I’d come too far to turn back. A plan presented
itself. I moved forward cautiously. Closer inspection revealed the guard to be
Brother Baron, nee Barry Graffius. This cheered me greatly. I’m not a violent
person by inclination and had begun to feel more than a little guilty about
what I was about to do. But if anyone deserved it, Graffius did. The
rationalization didn’t remove the guilt, but it did serve to lower it to a
tolerable level.
I timed my footsteps to coincide with his and drew
closer. Unloading my tools, I waited, concealed behind high shrubbery, but able
to see him through the branches. He continued his walk for a few minutes, then
obliged me by stopping to scratch his rear. I gave a low hiss and he snapped to
attention, straining to locate the source of the sound. Edging closer to the
gate he peered out, sniffing like a rabbit.
I held my breath until he resumed pacing. Another
pause, this one deliberate, inquisitive.
Hiss.
He reached under his
blouse and drew out a little pistol. Stepped forward, pointing the gun in the
direction of the sound.
I waited until he’d stopped and listened three more
times before hissing again. This time he let out a curse and pressed his belly
up against the iron bars of the gate, eyes wide with suspicion and anxiety. He
raised the weapon, moved it in an arc like a turret gunner.
When the barrel was pointing away from me I rushed
him, grabbed the gun arm and yanked it forward through the bars. A sharp
perpendicular twist against the metal made him cry out in pain and drop the
weapon. I put my fist in his solar plexus and as he gasped, employed a little
trick I’d learned from Jaroslav. Grabbing his neck, I felt for the right
places, found them, squeezed and shut down his carotid arteries.
The choke-hold worked quickly. He went limp and passed
out. As consciousness departed, his body grew heavy in my grasp. I struggled to
keep my hold on him and lowered him carefully to the ground. It was tricky
working through the bars but I managed to roll him over and loosen the
drawstrings of the stash bag. The yield: a roll of breath mints, a small sack
of sunflower seeds, and a ring of keys.
I left him the snacks, took the keys and unlocked the
gates. After retrieving the tools and the pistol, I walked through, closed and
relocked the gates.
Stripping Graffius was harder than it looked. I used
his clothes to bind his arms and legs. By the time I’d finished I was breathing
hard. After ensuring that his nasal passages were clear I gagged him with one
of his socks.
He’d be coming around soon and I didn’t want him
discovered, so I lifted him over my shoulder and carried him off the path,
stepping into the bed of succulents. The plants squished underfoot, moist and
cold against my trouser legs. I took him through to where the wooded area
began, continued several yards, and deposited him between two redwoods.
Gathering my tools I began the walk to the Retreat.
A pale amber light shone above the door of the
cathedral. The crucifix seemed to float above the belfry. A pair of male
cultists patrolled the entrance at ten minute intervals.
I took my time crossing the viaduct, crouching to
avoid detection, concealing myself behind the columns of the arbor. An arched
gate was set into the wall to the right of the main building. When the time was
right I made a run for it, found it unlocked, and walked through.
I was in one of the many courtyards I’d noticed during
my first visit, a grassy rectangle rimmed on three sides by a hedge of eugenia.
The church wall formed the fourth. At the far end of the lawn was a
brass-topped sundial.
Draperies had been drawn over the clerestory windows,
but a crescent of light escaped from one and whitened the grass. I bounded over
to look but the windows were too high to see through, the stucco walls free of
toeholds.
I searched for something to stand on, saw only the
sundial. It was solid stone, far too heavy to carry. Roots had wrapped
themselves around the base. By rocking it back and forth I was able to free it
from its earthly mooring. Laboriously I rolled it to the window, hoisted myself
up, and peeked in through folds of brocade.
The huge domed room was brightly lit, the biblical
murals vivid to the point of vulgarity. Matthias sat in its center,
cross-legged and naked, on a padded mat. His long body was as thin as a fakir’s,
soft and pale. Other mats ringed the periphery of the cathedral. Cultists
squatted on them, fully garbed, men to the left, women to the right.
