The Committee

by Terry E. Hill

  At that moment the cabin door slowly opened and Angel cautiously looked out.

  “Do not disturb me!” Karen snapped before Angel could take the first step. “Turn around and close the door now if you value your life.”

  The cabin door quickly closed. All that could be heard was the clicking of the lock and the purr of the plane engine.

  There still was no reply on the screen. “Again, please explain,” she implored with a flash of fingers across the keyboard.

  The notion of failure had still not entered her mind. The concept was too foreign for her to grasp.

  Then the words appeared.

  “GT is alive. Wrong target hit.”

  The green letters on the glowing screen hit her between the eyes as if they were fired from her own custom-made Glock at close range. She blinked to adjust her eyes. It must be the lights in here, she thought as she reread the words.

  “GT is alive. Wrong target hit.”

  Karen’s hands began to shake as she raised them over the keyboard. The only response she could form was, “Not possible. The kill was confirmed.”

  The reply came quickly.

  “Report from LAPD source is Danny St. John was the victim, and he is still alive as well. Return to your cover immediately and await further instructions. Conversation is over.” The screen went black at the moment her cell phone rang. She closed the laptop and picked up her phone from the table.

  “Mommy?”

  “Hello, honey,” she said barely containing her trembling vocal chords. “I’ll be home a few—”

  “The game is in three hours. Is Consuelo taking me?” Nelson interjected with a hint of irritation.

  “No, I’ll be home long before then.”

  “Good. She doesn’t understand the game very well.”

  “How was school today?” she asked, teetering precariously between loving mother and cold-blooded killer. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to take you this morning.”

  “That’s okay. Consuela took us.”

  “Where is Winnie?”

  “She’s in the solarium doing her homework.”

  Karen loved the thrill of the hunt, the kill, the weight of the rifle on her shoulder, the smell of a recently fired weapon. But the rush was always tempered by the guilt of missing even a single moment of her children’s lives. She ached at the thought of Winnie sitting alone in the solarium doing her homework and Nelson worrying Mommy wouldn’t make his soccer match.

  “Tell Winnie I’ll be home soon and we’ll bake her cupcakes for school after your game. I love you. Make sure you’re ready when I get there. And remember, nana and pawpaw are coming to visit tonight, so please make sure your room is clean.”

  “I will,” Nelson grumbled.

  “I love you, honey,” Karen said.

  “I love you too, Mommy.”

  The song caused tears to flow from almost everyone in the auditorium during the funeral service. No one was immune to the sorrow of the grieving, beautiful widow.

  Lazarus sat quietly in an office on the second floor of Headquarters. A cigarette burned in an ashtray on the desk. He watched the mahogany coffin on an eighty-inch monitor mounted across the room.

  “Camille looks lovely,” came the voice of Isadore Montgomery from sources unknown. “Love the birdcage veil. Nice touch.”

  “Always the fashion critique,” Lazarus said with a smile.

  “Is this the work of The Surgeon?” asked Robert Irvin, the second disembodied voice in the room.

  “No. Looks like it, but it wasn’t.”

  “Then who? Have you hired another assassin?” Isadore asked.

  “No. Gillette and Camille handled this one.”

  “Camille?” Robert responded with surprise. “How?”

  “The candle.”

  “Excellent,” Isadore said. “She belongs to us.”

  “There is no doubt she’ll be president,” Robert interjected.

  “No, boys. There is no doubt now,” was Lazarus’s definitive reply.

  Camille gracefully dabbed another tear she managed to squeeze free.

  Hattie fell to her knees on the kitchen floor, the wind sucked from her lungs. A bolt of pain shot up her leg on impact.

  “No!” she cried out. “No, Lord, not again.”

  She saw the dark angel in the window above her sink. Its wings clapped in victory as it burst into the air from the depths of a turbulent sea. It soared high over the city and disappeared from Hattie’s sight into the clouds.

  “It’s her,” Hattie gasped. “I know it’s her.”

  Hattie struggled to her feet and made her way to the telephone hanging on the wall. She furiously dialed Gideon’s number. The phone rang three times before greeting her with, “This is Gideon Truman. Please leave a message.”

  Hattie pressed the button hard and dialed again.

  “This is Gideon Truman. Please leave a message.”

  “Gideon, this is Hattie,” she said still breathless. “Call me, baby. I need to hear your voice.”

  Hattie walked slowly to the kitchen table and collapsed into the plastic upholstered chair. She placed a hand on the Bible and opened it. The thin, translucent pages flapped open and fell randomly to Revelation 13.

  She read in horror. “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”

  Hattie clasped her mouth with a trembling hand and prayed out loud, “Give me strength, Lord, to stop this evil.”

  It was a postcard-perfect Southern California day. The sun reflected off the glassy surface of the Pacific Ocean and covered Dober Stadium in a warm embrace. Snowy white seagulls pirouetted and danced in uniform as if their synchronized maneuvers were choreographed especially for the momentous occasion.

