by Jack Du Brul
“I asked for the time.”
“How the hell should I know? It’s nighttime. Don’t worry about it.”
“I guess maybe I won’t.” She eased herself onto the bed.
Once Randall had the proper key, he could turn his mind to his next concern. “Your brother’s going away in a couple of days. My orders are to keep an eye on you. I just wanted you to know my eye isn’t the only thing of mine that’s gonna be on you, if you know what I mean. You ain’t got much tit, but I figure if you were good enough for Mercer, you’re good enough for me too.”
Tisa had expected this was coming. Randall had done little to hide his leering interest since shortly after he’d pulled her from the Aegean. “Fine. By all means, rape me all you want. I just hope you understand that molesting me isn’t going to get you any closer to the person you really want.”
“Yeah, and who’s that?”
“It’s obvious you’re using me as a surrogate for Mercer. He’s the one you want to rape. He’s the one you want power over. You’re only with me so you can pretend I’m Mercer.”
Donny bristled. “Are you calling me some kind of fag?”
“No. I’m calling you a deeply sick person. And if you touch me even once, I am going to hurt you in ways you’ve never imagined.”
Randall pulled himself to his full height, the top of his head scant inches from the underside of the doorframe. “Brave words now. Let’s hear them again when your brother’s gone and I’ve got a knife to your heart.”
“Then I’ll do us both a favor and walk into it.”
Not understanding what she meant, Randall the Handle shot her a scowl and slammed the door, jamming the key in the lock as though it were an act of violation.
At another time, Tisa would have been scared, but she truly didn’t care any longer. Being raped by Donny Randall was nothing, a small taste of the shame she was just beginning to sense from her own failures.
The next day Luc knelt before an altar on the monastery’s second floor. The smell of incense was thick and the low dirge of chanting monks reverberated around the spartan temple. To the disciples behind him it appeared that Luc was deep in prayer. He was in fact thinking about his next course of action but he understood the symbolic role he had to play. While the Lama lived, he couldn’t don the sacred blue robe. However, by acting out the Order’s mysteries and rites he was laying the foundation for his eventual consecration.
In the months since the Lama’s stroke, Luc had steadily brought the Order’s younger brothers to his cause. Like him, they were drawn to the promise of power in the wake of the cataclysmic destruction of civilization. It was the old guard who resisted the changes he wanted to implement. Luc would soon leave Rinpoche-La again. Tisa had always been a poor liar and he knew Mercer was still alive. While there was nothing Mercer could do about the eruption, Luc wanted him dead. But before he could fulfill that mission, he had to solidify his position here in the monstery.
The prayers went on for six straight hours. As the voices of some monks faltered, others took up the chant. Even Luc added his voice, one more small deception. As the sixth hour ended, Luc came to his feet. Despite the forced inactivity, his muscles hadn’t cramped and he moved easily.
“My brothers,” he called softly. While the fifty younger monks stopped chanting immediately, it took several minutes for the dozen older monks that Luc had invited to this special prayer to return from their trances.
“My brothers,” Luc repeated. “Your voices have helped guide my thoughts at this troubled point in our history. I have been too long away from Rinpoche-La yet even just a moment home restores my spirit and clears my mind.”
“Time has no meaning when one has peace,” Yoh Dzu remarked. He was the Lama’s secretary and the voice of the more conservative arm of the Order. His words were part of a familiar litany, a not-so-subtle rebuke to the discord Luc’s actions had created.
“And yet time stalks us even if we have peace. Because peace isn’t a possession, but a state. That is precisely what I want to discuss with all of you. The state of the world and the state of the Order, for the two are more entwined now than ever.”
“That was not always the way,” an ancient monk muttered. “For many generations the world and the Order were separate.”
Luc seized on that comment. “Since our present Lama was given the right to wear the blue robe, he has changed the nature of the Order from passive watchers to active participants. He embarked us on a path of interference, of trying to correct the discrepancies between the oracle and physical reality. I stand before you and say that it was a mistake.”
Several heads nodded. A young monk Luc had coached said, “His mistakes have cost us and they have cost him.”
“Laying blame at the feet of a dying man is not taking a stand,” Dzu scolded.
“It is not blame, brother. It is fact. The world and the Order are no longer separate.” By invoking the Lama’s controversial decision to try to realign the earth’s chi, Luc had carefully sidestepped his own responsibility in drawing attention to the Order. “Even if we stopped now, our presence has already been detected.”
“This was debated many years ago,” Dzu pointed out. “We understood the risk then and accepted it. We all agreed that we had to do something to heal the earth and return the oracle’s accuracy. It is an unfortuante circumstance that we are without the Lama’s guidance when the time came to face the consequences.”
“Perhaps not unfortunate, but auspicious. Unlike our Lama, I have spent a great deal of my life in the outside world. I understand how it works. The La Palma eruption is going to spark unprecedented fear, and what people fear they hate. What they hate, they kill. Word will soon spread about us and how we knew about the volcano. The world leaders cannot lash out at a mountain, but they can come after us.”
“Why would they do that?” an older monk asked innocently. The man had never set foot outside the valley and had been sheltered from the corruptive nature of the world.
