Authors: Al Ruksenas
Caine nodded assent.
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And throughout history there have been elaborate rituals by believers to evoke the power of good, as well as the power of evil.”
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And you’re searching for such rituals.”
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Yes. Rituals. Traits. Outward signs. Historical coincidences that have a predictable pattern. Pentagrams. Things done upside down or in reverse. Grotesque ceremonies. Sacrifices. Familiars—cats, dogs, birds. Any animal really. Objects that emanate power.”
Caine furrowed an eyebrow. Jonas Mitchell’s descriptions were sounding eerily familiar to him.
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Laura tells me you theorize there’s a pentagram centered over the Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian.”
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There’s an object there that emanates power.”
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Yes. Supposedly.”
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And I don’t think that attack upon you and Laura at the museum was incidental. They were protecting something.”
Jonas Mitchell looked at his niece, then at Colonel Caine. “Laura said you were going to investigate that incident.”
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We are. I can’t do it directly as a military man, but we are cooperating with the local authorities. We’re still waiting for results of the investigation.”
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Thank you,” the uncle replied. “I know you’ll find something that may answer a lot of questions for all of us.”
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I certainly hope so,” Caine replied sincerely.
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I think I could have learned more from my Chekist prison mate,” Mitchell continued. “He died after several years. I think he lost his will to live. It was his own punishment for his own past. He was bitter. The Soviets were always the last to realize that they were supporters of a system that fed on its own.”
Jonas Mitchell looked at Colonel Caine as he lifted the bottle of bourbon and made ready to pour. Caine’s slight nod signaled acquiescence.
Caine fingered his newly filled glass and waited for the old man to continue.
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After Stalin died in Nineteen fifty
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three—a lot of us prefer to say ‘croaked’—many of us who survived in the tundra were released. I returned to Lithuania. The secret police still harassed me, because I had been a partisan fighter. I found work on the side with the help of the underground. I delved in folklore and ancient customs: the typical non
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political curricula. By then the NKVD had become the KGB. I really thought that eventually they would do me in—a drunken fall into a river, perhaps a slip from a second
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story window, a delivery truck ramming a friend’s Moskvitch. My friends and colleagues were dying in like fashion.”
Colonel Caine took a small sip of his bourbon and studied the drawn, but dignified face of Laura’s uncle. She sat quietly looking at him. She had heard him relate his ordeals many times, but listened once more with loving affection and bitter emotion—as if she could recapture some piece of his life story and avenge it.
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You are wondering, of course, how under such circumstances I found my way out of the country—to America.”
Caine nodded slightly.
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It was the self
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interest of your own intelligence services. As soon as they found out that Kim Philby in England was a traitor, they tried to get every piece of information they could. Leads to other networks. Likely contacts in America. Other traitors. After all, he had been groomed to become chief of MI
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6 itself. “
Mitchell shook his head in dismay, while Caine sympathetically looked on.
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As soon as Philby was unmasked, I think the CIA took a personal interest in getting me out. They needed information from anyone who had contact with Philby. I had been high in the ranks of the partisan movement that he had betrayed to the Soviets, so the CIA naturally thought I might be of some value in ferreting out his network. A missing link, a name, a phrase, a rendezvous, a piece of the puzzle that might undo his network. I received a visa to go to an academic conference in East Germany. From there Uncle Sam smuggled me across the Berlin Wall.”
He stopped for a moment, adding with amusement. “It’s funny to think that after all that, the Wall is no longer there.”
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The counter
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intelligence officers here were very good to me. They helped me get this position at the Library of Congress. I’ve been here many, many years. I even wrote a couple of books on folklore. Meanwhile, I assisted the CIA in developing tactics and strategies around guerilla warfare.”
He looked at Caine with a knowing eye.
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Guerilla warfare—unconventional warfare—the new name of war.”
Colonel Caine, the new age warrior, showed no reaction.
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Of course, Mitchell, is not my real name. It’s anglicized. For protection. Mine and my family’s.”
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Of course.”
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Finally, I think I found—actually stumbled upon—a key element of my research. Something that ties together disparate facts and events occurring over time. Actually, Laura triggered it when she told me about one of her lectures. It was in front of me all the time. “
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Your pentagram over the museum?”
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Yes. There has to be some kind of cabal, some central, powerful group manipulating events to their ends.”
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How would we stop it? You, yourself, said this would be dismissed as outlandish quackery.”
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I know. That’s the problem. That’s the best cover for their activity. It’s relegated to supermarket tabloids next to invasions from Mars.”
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Well, Mr. Mitchell, I’ll see at least what more we can find out about that attack by the museum. I took it very personally and I’m sorry Laura had to go through it.”
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Thank you, Colonel…Chris.”
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If it leads to something, I’ll let you know what I can.”
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I’ve got to see more of that museum,” Laura declared. “Behind those ‘Personnel Only’ signs.”
Colonel Caine glanced at her warily, then stood up to leave. He shook hands firmly with Jonas Mitchell. Laura hugged her uncle and they left the distinguished old man among his books.
