Kaleidoscope (11 page)

Roger Gillespie said, “Cults can be very attractive these days. We've created such an impersonal and complicated world for our children, too dependent on forces we can't control, leaving us vulnerable, extremely so.”

“Vulnerable?” murmured Dr. Berkowitz.

Faber-Jones said, “I might further explain that Roger is our government's top intelligence expert on terrorism.”

“Terrorism!” exclaimed Tanya. “We move from robberies to terrorism?”

“Cults often lead to terrorism,” pointed out Gillespie, “depending on what their emphasis may be, of course, whether purity of soul or destruction and hate. In Japan, fanatics from the religious cult AUM boarded subway trains with bags of sarin, and in releasing them killed people and injured thousands. And, as you know very well, we've bred our own crop of terrorists: the Oklahoma City bombers, the Heaven's Gate cult, and before that Jim Jones and his mass deaths in Guyana, not to mention Charles Manson earlier, on a smaller scale.”

Dr. Berkowitz, frowning, said, “But you mentioned forces we can't control. What did you mean exactly?”

“Tell them, Roger,” Faber-Jones said, and to the others, “He's given interviews and talks on this, so it's no secret.”

Gillespie nodded. “What I'm saying is that as terrorists grow more sophisticated, and electronic experts more ingenious, as reality becomes ‘virtual' reality, we enter a dangerous world.”

“Dangerous in what way?” asked Dr. Berkowitz. “Are you thinking of anthrax or sarin or bombs?”

Gillespie shook his head. “Anthrax? To bring an entire country to its knees there would have to be incredible quantities—tons and tons—manufactured, all of it made in laboratories, and you'd no doubt need hundreds of planes to disseminate it. As for bombs, one bomb can kill hundreds in one city and is tragic enough, God knows, but multiply it by city after city—”

Jan said incredulously, “You can't mean these dreadful computer hackers invading us with their viruses, overloading computers, raiding company files . . . I can't believe that!”

Gillespie looked almost amused. “Unfortunately that's what all the CEOs I talk to assume: competent and inventive global hackers making their mischief. No, I'm talking of our dependence on electricity. Can you think of anything in your home that doesn't depend on electricity?”

Tanya said flippantly, “My toothbrush.”

He smiled. “Ah, but you rinse with water, don't you, and how do you think water arrives through your pipes?”

“Oh,” she said, startled.

“A manual typewriter,” ventured Pruden.

“Yes, if you can find one.”

“My car?” suggested Dr. Berkowitz.

“A car is refueled at a gas station by pumps that are operated by electricity.” Gillespie added dryly, “It's not occurred to us how dependent on one source we've become. My wife, for instance, uses an electric can opener and hair dryer, our gas furnace is triggered by an electric turn-on, my wife and I still enjoy the pleasure of an electric blanket, our sons watch television, when my car needs gas I stop at a gas pump that operates on electricity, as I mentioned . . . I use an electric shaver, and my two daughters spend hours on the Internet, and these rooms we're dining in are blessedly cooled by air-conditioning. We all of us survived the millennium—Y2K—very nicely, but may not always be so fortunate. After all, what would be left if the genie escapes the bottle?”

Madame Karitska felt a growing unease among the guests and gave him a curious glance.

Dr. Berkowitz said, “Why are you saying this?”

“Yes,” said Tanya, “what are you leading up to?”

“To something far worse,” he told them, and his face sobered. “What I'm talking about are people capable of shutting down whole cities: 911 calls, lights, transportation systems, elevators. . . . Planes don't fly, trains don't move,
or
the police and the military. Computers and phones go dead. You black out one city, people die. You black out lots of cities, lots of people die. An entire country at a standstill.”

“You're scaring me,” said Tanya Jamison.

“Good. You should be. We all should be.”

“This is a huge country,” protested Pruden. “How? How could that be done?”

“I'm not an electronic genius,” Gillespie pointed out, “but considering how new electronic devices and inventions multiply month by month . . . Or picture it this way,” he said. “An entire generation has grown up reading science-fiction novels and seeing sci-fi movies, where—with the zap of a ray gun—villains and whole cities are wiped out. Consider the equivalent of that ray gun—sonic beams, powerful magnetic charges, who knows? We've been breeding a hotbed of electronic geniuses, really brilliant men and women. It needs only a few ‘rogue' geniuses to set up shop very, very privately and come up with a machine more powerful and advanced than anything known before, one that would connect entirely—and
only
—to specific targets. Forget computers. Think electric companies . . . power plants and grids, the
source
of all our power. Kaput. Out of order.”

