The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (58 page)

Washington DC Temple

Ben took one of the envelopes and scribbled on it in his finest handwriting:

To
Brother
Joseph Morgan

Hand Deliver – Personal and Confidential

Pulling a blank letterhead from the pile, he wrote the following note:

Dear
Brother
Jo
seph
,

Please meet in private with the bearer of this note
, Sampson Allard, who
has an important
testimony to share with you.

Brother James
Benson

He folded the note and sealed it in the envelope.

At first he saw no computer
. B
ut pu
shing aside the sliding doors on
a side
cabinet revealed a Dell desktop. He moved the mouse, and the screen came to life.

It was a plain
W
elcome
!
window with blank spaces for the user’s ID and password. Drawing on his memory, Ben typed:

User ID: Zachiboy

Password: DCMTDBS

A
n hourglass
appeared, and the computer made typical sounds of coming to life. But it was taking a long time, and in the outer office there were suddenly sounds of talking.

He tip
toed to the door and found that it had no key.

Back at the computer,
B
en
faced a blank
screen. Had they removed Zachariah’s access already? When was the last time he had access to this system?
The fact that Zachariah
had left this code as a
clue
in the virtual treasure hunt for the incriminating floppy disk
meant that he believed it
would remain
in effect.

The computer
finally
beeped, and a Windows Vista
logo
appeared
on the screen
.

Sitting back in the
oversized
leather chair, Ben pulled up a search window and typed in, again from memory, the file name Zachariah had left:

File: BFD111995

A picture folder appeared, and when
he clicked on it, a photo opened.

Staring at it, Ben reached over his shoulder and pulled the key ring from under the bandages. He held the
miniature
statue of the Angel
Moroni next to the
photo on the screen. They were identical.

Moving the mouse, Ben ran the curser over the photo, causing it to change focus. The view expanded,
revealing that the statue was positioned in
the
corner of a
large
hall
with white walls, luxurious furnishing, and
c
rystal chandeliers.
Judging
by the size of the furniture, the statue was about the size of a child, perhaps ten or twelve years
old, but the
long
trumpet made
the statue
taller, almost
the size of a
n average adult.

Another move of the curser over the photo caused th
e Angel Moroni
to turn
on its side
, resting flat on
the marble floor
, its
base
visible. Glued to the bottom
was
an object
.
Peering closely, Ben realized it
was another
floppy disk
.

By moving the curser again across the photo, he
made the Angel Moroni stand up.

C
oncentrating on the
hall, Ben realized how
beautiful
it was
in a cleansed, other-worldly way. Zachariah
must have
assumed that whoever followed his clues would be familiar with that room. But Ben wasn’t, and he wanted to yell in frustration. Where the hell was this room?

Suddenly it hit him! The style of the walls, windows, furnishings, even the floor, was reminiscent of the room he was sitting in! Not identical—this large office had colors by virtue of the portraits, books, and cabinets. But the feel of the place was similar, which meant that the Angel Moroni statue in the photo must be somewhere in the
t
emple!

Sticking the memory flash drive into a USB port, Ben saved the file. Returning to the search window, he typ
ed
:

Zachariah Hinckley

After a few seconds of searching the
t
emple’s database, to Ben’s
utter amazement a
folder came up in the search
results list:

SCMC/
Zachariah Hinckley
/
Trial Evidence and Proceedings

It took him a moment to figure out that
SCMC
stood for
Strengthening Church Members Committee.

It was a large
data
folder
. W
hen Ben placed the curser on it and right clicked to find the
s
end
order, a voice startled him
.

“You’re a hard man to find.”

He looked up.

The Ghost was closing the door behind…
her!

There was no mistaking the tall figure and white riding suit. It was the Ghost. But her
Nordic face was almost beautiful, marred only by a red scar that divided the right cheek.
Her blue eyes were cold, and her blond hair was
tucked
under the
white
baseball cap.

Ben forced his finger to
move
the mouse
and click
s
ave
. The tiny light on the memory flash drive blinked as a copy of t
he folder
was saved on it
.
He turned to her and said,
“How did you find me?”

