Cult (4 page)

His eyes darted away. Had he still expected a blind alliance? He sipped his drink and shrugged with resignation.

“I made appointments,” she said gently. “Hal Phillips. He's with the FBI. As a general rule, they're not my favorite outfit, but he's a very good friend, a great guy.”

“I also made an appointment for you with a woman who got her son out of the Glories, a Mrs. Prococino.”

He nodded. “I appreciate that, Nay. That's all I could ask for.” She knew he wanted more, but she couldn't provide what more was.

Obviously, he plucked at hope, like a fish jumps at bait, but she knew he was disappointed. He was trying to bring his wife home.

“You've been terrific,” Barney said, as he might have said to a salesgirl showing him a collection of ties. It wasn't, she knew, what he really meant.

When they were outside, he put out his hand. She took it and their eyes met.

“I could tag along,” she said, her throat constricting. She had debated that option all morning, her instincts opting for the negative. But seeing him now, forlorn, unhappy and confused, she betrayed her own caveat that she would avoid any greater involvement.

“Really, Nay… haven't I imposed enough…?”

“Barney, don't get maudlin. What are old friends for? Anyway, I might learn something.”

“I won't forget this, Nay.”

Phillips worked at the main FBI building on 10th Street. Barney and Naomi obediently went through elaborate security checks, clipped on badges, and eventually followed a prim secretary towards the end of a long corridor to Phillips' office.

On the way over, Barney said nothing more than superficial conversation. The reunion had clearly been a disappointment for both of them. She had been a fool to even let herself think otherwise or even acknowledge her secret speculation that something might rekindle their old relationship, then dismissing it with embarrassment. Any feeling for her had died in him, she concluded. He had let her go without a fight. But hadn't she left him that long apologia, which precluded any recourse? Wrong man. Wrong time. I'm sorry. Now, the man wanted his wife back. He had come to her for that purpose only.

“Naomi filled me in,” Phillips said. He had the scrubbed typical look of the quintessential J. Edgar soldier, despite efforts by later FBI chiefs to exorcise the type. He was an executive now, in charge of others. But under his shaggy dark eyebrows, he looked kindly. He made a practiced effort to keep Barney at ease. Naomi had begged him to see Barney.

“Just see him, Hal. Please. He has nowhere to turn.”

“Is he a relative?”

“Sort of.” For some reason she resisted explaining their relationship. “He's at wit's end.”

“I don't think I can help him. I've been down that road. You can't make a case.”

“Just see him. Hear him out.”

It was enough of an explanation for Phillips to be persuaded, as Naomi knew he would. They went back a long way.

“It's not against the law,” Phillips said after Barney had outlined the situation. They were seated around a small conference table. The prim secretary had brought them coffee. There was a picture of the President on one wall. A flag stood in a corner of the room.

“No one gives up a home, a husband, and a child in two damned weeks,” Barney said. He looked briefly at Naomi, seeming incongruously accusatory. Although Phillips tried to mask it, the interview was a transparent courtesy, a bureaucratic shuffle. Nothing useful for Barney would come of it. Naomi saw that immediately. But Barney, a trained salesman, had a certain tenacity. She had always admired that quality about him. He would never give up, never admit that defeat was possible.

“Could it be drugs?” Barney asked Phillips, despite his previous denials.

“Not in the case of the Glories. We would know.”

“She crossed state lines,” he said with waning hope.

“Of her own volition.”

“It wasn't her own volition. She was lured by her sister,” Barney persisted.

“But it was her decision, Barney,” Naomi said gently.

“How did you first find out about it?” Phillips asked, crisply professional. It was a question that she had not thought to ask.

Barney coughed, his body shifting, as if he hurt. In the harsh office light, she could see heavy puffs under his eyes, a sagging of his jaw. There were specks of gray in his gilded hair. He seemed ravaged by life, yet a few weeks ago he might have been smug, self-assured.

“I called my sister-in-law's old boyfriend. There's only two of them, Suzie and Charlotte. Charlotte is older. Twenty-five. Their parents are dead.”

Robbing the cradle
, Naomi thought not without a pang of jealousy. She had just turned thirty-five.

“He told me Suzie had been a Glory for six months. It was Suzie who brought her in.” He swallowed hard. “Bitch,” he muttered.

“You didn't know this?” Phillips asked.

“If I did, would I have let her go?”

“You know, Mr. Harrigan, it's not an FBI matter. Not now.”

Did that imply that one day it would be?
Naomi thought.

Phillips looked at Naomi, then at the anguished Barney. His kindly mien had disappeared. He was all business now.