The pine table that had been at the center of the room
during my first visit was pushed back behind the guru. One of the men— the
black-bearded giant from the vineyard—stood by it. Several red porcelain bowls
sat on the table. I wondered what was in them.
Matthias meditated.
The flock waited silently and patiently as their
shepherd retreated into an internal world, eyes closed, palms pressed together.
He swayed and hummed and his penis began to harden, tilting upward. The others
gazed at the tumescing organ as if it were sacred. When he was fully erect he
opened his eyes and stood.
Stroking himself, he regarded his followers with
authoritarian smugness.
“Let the Touch begin!” he thundered in a deep metallic
voice.
A woman rose, fortyish, pudgy, and fair. She walked
daintily to the table. Blackbeard inserted a golden straw into one of the
bowls. The woman stooped and put her nose to it, sniffed hard and inhaled the
powder up into her sinuses.
The cocaine must have been high-quality. It took
effect quickly. She swooned and grinned, broke into a giggle and did a little
dancelike shuffle.
“Magdalene,” called Matthias.
She walked to him, undid her clothes and stood naked
before her master. Her body was pink and plump, the buttocks marbled and
stippled. She knelt and took him in her mouth, licking, nibbling, breasts
bobbling with each movement. Matthias rocked on his heels, gritting his teeth
with pleasure. She serviced him as the others watched until he pushed her head
away and gestured for her to go.
She rose, walked to the left side of the cathedral and
stood in front of the men, arms at her sides, completely at ease.
Matthias spoke the name “Luther.”
A short man, bald and stooped, with a full gray beard,
stood and disrobed. Upon command he went to the table, received a giant
snootful of coke from the giant. Another stage direction from Matthias led him
and the chubby woman to the center of the room. She dropped to her knees,
teased him hard and lay down on her back. The bald man mounted her and they
copulated frantically.
The next woman to dip into the snow and kneel before
the guru was tall, bony, and Spanish-looking. She was paired with a heavily
built, bespectacled, florid man who looked like he’d been an accountant in a
former life. He had an unusually small penis and the angular woman seemed to
swallow it whole as she worked energetically to arouse him. Soon the two of
them joined the first couple in the horizontal dance on the cathedral floor.
The third woman was Delilah. Her body was freakishly
youthful, lithe, and firm. Matthias kept her with him longer than the first two
and had four other women join in. They ministered to him like drones servicing
a queen bee. Finally he released them and assigned them partners.
In the course of twenty minutes a fortune in coke had
been consumed, with no letup in sight. I saw people go back for seconds and
thirds, all in response to commands from Matthias. When one bowl was depleted
the giant simply shoved his straw into another.
The padded mats held a writhing mass of wriggling
bodies. The scene was sexual without being sensual, depressingly lacking in
spontaneity, a mindless ritual, codified, choreographed, and based on the whims
of one megalomaniac. A nod from Matthias and the cultists tumbled and thrust.
The crook of an eyebrow and they heaved and moaned. I couldn’t help being
reminded of the maggots blindly burrowing through the meat in Garland Swope’s
greenhouse.
A roar rose from the cultists. Matthias had spurted.
Women scurried to lick him clean. He lay back, sated, but their attentions made
him hard again and the action resumed.
I’d seen enough. Climbing down from the sundial, I
walked quietly to the gate. The two sentries were approaching from the right,
brown-bearded, grim-faced, and goose-stepping in rhythm. I stepped back into
the shadows until they had passed. When they’d turned the corner I sprinted out
of the courtyard and raced to the iron-banded front door. Pulling it open a
crack I peeked through and found the entrance unguarded. From behind the doors
of the sanctuary came sounds of muffled bleating and the rhythmic slap of flesh
on flesh.
To the left was the dead end punctuated by Mathias’s
office. I ran to the right, nearly tripping over a potted palm in my haste. The
corridor was empty and white. I felt as conspicous as a roach on a
refrigerator. If discovered, I was a dead man: I’d seen the coke cache. I had
no idea how long the orgy down the hall would last, or if the sentries’ circuit
took them indoors. Speed was of the essence.