Jan said incredulously, “How horrible. You've said who might, but
why
?”

“Blackmail. Power. Greed. Ego. The challenge of it. An entire nation rendered helpless.”

There was a long and stunned silence until Tanya said again, “You really
are
frightening us.”

He nodded. “It would be an electronic Pearl Harbor, yes.” After a moment he added lightly, “On the other hand, in my own very small department we cultivate and nourish our own forms of surveillance and watchfulness, which shall be nameless.”

Madame Karitska said, “And have you already indications, suspicions—”

He shrugged. “Mere rumors . . . whispers in the wind, so to speak. But do let's change the subject now; I've done enough proselytizing and have become a complete bore.”

There followed a long and sober silence until Faber-Jones broke it by saying, “Actually, Roger's a very normal chap, you know, devoted to his family and plays a mean game of tennis.” With a glance at Madame Karitska he said, “You've not contributed much to this. Picking up any vibrations?”

“Vibrations?” asked Gillespie.

“She's a very talented psychic—sorry, clairvoyant— as Lieutenant Pruden can tell you. If you ever need help, there's your person!”

Obviously he had not confided his own blossoming talent to his friend.

“Really,” Gillespie said without interest.

“He flatters me,” Madame Karitska told him politely and dismissively.

Pruden glanced at his fiancée and then at Faber-Jones and laughed. “Actually, Mr. Gillespie, you're surrounded by—”

Jan gave him a reproachful glance. “By her admirers,” she said firmly.

With equal dismissiveness Gillespie said, “Our department doesn't delve into the supernatural; it's strictly science with us.”

But Faber-Jones refused this. “Try her, my friend—I dare you. Just to . . . well, entertain us, if Madame Karitska doesn't feel insulted by the word. After all, you've presented us with a frightening doomsday scenario.”

Gillespie laughed. “You fiend . . . All right, if it lightens the moment . . .” He shrugged, and turning to Madame Karitska, “What is it you need for your magic?”

Jan said, “Give her something to hold that's been in your possession for a long time, because what she uses is psychometry.”

Gillespie thought a moment and then, loosening his shirt, brought out a small piece of jagged metal laced to a thin leather cord. “All yours,” he said with amusement, and handed it to her.

Madame Karitska gave him a quizzical glance and then placed it in her right hand, but loosely because its edges were sharp. She closed her eyes and the room was suddenly very still. Abruptly opening her eyes she said, “This is a very curious piece of metal but it scarcely needs clairvoyance to guess that it's a piece of shrapnel.”

His voice was curt. “Scarcely clairvoyance, no.”

Again she closed her eyes and for a long moment was silent until she frowned. “All that comes to me—is this really yours? What I'm feeling—the impression I'm receiving from this is so very odd, so removed, so foreign to anyone in your position.” She shook her head, still concentrating. “I can feel a searingly hot sun. And thirst. And
fear
. . . walls, crumbling stone walls, yellow, perhaps mud or adobe.” She shivered. “I do not like this; there is such
pain
. And fear.” With a shudder she opened her eyes. “I'm sorry, I don't understand. Was this a memento from a friend?”

From the look on Gillespie's face she appeared to have shocked him. After a long moment he said soberly, “All right, it's mine, yes. . . . It was a long, long time ago. Africa, a UN mission. Our plane was shot down and we were taken hostage. Five of us survived the crash and we were treated
very
badly. We nearly died.” His voice broke. “After we were rescued, that piece of shrapnel was dug out of my thigh. I kept it—prized it—to remind me how precarious life is, and how lucky we were.” Turning to Madame Karitska he said, “I hope you will accept my apologies.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course,” and applied herself to eating her dessert again, aware that he was staring at her, baffled and discomfitted.

He said, “This goes beyond extrasensory perception.”

Reluctantly she nodded. “Many people make their decisions with an ESP they don't realize they possess.”

