The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

21

The hall was full. Die Gotterdammerung was playing through the loudspeaker hanging on the balcony just below me. I leaned over the railing, ripped the speaker loose, and dropped it in the aisle just below me. It landed with a resounding crash, causing those people in the immediate vicinity to jump out of their seats. In the rest of the packed hall heads turned as people looked in that direction, and then up at me.

"Listen to me, everybody!" I shouted through cupped hands, struggling to be heard over the music playing through the remaining loudspeakers. "Please listen to me! You are in great danger, but if you do what I say and don't panic everybody will be all right! In a few minutes this ceiling is going to collapse on you! You must all start leaving now, quickly but in an orderly fashion! As you leave the building make sure you keep going across the street so as to leave plenty of room for those coming out behind you! Please start leaving now!"

Somebody yelled, "Judas!"

"Damn it, this place is going to blow up! You have to get out!"

And then the music abruptly stopped.

"Please be still, everybody. This is Sister Kate. Everything is all right.''

I glanced to my left at the stage, but it was empty except for the lectern and a standing microphone which were now bathed in a spotlight. The woman was patched into the public address system-undoubtedly a safe distance away from the main hall. I wondered if she had pushed the button on the control box, knew I must assume that she had.

"You have to get out of here! This place is going to blow up!"

"Garth will join us as soon as the marked intruder is driven from our midst. We can do that by calling him by his real name. Judas!"

"Get out!"

The crowd began to chant: "Judas! Judas! Judas!"

"You're all going to be crushed or slashed to bits!"

"Judas! Judas! Judas!"

So much for good intentions, I thought as I quickly loosened the tourniquet to let some blood flow, then tightened it again. There was nothing more the "marked intruder" could do where he was except keep shouting, to no avail, until he went down with the balcony, and that seemed a rather futile gesture. In whatever time I had left, I intended to go back to see if my brother and the Israelis had managed to escape-and live or die with them, as the case might be, if they hadn't.

I was starting to turn away from the balcony when suddenly a forearm with a leather sheath strapped to it dropped out of the shadow darkness of a girder twenty yards or so out over the hall. Blood, black-purple in the gleam of a klieg light that illuminated the forearm, flowed freely down the arm, then dripped off the fingertips onto the upturned faces of the people below. Then the arm began slowly to swing back and forth.

Marl Braxton was beckoning me.

I pulled the belt tourniquet on my leg even tighter, then clambered up on the railing of the balcony. I gripped the edges of the girder's support footing and hauled myself up into the darkness overhead.

I had hauled myself less than five yards when my right hand touched a gummy mound that could only be plastique; there was a hole in the center where a primer had been torn out.

Something I had said-or the sight and touch of Whisper-had gotten through to the insane D.I.A. operative. Marl Braxton, still the consummate professional, had anticipated what his K.G.B. opponents might be planning, and he had set out to stop it. Now it was up to me to finish the job.

Marl Braxton was still alive when I got to him-but he wouldn't be for very long. In his effort to attract my attention, he had draped himself across the width of the girder, and the upper part of his body now hung precipitously over the edge; I could clearly see the large exit wound of a bullet in his back, and I wondered how he had managed to stay alive as long as he had.

"The woman," Braxton rasped, coughing blood. "Crack sharpshooter. . rifle with silencer. . watch out."

I loosened the tourniquet. Blood from the bullet wound in my thigh mingled with Marl Braxton's, dripped onto the people below. The music suddenly began to play again-full blast; it would be more than enough to cover the sound of rifle fire, silenced or not. I gripped the far edge of the girder with one hand while I reached down with the other, grabbed the back of Marl Braxton's shirt, and tried to pull him back up on the girder.

"Too late … for me," Braxton said in a voice I was just barely able to hear over the cascading roar of the music. He coughed more blood. "Defuse. . charges. But don't expose yourself. She … got me from. . wherever she is. She'll get. . you."

"Don't talk, Marl," I said, pulling on the back of his shirt. "Save your strength. You're not dead yet."

"Soon will … be. Charges all along. . this girder."

"I know, Marl. Don't talk."

"No matter what you. . say. . Garth is the Messiah. I was right. I'll be. . with him in paradise."

