The Overseer

by Jonathan Rabb

  Sarah stared at her for a moment, her own emotions rocked by the outpouring, ever more familiar and so desperately real. Alison, locked in a stare, her eyes betraying nothing of the last minutes—only a strange tension, distancing herself from the memories.

  “Do you mean the boys?” asked Sarah quietly.

  Another moment of recognition, then nothing. Frail, quiet, struggling for control, Alison shook her head. “The boys? I don’t understand.”

  “The boys who died,” answered Sarah. “At the school.”

  The tears flowed freely; still, there was nothing in her expression to hint at the slightest reaction. Only her hand clenching, releasing, clenching. She shook her head, even as the drops began to slide down her cheek. “I don’t remember any boys,” she answered.

  But Sarah knew. She knew because of her own memories—weeks, months denying the lives she had taken. Hands clenching, releasing, clenching—unconscious mechanisms implanted through a doctor’s hypnosis to allow her a release from the horror. Memories erased until she could learn to accept them. How long, Sarah wondered, had Alison hidden behind those same devices? How long had the men responsible for them forced her to remain a victim of her own self-loathing?

  “It’s all right,” said Sarah, her voice quiet, caring. “I do understand. You don’t have to remember.”

  “It was a good place.” Alison nodded, her eyes still distant. “And then it went wrong.”

  “How?” she asked. “How did it go wrong?”

  Alison shook her head. Without warning, she looked up, her eyes suddenly focused. “It was wrong to try again, wasn’t it?”

  The reaction surprised Sarah. “Try what?” she asked.

  “They’ll go wrong again, won’t they?”

  Again? Sarah sat motionless.

  “Anton doesn’t think I know,” continued Alison, her eyes on some faraway spot, “but I know. Even though he promised. Even though he said it would be fine, that he could stop it from going wrong.” She looked at Sarah. “It was bad to do it again. I know. I’ve seen it.”

  Sarah forced herself beyond the shock. “What have you seen, Alison?”

  The tight smile. A shake of the head. “It was bad to do it again. That’s why I told you to come. You have to tell him it was wrong.”

  “Do what again?” Sarah knew the answer, but she needed to hear it from Alison.

  They stared at each other. Alison then stood, walked to the bookshelf, and pulled several volumes from the bottom shelf, uncovering a single videocassette. “I took this from Anton. I took this so I would know.” Fifteen seconds later, she was at the television, sliding the tape into the VCR.

  Before Sarah could ask, the screen flashed blue. In large black type, the words PREFECT RELEASE—NONDISCLOSURE PRIORITY appeared. A moment later, they were replaced by a thin strip at the bottom of the screen, a time counter spinning off the minutes and seconds. The date of the filming, April 7, 1978. The place, Winamet, Texas. Nineteen seventy-eight, Sarah thought. My God, it had never ended.

  The picture came alive with a cluster of young children, no more than six or seven years old, seated around a woman in the middle of a room, an area called “the Learning Circle.” A sign hung from the ceiling in a crescent arc, each letter a different shade of colored paper, the evident work of tiny hands. The woman was in her late forties, with a tenderness essential for those who mold the very young. She was reading to them. After a few seconds, she placed the book in a pile and looked out at the children.

  “Poor Cinderella,” she began, “so many people who were so unkind. In fact, I can’t think of a nice thing to say about her sisters. Can you?”

  “They weren’t nice at all,” piped in one tiny charge, so eager to please that her words flew out in a rapid burst of syllables and gasps. “When the prince came to see their feet, and Cinderella had the right shoe on her foot, but her sisters were mean and angry because they couldn’t go.” The slight roll of the head, the coy smile, each an indication that the exegesis had come to an end.

  “I quite agree,” smiled the teacher.

  “I hated them,” remarked a small boy lounging off to the left, his head resting on an elbowed hand, not even the slightest bit of menace in his voice. Simple. Straight. To the point.

