That night, he slept deeply and dreamed that he was floating on an ice floe. He was bitterly cold but he couldn’t move, because the ice floe was melting fast and he was on the verge of tipping into the water. He circled around and around, and above his head the stars circled around and around, the scattered constellations of the northern hemisphere.
He dreamed that the ice floe suddenly rocked; and dipped; and that something began to rear out of the water; something huge and tall and white, like a phantom. He opened his eyes and it was a polar bear, standing erect, its claws raised, its eyes burning like incandescent lumps of coal.
Don’t try to shoot it, he said. Don’t try to run away from it. Don’t run after it, whatever you do. He felt somebody putting their cool arms around him and saying, ‘Ssh, ssh …’ He was sweating and shaking, and he didn’t know whether he was asleep or awake. But gradually he was able to focus, and he could recognize the bedroom ceiling, and the triangle of sodium light from the street outside.
He turned his head and Magda was lying beside him, stroking his hair with one hand and stroking his hip with the other. Her face was so pale that she was almost invisible against the pillow but her eyes were as black as cut-out pieces of the night sky, going on to infinity. Her skin was smooth as her voice was smooth. Smooth as the tip of a silk scarf, being slowly drawn between the cleft of his buttocks and up his spine.
‘You were having a nightmare,’ she breathed. ‘I heard you shouting, so I came in to see what I could do.’
He tried to touch her but she deflected his hand. He tried again and she deflected him again. Her fingertips ran down his side until they reached his hips. Her touch was exquisite, like pleasure and irritation, both at the same time. His penis began to stiffen in spite of himself, and her fingernails formed a birdcage around his glans, teasing, pricking.
‘You see?’ she said. ‘No hypnotism.’
She slid herself beneath him, almost magically, and as he turned over she took hold of his penis and guided it between her legs. His hands were free now, he could feel her – Magda Slanic, the stage hypnotist. She had no body hair at all. Her vulva was smooth as a nectarine. Her breasts were small but they were very firm, and when he cupped them in the palms of his hands he realized that they were pierced with nipple rings.
Her mouth opened wide and her tongue slid all over his face, even sticking his eyelashes together. He lifted his head slightly and she licked his throat.
‘Come on,’ she whispered, opening her thighs wider. ‘You can have me now, Conor, and I will give you feelings like you’ve never felt before.’
She parted her vulva with both hands, opened it up wide like a pink slippery fruit. She placed the swollen head of Conor’s penis against it, and said, ‘Now … all you have to do is sink inside.’
There was an instant when Conor almost gave in to temptation. He opened his saliva-sticky eyelids and looked down at Magda’s white, sculptured face. She was beautiful in an alien way and the feeling of her skin was so erotic that it made his nerve-ends effervesce. But in those slanted black eyes of hers he saw absolutely nothing but self-interest. Even the physical pleasure that she was giving him was entirely for her own satisfaction.
And there was something else: the cock was about to crow thrice. He had compromised his integrity to ask for help from Luigi Guttuso. He had denied his religion. Now he was about to betray Lacey, too.
He leaned forward and kissed Magda on her forehead. It was as cold as ivory. She said nothing: she could obviously guess by his kiss that he wasn’t going to make love to her. She lay unmoving while he climbed off her and sat on the edge of the bed. She didn’t try to touch him again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s me, not you.’
‘You’re feeling guilty. You have such honor, it makes me want to bite you.’
‘Honor? I wish.’
She knelt up close behind him. He could feel her nipple rings against his back. ‘Yes, you have honor. Bravery is nothing but the child of luck and stupidity. But honor. Honor is the child of suffering and faith.’
He turned his head and looked at her. ‘Are you really Romanian?’ he asked her.
‘I am what I want to be. Now, you’d better get some sleep.’
At 10:17 a.m. the next morning, Conor called Captain Ingstad again.
‘Well, it seems that your information was correct,’ said Captain Ingstad. ‘I just wish I knew who you were and how you found out such things.’