Chapter 30
The funeral of the Secretary of Defense was held at the Church of the Apostles in Cathedral Heights north of Georgetown. The gothic structure was a jewel of the Episcopal Church in the United States. The faithful had spared no effort in building this edifice as a symbol of their unity following years of theological struggle over the application of their faith in socially controversial issues. They had overcome issues of women ministers and homosexual clergy. The Church of the Apostles was built to withstand any storm; real or abstract. It was a testament to their faith in God and in themselves.
Twelve immense marble columns along the interior length of the main aisle supported the arched ceiling of this vast cathedral visible from Embassy Row less than a mile away. At the top of each column was an ornate bracket upon which stood an exquisitely carved life statue of each of the apostles, from which the name of the church derived.
Camera crews from local and national televisions stations were filming unobtrusively as family and dignitaries filled the pews to the cavernous sound of the pipe organ playing requiem music.
Mourners included dignitaries from virtually every country with which the United States had diplomatic relations. Both the President and Vice President were attending, but protocol and the Secret Service required that everyone be in their places before the President and Vice President arrived.
When the pews were occupied Vice President Louis Mansfield entered and was ushered up the main aisle to the left of the bier and was seated in the third pew next to Victor Sherwyck. The gaunt, goateed presidential adviser was sitting near one of the twelve marble columns. He and the Vice President nodded somberly to each other.
Finally, came the President escorting Mrs. Stack and her three children. They filed into the first pew to the right side of the bier.
The funeral service was begun with favorite hymns of Ronald Stack sung by his daughter’s high school choir. The President occasionally leaned towards Mrs. Stack and whispered supportive words to her and her children.
After appropriate readings from the Gospel, the Reverend Milton Rand, a long
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time friend and confidant of the Stack family and beloved evangelist of the nation, delivered a poignant eulogy.
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No words are adequate enough to express what we feel here this day,” the fatherly, silver
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haired Reverend intoned. “Ronald Stack was an exceptional individual. A devoted husband and father. A source of strength and guidance to his family. And a source of strength and guidance to his nation. He was a public servant of the highest order who was called upon by his President to serve his country—his fellow
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citizens. Ronald Stack did so unfailingly. He left our midst unexpectedly in the performance of that duty.”
The Reverend paused in reflection.
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Our Savior tells us in the Good Book, that there is no greater love than that of a man who gives his life for his friend.”
Reverend Rand glanced at the President while saying so and the President nodded slightly in acknowledgment.
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There can be no greater sacrifice,” Reverend Rand continued. “For that sacrifice and for the monumental legacy of his work we honor Ronald Stack in memoriam today. And in doing so, we must strive to continue his vision.”
The Reverend’s words resounded in the expansive alcoves of the cathedral. Family members and friends quietly sighed or dabbed at tears. The President listened stoically, remembering his friend and what a truly effective and insightful Secretary of Defense he had been. The President began to realize just how much he had relied upon Ronald Stack and how much he would miss him.
As the Reverend’s assuring words drifted over each succeeding pew, where ambassadors and dignitaries and others less personally connected to the Secretary of Defense were seated, the depth of grief diminished from personally felt loss to more affected, but nevertheless sincere demeanors of sorrow.
Everyone in attendance, even representatives of countries manifesting less than friendly relations with the United States, seemed outwardly united in this hour of grief and shared acknowledgment of their common individual destinies.
Only one person in the church, presidential adviser Victor Sherwyck, who was next to the Vice President in the third pew, felt somewhat uneasy.
Sherwyck’s eyes periodically darted upwards into the higher reaches of the cathedral where murals depicting heavenly scenes competed with brilliant stained glass windows for the viewer’s prayerful attention. But Sherwyck was not here to pray. He never felt comfortable in church. In fact, a church was the only place in which he felt actual fear.
At some point in the service, when one of several doors to the cathedral had been opened to facilitate security surveillance, a charcoal gray mockingbird swooped inside and bounded toward the ceiling where Victor Sherwyck had cast his surreptitious glances. The bird extended its feet reminiscent of a raptor and awkwardly grasped a frame supporting one of the stained glass mosaics. It vigorously flapped its wings while trying vainly to gain purchase, then flew to one of the statues atop the marble columns. It alighted on the statue’s head.
A number of people saw the bird fly into the church, including General William Bradley who was seated in the middle of the cathedral. No one paid the bird any obvious attention. To appear too curious would upset the decorum of the somber ceremony and reveal a mind too easily distracted by trivial anomalies. Birds in malls, old arcades, airport terminals and even large, cavernous churches were not an unusual sight. A trail of bread crumbs would probably lure this poor navigator out, thought General Bradley.
Victor Sherwyck was thinking something vastly different. When the mockingbird alighted on the statue above them, he went into deep concentration. “
Elohim, Elohim, Eloah Va
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Dath
,” he silently and fervently conjured in his mind. “
Elohim. El Adonai, El Tzabaoth, Shaddai, Tetragrammaton. Iod. El Elohim, Shaddai.
”
The bird on the statue cocked its head one way, then another.