Secret of the Seventh Son (20 page)

On the white lacquered desk, next to a closed laptop computer, was a short stack of two thin manuscripts bound in brass brads. He glanced at the cover page of the one on top:
Counters: a screenplay by Peter Benedict, WGA #4235567.
Who's Peter Benedict? he wondered, Mark's nom de plume or some other guy? Beside the screenplays there were two black pens. He almost laughed out loud. Pentel ultrafines. The little peckers were everywhere. He was back on the sofa when Mark returned with the beers.

"In Cambridge, didn't you mention you did some writing?" Will asked.

"I do."

"Those screenplays yours?" he asked, pointing.

Mark nodded and gulped.

"My daughter's something of a writer too. What do you write about?"

Mark started tentatively but progressively relaxed as he talked about his most recent script. By the time Will downed the beer, he'd heard all about casinos and card-counting and Hollywood and talent agents. For a reticent guy, this was almost a blue-streak topic. During his second beer, he got a taste of Mark's postcollege, pre-Vegas life, a barren landscape of few personal bonds and endless computer work. During the third beer, Will reciprocated with details about his own past, sour marriages, busted relationships and all, and Mark listened in apparent fascination, with a growing amazement that the golden boy's life, which he had assumed was perfect, was anything but. At the same time, creeping pangs of guilt were making Will uneasy.

After taking a leak, Will returned to the living room and announced he had to be going, but before he did, he wanted to get something off his chest. "I've got to apologize to you."

"For what?"

"When I look back on freshman year, I realize I was a jerk. I should have helped you out more, gotten Alex to leave you alone. I was a dumb-ass and I'm sorry." He didn't mention the duct-taping incident; he didn't have to.

Mark involuntarily teared up and looked profoundly embarrassed. "I--"

"You don't have to say anything. I don't want to cause any discomfort."

Mark sniffed. "No, look, I appreciate it. I don't think we really knew each other."

"True enough." Will dug his hand in his pockets for the car keys. "So, thanks for the beers and the chat. I've got to hit it."

Mark inhaled and finally said, "I think I know why you're in town. I saw you on TV."

"Yeah, the Doomsday case. The Vegas connection. Sure."

"I've watched you on TV for years. And read all the magazine articles."

"Yeah, I've had my fill of media stuff."

"It must be exciting."

"Believe me, it's not."

"How's it going? The investigation, I mean."

"I've got to tell you, it's a pain up my butt. I didn't want any part of it. I was just trying to ease on down retirement road."

"Are you making any progress?"

"You're obviously a guy who can keep a secret. Here's one: we don't have a fucking clue."

Mark looked weary when he said, "I don't think you're going to catch the guy."

Will squinted at him strangely. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't know. What I've read about it, he sounds like he's pretty clever."

"No, no, no. I'll catch him. I always do."

T
he call from Peter Benedict rattled Elder. It was deeply unsettling to receive an offer to help Desert Life from a man he had met once in a casino. And he was almost certain he hadn't given out his mobile number. Add to that the FBI's sudden interest in him and his company, and this was shaping up to be a worrisome weekend. During times of trouble he preferred to be in his headquarters with his people surrounding him, a general among his troops. He thought nothing of pulling in his executive team during a crisis to work on Saturdays and Sundays but needed to deal with this situation alone. Even Bert Myers, his confidant and consigliore, would have to be blacked-out until he knew what he was dealing with.

Only he and Myers knew the extent of Desert Life's problems because the two of them were the sole architects of a scheme to get the company out of its financial hole. Undoubtedly, the correct adjective to describe the scheme was "fraudulent," but Elder preferred to think of it as "aggressive." The plan was in its early stages, but unfortunately it wasn't working yet. In fact, it was backfiring and the hole was getting deeper. In desperation, they had decided to shift some cash from their reserves to artificially boost profits for the last quarter and shore up the stock price.

Dangerous ground, the path to Hell, or at least prison.

They knew it, but in for a penny, in for a pound. And God willing, Elder thought, things would turn around in the next quarter. It had to. He had built this company with his own two hands. It was his life's work and his one true love. It meant more to him than his arid country club wife or his dissolute offspring and it had to be saved, so if this Peter Benedict character had a viable idea, then he was obligated to hear it.

The backbone of Desert Life's business was life insurance. The company was the largest underwriter of life insurance policies west of the Mississippi. Elder had cut his teeth in the business as a life insurance man. The steady actuarial predictability of forecasting death rates had always attracted him. If you tried to predict an individual's time of death and put money on it, you'd be wrong too often to make a consistent profit. To get around trying to figure out an individual's risk, insurers relied instead on the "law of large numbers" and employed armies of actuaries and statisticians to conduct analyses on past performance to help predict the future. While no one could calculate what premium you'd have to charge one individual to make money, you could predict with confidence the economics of insuring, say, thirty-five-year-old male nonsmokers with negative drug screens and a family history of heart disease.