“Because that is their way. Startle a snake and it will strike. It doesn’t matter to it that you meant it no harm.”
“But I would not blame the snake,” the elder brother said.
“Nor I,” Luc agreed. “But the outside world does not think like us.”
The old man grasped the analogy. “I think I understand. When I was a young man I once burned my hand picking up a stone that was too close to a fire pit. In anger I kicked out the fire. Afterward I could not understand why I did it, for it was not the fire’s fault.”
Luc smiled. “You were given a taste of human nature’s darker side, one that is amplified outside the valley to the point where nations wage wars over rumors.”
“What can be done?” Dzu asked.
“I do not know, but I fear that we can no longer rely on the monastery’s isolation to protect us.”
“Is that why you and some of the others are carrying weapons?”
“Yes, brother. I fear for our safety.”
“Would you take a life to protect your own?” Dzu asked.
“No,” Luc lied. “But I still debate whether I would do it to defend the oracle.”
The statement sent a shocked murmur through the older monks. The taking of life, either a human’s or that of the lowliest insect, was anathema to everything the Buddhist Order believed.
Luc cut through the chatter. “That is the question that faces us all, the one we must answer before I take my leave of Rinpoche-La.”
“Is our situation truly that dire?” Dzu, who had been Luc’s sharpest critic in the months since the Lama’s stroke, was falling under Luc’s spell.
“It is. We must all recognize that our way of life will soon come to an end. It is how we go forward from this moment that will determine the Order’s ultimate fate.”
“I for one can never kill, no matter the circumstances.” Dzu crossed his arms over his chest as if that settled the discussion.
“And many agree with you,” Luc said. �
�I would never ask anyone to act against his vows. But I need to know if you would prevent others from acting in ways that you would not? What if they believed that killing to protect the oracle was the right choice? Would you stop them?”
“That question should be easy to answer. Life must take precedence over all other considerations.” Dzu paused. “Even if the oracle was threatened, killing to preserve it is wrong.”
“As wrong as those who may kill to destroy it?”
“Are there degrees to that kind of sin? I don’t know, perhaps. This is a matter I have never contemplated.”
Luc took on a sincere look of sympathy. “It is something I have not stopped thinking about for some time now.” It was a struggle to keep from smirking. He had so twisted logic that he now had the monks thinking about committing murder. “Here is something else for your consideration, something that has occurred to me over time. For one hundred fifty years the Order has had within its power the ability to save countless lives by warning those about to die and yet we did not. By rights those deaths should be on our collective consciences. Is not a lie of omission still a lie? Why then would the deaths of those who come to harm us be more wrong?”
His question was met by silence.
Finally Dzu spoke. “In some ways I hear the voice of our Lama in you, Luc. He stood in this very room when he proposed that the Order heal earth’s chi. He was very convincing and after a short debate we agreed to his plan, although some secretly believed it was a mistake. How do we know that your intentions aren’t also a mistake?”
“You must all agree that passivity is not an option. No matter what we do, the Order is forever changed.”
“I see that, yes.”
“If we do not defend ourselves when they come for us, we will cease to exist. The oracle will be destroyed.”
“So you say.”
“All I am asking is for you to consider that we are worth saving, that we should survive and emerge whole after the eruption.” He turned his attention to the elder monk. “Brother, would you not prevent a man from beating the snake that bit him.”
“Yes, I would.”
“That is all that I ask. I do not blame those of you who wouldn’t protect the snake, but I ask you not to stop those that would.”
The door at the back of the temple room creaked open on its iron hinges. A gust of fresh air swirled in, diluting the cloying smell of the joss sticks. Donny Randall wouldn’t enter the chamber but just his presence at the threshold interrupted the meeting.
“I believe Mr. Randall is here to tell me everything is ready for my trip back to Nepal.” Luc smiled at the assemblage. “Were it that I could stay and pray with you for our Lama’s recovery and for guidance in these troubled times.”
“We shall pray for your speedy return to us, Luc.” Dzu got to his feet and embraced him. “You do the Order proud and while I don’t agree with some of what you said, I know your heart is good and your thoughts pure.”
“Bless you,” Luc replied and hugged the older man more fiercely.
He crossed the carpeted floor and joined Donny. Together they strode down the hallway away from the temple and the reek of incense that burned Luc’s eyes.
“How did it go?” Donny asked.
“Better than I expected.” Luc snickered. “The old men are so confused they don’t know what to do. Even Dzu is looking for someone to lead them.”
“They’ll make you Lama when old toothless kicks the bucket?”
“Without a doubt.”
“And then?”
“And then things get run my way. With the United States and Western Europe in disarray, the world’s balance of power will immediately shift to China, Japan and the nations of the Pacific. It will take a year, maybe two, before the world economy has adjusted to the fact that most of its biggest consumers are dead. By then people will have realized that the great cities that were destroyed were little more than black holes that absorbed everything and produced only more mouths to feed.
“The planet’s natural resources like coal, grain, timber and oil will not be affected, only their means of distribution, and those can be rerouted. Take away New York as a financial capital and a new one will emerge in Australia. Scour away the beaches of Miami and people will vacation someplace else. Adaptation is perhaps mankind’s greatest skill. The eruption will force humanity to realize the suicidal path they were on and buy enough time to correct it.”