“We've been in these cases,” Phillips said. “Kidnapping. That's part of our mission.”

They are always burrowing into organizations, paying informers, working undercover
, she couldn't help but think.

“Kidnapping?” Barney asked, strictly rhetorically. She could see his interest. Obviously, the idea had crossed his mind earlier.

“Parents. Brothers. Friends. In desperation, they pull a snatch, then turn the subject over to a deprogrammer who attempts to reverse the process. The objective is to pressure the subjects out of their beliefs. Technically, we have laws against such activity, but deprogramming is an industry. Kidnapping has severe consequences for all perpetrators.”

There could be no mistaking his meaning. It was a warning.

“It's a federal offense. The FBI gets involved.”

“So I have no recourse,” Barney said suddenly, slapping his thighs and standing up.

“Not here, I'm afraid.”

He exchanged glances with Naomi. Hal had done his duty. No small talk, quick, brief, to the point. The interview was in its last gasp.

“You might try to talk with Charlotte,” Phillips said.

“I'd love to,” Barney said bitterly. “I've tried. Boy, have I tried. They won't let me. I don't even think they'll let me see her. They have these camps….” He cleared his throat and his lips trembled. “You guys just don't know. I mean, what good is the FBI if they can't protect people from this?”

“It's not in our jurisdiction. But that doesn't mean I don't empathize.” He looked toward Naomi.

“Empathy is not what I came here for,” Barney said.

“I understand,” Phillips said. “I hope your wife comes home, Mr. Harrigan.”

“Give it time.”

He stood up and held out his hand. Barney took it heartily. In a salesman's eyes, Naomi had learned, no potential deal was ever completely dead, no bridge ever burned.

“Don't do anything foolish,” Phillips said, with a look at Naomi.

“Foolish?” He forced a wry chuckle. “Have I ever, Nay?”

An answer seemed superfluous.

***

In the cab on their way to Mrs. Prococino's, Barney came out of his silence to mumble, “Dead ends. It all leads to dead ends.”

“I'm sorry, Barney.”

He patted her arm.

“Not your fault. You shouldn't even be in this, Nay. Phillips was… by the book. I didn't expect much.”

“He did it as a favor, Barney.”

“I appreciate your calling in your chits.”

“I see what you're going through… and I can see how much it hurts.”

“They all say that. In the end, you're alone.”

“Not quite,” she whispered.

She felt his eyes on her, but she did not raise hers to meet them.

It wasn't fair to judge him now, she decided. Not in the midst of this crisis in his life.
Poor Barney.
He could not transfer his outrage.

Mrs. Prococino lived in a quiet street in Silver Spring, a split-level suburban home, typical of those built in the '50s, the complacent Eisenhower years. Naomi had found her through a newspaper story she had discovered online.

Four years ago, the Prococino's son, Paul, had been recruited by the Glories in Seattle. The Prococinos, who, according to the clipping, originally came from Brooklyn, refused to accept their son's fate. The Glories had picked him up on a street corner and brainwashed him. The Prococinos had found him, and by grit and subterfuge got him home and successfully deprogrammed him. For a time, they were Washington media heroes of sorts, a position of notoriety often measured in milliseconds.

“Why not?” Mrs. Prococino had eventually said when Naomi called her for an appointment. At first, the woman had been reluctant, but Naomi had been forceful. Barney could expect no help from Washington, so Naomi's reaching out to Mrs. Prococino seemed a logical way to deflect Barney's attention from the disappointment of any official support. It seemed a logical way to deflect Barney's attention from official Washington, from which he could expect no help. At least Mrs. Prococino would offer him the succor of a common experience.

“For a while that's all I did,” Mrs. Prococino told them. “Help other people who got caught up in this… this horror.”

They sat at a marble table on a screened porch looking out over a garden heavy with plantings of flowers and vegetables. At its edge was an arbor, and the smell of semisweet grapes floated through an open window. She had set out iced tea and Italian cookies in colorful wrappers. Behind the uniformly sterilized façade of the split-level, she had somehow put her ethnic stamp. The atmosphere was indisputably Italian.

Mrs. Prococino's olive skin had drained of color, but her eyes dominated the fleshiness in her face. They were large, dark, and expressive, ringed by undiminished thick black lashes under heavy, plucked eyebrows. There was a tough earthiness about her, a determination so strong that it had come through even in the reporters' stories.

“Finally, I couldn't take all this sentimentalism, especially after Vinnie died. I think it killed him… my husband. No, I don't think. It killed him.”