"Yes, Marl," I said with a sudden surge of emotion that was probably the closest I had come to experiencing a genuine religious feeling in my life, "you'll be with Garth in paradise."

I never heard the rifle shot, but suddenly Marl Braxton's lowered head snapped to one side and a hole opened in his right temple. I released my hold on his shirt, and his corpse slipped off the girder to tumble down into the sea of people below. There was a shocked silence after Marl's body landed, which lasted two or three seconds, and then the people below began to scream and scramble blindly in a sharp crescendo of panic. I ducked back, pulled the tourniquet tight.

If Sister Kate was in firing range, as she obviously was, it had to mean that I still had a few minutes left. That was encouraging; what was not encouraging was the fact that she was winging shots at me.

A bullet ricocheted off the steel an inch from my head, passed up through the glass dome. Snow trickled onto the back of my neck. I flattened myself on the girder, pulled myself upward.

I found the next slab of C-5 ten yards farther on. Using Whisper, I dug the primer out and let it fall into the milling crowd below me. The frenzied screaming of the people filling the hall rose above the music that thundered in my ears and thrummed through the girder I was moving on. Glancing over the edge of the steel, I watched in horror as men, women, and children were trampled, limbs caught in folding chairs and snapped. People were dying. Sickened, I looked away and pulled myself along the girder.

I didn't bother looking at my watch; I had lost track of time, but it didn't seem to matter. The shooting had stopped, and I took that as a decidedly bad omen. I wondered how long the woman had given herself to get clear of the building. Five minutes? One minute? Thirty seconds?

Suddenly the music was cut off, and my brother's voice-in the sharp, commanding tones of a veteran police officer-came over the public address system, cutting through the cacophony of screams and splintering wood.

"Stop! Stop it! Everyone stop moving and listen to me!"

Garth's sudden appearance in the spotlight on the stage, and his voice over the P.A. system, had the desired effect. Suddenly it was still in the hall, except for the moans of the injured. I kept crawling, found another slab, cut out the primer.

"Everyone remain calm and do as I say! Right now, wherever you' re standing, look around you. If you're close to an exit, walk out of it. Those of you in the middle of the hall, lie down right now and curl into a ball. If you're near a chair that's in one piece, try to get at least your head under it. Cover the injured. Do it now!"

Out of the corner of my eye I watched as the two Mossad agents hurried across the stage to Garth, flanking him and wrapping their arms around his body, forming a protective shield of their flesh between Garth and any more bullets that might be fired.

But there were no more shots. The woman was gone-which meant that the remaining charges might go off at any moment, raining broken glass and steel down on the helpless people below.

I had lost all feeling in my wounded leg, and I knew that I could lose it to gangrene even if I survived. But there was no time to loosen the tourniquet; I kept crawling.

After disarming two more charges, I reached the apogee of the curved girder. From there it was literally all downhill. I pulled myself down the girder at a pretty good clip, carving away the primers on the last three remaining charges. I reached the end of the girder, fell off the top of the support footing and landed hard on my side. I immediately reached down to the belt on my leg, loosened it. More blood rushed out over my already soaked pants leg.

"You meddling little son-of-a-bitch," a woman's voice rasped.

I looked up as Sister Kate stepped out of the shadows in one of the corridors that radiated off the balcony. The rifle she was holding was aimed at my chest. Her finger on the trigger was just beginning to tighten when a brawny arm reached out of the same shadows. A hand cupped her chin, jerked her head to one side, snapping her neck. Her shot whistled over my head, the rifle fell from her hands, and she slumped to the cold stone of the balcony as a familiar figure stepped over the body, reached down, helped me to my feet.

All along, I'd been looking for help from Mr. Lippitt's man inside the organization. Only now did I realize what I should have realized before; Lippitt's man was undoubtedly dead-discovered and executed earlier. But the guardian angel who'd shown up was more than an adequate substitute.

"Mr. Lippitt sends his regards, Mongo," Veil said evenly.

"Jesus Christ," I managed to say when I recovered from my initial shock at finding myself still alive. "Where the hell did you come from?"