“No, this is different. How does it happen? When did it begin?”

“As a child.”

“Can you see the future?”

Vehemently she said, “
No.
That is, yes, but I prefer not. I cannot say that mine is a pleasing or comfortable gift to have been given. Only when I see happiness in a future”—she smiled at Pruden— “such as telling
him
he would one day meet and love a young woman with very pale silvery blond hair, who is also—” She did not finish this. “No, very seldom the future. Only the concerns of the present and the past.”

The candles on the table had been slowly dimming, and with a sudden glance at his watch Gillespie said, “I had no idea it's grown so late. I'll have to leave, I'm catching the last plane back to Washington.”

They all rose from the table, and as they retrieved their coats Tanya said to Gillespie, “You've certainly scared the heck out of us. I think I'll order an extra cord of wood for my fireplace and buy a few kerosene lamps.”

Gillespie said dryly, “The best of intentions fade by morning light, when you take a hot shower tomorrow, for instance, snap on a light, draw food from your refrigerator and turn on your computer.”

Faber-Jones laughed. “Gillespie does this, you know. Very insistent man, and not too popular with the State Department. But I'm delighted you could join us, Roger.”

“I enjoyed it,” he said gravely, but to Madame Karitska, shaking her hand, he said quietly, “If I have frightened Miss Jamison, you—I must admit—have somewhat humbled me.”

“Which,” said Pruden with a smile, “makes it a perfect dinner party, a stimulating if
quite
alarming evening.”

10

It was the next afternoon that Faber-Jones telephoned Madame Karitska to say in an anguished voice, “I wasn't fast enough, Tanya was right, Laurie's bank account was closed out yesterday, very late in the afternoon.”

“By Laurie personally?” she asked.

“Yes, but a young man was with her,” he said. “I questioned the woman, the officer who handles the closing of accounts. It's a small bank, a branch of the main one, and near the college, so Laurie had often cashed checks there, and the woman recognized her. She's so pretty, you know . . . Laurie, I mean. I asked for details and when she thought about it she said Laurie seemed to her overexcited, her eyes very bright.”

“And the young man with her?”

“I've got his description,” he said grimly. “I have to wait now to see who she endorsed the check to. As if I can't guess,” he added angrily.

“You've spoken with Pruden?”

“Caught him on the wing, so to speak. Of course he's knee-deep in the Brinks robbery but he did ask the name of the electrician I talked with.”

“Which means that eventually—”

Faber-Jones sighed. “Eventually, yes. If he remembers.”

But he had misjudged Pruden. After a day of failure to discover any traces of John Mayfield, the FBI arrived to take over the investigation. The Trafton police turned over their limited results to them, and three days later Pruden put in a call to Joe Witkowski at the Amber Avenue Electric Company to ask when he might see him.

“At day's end, five o'clock,” the man said, and Pruden found him at five o'clock in his shop, washing his hands with yellow soap, still in a bright blue overall with JOE'S ELECTRIC printed in blazing white across the back.

“Police, hmm?” he said, looking at him narrowly.

Pruden, not in uniform, nodded and showed him his badge. “We're interested in the Guardians of Eden. We hear you've done some electrical work for them, according to a Mr. Faber-Jones, whose daughter has suddenly joined them. It upset him very much.”

“Aye,” said Joe, nodding. “Him I recall, he came to see me. Upset, like any dad would be.”

“Can you describe the place?”

“I don't want trouble,” Joe said. “I just found it spooky but they pay damn well. Maybe I went at the wrong times of the day—I've wired three rooms for them at the top of the place—but considering how many people there must be in that big house it was always damned silent. That's what bugged me. No sound of voices. Doors closed.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was naptime, who knows? The man who took me upstairs the first time wore a robe, of all things. And long hair.” He shook his head. “I've got a son with long hair but he's sixteen. . . . There's something about grown-up men with long hair that strikes me as damn silly.”

“You've got to admit it's good theater,” said Pruden.

Witkowski laughed. “Aye, that's the point of it, isn't it.” He looked Pruden over carefully. “I'm booked to go back on Tuesday. If you know anything about tools you could come along and work with me. Look the place over.”