“It's my wife, Mrs. Prococino,” Barney said.

“I feel for you.” She shook her head. “You're dealing with the most ruthless bastards in the world.”

As they listened to the bits and pieces of Mrs. Prococino's story, anger flared up in her. Barney had read about her in the printouts that Naomi had provided, but the sound of her voice, her expression and emotion, gave it another dimension. Her son had gone on a skiing trip. He had stopped first in Chicago, met two beautiful girls who took him to one of the Glory houses in downtown Seattle. They persuaded the young man to go with them to their camp in a nearby rural area. All very harmless. No mention of the Glory Church. They worked behind the guise of some do-gooder group. Franco was an innocent, an idealist. Not a New York street kid like Mrs. Prococino or her husband.

“They would have smelled a rat within ten seconds. But this suburban life weakened kids, didn't expose them to the hustle, the con game,” she said bitterly.

The emotion, Naomi sensed, despite the number of times Mrs. Prococino had told this story, would never go away. It came out of her fresh, raw, with all the bitterness and vitriol intact.

“Once they lure you into isolation, it's all over. There's no newspapers, no television, no conversation, unless it's controlled by them. Control! That's what they want. Control! And every time you say you want to go home, they lean on you, push you to stay, supposedly “for your spiritual health.” That's a laugh. Besides, it's not easy to find your way back to civilization. Their camp is far away from any means of public transportation. They've got you cornered. They usually bring the kids in during the night and hand them sleeping bags, lining the boys up on one side, the girls on the other. They crash in on your sleep. Cut it down to three or four hours. You're exhausted all the time.” Mrs. Prococino took a sip of her iced tea.

“That first morning they wake you up with familiar songs, with restructured lyrics with words like “centering” and “glory,” innocent words that float into your subconscious. They split you into groups of twelve. Six are Glories, only the new kids don't know that. Each kid had his own Glory watchdog, a girl for a boy and a boy for a girl. They call them spiritual brothers and sisters. They're with you all your waking hours, even when you go to pee. They control you with eye contact, a kind of hypnosis. Eyes! Powerful instruments. It's all titillation at first to draw you in, but they withhold sex. You start off the day by marching around to the head, a wash, then off to breakfast. There, you get sugared up. Cereal with sugar; Kool-Aid, sugared up; coffee with sugar. They withhold protein.”

“But how….” Naomi heard her voice, then retreated when it was ignored. It was a question that had arisen since the meeting with Phillip.
How can they make someone believe, commit their lives, so quickly?
It was a stonewall against her reason.

The boy must have been weak, ready for it, vulnerable
, she decided.

“After breakfast you all sit around and talk about your lives, your innermost secrets, real heavy personal stuff, whatever sins against themselves or society they had imagined or actually committed, all to great applause. It was called ‘getting out the garbage.' Like Catholic confession. The Glories liked to tell him they were just like Catholics. They record what you say, ready for use. Blackmail. Everything you do is declared marvelous by them. You're Mr. Wonderful. When you fart it's like you sang the “Star Spangled Banner.” You're back in the womb, in a warm bath of manufactured admiration. They control your environment. Your information. Your diet. Your time. You play crazy games, like dodge ball. They call it ‘team building.' They sardinize you.” She paused.

“This goes on for three days. Then they start to fill your mind with the Father Glory pitch. You're ready, you've been prepared, you're not thinking clearly, your ego inflated to its furthest limit. You are never alone. They take you to the bathroom, to your meals, to the lectures. And they push you to call home, telling you exactly what to say, listening in when you talk. It's a critical time. They don't want intrusion.”

“I spoke to her at the beginning,” Barney interrupted. “It was like you said. I knew something was wrong.”

“Bet she told you she'd met these fantastic, wonderful, caring, loving people, that she was having a fabulous spiritual experience.”

“Yes. Exactly that.”

“And she was going to stay just a little while longer.”

“Yes.”

“And when you finally inquired where she is or got suspicious, she wouldn't tell you where she was. Not precisely. Not enough for you to hop a plane to find her.”

He nodded, trembling with anger.

“Finally, it's too late. Franco would scream at him when he called. I would get hysterical. We had no idea. No idea.” For a brief moment, Mrs. Prococino's large eyes welled up and her voice broke. “They give you this amulet or charm and you wear it around your neck for the rest of your life. It's in the likeness of Father Glory's head, complete with his wide smile and foreboding eyes. There's a liquid in it, ‘holy water' blessed by Father Glory. I think it's poison. Maybe one day it'll be like Jonestown.