  It was opening day at the new Dober Stadium, and every one of the 175,000 seats were filled with citizens who had waited anxiously for a year and a half to be the first to see the Dobers play in their new home. A tangible hum of chatter, laughter, and sporadic bursts of applause and cheers filled the air. Concessionaires shoveled hot dogs, salted pretzels, peanuts, and goo-covered nachos by the ton over counters to the ravenous hordes.

  The arena was built in record time. It was exactly twelve months to the day since Camille plunged a gold shovel into the ground with her black Christian Louboutin pumps and declared to the world, “Doberman Stadium is officially under construction.”

  She now stood triumphantly in front of the feverish crowd. “This is a great day for the city of Los Angeles,” her amplified voice echoed off the surrounding hills. “Thanks to all of you, our beloved Dobermans have a home that will be theirs for generations to come.”

  The fans leaped to their feet and burst into hoots, applause, whistles, and fist pumps in the air. Camille stood firmly behind home base. Her red Giuseppe Zanotti sneakers were the first ever to leave prints in the freshly smoothed clay. Locks of coiffed hair spilled from beneath the Doberman baseball cap she wore proudly. The only things separating her from the adoring mass were the 100,000 square feet of Bermuda grass, a cordless microphone, and the brim of the cap.

  “They said it couldn’t be done!” she shouted. “And we said . . .” Camille held the microphone up and pointed it to the audience who chanted in unison, “Yes, we can!”

  “They said we’ll never raise the enough money to build it, and we said . . .”

  “Yes, we can!”

  “They told us we wouldn’t finish construction in time for the opening season game, and we said . . .”

  “Yes, we can!”

  The euphoric volley of words and recital of promises kept continued until Camille whipped the crowd into an almost uncontrollable frenzy of excitement. She was the mayor of the people, and they loved her more today than ever before.

  “Without further delay,” she said, “I am honored to be the very first mayor to say in this new Doberman Stadium: Let the g
ame begin!”

  Camille was consumed by an avalanche of applause. If the crowd’s reaction to her words was a barometer of her popularity, she would definitely have a 100 percent approval rating on this day.

  Gillette, Lazarus, Isadore, and Robert watched Camille start the game on a floor-to-ceiling monitor in the Headquarters basement in the French Quarter. It was one of the most secure rooms on the planet. The bunker was built to survive a multimegaton nuclear detonation within one nautical mile. A round acrylic conference table with a hollow center sat in the middle of the room with thirteen high-back leather chairs, one for each Committee member. Walls filled with row upon row of buttons and blinking lights, twenty-four-hour newsfeeds from all the major world news networks, CCTV monitors following the every move of heads of state and persons of interest around the globe, and other sundry gizmos and gadgets needed for the weighty task of running the county surrounded the table. The room’s perimeter included three-ton Swiss-made doors, five-foot-thick walls, a six-foot-thick steel-reinforced concrete ceiling, and two escape tunnels. The extreme design provided ample assurance that only persons with the proper retina scans could enter or exit the room. The mansion aboveground on Rue de Bourbon served as a quaint and homey setting for generations of Committee members, but the 1,000-square-yard bunker ten stories belowground was clearly command center.

  Four members present sat around the conference table at equal distances from each other. The only source of light in the dim room came from the massive screen and the blinking wall of buttons and lights. The darkness gave the illusion of the room having no floor and no ceiling.

  “She is magnificent,” Gillette said studying the life-size image of Camille tossing out the first ball in Dober Stadium on the screen.

  “This is going to be a slam dunk,” Lazarus echoed.

  “Agreed. But, first things first. We have to make her governor,” was Isadore’s contribution to the exchange.

  Lazarus smiled and said. “That’s already been taken care of.”

  “Are the ballot machines programmed?” Gillette asked. “I don’t want to have to deal with another Florida fuckup.”

  “Yes,” came Lazarus’s defensive response. “We got the top programmers at Apple working on them now. I assure you, the majority of votes will go to Camille.”

  “Have we lined up her Republican competition?” Gillette continued the direct line of questioning.

  “Yes,” Robert Irvin answered quickly. “Christi Wedgewood is going to be the Republican front-runner. She’s the CEO of CompuCo. Never held public office and doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground. We’ve convinced her she can win. Wasn’t hard. The woman’s ego is almost as big as her bank account.”

  “Excellent,” Isadore said. “I know her. Camille will destroy her.”

  “She won’t have to,” Robert replied. “Christi has a shitload of skeletons in her closet, all just waiting for us to open the door and send them crashing down on her, including a lesbian lover in Puerto Rico, a husband who frequents transsexual prostitutes on Hollywood Boulevard, and three undocumented workers on her household payroll. We’re going to start leaking the stories a few months before the general election. She’ll start to unravel on her own like a cheap sweater. Camille won’t have to lift a finger.”

  “By this time next year, Camille Ernestine Hardaway will be the governor of California and one step closer to the White House.”

  “Don’t let her get to you,” Danny said, cautiously. “Baby? Gideon, did you hear me?”

  Gideon stared intently at the television screen as Camille beamed on opening day at Dober Stadium.

