The Summoner

by Layton Green

  THE SUMMONER

  A Novel of Suspense

  by Layton Green

  Copyright ©2010 by Layton Green

  Cover Art by Daniel Will-Harris

  eBook Creation by Dellaster Design

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To my wife

  THE SUMMONER

  1

  December 9, 2009

  The only thing Dominic Grey knew for certain about the disappearance of William Addison was that it was the strangest case to which he had ever been assigned.

  The facts were few. Three nights ago, Addison, retired head of Consular Affairs at the United States Embassy in Zimbabwe, attended a religious ceremony on the outskirts of Harare. What religion the ceremony belonged to remained unclear. Harris Powell, Deputy Director of Diplomatic Security and the man now walking beside Grey, had described it as “one of those African ones.”

  According to Addison’s girlfriend, a Zimbabwean nurse thirty years his junior, Addison was drawn into the center of a ring of worshippers. The girlfriend didn’t know what happened inside the circle. She tried to follow, but couldn’t press through the crowd. What she did know is that he never came out.

  As Grey and Harris neared their destination the summer twilight enveloped them, a soft melting of the mammoth sun into the city’s urban hues, a brief and dreamy purgatory before the certainty of the African night. A broad avenue stretched before them, bordered on the left by the lush beauty of Harare Gardens. Better light would have revealed a collection of modest-sized buildings too young to be considered quaint or historic, but old enough to have lost their gleam. Downtown Harare was clean, handsome and quiet—just the opposite of what one might expect from one of Africa’s modern-day tragedies.

  The first sign of something amiss was the lack of commerce on the streets. A few people hurried by, most of them smartly dressed and lucky to be returning home from a job in one of the surviving businesses. But in a city this poor, Grey knew, beggars and street urchins should clog the center, fruit and produce stands should feed the masses, rickety bazaars should hawk everything from cheap souvenirs to black market commodities. The absence of these gritty realities glared more than their presence would have.

  Grey’s eyes scoured the streets with habitual caution. The Central Business District was a short walk from the Embassy, but downtown Harare at night was not a place to lose focus. Harris was doing what he always did: casting lecherous stares at every girl old enough to use teen as a suffix. His pin-shaped head swiveled on top of his skinny frame, afraid he might miss one. Coarse black chest hair clumped out of his dress shirt, and he ran a hand over his thinning, cropped hair as if it belonged on the cover of a romance novel.

  “What’s the protocol on this one?” Grey said.

  “The protocol,” Harris whined in his high-pitched voice, “is don’t let anyone get kidnapped. We don’t have jurisdiction, and we’re not detectives.”

  “Any feds coming?”

  “The Ambassador tried to get some flown in, but the Zim officials wouldn’t hear of it. We’re stuck with it. Improvise.”

  Grey shrugged, glad for the change of pace. Most of his days were spent investigating routine visa and passport fraud, and escorting high-ranking government figures to their favorite restaurants. The travel kept it interesting, but outside of a coup or assassination attempt, diplomatic security was not an action-packed profession.

  “Maybe this’ll jump-start your career,” Harris said. “If you stumble onto Addison you might get yourself assigned to a decent posting.”

  “I happen to like it here. You seem to have landed in the same country as me, last time I checked.”

  “You’ll never learn, will you? You have to play the game. I’m here because my next stop is chief of security in the Bahamas. You’re here because no one wants to deal with you.”

  “I’m here because I helped a woman who was carjacked.”

  “You left your post.”

  “It happened fifty feet away, Harris. She got stabbed.”

  “That wasn’t your job. Protecting United States citizens is your job. She was a local. She could’ve been a decoy.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “You’re damn lucky. The only reason you still have a job is because of your… skills. But if you keep getting downgraded you’ll end up in the Congo, protecting spoiled diplomat kids from mountain gorillas.”

  Grey had zero interest in climbing the bureaucratic ladder, but Harris was right, his career was on its last shaky rung. Nor had it started well. His stint in the military had almost ended in a court-martial for disobeying his Marine Recon commander’s order. The order at issue had been to fire into a crowd of villagers.

  Even after that incident the CIA had recruited him. They loved his profile: he’d lived almost his whole life abroad, spoke three languages, had no relevant family ties, scored high on the I.Q. tests, and was already trained in self-defense. Not trained, according to his former commander, but extraordinary. Gifted.