  “Hate’s a very strong word.” The teacher seemed to be waiting for an answer. The boy shrugged as only little boys do, shoulder high to the cheekbone in unintentioned exaggeration. “But I think you’re right. I don’t think the word is too strong.” She scanned the others’ eyes. Sarah sensed that the woman had been waiting, even hoping for the response. Clearly, the Learning Center taught a very specific type of lesson. “Let’s try and think of all the nasty things those sisters did,” she continued.

  In quick succession, the children shouted out a long list of infractions, the most poignant from a shy boy who had waited until all the others had quieted down to speak.

  “They made her feel very bad and said that nobody liked her.”

  A silence filled the room, several heads turning toward the boy as the teacher, in her most motherly tone, added, “And that’s probably the worst thing, isn’t it? To make special people, like Cinderella, feel that they don’t belong, that they’ve done something wrong.” The boy stared at the floor, nodding as he continued to play with a small tuft of carpet in his fingers. “And people who do that,” she continued, “shouldn’t be our friends, should they? And we don’t have to like them, do we?” A chorus of nos. “In fact, sometimes it’s all right not to like certain people. People who scare us, or hurt us, or make us feel bad about ourselves—”

  “Like strangers,” yelped one ponytailed girl.

  “Like strangers.” The teacher nodded. “But other people as well. People like Cinderella’s stepsisters, who knew how special Cinderella was, but who did everything they could to hurt her. It’s important to know that you have to watch out for those sorts of people. And you shouldn’t feel bad if you begin to dislike them. Dislike them so much that you begin to hate them.”

  “I hated them, too.” Several children, once given the official go-ahead, were happy to voice their ardent disapproval.

  “They were bad people,” said one little boy. “Some people are bad and you hate them. And that’s it.” The no-holds-barred tyke leader of the hate patrol. Our Gang in SS boots. Sarah continued to watch.

  “Some people are bad,” continued the teacher, “and they’re not just in stories. Sometime, you might run into someone like Cinderella’s stepsister, and you’ll have to know what to do, how to behave, how to treat them.”

  “I wouldn’t let them make me do all the work in the house,” one voice piped in. “Or make me stay at home when they’re at the palace,” offered another. The teacher seemed to encourage the whirlwind of enthusiasm from the children, most pleased when one little girl, shouting above the rest and in full lather, screamed out, “I’d make them do all the bad things and be mean to them!” The final crescendo—the little girl springing to her feet, jumping nervously, arms pulled tightly to her little chest at the attention and prodding from her tiny peers—thrust the little band into shrieks of excitement. The room seemed to explode in a cackle of delight as several others hopped up, trembling wirelike fists boxing the air in full release of emotion inspired by the near-glowing teacher. Catching the wave at its crest, she slowly began to quiet the children in firm but gentle tones. “All right, all right, let’s find a calm place. Let’s find a calm place.” Code words which, within a minute, had the children once again in obedient order.

  The screen faded to black; a moment later, it filled with snow.

  Sarah looked across at Alison. The young woman stared unimpassioned at the television, her eyes again distant.

  “Where are those children now?” asked Sarah. Alison did not respond. Before Sarah could ask again, the screen slid to black; a moment later, another group of children materialized, these older, perhaps twelve, thirteen years of age. The strip at the bottom read “October
14, 1981, Brainbrook, Colorado.”

  No one spoke, a class in martial arts, each child showing extraordinary proficiency in any number of techniques. But it was their eyes that Sarah watched—focused but empty, personality absent from the cold precision of the movements. The scene quickly faded to black.

  Twenty minutes later, Alison reached forward and pulled the tape from the machine. Throughout, Sarah had sat mesmerized as ten other segments had come and gone, each from a separate school, each from a different year, each with its own skewed vision of schooling. The common lesson, blind obedience; the underlying theme, a cultivated hatred. Fifteen-year-olds taught to hunt out the weak; eighteen-year-olds taught to demonize in the name of social cohesion. A constant dosage of venom to focus the children’s aggression and turn it into a zealot’s passion.