“Where does that leave us? The Order, I mean.”
“Interestingly, it is the nations of the Pacific basin that will be least affected by the eruption, yet they remain the most vulnerable to earthquakes and volcanoes. We will be in position to warn them about impending catastrophes.”
“For a price?” Donny asked.
“For a price,” Luc agreed.
Where Randall saw storehouses of gold, Luc saw power, raw unadulterated power of a kind not held since the Roman Caesars. Nations would give him anything to protect themselves and perhaps even more to not warn their enemies. How much was it worth to the Saudi government to know that a major earthquake was going to strike Iran on a certain date and disrupt their oil shipments for weeks or months? How much would the Japanese pay to have enough warning to evacuate Yokohama when an undersea slide sends a tsunami washing over the port? That kind of knowledge was worth something beyond mere money.
After just one or two demonstrations Luc was certain he’d be given virtual control of the world.
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Paul “Tiny” Gordon backed out of the ladies’ room brandishing a plunger and cursing the antique plumbing. He flipped the sign on the door so it read OUT OF ORDER. Not that it mattered. Sundays were notoriously slow and even on a busy night his bar catered to an almost exclusively male clientele. The few women who did venture in weren’t the type to be deterred by using the men’s lavatory.
Nursing a vodka gimlet at the bar, Mercer smiled good-naturedly. “The laundry joint again?”
Tiny’s was part of a run-down strip mall anchored by an industrial laundry facility. On a regular basis, the toilets belched thick curds of detergent foam.
Tiny tossed the plunger into the back room and stepped onto the platform behind the bar that allowed him to look his seated customers in the eye. “Damn landlord won’t do anything about it and the last time I talked to the owner of the laundry he told me that the detergent’s keeping the lines clear and I shouldn’t complain.”
“The joys of running a business.” Mercer checked his watch. It was past four in the afternoon. Lasko was running late.
The front door opened. In the reflection of the mirror behind the bar, Mercer saw Harry unclip Drag’s leash. The pooch and his master ambled into the bar, the basset making for a pile of blankets Tiny kept for him in a corner and Harry for the bar stool Tiny kept for him to Mercer’s right. Tiny had mixed a Jack Daniel’s and ginger ale by the time Harry eased into his seat.
“Where were you last night?” For the first time in a week, Harry hadn’t slept at Mercer’s. “You didn’t come by.”
Harry shot him a lecherous smirk. “I came someplace else.”
Mercer and Tiny groaned.
“What brings you here so early?” Harry asked.
“Ira wanted to meet and I needed to get out.”
“Think they found Tisa?”
“That’s my hope.”
“And you’re going to go get her.”
Mercer sipped at his drink. “That’s my plan.”
Harry looked to Tiny. “The charming prince storming the castle to rescue the fair damsel? Is his life a cliche or what?”
“You gotta wonder what that makes us.”
Mercer indicated his glass. “Obviously you’re the alchemist who concocts the healing potions that keep me going.”
“And Harry?”
Harry straightened. “I see myself as the sage providing insightful advice.”
“Sorry, Harry. Drag’s the insightful one. You’re more like the
court jester.”
The door opened again. Ira paused to let his eyes adjust to the bar’s gloom and his nose adjust to the smell of old beer and stale cigarettes. He wore khakis and a golf shirt with boat shoes on his feet. The clothes appeared fresh. Mercer suspected he’d been in his office all weekend and had changed for the meeting, which coincided with his commute home.
“Whatchya drinking, Admiral?” Tiny asked.
“Dewar’s rocks.” Ira slapped Harry on the back. “How you doing, Harry?”
“Fair to partly cloudy. How about you?”
“About the same, maybe a chance of precipitation.”
The admiral turned to Mercer. “Let’s grab a table.”
They collected their drinks and moved to a booth. Ira set a briefcase on the floor after withdrawing a file folder.
“Is that what I think it is?” Mercer asked.
Ira opened the folder and slid it across. “The valley of Rinpoche-La.”
The folder contained dozens of satellite photographs. The top picture was a wide-angle shot encompassing hundreds of square miles of rugged snowcapped mountains. Smears of clouds obscured many of the peaks.
“You’re looking at the Himalayas from one of our polar orbiting birds,” Lasko explained, his voice raspy with exhaustion. “This is the satellite’s minimum resolution but about the same as you got from that commercial platform.”
“Looks about right,” Mercer admitted.
“Using the report you prepared about geothermal activity in the valley, the photo interpreters tasked an infrared bird to shoot the region.”
Mercer turned to the next picture in the stack. The photograph was of a black field shot through with white specks.
“Each white dot represents an appreciable heat source. Everything from factory smokestacks to cooking fires. They filtered out known sites, like towns and villages, and anything along established roads.” The next picture was the same image but more than three-quarters of the white flecks were gone. “These are the spots we focused on. To be on the safe side, we did this across the entire Himalayan range. In total there were eight hundred seventy-seven targeted sites.”