“I can change a lightbulb,” Pruden told him dryly, “and I did take shop in high school and know a wrench from a screwdriver.”

Witkowski went to his cluttered desk and drew from the pile of catalogs, calendars, bills, and receipts a colorful advertisement, illustrated, of small tools. Handing it to him he said, “Look these over; it has pictures of screws, pointers, brads, and so on. Come for coffee at seven-fifteen Tuesday morning; I'll have an overall and cap for you and we'll leave seven-thirty on the dot.”

“Great,” said Pruden. “And thanks.”

Early on Tuesday, having done his homework, Pruden met Joe at his shop, had a very good cup of coffee, and they set out in his van for the Amber Avenue estate. “Used to be the old Governor Stuyvesant mansion,” confided Joe. “Just wait until you see it now.”

It was just as well that Pruden had been forewarned: the house had been remodeled—by a madman, surely— into an architectural monstrosity, a mixture of New England and the Mediterranean: there were arched Moorish windows, several charming ironwork balconies, but a very New England widow's walk on the roof, all this set on a grassy knoll surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence with a gate on which an intercom was mounted.

Joe reached out and pressed the button on the intercom and a pleasant voice said, “Guardians of Eden . . . State your name, please.”

Once he'd been identified, the gate slowly opened and they drove up to the front door, where they were met by a young man wearing what looked like a burlap robe (
sackcloth and ashes?
wondered Pruden). The young man nodded to Joe, glanced doubtfully at Pruden, and then led them through wide halls and up three flights of stairs to a room at the top of the house, a white room bare of furnishings.

“There you are,” he said. “Lavatory two doors down,” and he left.

In a low voice Pruden said, “How many rooms
are
there in this house?”

“Twenty-five at least; I looked it up in the library's Historical Room. And they must be filling up fast to be developing this top floor, which is why they've brought me in.” Unpacking his tools Joe brought out a diagram he'd apparently been given on earlier trips, and became very busy drilling holes for outlets, running snakelike connections behind the wall and repeating this process in silence while Pruden handed him tools and kept very quiet.

Finally, “Lavatory,” he told Joe, feeling it time to reconnoiter, and strolled down the hall toward the bathroom. Passing several closed doors he quietly opened one of them an inch or two. What he saw were six or seven young women in white robes lying on mats on the floor, eyes closed, an older woman crouched over them and intoning in a soft, dulcet, singsong voice “. . . to feel at one with the universe, and bathed in love . . . can you feel the warmth of our love . . .
Love . . .
at last you have reached
home
.”

“Home,”
the girls repeated drowsily.

Pruden quietly closed the door and stood in the hall, frowning. He looked at the three other closed doors and he wondered . . . but someone was coming up the staircase and he tiptoed back to Joe.

Joe gave him a quick glance and handed him a pair of pliers. “Hold the end of this wire,” he said in a low voice. “Look busy.” In a louder voice, “I need a 1
¹
⁄4 brad. And I can use those
⁷
⁄16 pointers to hold the wire.”

Joe's ears had been even more attuned than his to the sound of footsteps. “Nearly finished?” asked a man in the doorway.

Over his shoulder Pruden glanced at him and quickly, professionally, memorized him: tall, over six feet, rose-colored robe and sandals, sensual mouth, beak of a nose; heavy brows; dark hair flecked with gray; he decided this must be Brother Robin.

“Almost,” called out Joe to the man, and pinning a last wire to the molding said, “There!” Rising, he rubbed his hands together, glanced over the job, and nodded. “All done,” he said.

“You didn't bring a helper last time,” the man told him curtly.

Joe said amiably, “Save you money, my bringing Pete— finished in half the time.”

“You can send us the bill as usual,” the man told him, and waited while Joe packed up his tools and handed his toolbox to Pruden. “All set,” he said cheerfully.

The man, waiting, led them personally down the staircase past a room where a dozen people stood with raised arms, swaying back and forth and softly chanting what Pruden gathered was a mantra, but their host quickly closed the door before Pruden could see faces.

The massive front door was opened for them and they walked out to Joe's truck; he placed the tools in back and they climbed in. As the car started Pruden saw the man in the rose-colored robe still watching them.

“Gives me the creeps,” Joe said once the gate opened for them and they turned onto the street.