‘You contacted the police at Tromso?’
‘Of course; and they discovered the laboratory exactly as you said. Except that there was nobody there and it was burned to the ground. They found the bodies from Longyearbyen there, too, or what was left of them. They had all been doused in some kind of accelerant, and there is nothing left but ashes.’
‘No sign of Dennis Branch?’
‘As I said, there was nobody there. I myself went to the bank this morning and checked the account. All of the funds were withdrawn on Friday and the account closed.’
‘Did the bank have any idea where the money went?’
‘I’m not really supposed to tell you anything. But most of it went to Switzerland and the rest was divided between many different countries throughout the world, even the People’s Republic of China. Quite a large amount went to New York.’
‘And you don’t have any idea where Dennis Branch might have gone?’
‘None at all. There are so many ways for people to leave Norway without the authorities having any record. So many small airfields. So many fiords. You could drive into Sweden and nobody would know. Then a ferry from Goteborg to Frederikshavn, and in a day’s drive you could be in Brussels.’
Conor said, ‘OK, I get the picture. Thanks for your help, anyhow.’
‘You still won’t tell me who you are? You see, I have the suspicion that you are police.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You know what they say about police. It’s not a calling, it’s a nationality.’
Chapter 32
They spent the rest of the day quietly, although Conor couldn’t get Dennis Branch off his mind. If he had sent a large sum of money to New York then it was possible that he intended to go there. In fact, he could be there already. But he might simply have been sending funds to Victor Labrea to support the Global Message Movement; or paying Victor Labrea off.
After lunch, Eleanor and Magda went shopping for clothes along Karl Johans Gate, while Conor went walking around Oslo alone. He came at last to the Domkirke, the cathedral. It wasn’t a Roman church, but it was still the house of God and he had something to settle. He walked through the huge bronze doors illustrating the Beatitudes, and into the cool interior. The cathedral was decorated in grays, blues, greens and gilt, against dazzling white. Very Scandinavian, and nothing like the high Gothic grandeur of St Patrick’s. The only sound was the echoing shuffle of a few off-season tourists, and an occasional voice sounding as if it were underwater.
He knelt down in a pew. The watery October sun came slanting through the stained-glass windows. He closed his eyes and said a prayer for his family and for Lacey; and then he asked for God’s forgiveness for having so easily renounced his religion.
Gradually he lifted his eyes and saw the paintings on the ceilings. They were tempestuous biblical scenes such as the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as calm, uplifting pictures from the life of Christ. The cathedral organ quietly began to play, a Norwegian hymn, melodic and calm, as luminous as one of the distant glaciers that he had seen on Isfiorfden. He understood then that he was forgiven for what he had said to Evelyn Branch; and that he was readmitted to the grace of God. In fact, he had never left it.
He remembered the story of the man who walked across the desert of his life with Jesus beside him; and turned around to look at the footprints they had left behind. ‘Look how many times you left me, Lord,’ he said, resentfully. ‘Whenever I was going through really bad times, there is only one
set of footprints.’ And Jesus said, ‘My son, whenever you were going through really bad times, I was carrying you.’
They returned to their apartment that afternoon when it was just growing dark. Eleanor drew the drapes while Magda switched on the television. Conor opened one of the bottles of chardonnay that he had bought at the local Vinmonopolet, the state-controlled liquor store, for about four times what it would have cost him in New York.
‘Just to go out and have a decent whiskey sour,’ complained Eleanor. ‘I mean, how does anybody ever get smashed here?’
‘They distil their own,’ said Magda. ‘Cherry akvavit, lemon akvavit, every flavor you can think of. It’s illegal but everybody does it.’
‘Rather Philadelphia than here,’ said Eleanor, misquoting W.C. Fields.
‘It’s snowing again,’ said Magda; and sure enough it was.
They were still talking and bantering when a CNN news bulletin came on the screen. ‘… Internet message that threatens the entire world with a deadly influenza virus.’
