The Trinity (42 page)

Chris shudders. He is amazed that someone can think of setting another person on fire.

“Excellent, excellent. I think we are on to something here. Brilliant, Mr. Hinckley, brilliant.” Crowley, too, has had the same idea all along, but he wants his two young companions to feel like they’re participants in the whole process.

The paleness of Chris’s face and his silence disturbs Crowley. He is concerned that a member of his Trinity may be tempted to drop out.

“Chris, what do you think?”

Chris answers, too afraid to be singled out for being noncommittal. “Yeah, fire would work, I guess, as well as anything. What exactly are we trying to do, though?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Crowley asks.

Brad laughs and the priest joins him.

“Look,” says Crowley, seeing Chris’s obvious squeamishness, “this is a war, and the stakes are high. We have to defend our culture and our race before it is absorbed into the mess of blacks and Jews and god knows what else. Do you want a wife and kids someday?”

Chris nods.

“Of course you do, and you want them to grow up in an environment that is safe and free, not under the control of Jewish bankers or media, not in fear of some Negro robbing you or raping your wife or killing your child. That happens all the time, especially in America. It is happening as we speak. It is very important that the blacks that aren’t wiped out be sent back to Africa, and it is very important that the white man’s money be taken from the Jewish banks. They have the real power over us. Our war is an important one indeed, and if you can’t handle it, you had better toughen up or get out of our way.”

Chris says nothing. He would like to get up and walk away, but he knows Father Crowley won’t allow him to simply leave. There would be some price to pay. A price to pay to a man who is capable of murder, murder without even blinking or the slightest pang of conscience.

Crowley takes Chris’s silence as compliance, and continues his strategizing.

“I think we should start with the Aberdeen synagogue. Chris, didn’t you say that there were no windows that you could see?”

Chris nods. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Excellent. I think that might be the place to start, but I also think it is worth a trip to verify that fact. We will count the windows and the doors and plan accordingly. Let’s go.”

Crowley grabs his coat and Chris and Brad follow him to his car. The engine whines as he drives the car fast and hard and north.

Despite the furiousness of his driving, the trip is still nearly half an hour. Chris stares out the window, wondering what he has gotten himself into and wondering how he is going to get out. What would he be doing now, at this moment, if he had opted not to join the service, to stay in Michigan?

He would be homeless, he decides, his mother having moved, his father indifferent, and his brother constantly stoned or drunk.

The lights of Aberdeen illuminate their drive through the city center, and they easily find the synagogue. They park in the street right in front of the door, separated only by a narrow swath of sidewalk. The synagogue is housed in an old building on the edge of the center of Aberdeen, surrounded by shops and storefront offices. The building stands alone, barely, with a narrow passage leading to the alley from the sidewalk on either side of the building. There is one window in the front, right by the door, and only one door leading into the alley.

“Splendid,” says Crowley, while looking up and down the street and the alley, scanning the rooftops, the doorways and other possible places to hide.

After only a few minutes, Crowley leads them back to the car and they head back to Lutherkirk.

He details his plan while driving south.

“This is so simple, it is brilliant.” He grins from ear to ear. “On a day of my choosing, in the not too distant future, we will go to Aberdeen, during a service in the synagogue. Brad and Chris, you will take the front door, and I will take the back. Remember the wine bottles in Glasgow?”

Nods and uh-huhs from inside the car.

“Well, we will have an arsenal of those, at least two bagfuls, and we will simply light them and throw them inside. We will fill them with gasoline and oil. The gasoline will burn, and the oil will allow the fire to stick wherever our bottles are thrown. Chris, you will have to do the throwing, because Brad will be holding Thor’s hammer, to deal with any sort of insurrection. We will also cover the doorways in gasoline, and will light those as we leave, so no one can get out. The building is old. The interior is made of wood and I am sure the pews are, too. If we do this right, the building will ignite rather quickly.”

His plan is now clear in Chris’s mind. He plans to burn people alive.

“What is Thor’s hammer, Father?” Brad asks.

“Do you know who Thor is?”

Brad nods. Hesitant, he says, “Yes.” He recalls a cartoon show from his youth and Crowley’s occasional vague reference to the Norse gods.

“Thor is the son of Odin, a mighty god indeed. He rules the thunder, the lightning, and the rain. His hammer is a powerful weapon. He used to fight and slay giants in the ancient days, and he carries it now, in Valhalla, and returns to Earth occasionally to mete out justice as he sees fit.

“I have my own version of Thor’s hammer that I’ve recently acquired. I have been waiting to show you, until the time was right. I ordered it through the mail, from the back of a mercenary magazine. It’s a metal club with a five-pound metal ball with spikes on the end. I knew it was Thor’s hammer the first time I saw it. It is, indeed, beautiful. As you are the largest and strongest among us, I thought it would be best for you to handle it. You will destroy anyone—man, woman or child—who tries to leave the synagogue or gets in our way.”

“Not a problem, Father,” says Brad, proud of himself, proud to be a mortal version of Thor, relishing the opportunity to slay the enemy.