She smiled—not a friendly Mormon smile, but a frosty one. “
Your black bitch must’ve been happy to see you.
”

The rage flooded him,
yet he realized the Ghost was
trying
to
unsettle him, make him reckless, easier to handle
.
He took a deep breath. “It’s love,” he said. “But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”

“
True. Hot
nigger
s aren’t my thing
.”
The Ghost stepped toward the desk, but stopped when the door behind her opened.

The male secretary poked his head in. “Excuse me, but what’s going on here?”

“Please,” the Ghost said, “come in.”

Foolishly, he obeyed.

She kicked the door shut, chopped him on the side of the neck,
and
ripped open his white buttoned-down shirt. She peeled it off his shoulders and
us
ed the sleeves
to bind his wrists behind his back.
It was all done rapidly, without hesitation, not one second wasted. Next the Ghost
pulled a green belt from her pocket—similar to the one Ben had seen among the temple garb he had been given.
S
he
loo
ped it around the stunned secretary’s neck, tightened a knot, and fastened the other end to the door knob
, causing him to sit up with his back to the door, immobilized and suffocating
.

The
computer beeped to
signal c
omplet
ion of
saving the folder to the memory flash drive.

The Ghost turned to him
.

“A
real living, breathing
Danite
!
” Ben pull
ed
the
flash
drive from the USB port. “
Never expected to see one
.”

She approached the desk. “Feeling lucky?”

“Blood atonement isn’t how I’d
like
to get to
h
eaven.”

The
secretary made gagging sounds. He
jerked, rattling the door, but it only tightened
the noose
around
his neck.

The
Ghost reached the desk
.

“Killing is a sin,” Ben said, rising to his feet. “Joseph Smith
’s last words
.”

“It’s only business, kid.”
She flexed her hands
and smiled
. Up close, her teeth were yellowish.
“Nothing personal.”

“Business? What about God?”

“Who?” She circled the desk.

Ben
nudged
the executive chair
, making it
turn on its wheels, the backside blocking the Ghost. He clenched the Angel Moroni in his fist and felt the
long
trumpet sticking out between his fingers. With the other hand he pointed at his forehead. “Barely a bruise from your kick. I should have realized it was girly.”

She
paused,
surprised that he had the capacity to joke when his life was about to end.

“
Next time,” he said, “try to
give it your all,
like this!”
He placed his foot
on the edge of the chair and pressed with everything he had. At first, the heavy chair hardly budged, but then its wheels gained momentum
and
its back hit the Ghost in the
stomach
,
propell
ing
her back
ward
and
throwing her again
st
a bookcase
.

Ben knew he had only a second or two before this female assassin recovered from th
e shock of being knocked back by an odd-looking, sickly
reporter
wearing
a wet white poncho.

Leaping forward, he mounted the chair and brought his fist pounding at her face. He felt the Angel Moroni’s trumpet penetrating through the flesh and facial bones next to
her
nose, below her
left eye. He pulled it out j
ust as she moaned, her hands ris
ing to her punctured face. But she wasn’t disabled yet, and he knew that
her
killer
instinct
s
would
soon
cause her to shift from defense to
deadly
attack. There was no choice for him but
to
attack again, which he did, still perched on the padded chair, throwing a hook punch to the side of her
face
, where Angel Moroni’s trumpet speared
her
again through skin, flesh, and
delicate
bones.

Now she screamed
—
a
long, agonized, primal scream.

As he
jumped
off
the chair,
the Ghost collapsed. Something fell out of her pocket
—a
pack of cigarettes with the logo of the House of Prince and the Danish royal crest.
And while she was still down, he grabbed the side of the bookcase and pulled
hard
, causing it to fall over on top of
her
.

Ben ran to the door
. The secretary’s face was blue, his tongue sticking out. There was no time for fiddling with the knot, which had likel
y tightened with the man’s dying
struggles. Instead, Ben
forced
the door open until there was enough room for him to squeeze through.

In the outer office, rummaging through the secretary’s desk, he found scissors
, which he used to cut the green belt
at the
secretary’s
neck
.
T
he
man dropped
to
the floor,
his first breath shrieking through
constricted
airways
.
His hands were still bound behind his back, but
he was alive. Ben turned and ran.