‘Turn it up,’ urged Conor, and Magda immediately increased the volume.
Serious-faced, CNN’s David Channon said, ‘The warning appeared on the Worldwide Web at precisely five o’clock this morning Eastern Standard Time. It takes the form of a long personal announcement by Dennis Evelyn Branch, the leader of a breakaway Baptist cult from western Texas, the Global Message Movement.
‘Dennis Evelyn Branch claims that he and his followers were responsible for the exhumation last week of seven young men who died eighty years ago on the remote island of Spitsbergen, five hundred and eighty kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. They say that they recovered frozen samples of the Spanish flu virus which swept the world in 1918, killing more people than the combined populations of Washington, DC and New York City.
‘They will release this deadly virus Wednesday, October twentieth, at eleven-thirty a.m., at an unspecified location, unless they have a written assurance from the leaders of all the world’s major religions that they will renounce their own rituals and their own beliefs and accept the doctrines of the Global Message Movement.’
They sat and flicked from channel to channel. The news of Dennis Branch’s ultimatum was on every satellite station across Europe. They picked up Sky News from Britain where a representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury was calling the ultimatum ‘a particularly tasteless hoax’. They picked up Italy, where the Pope had issued a statement saying that ‘you cannot bargain with your beliefs’, which gave Conor a moment of uncertainty. From Cape Town, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that ‘the Word of the Lord does not belong to any one sect … it belongs to all of us, to interpret as we understand it’.
At 10 p.m., however, a new message appeared on the Internet – a slowly rotating globe with a cross superimposed on it – and a voiceover in Dennis Evelyn Branch’s familiar whipcrack drawl. ‘This is Dennis Evelyn Branch of the Global Message Movement. Those epidemiologists who know about the Spanish flu virus will understand that this is not a hoax. This is reality.’
A series of furry crimson blobs appeared on the screen, and hovered there for over a minute. Then the message continued. ‘Any half-competent influenza researcher will recognize that for what it is: the whole Spanish flu virus. I have it. I have this virus, and my assistants have been able to replicate it, and the deal is country simple. Either I hear from the following leaders from the following religions within forty-one hours and thirty minutes, declaring their irrevocable conversion to the Global Message Movement, or else you will be getting to know this virus a whole lot closer up.
‘You think that you’re united. You think that you’re a global community. But all of your global community is based on greed and pride and envy and prejudice. You show love for each other only if it fills your pockets! Your religions! What do you ever do but persecute each other, torture each other, tear down each other’s churches? The Catholics hate the Protestants and the Protestants hate the Jews and the Jews hate the Muslims and the Muslims hate the Hindus.
‘I don’t hate any of you, even the Pentecostalists. But I do believe that every one of you is wrong. The way to the Lord is through the words of the Lord. The words of the Lord as spoken to me, clearly and directly in my ear. The way to the Lord is through me and my church, and it’s the only way.
‘If your child takes the wrong path on his way to school, and heads toward the creek instead, what do you do? You say, “Son, you’re going the wrong way,” and you’d be failing in your duty if you didn’t, because that child of yours could fall in that creek and be drowned. So if he heads that way again, you have to be stem with him. You have to reprimand him. And that’s all I’m doing with this virus.
‘You have become a disparate world. You like to pretend that you’re united, but the only tower that you have built for yourselves is a second Tower of Babel. And remember what happened to those who built the first Tower of Babel. “The Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
‘The difference is that when you are scattered over the face of the whole world this second time, you’re going to be carrying something apocalyptic with you. You’re going to be carrying the seeds of your own destruction.’
The globe faded out, to be followed by a seemingly endless roll of religions and religious groups, with the names of their bishops or their deacons or their pastors. ‘Jesus,’ said Magda. ‘This looks like the credits for Titanic.’
Conor watched the list in silence. He hadn’t really believed until now that Dennis Branch would actually spread the Spanish influenza, but now he was convinced. He felt something that he had never felt before – a deep sense of dread.