Still, profit margins were tight. For every dollar Desert Life took in as premiums, thirty cents went to expenses, most went to cover losses, and the little left over was profit. Profits in the insurance game came two ways: underwriting profits and investment income.

Insurance companies were huge investors, putting billions of dollars into play every day. The returns from those investments were the cornerstone of their business. Some companies even underwrote to a loss--taking a dollar of premium and expecting to pay more than a dollar in losses and expenses but hoping to make it up in investment income. Elder disdained that strategy but his appetite for investment returns was large.

Desert Life's problems were growth-related. Over the years, as he'd enlarged the business and expanded his empire through acquisitions, he diversified away from dependence on life insurance. He branched out into homeowners and auto insurance for individuals and property, casualty and liability insurance for businesses.

For years business boomed, but then the worm turned.

"Hurricanes, goddamn hurricanes," he'd grumble out loud, even when he was alone. One after another, they slammed into Florida and the Gulf coast and beat the stuffing out of his profits. His surplus reserves--the funds available to pay out future claims--were falling to red-flag levels. State and federal insurance regulators were taking notice and so was Wall Street. His stock was nose-diving and that was turning his life into something out of Dante's
Inferno
.

Bert Myers, financial genius, to the rescue.

Myers wasn't an insurance guy; he had a background in investment banking. Elder had brought him in a few years earlier to help with their acquisition strategy. As far as corporate finance types went, he was a very sharp knife in a very large drawer, one of the smartest guys on the Street.

Faced with dwindling profits, Myers hatched a plan. He couldn't control Mother Nature and all those damage claims against the company but he could boost their investment returns by "wandering over the line," as he put it. Government regulators, not to mention their own internal charter, imposed strict restrictions on the kinds of investments they could make, mostly low-return, nonrisky forays in the bond market and conservative investments in mortgages, consumer loans, and real estate.

They couldn't take their precious reserves and bet them up the road on the roulette tables. But Myers had his eye on a hedge fund run by some math whizzes in Connecticut who had reaped enormous returns by correctly betting on international currency fluctuations. The fund, International Advisory Partners, was off-the-chart from a risk perspective, and investing in it was not an option for a company like Desert Life. But once Elder signed off on the scheme, Myers set up a dummy real estate partnership, ostensibly meeting the Desert Life risk profile, and passed a billion plus in reserves into IAP, hoping for outsized returns to repair their profit statements.

Myer's timing was not good. IAP used Desert Life's cash infusion to bet that the yen would fall relative to the dollar--and didn't the Japanese finance minister have to mess things up by making an adverse statement about Japanese monetary policy?

Their first quarter: down fourteen percent on their investment. The IAP guys were insisting that this was an anomaly and their strategy was sound. Myers just needed to hang on and everything would come out roses. So, in the full desert heat, their palms were sweating but they were holding on as tightly as they could.

Elder decided to meet Peter Benedict on a Sunday morning to keep it low-key and far away from his office. A down-market waffle house in North Las Vegas seemed like a venue his employees or friends were unlikely to frequent, and with the smell of maple syrup in his nostrils he sat and waited in an interior booth, dressed in white poplin golf trousers and a thin orange cashmere sweater. He wasn't sure he remembered what the man looked like and he scanned each patron.

Mark arrived a few minutes late, an unassuming presence in jeans and his ubiquitous Lakers cap, carrying a manila envelope. He spotted Elder first, steeled himself, and made his way to the booth. Elder rose and extended his hand, "Hello, Peter, nice to see you again."

Mark was shy, uncomfortable. Elder's culture demanded some small talk but it was painful for Mark. Blackjack was their only known common ground so Elder chatted about cards for a few minutes before insisting they order some breakfast. Mark became distracted by the fluttering in his chest, which he worried might be turning into something pathological. He sipped ice water and tried to control his breathing but his heart raced. Should he get up and leave?

It was too late for that.

The statutory small talk ended and Elder got down to it. The pleasantries done, his tone was flinty: "So, Peter, tell me why you think my company is in trouble?"

Mark had no formal finance background but he had taught himself how to read financial statements in Silicon Valley. He'd begun by dissecting his own data security company's SEC filings then moved on to other high-tech companies, looking for good investments. When he came across an accounting concept he didn't understand, he read about it until he had amassed a body of knowledge a CPA would envy. His mind had so much horsepower, he found the logic and the mathematics underpinning accountancy trivial.

