hand it to her,” John said. “The lady’s got balls.”

  Judd laughed. “That’s not all she’s got.”

  “We’ll have to rearrange security,” John said.

  “That’s right,” Judd said. “But that’s the way the game’s played.”

  15