  Danny’s recovery from the gun shot had been slow and steady. Two weeks in the hospital was followed by months of Gideon doting, and waiting on him hand and foot in their Hollywood Hills sanctuary. The house was under 24 hour surveillance by a private security firm hired by the network. An armed, highly trained security guard accompanied them both whenever they left the house.

  “Gideon,” Danny said again, this time accompanied by a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Turn her off.”

  Gideon looked up lovingly at Danny who was now standing behind his chair. “I’m not going to let her get away with it. She almost took you away from me. She has to pay for that.”

  “You still don’t know that she had anything to do with it. It’s almost been a year and nothing else has happened. The only reminder is the little scar. It’s over, baby, you have to let it go.”

  “It’s not over. What happens when the network decides to stop paying for our security? We’ll be sitting ducks. I’m not going to just wait for her to try it again,” Gideon said, touching Danny’s hand on his shoulder. “Next time we may not be so lucky,”

  Hattie wiped her dining room table in concentric circles with the white cloth doused with furniture polish. She could see her reflection in the glasslike finish of the wood grain and smell the scent of Lemon Pledge that filled the room.

  The words of a hymn accompanied each swipe of the rag.

  “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;

  And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

  Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;

  And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”

  Hattie sang the words and interspersed a hum here and a whisper there.

  “The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;

  And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.

  Washed all my sins away, washed all my sins away;

  And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.”

  As she completed the final arc of the last circle on the wood, she felt a rush of blood to her head. At first she assumed she had reached her daily quota of furniture wax vapor, but it quickly became apparent there was something more supernatural in the works.

  Hattie’s reflection in the table slowly faded and gave way to the face of a woman that she did not recognize. The face looked up directly into her eyes. Hattie sensed something familiar about the woman. An innocent, almost loving expression on the face seemed to say, “I mean you no harm,” but Hattie was not so easily deceived.

  Months of prayers and supplication after Danny’s near death had prepared her for moments like this. She had prayed for strength to face any evil that might be placed in her path and today would be the first test of her faith. She did not back away from the table but instead, planted her feet firmly on the round Sears and Roebuck braided area rug.

  “Who are you?” Hattie asked out loud.

  There was no response.

  “Tell me who you are,” Hattie demanded.

  Then she heard the words, “I am Madame Gillette Lemaitre.”

  Gillette Lemaitre continued with an unspoken dialogue. I’m not your enemy, her eyes gently conveyed. I have no qualm with you.

  Hattie responded out loud with a firm, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

  This was met with a look of disappointment from Gillette. You don’t want me as an enemy. This is not your battle, was the next unspoken message from the table came.

  Hattie was undaunted. She looked defiantly at Gillette with a clear, yet unspoken, response to what she rightly perceived as a threat. This is my battle, and I am prepared to fight.

  Gillette’s face suddenly turned cold, hard and menacing. The gentleness vanished, and was replaced with hate and loathing. Hattie heard the audible words, “You have been warned.”

  The face in the table slowly vanished and was replaced with Hattie’s own reflection in the high gloss.

  She relaxed her warrior stance, took a deep breath and resumed forming circles with the rag on the table as if to wipe away any remnants of the mysterious Madame Lemaitre. The words of her hymn filled the room once again.

  “Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power

  Till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more.

  Be saved, to sin no more, be saved, to sin no more;

  Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.”

  The tower clock in St. Louis Cathedral struck twelve just as the carriage rolled past and turned onto Rue des Bourbon. Stars dotted the midnight sky like embers from a wildfire burning below. Rays from a full moon followed the coach as if they were anticipating an assignation that would change the course of the world forever.

  A stone-faced coachman pulled the reigns and maneuvered the two steeds to a gentle halt in front of the mansion. The street fell silent as the clatter of hooves and scrape of wagon wheels against the cobblestone faded into the night.

  When the horses settled, the driver climbed from the box and opened the door. Silent moments passed before the top of a stovepipe hat appeared from the cabin. Threadbare black pants and worn black boots soon followed, and the six-foot-four inch man unfolded onto the street. He stood erect and surveyed the unfamiliar surroundings.

  A redwood pergola covered in wisteria arched over the brick path leading to front doors lit by flames from a gas lantern. The oak double doors swung open and Dahlia appeared in the threshold. Her petticoat rustled as she bowed her head and moved aside to make way for the lanky man. “Good evening, sir,” Dahlia said humbly but with a confidence rarely seen in a Negress of her time. “Welcome to the home of Mademoiselle Juliette Dupree. She is expecting you. Please come in.”

  The man bowed his head in acknowledgment of Dahlia’s gracious greeting, removed his top hat, and cautiously crossed the threshold. With each step, he absorbed every inch of his surroundings, searching for some clue as to where he was and why he had been summoned two days earlier from his home in Springfield, Illinois.

  The telegram vibrated with urgency:

  It is of the highest importance that you agree to meet with my associate Juliette Dupree of New Orleans [Stop] A train ticket awaits you at the Springfield Union Station [Stop] A private carriage will be in New Orleans to take you to Mademoiselle Dupree [Stop] The future of our country rests upon your prompt attention to this matter [Stop].