  Given those qualifications, the CIA could overlook his poor test results in social adaptability and obedience to chain of command. It wasn’t until Grey underwent ethical profiling that they realized Grey’s moral compass guided him far more than partisan dictates. He was told to try again after he’d discarded his hero complex.

  He’d contemplated the Foreign Service, but after one meeting knew that forced smiles and handshakes were not for him. During the application process he stumbled upon an opening in Diplomatic Security. It sounded intriguing, and Grey liked the promise of exotic postings.

  Four years in and he was restless. He wanted to affect p
eople’s lives in a more direct manner. He fantasized about being a detective in some random city, helping real people with real problems. But he knew he wouldn’t last there either, wherever there might turn out to be. Something would cause him to move on. Like all those who have lived their lives on the outskirts of conventional society, his desire for acceptance was as powerful as his inability to find it.

  “So it’s us and the liaison?” Grey asked.

  “And some quack the Ambassador called in, a professor-type from Interpol. He wouldn’t be here if Addison wasn’t friends with the Ambassador.” Harris glanced at a group of adolescent girls and sprouted a thin smile. “Waste of a perfectly good evening downtown.”

  “A professor?”

  “He’s an expert on religious something-or-other. I haven’t seen his CV yet.”

  Grey flinched. His parents had taught him everything he needed to know about religion. His father’s code of life was a warped mix of public service, domestic violence, militant patriotism, and the self-serving Protestant theology he used to glue it all together.

  As for Grey’s beloved and devout mother, she developed stomach cancer when Grey was fourteen, and he watched her pray every second of every goddamn day until she died a lingering death after six months of soul-crushing pain.

  If anyone was upstairs, he sure as hell wasn’t paying attention.

  They completed the rest of the walk in silence. Harris stopped in front of a palm-lined, granite and marble facade fronting the bright foliage of Africa Unity Square. White-gloved bellhops filled the entrance.

  Harris grunted. “At least the liaison has some taste.”

  Grey read the sign carved into the granite in bas-relief. The Meikles Hotel.

  2

  Harris led Grey through the lounge, past a gold-embossed elevator bank and to a door at the end of a long hallway. Harris knocked and then pushed the door open. Inside a conference room two people were engaged in conversation behind a long table.

  One was a young woman sitting erectly in a beige business suit, sculpted chin held high. She rose with a fluid grace and offered her hand, announcing herself as Nya Mashumba.

  She was tall, eye-to-eye with Harris and three inches shy of Grey’s lean six-foot-one. Although her name sounded Shona, Grey recognized signs of a mixed racial heritage: a soft, oval face defined by a mouth too full to be Caucasian and not full enough to be African, a narrow nose and curved eyes, flawless chestnut skin, and hair whose imprisonment in a bun couldn’t conceal its willfulness.

  Grey hid his surprise as the older man next to her rose and introduced himself as Professor Viktor Radek. He had pegged Nya as the academic. His surprise grew as Professor Radek rose to his full height.

  The man was a giant, and had to be near seven feet tall. Professor Radek’s clipped dark hair, broad face and blacksmith shoulders matched the slight palatalizations of his Slavic accent. Despite the heat, he wore a black suit, and he possessed the confident, solemn bearing of a man used to being taken seriously.

  Everyone sat. “We appreciate your government’s assistance in this matter,” Harris said. Neither Nya nor the Professor gave the slight flinch Grey was used to seeing when someone heard Harris squeak for the first time.

  Grey ran a hand through a mass of dark hair he kept just short enough to avoid frowns at the Embassy. He rubbed at his perpetual stubble, and rested a finger against a nose left crooked from numerous breaks.

  Harris was right. U.S. Diplomatic Security had no jurisdiction, and the Zimbabwean government sure as hell had no interest in the kidnapping of a retired U.S. diplomat. Normally the local police would handle the case, resulting in a rote investigation and an apologetic letter to the victim’s family by a junior FSO. But William Addison counted the Ambassador as a long-time friend, and the Ambassador had requested an investigation. It was an unusual request given the paranoid political climate, but the Ambassador had been successful, probably for reasons Grey didn’t care to know about.

  With one caveat: at all times during the course of the investigation, a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must be present.

  Nya gave a stiff nod. “Why don’t we begin with an overview of the facts. Although I believe we’re all aware of the regrettable dearth of information.”