Now, in a constricted voice, he began rattling mechanically through all the subtle anomalies in Desert Life's last 10-Q: the quarterly financial report filed with the government. He had detected faint footprints of fraud that no one on Wall Street had noticed. He even guessed correctly that the company might be trawling in prohibited waters for high-yield returns.

Elder listened with a queasy fascination.

When Mark was done, Elder cut into a waffle, took a small bite and quietly chewed. When he swallowed, he said, "I'm not commenting whether you're right or wrong. Suppose you just tell me how you think you can help Desert Life."

Peter took the manila envelope he'd been keeping on his lap and handed it across the table. He said nothing but it was clear to the older man that the envelope was to be opened. Inside were a bunch of newspaper clippings.

All of them were about the Doomsday Killer.

"What the hell is this?" Elder asked.

"It's the way to save your company," Mark almost whispered. The moment was upon him and he felt woozy.

Then the moment seemed to slip away.

Elder reacted viscerally and started to get up. "What are you, some kind of a sicko? For your information, I know one of the victims!"

"Which one?" Mark croaked.

"David Swisher." He reached for his wallet.

Mark mustered his courage and said, "You should sit down. He wasn't a victim."

"What do you mean?"

"Please sit down and listen to me."

Elder complied. "I've got to tell you, I don't like where this conversation is going. You've got a minute to explain yourself or I'm out of here, understand?"

"Well, he
was
a victim, I guess. He just wasn't a victim of the Doomsday Killer."

"How do you know that?"

"Because there is no Doomsday Killer."

A
bbot Josephus caught sight of himself in the reflection of one of the long windows of the Chapter House. It was black outside, but the candles indoors had not yet been smothered so the window had the quality of a reflecting glass.

He had a bulging middle and fleshy jowls and he was the only adult male in the community who was not tonsured, nor could he be, since he was completely bald.

A young monk, an Iberian with dark hair and a beard as dense as bear fur, knocked and entered with a candle snuffer. He bowed slightly and began his task.

"Good evening, Father." His accent was thick as honey.

"Good evening, Jose."

The abbot favored Jose above all of the younger brothers because of his intellect, his skill as a manuscript illustrator, and his good humor. He was seldom gloomy, and when he became amused, his laugh reminded the older man of the laughter he had heard many years earlier booming from the mouth of his friend Matthias, the blacksmith who had forged the abbey bell.

"How is the night air?" the abbot asked.

"It is fragrant, Father, and filled with cricket-song."

With the Chapter House dark, Jose left two candles burning in the abbot's chamber, one on his study table, the other by his bedside, and bade his superior good night. Alone, Josephus knelt by his bed and prayed the same prayer he had uttered since the day he became abbot: "Dear Lord, please bless this humble servant who strives to honor you each and every day and give me the strength to be the shepherd of this abbey and to serve your ends. And bless your vessel, Octavus, who toils endlessly to fulfill your divine mission, for you command his hand just as you command our hearts and minds. Amen."

Then Josephus blew out the last candle and climbed into his bed.

When the Bishop of Dorchester asked his new abbot whom he wanted to serve as prior, Josephus was quick to suggest Sister Magdalena. To be sure, there was no one better suited for the task. Her sense of organization and duty were un-surpassed among the ranks of the ministers. But Josephus had another motive, which had always made him uneasy. He needed her cooperation to protect the mission he believed Octavus was meant to accomplish.

She was the first Prioress of Vectis, and she prayed eagerly to be forgiven for the pride she felt every day. Josephus allowed her to attend to all details of the administration of the abbey, just as he had for Oswyn, and he listened patiently to her daily reports on the abuses and transgressions she ferreted out so energetically. Vectis, he acknowledged, was certainly more efficient and regimented than under his reign as prior. Yes, there was perhaps more grumbling over small matters, but he deigned to intervene only when he perceived Magdalena's actions excessive or cruel.

Instead he concentrated his attentions on prayer, the completion of the abbey's construction, and, of course, the boy, Octavus.

The latter two preoccupations intersected at the Scriptorium. Upon Oswyn's death, Josephus revisited the plans for the new Scriptorium and decided it must be even grander, since he fervently believed that the holy books and texts produced at Vectis were vital work for the betterment of mankind. He foresaw a future where ever more monks might produce more manuscripts, and the abbey and all Christendom would be elevated by their efforts.