I searched the laundry room, the kitchen, the members’
library, looked for hidden tunnels, false walls, secret stairways. Found
nothing.
Using a master key I discovered on the ring I’d taken from
Graffius, I conducted a fruitless search of each room. Halfway through there
was one false alarm: sudden movement under the bedcovers of one of the beds.
For one heart-stopping moment I thought my search was over. But the body under
the blanket was adult, male, hirsute, and thick, the face above it red-nosed,
open-mouthed, and mottled: a cultist sleeping off a cold. The man stirred under
the beam of my flashlight, passed wind, and rolled over, dead to the world. I
left quietly.
The next room was Delilah’s. She’d kept some of her
old reviews and press clippings in the bottom of a drawer filled with plain
cotton underwear. Other than that her sleeping quarters were as barren as those
of the others.
I went from room to room, checking another dozen cells
before coming to the one I remembered was Matthias’s. The door wouldn’t respond
to any of the keys on the ring.
I used the crowbar. The bolt was a long one and wouldn’t
surrender until the door was nearly shattered. Anyone passing by would notice
the damage. I slipped inside, taut with pressure.
It was as before. Identical to the others except for
the small bookcase. Low ceilinged. Cool. Walled and floored with stone.
Dominated by a hard narrow bed covered with a coarse gray blanket.
The humble domicile of a man who’d forsaken the
pleasures of the flesh for those of the spirit.
Ascetic. And false to the core.
For the man was anything but spiritual. Minutes ago I’d
watched him defile a church, drunk with power, cold as Lucifer. Suddenly the
books on his shelves seemed to stare out at me.
Mockingly.
Righteous
tomes on religion, philosophy, ethics, morality.
Books had revealed secrets once already this evening.
Perhaps they would again.
Furiously, I emptied the shelves, examining each
volume, opening, shaking, searching for false spines, hollowed out pages, clues
scrawled in margins.
Nothing. The books were pristine, bindings stiff,
pages crisp and unfoxed.
Not a single one had been read.
The empty bookcase teetered, shifted on its base. I
caught it before it fell. And noticed something.
The portion of the floor that had been under the
bookcase was a clearly demarcated rectangle, a shade lighter than the rest. I
knelt, pointed the flashlight, ran my fingers over the edges. Seams. Cut into
the stone. I pushed. Faint movement.
It took some experimenting to find the proper fulcrum.
Stepping on one corner of the rectangle lifted the block sufficiently to lodge
the crowbar in the opening. I exerted pressure. The slab rose and I pushed it
aside.
The hole was about eighteen inches by a foot, four
feet deep and lined with concrete. Too small for a body. But more than ample
for other booty:
I found double plastic bags tightly packed with powder
in shades of chocolate and vanilla: snowy cocaine and a brownish substance that
I recognized as Mexican heroin. A metal strongbox full of sticky dark resin—raw
opium. Several pounds of hashish in foil-wrapped chunks the size of soap bars.
And at the bottom of the hole, a single manila folder.
I opened it, read it, and slipped it into my shirt. By
now I was carrying more cargo than the Southern Pacific. I turned off the
flashlight, looked both ways down the hall. Heard the sounds of human voices.
At the end of the corridor was a door leading outside. I sprinted, as fast as I
could and hurled myself through it, lungs aching.
Cultists were streaming out of the sanctuary, most of
them still naked. I made it to the base of the fountain without being seen and
hid under the oak trees. Matthias came out surrounded by women. One wiped his
brow. Another—Maria, the bland-faced, grandmotherly woman who’d sat at the
entrance the day of my first visit—gave him a neck rub and fondled his penis.
Apparently oblivious to these ministrations, he led the group to the lawn and
bade them sit. Five dozen people obeyed, the crowd collapsing like deflated
bellows. They were no more than thirty feet away.