"Oh, I've been around all along doing the best I could to keep an eye on you. Lippitt asked me to ride shotgun, remember? But I had to stay way in the background, or they'd have made me. I lost you when you came in here, and I couldn't get in until they started letting everybody in." He paused, removed his false beard, nodded at Sister Kate's corpse. "Sorry I couldn't manage to put that bitch out of commission sooner. I got caught in traffic down on the floor."

"Believe me, you're forgiven," I said, shaking my head, leaning on the balcony railing for support. In the distance I could hear the wail of many sirens, approaching from all directions. I waved to Garth to signal that I was all right, then picked up the fallen rifle, leaned on it.

"You'd better lie down right there, Mongo," Veil said. "From the looks of that leg, you've lost a lot of blood. Ambulances will be here soon."

"There are people down there in a lot worse shape than I am," I said as I shook off Veil's hand and began hobbling across the balcony. "I want to help-and I want to be with Garth."

I'd gone a few steps when I felt Veil's hand clutch the back of my shirt, helping to hold me up as I struggled toward the stairs.

22.

USING Sister Kate's rifle as a crutch, and with Veil holding me up from behind, I made it down the stairs, hobbled into the meeting hall from a stairwell just below and to the right of the stage. I stopped, lowered my head, and groaned inwardly at the legacy of pandemonium, the sight of dead and broken bodies.

"You've done your job, Mongo," Veil said quietly but firmly. "Now you've got to get off that leg, or you're going to lose it."

"I have to help," I said in a hollow voice, looking around me in horror.

"There's nothing more you can do, except wait with the rest of the injured for the ambulances."

The people still standing on their feet seemed to be slowly milling about in separate knots of varying sizes, and all seemed to be suffering from various degrees of shock-including Harry August, whom I glimpsed wandering through the chaos as if in a daze. I sensed clearly that the initial calming influence of Garth's appearance and words was wearing off, and there was a sick, moist smell and feel of renewed mass hysteria in the air. A man in the back began to scream mindlessly, and after a few moments a woman off to my left joined him in an eerie, chilling duet of terror and horror.

Unable to go on any farther, I simply released my grip on the rifle barrel and slumped to the floor. Veil removed the belt tourniquet from my thigh, then used Whisper to cut away my pants leg, which he rolled up into a ball and applied to my wound as a pressure bandage. A lost, whimpering, terrified small child crawled close by; I picked her up in my arms, held her to my chest.

"You must stay calm," Garth said into the microphone from his place at the front of the stage, above me. "The police and ambulances will be here to help everybody very soon. For now, stay still-or try to help anybody nearby who's injured. The greatest danger has passed, and now we have to try and make certain that no more people are hurt."

From somewhere in the middle of the hall, a woman shouted: "What's happened, Garth?!"

"This isn't the time for explanations, ma'am. Just try to remain calm until help arrives."

A man shouted: "What have you done to us, Master?! How could you have let this happen?!"

Garth didn't answer. Feeling a growing sense of unease, I glanced up at the stage. The Mossad agents had jumped off the stage into the audience to help the injured, and now Garth stood alone in the spotlight. I wished the Israelis had stayed where they were.

"Master?! Tell us what's happened! What have you done?!"

"My name is Garth," my brother said in a low, even tone which nonetheless echoed throughout the hall as it was amplified through the loudspeakers, "and it always has been. I'm not anybody's master, and I never was. I've been very sick as a result of being poisoned. Certain people took advantage of me-and you-for their own purposes. They used me to manipulate you."

That was not exactly what his audience had come to hear from Garth, and angry shouts erupted all over the hall.

"You were supposed to announce that you were the son of God! The Messiah!"

"That's not true; I've told you from the beginning that it was nonsense to think I was some sort of messiah, and I never planned any announcement. I've been held a prisoner for the past week by the same people who've been manipulating you and me. All of us were brought here so that we could be killed. Now, thanks to my brother, that isn't going to happen. Try to understand that I'm very proud to be my parents' son, not God's. I am what I am; just Garth Frederickson."

More shouts of anger and confusion arose from around the hall.

"Blasphemer! You've brought the wrath of God down on us! We've been tricked and this is God's punishment!"