Furthermore, he wanted a private chamber to be constructed, an inner sanctorum within the building where Octavus could work unimpeded. It was to be a special, protected place where he could transcribe the names that brewed inside him and poured onto the page as ale from a tapped barrel.

The cellar of the Scriptorium was dark and cool, perfect for the storage of large sheets of vellum and jars of ink but also well-suited for a boy who had no desire to play in the sunshine or walk in a meadow. A walled-off room was built in one end of the cellar, and there, behind a latched door, Octavus lived his life in perpetual candlelit darkness. His sole motivation was to sit on his stool, lean into his writing desk, and furiously dip his quill over and over and over again and scribble onto parchment until he collapsed in fatigue and had to be carried to his bed.

Because of his zeal for his vocation, Octavus rarely slept more than a few hours a day and would always wake without prompting, seemingly renewed. Whenever Paulinus first entered the Scriptorium in the morning, the boy was already hard at work. A young sister or novice would bring him his meals, dutifully avoiding contact with his handiwork, then empty his chamber pot and bring fresh tallow candles. Paulinus would collect the precious finished pages and bind them into heavy, thick, hide-covered books when there were sufficient numbers.

As Octavus grew from a small boy to a young man, his body elongated as if a baker had been pulling on warm dough. His appendages were spindly, almost rubbery, and his complexion, like bread dough, was pallid, without a trace of color. Even his lips were bleached out, with only the lightest tinge of pink. Had Paulinus not seen drops of crimson ooze from parchment cuts on his fingers, he would have supposed the lad was bloodless.

Unlike most boys, who upon maturation lose their delicate faces, Octavus's jaw did not go square and his nose did not spread. He maintained a boyish physiognomy that defied explanation, but then again, his very existence defied explanation. His fine hair remained bright ginger. Every month or so, Paulinus would summon the barber to trim his locks while he wrote, or better yet, while he slept, and clumps of carrot-colored hair would litter the floor until one of the girls who attended him swept them up.

The girls who, under oaths of secrecy, were permitted to feed him and dispose of his waste, were in awe of his stone-silent beauty and his absolute concentration, although one boldly mischievous novice, a fifteen-year-old named Mary, would sometimes make unsuccessful attempts to attract his gaze by dropping a goblet or clattering a plate.

However, nothing could distract Octavus from his work. The names rushed from his quill to the page in the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.

Paulinus and Josephus would often stand over him in a kind of reverie, watching the frantic scratching of his quill. While many entries were of the Roman alphabet, many were not. Paulinus recognized Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebraic scripts, but there were others he could not decipher. The boy's pace was furious, defying the absence of tension or urgency in his countenance. When the quill dulled, Paulinus would substitute another, so the lad could keep his letters tight and small. He packed his pages so densely that a finished page was more black than white. And when a page was done, he would turn it over and keep writing, drawing on some innate sense of parsimony or efficiency. Only when both sides were filled would Octavus reach for a clean sheet. Paulinus, arthritic and with a perpetually knotted stomach, would inspect each completed page, nervously wondering whether he might spot a name of particular interest: Paulinus of Vectis, for example.

Sometimes Paulinus and Josephus talked about how marvelous it would be to ask the lad what he thought about his life's work and for him to offer a cogent explanation. But they might as well have wished for a cow to explain what its existence meant to her. Octavus never met their gaze, never responded to their words, never showed emotion, never spoke. Over the years, the two aging monks often discussed the purpose of Octavus's industry in a biblical context. God, the omniscient and eternal, knows all things of the past and the present, but also of the future, they both agreed. All of the events of the world are surely predetermined by dint of God's vision, and the Creator had apparently chosen the miraculously born Octavus as his living quill to record what was to be.

Paulinus possessed a copy of the thirteen books written by St. Augustine, his
Confessions
. The monks at Vectis held these volumes in high esteem since Augustine was a spiritual beacon to them, second only to St. Benedict. Josephus and Paulinus pored over the volumes and could almost hear the venerable saint speaking to them through time in this passage:
God decides the eternal destinations of each person. Their fate follows according to God's choice.

Wasn't Octavus manifest proof of that assertion?

At first Josephus stored the leather-bound books in a rack against a wall in Octavus's chamber. By the time the boy was eight he had filled ten bulky books and Josephus had a second rack built. As he grew older, his hand grew faster, and in recent years he was producing some ten books a year. When the total number of volumes exceeded seventy and threatened to crowd out his chamber, Josephus decided the books must have their own place.

The abbot diverted workmen from other abbey construction projects to begin an excavation at the far side of the Scriptorium cellar, opposite Octavus's chamber. The copyists who labored in the main hall above grumbled about the muffled pick-axing and shoveling but Octavus was unfazed by the racket and pressed on.