Crowley deposits Brad and Chris right outside the gate of the base, and they walk back to their room. Brad is swinging an imaginary club through the air, making noises with his mouth, as if he is making contact with human flesh. His pantomime becomes quite animated. Chris walks alongside, silent, his eyes seeing only the ground.

“It is going to be awesome, Chris. People are going to hear of us around the world.”

They enter their room and Chris immediately finds the bathroom.

He vomits, emptying his stomach and then some.

Chris spends the time off between the day and mid-watches with little or no sleep, while trying to avoid Brad as much as possible. He hides in the base library when it is open, mindlessly reading magazines. He even goes to the gym and tries to exercise, lifting weights among the larger and more athletic sailors but not remaining for too long, as he again feels awkward. He is unsure of how to exercise and self-conscious of his un-athletic form.

However, he can’t avoid Brad in the evening, as he has to return to his room. To avoid conversation, he feigns sleep, the earpieces of his Walkman glued to his ears. Radio Luxembourg occupies these evenings, with European popular music that he finds puzzling but interesting and mildly distracting. Distraction is welcome, anything that takes his mind away from Crowley and fire and war.

He knows he can’t go through with any plans that involve murder. At first, he was able to convince himself that the Jews and the blacks were all evil and inferior to his own race, and he felt superior because of that. Crowley managed to make him feel like he had some sort of special value, even though it was based solely on the color of his skin.

The priest’s venom has changed all that, and he now knows what is truly evil. The barbaric images of people running to avoid flames and smoke, especially women and children, are too horrific for him to keep in his mind for very long.

Even more horrific is the imagined sight of Brad clubbing the frightened masses, clubbing them to a bloody and charred submission, with the beastly device coined by Crowley as Thor’s hammer.

His mind while awake—with the irregular rhythms of Radio Luxembourg reverberating in his head—scrambles for a solution.

He could hide and avoid the priest, staying away from his house and from the chapel. He doubts the priest has been granted a security clearance, and doubts he has access to his worksite.

Hinckley—because of his roommate status—is a permanent fixture in Chris’s life, as permanent as a layer of skin.

That leaves him with no other option but to confront the priest, to tell him he’s out, out of the Trinity, and sorry, but he hopes there’s no hard feelings.

Chris knows this approach is not possible. He bears too many of the priest’s secrets, the graffiti and fire and murder that he has left in his wake. There is no way the priest will let Chris just walk away.

He, too, could die of an apparent suicide.

He thinks about running away from the base and trying to immerse himself into the Scottish countryside. Maybe he could find a job or something and become as anonymous as the countless sheep that dot the hills just underneath the nearly perpetual gray sky.

Not possible. He has no place to live, and he doesn’t see Scottish society putting up with a vagrant American, wandering from village to village seeking food and shelter.

He thinks briefly about reaching out to his family, maybe his father, but this idea is also rejected. He doubts his father would even open a letter from him.

He has no address for his mother.

That leaves him with one option. The Navy has always stressed using the chain of command. One should always go to their direct supervisor with any questions or concerns, and if that supervisor feels it is necessary, they can forward the information further up the chain.

That leaves him Karen, and he knows this is the best option of all. She seems to emanate a certain sort of serene wisdom, and he knows though she may be shocked with what he reveals to her, she may offer a solution.

His first mid-watch comes. Bleary-eyed from a lack of sleep, shaking from an overindulgence of cola and stress, he enters the building with trepidation and hope. He is nervous about what he has to tell Karen. The details are unpleasant to think about, let alone to explain with words.

He is also hopeful. Something will happen because of this. His career in the Navy may be over, but that is better than the alternative: having a hand in mass murder.

He arrives for his watch and takes the pass-down from the outgoing seaman. There has been a bit of activity in the Mediterranean and a flurry in the Arctic Ocean as an American destroyer has been shadowing a Soviet sub. All part of the endless charade of cat-and-mouse that is part of this Cold War.

Normally, Chris would be excited by such details, the flurry of activity stirring his sense of duty and patriotism. But not on this night. On this night, he would prefer the oceans and seas surrounding Europe to be devoid of any military activity.

Karen takes her pass-down from the outgoing supervisor, another Petty Officer Second Class like herself. They chat idly for a while, longer than Chris would like. He wants to get his confession and his plea for help delivered as soon as possible, and he needs to wait until all ears have left the room, leaving just Karen and himself.

He enters his initials in the logbook, and the printer starts to buzz with the traffic of the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic. He ignores the printer as the scrolling paper piles up on the floor. Karen stares at him as her peer leaves the room. Chris has been distant lately, she realizes, but still dutiful.

“Are you going to get that?” she asks, pointing at the paper piled on the floor. “There’s stuff going on. You need to pass it along.”

“I need to tell you something,” he says, tearing off the paper from the printer and scooping the pile off the floor, placing the heap of paper on top of the table that serves as a common desk.

“I’m guessing this is important, seeing how you’re putting the welfare of the Atlantic Fleet at stake,” she says, pointing at the pile of messages on top of the table.