It was clearly beginning to look like an argument my brother couldn't possibly win, and I motioned rather urgently for him to get down off the stage. He ignored me.

"Stay calm! You deserve to be told the truth, and that's what I'm telling you. During the months we've worked together, you've shown to yourselves and to the world how good you are-how good people can be. It's you people who've done the work that needs to be done, not God. God doesn't feed hungry people; other people do. You don't need gods, or the sons or daughters of gods, to show you what's right. Your reward has been the good feeling you've had in your hearts about yourselves, and about other people. Continue to do what you've been doing, and you'll continue to feel good about yourselves. Do it with or without God, as you please, but you have to do it now without me. You don't need either of us."

"Garth!" I shouted. "Stop your Goddamn preaching and get off that stage! They don't want to hear it!"

"You betrayed us!" a woman screamed from somewhere right behind me. "You tricked us! You took our money, wasted our time, and now you've killed a lot of us! Satan!"

"I felt I owed you the truth!''

A jagged chair leg sailed through the air, bounced off the lectern less than a foot from Garth's head. It ricocheted into the darkness at the back of the stage, impaled itself in a huge piece of equipment in a bank of electronic gear. Sparks flew, and there was the chilling crackle of unleashed electricity.

Suddenly it seemed that everyone was shouting in either rage or panic. Fistfights broke out, and more pieces of chairs flew through the air. Garth stayed where he was, pleading for calm, shouting into a microphone that had gone dead. Still holding the child with my left arm, I reached up for Veil's with my right hand, and he hauled me to my feet.

"Garth!" I screamed. "Get the hell off that stage! Get out of there!"

It seemed that chairs were flying everywhere, bouncing off the lectern and stage all around Garth. I cringed, clutched the little girl close to me, and watched in horror as electrical power cables that had been strung along the underside of the balcony were torn away and broken; more sparks flew. A fire had begun to blaze around the electrical equipment at the back of the stage; blue-white electrical fire flickered over the wires, dancing on bare metal. Two loudspeakers suspended from the balcony suddenly exploded.

"Garth, come on!! This place is going to blow!!"

He couldn't have heard me in the din, and I was being rapidly swept away from the stage by an inexorable tide of milling, churning bodies-but Garth's eyes suddenly met mine. Desperately, I motioned with my free hand toward the sparking wires, then up at the glass dome and the girders. He nodded, again tried to shout into the dead microphone just as a man emerged from the flame-streaked darkness behind him and smashed a chair across his back, driving him to his knees. The microphone flew through the air with its sudden feedback sounding like an electrical scream of protest.

"Garth!"

Now people had begun to surge onto the stage from all directions. Garth shook his head to clear it, took a series of deep breaths, then abruptly stood up. Almost absently picking a thick, bloody, wood sliver out of his shoulder, he leaped down off the stage and walked straight toward me. Most people parted as he strode forward, and the others he pushed aside. I was trying to scream warnings to the people around me, but no one would listen. I looked up, saw translucent blue fire dancing along the support girder at the farthest end of the hall.

And then Garth was beside me. He scooped both the child and me up in his arms, and then both he and Veil began to push toward the closest exit, fifteen years to our left. We were only a few feet away when the electricity reached the slabs of C-5. There was a deafening explosion, and it felt like a steel fist struck me from behind, knocking me from Garth's arms, throwing us all to the ground. Chunks of steel, slivers of glass and wood whistled through the air over our heads. I struggled to drape my body over the little girl's, and then something struck me in the head and I passed out.

I couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes, because I was suddenly aware of hands clutching at the child and me, pulling us from the rubble, placing us on stretchers. Desperately, I looked around for Garth-and found him lying on a stretcher next to me; he was conscious, staring back at me. We reached out, touched each other's hand. Then our stretchers were raised and we were carried away through a nether world filled with the scream of sirens and swirling smoke.

Somebody shoved a television camera in my face, and I swiped at it and turned away in disgust. As I did so, I caught sight of something that filled me with renewed horror and tore a strangled cry from my throat.

Harry August was lying on a stretcher on the ground, clutching at his face as attendants struggled to strap him in. Blood oozed through his fingers.

Mercifully, I passed out again.