‘If only we knew where he was,’ remarked Eleanor, taking out another cigarette. She had bought herself a long knitted dress today, in charcoal gray, and she had braided her hair, like a Norwegian woman. She looked different, exotic, as if she had become a character in one of Ibsen’s plays.
‘Maybe we do,’ said Conor. ‘He mentioned the Tower of Babel, didn’t he?’
‘I’m sorry, Conor, but the Tower of Babel is a myth.’
‘Sure, but he also mentioned it back in Tromso. He said that every nation spoke a different language, and that as far as he was concerned, the United Nations headquarters was the Tower of Babel.’
‘The United Nations? Do you think that’s where he is? Back in New York?’
‘Surely immigration would have stopped him,’ said Magda. ‘He’s a wanted man.’
‘Of course, but now he’s a very wealthy wanted man. He could have entered the States from anyplace at all. By helicopter from Canada … by speedboat from Cuba.’
Conor picked up the phone and asked for International Directory Enquiries. Then he dialed 001 – 212 745 1234. ‘Hi … I’m planning on a visit to the UN headquarters. Can you tell me if the General Assembly or the Security Council are meeting this week? I see. Sure. And I can get tickets? Right, thank you very much.’
He put down the phone. ‘There’s a Special Session of the General Assembly on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., to discuss international religious terrorism in general, and Dennis Branch’s threat in particular.’
‘That must be his moment,’ said Eleanor. ‘He has the same instincts as a theatrical producer. Look at the way he used Magda and Ramon to raise money for him. Look at the way he exhumed those bodies on Spitsbergen. Everything that Dennis Branch does is a drama, played out for an audience. That’s the way he preaches, that’s the way he arouses his congregation. All my life I’ve known men like him – producers, directors – men who have to control everything around them.’
Conor said, ‘I just hope we’re right. I don’t want to fly back to New York to find out that he’s in the European Community headquarters in Brussels; or Paris; or God knows where.’
‘What choice do we have?’ asked Eleanor.
* * *
They arrived at Newark on Tuesday afternoon. It was a chilly fall day, and it was raining hard. Conor called Luigi Guttuso a
s they rode in their taxi into Manhattan, and asked if it was OK for them to use the apartment on Bleecker Street for a few more days.
‘Why do you want to stay in New York? You should use my beach-house in Sarasota.’
‘That’s very generous of you, Luigi, but Bleecker Street will do fine.’
‘I’ll have some champagne sent over. It’s the best.’
‘Luigi, I don’t want to be beholden to you.’
‘You’re not beholden. Who says you’re beholden? You’re my brother.’
That’s what I was afraid of, thought Conor, and switched off the phone.
As soon as they got back to the Bleecker Street apartment, Conor tried to ring Lacey, but there was no reply, only the answerphone. He took some consolation from the fact that she hadn’t yet deleted his name from the welcome message.
Eleanor called the hospital to see how Sidney was, only to be told that he had been discharged and had gone back home.
‘His doctor said he was making a wonderful recovery. None of the bullets hit anything vital, and he’s as tough as they come.’
She called Staten Island. Sidney took a long, long time to answer, and when he did, Eleanor was too choked up to speak.
At last she managed to say, ‘Sidney? How are you, my darling? I just can’t wait to see you. How do you feel? Are you walking? Oh, that’s marvelous.’
Conor talked to him for a while. He sounded just the same as ever – soft-spoken, droning but resilient beyond his years. ‘I want to tell you, Conor, when I felt those bullets hit me, I put myself into a trance. I didn’t feel any pain at all. I imagined that I was back at home, lying in my hammock with Mesmer chasing butterflies all around me.
‘The doctor said that it helped to save my life. Slowed down my pulse rate, so that I didn’t lose so much blood, and kept me from going into shock.’
‘We said a few prayers for you, too, Sidney. I hope those helped a little.’
Sidney hesitated for a moment, and then he said, ‘Would it be impertinent of me to ask why you’ve all come back?’
Holy Terror Page 39