  Most troubling, though, was how they had been groomed to express that passion. The sniper’s gun, the demolitionist’s explosives, the computer hacker’s manipulations—all vividly documented.

  The blueprint for Eisenreich’s assault on Washington. The blueprint for the world beyond the first trial.

  Alison remained silent. She looked at Sarah.

  “Now you see the process,” she said. “Now you see why I asked you to come. You have to tell Anton to stop it. He must stop the process.”

  Sarah waited before answering. She looked into the frightened eyes, aware for the first time that perhaps Alison understood far more than she had let on. “How did you get a hold of this?” she asked.

  Alison stared at her, then spoke. “You have to tell him to stop it.”

  Sarah nodded. “I’ll tell him to stop … the process.” The mention of the last word seemed to calm Alison. “May I have the tape?”

  Alison stared into Sarah’s eyes for several seconds, a penetrating look, something Sarah had not expected. “What makes you so sad, Sarah?” Alison held her gaze for a moment longer, then leaned over and placed the tape on the table. “Maybe you do understand.” She picked up the tray and stood. “I’ll get some more lemonade.”

  It took Sarah a moment to recover. “Actually … I should be going.”

  Alison stopped at the swinging door. When she turned, a strained smile creased her lips. “You’re welcome to stay. I have other—”

  “No,” smiled Sarah, now standing. “I should be going.”

  A momentary pause; Alison placed the tray on the sideboard. “You’re not a doctor, are you.” Again, no accusation, only statement. Sarah said nothing. The smile tightened on Alison’s lips as she moved to the closet and retrieved Sarah’s coat.

  A minute later, they stood at the front door, Sarah no more easy with her newfound confidante than she had been half an hour ago. The look of tender helplessness in the eyes was too long ingrained to find release in the gentle squeeze of a hand. “Things will be all right,” Sarah heard herself say.

  “Will you come back for me?”

  The words tore through her, a simple request, but it was all Sarah could do to find an answer. “Yes … I will come back for you.”

  Again, Alison stared into Sarah’s eyes. A moment’s recognition and then a nod. Sarah squeezed her hand and turned for the garden path.

  Halfway down the block, a sedan slowly began to inch its way toward the house, Sarah immediately aware of its presence. Gradually, she quickened her pace. A man in his early twenties—a broad-shouldered boy stuffed into a plain gray suit—appeared from behind a tree. He remained still, hands crossed at his front, eyes lost behind a set of dark sunglasses. Requisite Justice attire. Sarah stopped. Tommy had evidently been more careful than she expected. And quicker. The sedan pulled up behind her car as the man in the glasses started toward her.

  For an instant, she considered running. The thought of Alison alone, however, made the idea of escape impossible. Sarah knew the woman was too fragile for the scrutiny to which the men from Washington would subject her, too close to the men of Eisenreich not to be held accountable. Another life drawn in. Another life Sarah would not allow herself to dismiss so easily.

  She slowly turned toward the house.

  What she saw took her completely by surprise. Alison was standing next to a third man, the smile wide on her face, her hand resting in his. Sarah froze, the scene strangely serene.

  “Look who’s here,” cried Alison. “It’s Willy and John.”

  Before Sarah could react, the man from behind her slipped his hand tightly around her arm. In a whispered voice, he said, “Mr. Votapek doesn’t want Alison upset in any way. Do you understand?” His grip tightened.

  Votapek. Sarah could only nod.

  After two and a half hours of misdirection and incompetence, Xander held the essential pages in his hand, ripping them from one of the library printers. The odyssey had begun at the desk of the assistant librarian, who, at first, had sent him halfway across town to an annex; there, he had been told that the books he was looking for were never permitted to leave the main library. Wonderful. He had returned to Russell Square, only to receive a somewhat embarrassed apology—“I thought you wanted the Dillman Collection”—and another hour’s worth of ineptitude before he had insisted on seeing the head librarian. Mrs. Denton-Fiss, far more apologetic than her colleague for the “unfortunate mix-up,” had then taken him to the back office and the private computer files. Now, ten minutes later, Xander scanned the few pages he had been looking for all along.