“Me, too,” admitted Pruden. “At least I've gotten the feel of the place, and I thank you for it. So just what were we wiring?”

“You know, that's a very interesting question,” said Joe. “I've wired three rooms by now, all the same, a crazy setup, most of the wires running out of sight behind the walls and up to the ceiling and an incredible number of outlets. . . . The only possibility I can think of for such a setup, the only one possible . . .”

“Yes?” asked Pruden, as he hesitated.

“Listening devices. I suspect he plans to bug every room.”

“Good God,” said Pruden. “Not good, not good at all.”

“Not if anyone gets restless and wants to leave.” With a quick glance at him Joe said, “Police interested?”

“Only me. So far.”

Joe nodded, and added casually, “I'm booked to wire the last room on Friday, a two-hour job this time, smaller room. Care to come?”

“Definitely,” said Pruden.

The chief had originally refused to authorize Pruden's research into the Guardians of Eden but had finally relented. Now he demanded, “So just what do you think's going on out there?” His voice was skeptical.

“Whatever it is, I don't like it,” Pruden told him. “Possibly drugs. The one group I very briefly spotted sounded half-asleep and kept drowsily repeating, ‘home . . . home . . .' like the sound track in the film
E.T.
”

“No fingers pointed skyward?” said the chief sardonically. “Aliens from another planet? Scarcely worth our attention.”

Pruden sighed. “Nevertheless, two of Jan's volunteers at the Settlement House are there, as well as Faber-Jones's daughter, who took with her twenty-one thousand dollars from her savings account.”

“Yes, but can you
prove
the girl's there?” demanded the chief. “Did you see her there? Did her father? How do you know she's not run off with a boyfriend on a well-financed joyride, and used the name of that place to cover her tracks?”

“I can't,” admitted Pruden. “But I can tell you that it looks to me as if anyone who
is
there is not likely to leave, even if they want to.”

“Prove it,” said the chief. “You tell me Joe Witkowski thinks what he's installing will be used for eavesdropping, but he can't prove that, either, can he?”

With a sigh Pruden admitted defeat and rose to go. Before he reached the door the chief said less harshly, “Look here, I trust your instincts, Pruden. If you learn anything tangible I'll listen, but we need
proof
. Oh, and by the way—”

Pruden stopped and turned.

“About the diamonds stored in our safe? We heard this morning from the police in New York. The dealers in the Manhattan Diamond District have been very helpful; they tracked down the company in Antwerp this Verlag chap worked for, but it seems he left them a year and a half ago. The Antwerp police are asking us to send the attaché case to them by courier. They're very suspicious about this Georges Verlag—have been for some time. It seems that diamonds have characteristics that can prove whether or not these are De Beers gems or whether Verlag was into smuggling diamonds out of Sierra Leone by way of Liberia, in which case he's been illegally abetting some very cutthroat rebels and is not the man your what's-her-name friend thought he was.”

Pruden grinned. Even now the chief had difficulty acknowledging Madame Karitska. “Bad news,” he agreed.

“Yes. You'll have to tell her.”

Pruden nodded and left. He would later stop in to see the chief's “what's-her-name,” but as to Faber-Jones he felt that to admit and describe his visit to the Guardians of Eden would only alarm him more than it did Pruden.

Leaving his desk at half past five Pruden realized that before meeting Jan for dinner there was still time to stop and give Madame Karitska news of Georges Verlag. He found her door ajar, with a sign, BACK IN 5 MINUTES, and he guessed that she must be upstairs seeing her landlord. Since her door was open he walked in and headed for a couch, realizing how tired he was, and he stretched out, relaxing, a sense of her presence still lingering. Except for books added to the shelves that lined one wall the room had not changed in the year that he'd known her, and he thought how much he appreciated the calm he felt here. He need only walk up the steps of the shabby brownstone, past the sign in the window, enter, and knock on her door to enter this other world. The wall of books muted the sound of traffic outside, the high-ceilinged room was cool, and there were always flowers on the carved coffee table; a room that should have been gloomy, considering its location and size, was as bright and cheerful as Madame Karitska.

Hearing her steps on the staircase he rose, and at sight of him she smiled. “Paying my rent,” she told him. “What can I do for you?”