In time Josephus had a library for Octavus's growing collection, a cool, dry, stone-lined vault. Ubertus personally supervised the masonry work, aware that his son was behind the closed door but completely uninterested in laying eyes upon the boy. He belonged to God now, not to him.

Josephus maintained a strict code of secrecy around Octavus. Only Paulinus and Magdalena knew the nature of his work, and outside this inner circle, only the few girls who tended him had direct contact. Of course, in a small community such as the abbey, there were whispered rumors about mysterious texts and sacred rituals involving the young man whom most had not seen since he was a little boy. However, Josephus was so loved and respected that no one questioned the piety and correctness of his actions. There were many things in this world the inhabitants of Vectis did not understand and this was just another one of them. They trusted God and Josephus to keep them safe and show them the correct path to holiness.

The seventh of July was Octavus's eighteenth birthday.

He began the day by relieving himself in the corner and marching straight to his writing desk for his first ink dip. He continued writing at the precise spot on the page where he had left off. Several large candles that burned even as he slept rested in heavy, forged stands and bathed the desk in flickering yellow light. He blinked to moisten his sandy eyes and set to work.

A new name. Mors. Then another name. Natus. And on and on.

In the early morning, Mary, the novice, knocked and, without waiting for a response she knew would never come, entered his chamber. She was a local girl who hailed from the Normandy-facing southern part of Vectis. Her father was a farmer with too many mouths to feed who hoped his earnest daughter would fare better as a servant of God than an impoverished wheat thresher. This was her fourth summer at the abbey. Sister Magdalena thought her a keen lass, quick to learn her prayers but a tad too high-spirited for her liking. She was mirthful and given to playful behavior with her fellow novices, such as hiding a sandal or placing an acorn in a bed. Unless her decorum improved, Magdalena was hesitant to admit her to the order.

Mary brought a light meal on a tray, brown bread and a slab of bacon. Unlike the other girls, who were fearful and never addressed Octavus, she would jabber away as if he were a normal young man. Now, she stood in front of his desk to try to get him to look at her. Her chestnut hair was still long and flowing and it spilled from under her veil. If she became a sister, her hair would be cut short, something she wished for but nonetheless dreaded. She was tall and big-boned, gangly like a yearling, pretty, with perpetually blush-apple cheeks.

"Well, Octavus, it's a fine summer morning up there, wouldn't you like to know."

She put the tray on his desk. Sometimes he would not even touch his food but she knew he had a fondness for bacon. He put his quill down and started chomping at the bread and meat. "You know why you've got bacon today?" she asked. He ate greedily, staring at the plate. "It's because it is your birthday, that's why!" she exclaimed. "You're eighteen years old! If you want to take a good rest today and put down your quill and take a walk in the sunshine, I'll let them know and I'm sure they'll let you."

He finished the food and immediately started writing again, his fingers rubbing grease on the parchment. For the two years she had catered for him, she'd grown increasingly intrigued by the boy. She had imagined that she alone would one day unlock his tongue and get him to speak his secrets. And she had convinced herself that there was something significant about his eighteenth birthday, as if the passage to manhood would break the spell and let this strangely beautiful youth enter the fraternity of man.

"You didn't even know it was your birthday, did you?" she said with frustration. She taunted him. "Seventh of July. Everyone knows when you were born because you're special, aren't you?"

She reached under her linen smock and pulled out a small bundle secreted there. It was the size of an apple, wrapped in a bit of cloth and tied with a thin strip of leather.

"I've got a present for you, Octavus," she said in singsong.

She was behind his chair and reached around him, putting the package on top of his page, forcing him to stop. He stared at the package with the same blankness he reserved for everything.

"Unwrap it," she urged.

He continued to stare.

"All right, then, I'll do it for you!"

She leaned over his back, encircled his thin torso with her sturdy arms and began to untie the parcel. It was a round golden cake that stained the cloth with sweet goo.

"Look! It's a honey cake! I made it myself, just for you!"

She was pressing against him.

Perhaps he felt the sensation of her firm small breasts against his thin shirt. Perhaps he felt the warm skin of her upper arm brush his cheek. Perhaps he smelled a female musk from her pubescent body or the warm gusts from her mouth as she talked.

He dropped his quill and let his hand drop to his lap. He was breathing hard and appeared to be in some kind of distress. Frightened, Mary took a few steps backward.

She could not see what he was doing, but he seemed to be grabbing at himself as if stung by a bee. She heard small animal-like noises whistling through his teeth.