  The Danzhoeffer family had been quite generous, according to the list, donating four filing cases of documents, each with perhaps forty listings—letters, pamphlets, manuscripts—in no specific order. That meant he would have to plow through each case individually in order to find Eisenreich. Any sense of annoyance from the further delay, however, quickly disappeared as Xander’s eyes came to a stop about a third of the way down the page, where two small words stared back at him: On Supremacy. He passed his thumb over the print. Caught up in the chase, Xander felt the same sense of exhilaration he had sensed in Carlo’s notes. A slight tingling licked at his throat.

  It was only then that he noticed the asterisks on the page. Some ten to twelve entries, including the manuscript, sported little stars alongside their listings. He quickly flipped to the bottom of the second page. No note to explain. The asterisks simply sat there, causing a momentary tightening in his stomach. What now? There was only one way to find out. Xander picked up his briefcase and headed for the stacks.

  Three minutes later, his eyes took a moment to accustom themselves to the dimly lit area of the fourth floor. Typical of so many research libraries, the books lay hidden within dark recesses, pale screens of light slanting this way and that from the few overhead lamps. Directly in front of him, a long, thin alley ran the length of the floor, its black-speckled tiles crisscrossed by shadows cast from the row upon row of shelves on either side. Each row stood within a wall of black, waiting for that one passerby to switch on its private light and break through the somber pall of the place.

  Slowly moving down the corridor, Xander read each of the catalog numbers tacked hastily to the topmost shelf brackets. Once or twice, he checked the number he had written down just to make sure he hadn’t missed it. Two rows from the back wall, the listing 175.6111 CR–175.6111 FL brought him to a stop. He shoved the piece of paper into his pocket, and with a quick click, ignited the narrow tunnel in light, his eyes racing by the numbers printed on the books’ spines. Halfway to the wall, he nearly tripped over four large cases protruding from the edge of the bottom shelf. He looked down and read the inscription, the tingle once again in his throat. He then squatted to the floor and pulled the Danzhoeffer Collection from the shelf.

  The state of the documents was far better than he had anticipated. Granted, no one had done a thing except catalog them and then place them back in their respective cases, but at least care, if not logic, was evident in the ordering of the small stacks. Xander began to read.

  The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries commingled in the first case—some rather forthright let
ters from a Cardinal Vobonte to several Popes, demanding dispensations for various French aristocrats. Tax cuts for his constituents, mused Xander. Some things never change. Next, he found a collection of poems by an Italian court musician, homage to Boccaccio’s Decameron. Flipping quickly past it, Xander lit upon a large assortment of pamphlets on religious practices—guides to proper observances for any number of saints’ days.

  At first glance, the second case seemed equally unpromising. More poems, more pamphlets on the saints. Two-thirds the way through, though, the titles took a dramatic turn away from saint-day rituals to the heated topic of papal authority—someone’s idea of a natural progression from fifteenth-century primers to sixteenth-century treatises. Whatever the rationale, Xander knew he was close—very close. Sifting through seven or eight dreary tracts on church jurisdiction, each with endless counterarguments to Marsilius’ Defensor Pacis, Xander finally uncovered a small leather volume, the Medici crest still discernible on the weathered leather binding. For a moment, he stared at the little book resting comfortably among the various other papers. Nothing to distinguish it. Nothing on its surface to explain the sudden rapid-fire pounding in his chest. Letting the other manuscripts drop into the case, he brought the book up to within two inches of his face. Its edges long ago frayed, a strange smell of apple vinegar rose from its pages. Gently, he pulled open the front cover and saw the simple Italian staring at him:

  From Eusebius Iacobus Eisenreich to His Holiness, the Most Holy Father, Pope Clement VII

  The dedicatory letter—written in thick sixteenth-century script—continued on to the next page. Xander ever so delicately turned the page, less taken with the text than with the tangible reality of the book in his hands. It was here, in front of him, the key to the riddles, the answer to the skeptics.