  Her voice had an elegant, almost haughty British inflection, typical of the Zimbabwean elite. She spoke slowly and precisely, as if selecting each word from a private dictionary in her head.

  “William Addison,” she said, “was last seen on December 6th—this past Saturday. His girlfriend, Tapiwa Chakawa, reported his disappearance the next morning. The police report was faxed to your office. According to Ms. Chakawa, Mr. Addison had asked her to attend a traditional Yoruba ceremony the night of his alleged disappearance, and-”

  Harris interrupted with a wave. “What kind of ceremony?”

  Nya regarded him with a cool stare. “Questions concerning the Yoruba will be addressed by Professor Radek.” Harris leaned back, and she continued. “Ms. Chakawa accompanied Mr. Addison to the ceremony. At eight p.m. they drove to an undetermined location approximately an hour outside Harare.”

  “Undetermined?” Harris said. “Is it a town? A village? A theme park?”

  “It’s bushveld. Apparently these ceremonies have been taking place periodically and in secret, remote locales.” She paused. “We know little else. Sometime during the ceremony Mr. Addison entered, apparently of his own free will, the center of a large ring of worshippers. As you know, according to his girlfriend, he never exited.”

  Harris snorted. “It’s a circle of people in the middle of the bush, for Christ’s sake. Where the hell did he go? What was she on?”

  Grey tilted his head down to distance himself from Harris’s outburst. It was a familiar movement.

  “I haven’t met with Ms. Chakawa,” Nya said. “The police report states she was unable to see into the ring of worshippers. This is your investigation, Mr. Powell. I suggest you start by familiarizing yourself with the one piece of documentation we have.”

  “I’ve read the report,” Harris said.

  Professor Radek shifted; even a slight movement of his gargantuan frame drew attention to him. “Ms. Mashumba, if I may?” Although not as booming as Grey expected, his voice commanded.

  “Before we continue,” Harris interrupted, “and forgive me, Professor—I understand the Ambassador requested your assistance—but what exactly do you do? I like to know who I’m working with.”

  “Of course,” Viktor murmured. “I’m a professor of religious phenomenology at Charles University in Prague.”

  “Religious what?”

  “Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy that eschews abstract metaphysical speculation, and instead focuses on reality as it’s perceived or understood in human consciousness. The phenomenologist studies actual experiences, or “phenomena,” and how they affect the perceiver.”

  “I see,” Harris said dryly.

  “I apply the principles of phenomenology to the study of religion, by exploring the diverse phenomena that practitioners from various faiths claim to experience—including those religions not officially recognized by any authority except their own.”

  Grey was familiar with phenomenology; he found it one of the more practical branches of philosophy. But he didn’t know there was a religious subset. He said, “What kind of phenomena?”

  “Any occurrence, encounter, miracle, awareness, or other extraordinary spiritual experience. The subjective side of religion as opposed to the objective. Acts of faith and spiritual belief.”

  Grey failed to keep the skepticism from his voice. “How do you study those types of things?”

  A patient nod. “I observe the practitioner as he’s experiencing the alleged phenomena, and analyze the effects. I’m concerned with how the experience impacts the devotee, not the veracity of the event itself.”

  At least Professor Radek’s clinical description implied that he housed his religious beliefs just where Gre
y thought they belonged: in the classroom.

  “Perhaps a more concrete example would help clarify?” Nya said.

  “Make it very concrete,” Harris added.

  Grey followed Viktor’s eyes as they darted, with the economy of motion of a practiced observer, to regard a silver cross that clung to Nya’s throat. “I assume all three of you come from a Judeo-Christian background, or are at least familiar with it. Within this belief system I might explore phenomena such as mass prayer, a Catholic rite, or a charismatic worship service. Were I to delve deeper, I might seek out a faith healer, a snake handler, an exorcist, or a sufferer of the stigmata.”

  “It sounds like you have plenty to talk about at cocktail parties,” Harris said, “but how does any of this help us here?”

  “My profession has led me around the world in pursuit of phenomenological experiences, and I have acquired a rather… unique… knowledge of the workings of a large number of fringe religious groups. Over the years, this knowledge has proven useful to various law enforcement organizations.”

  Viktor interrupted himself, as if realizing his explanations were too academic. “Forgive my lengthy answers. Simply put, I’m an expert on cults.”