Ground Zero rj-13 Read online

  He gave her a self-conscious smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  As he wandered away, she glanced into her virtually empty bag. She kept no ID of any sort on her person. Cash, a few toiletries, a pay-as-you-go cell phone, the keys to her three front door locks—that was it. No one could be allowed to know where she lived, because that was where she kept her proof, all the documentation for what she knew to be true. It had taken her years to assemble it and she doubted she’d ever be able to do so again. She couldn’t allow it to fall into the wrong hands.

  With a start she noticed her stalker rise from his seat and amble her way. She stiffened as her heart rate jumped. What was he doing? Was he going to speak to her?

  No, he passed without a look and stepped into the restroom.

  The not-looking was a giveaway. A casual patron would have glanced her way. Or would he?

  She sighed and slumped in her seat. Maybe this was all in her head. God knew she’d been told often enough she was crazy—starting in her teens and continuing through the rest of her life. Maybe they were all right. Maybe—

  No. She couldn’t allow herself to think like that. She knew some of the truth and had to put what she knew out there, to stimulate others to help her look for the rest of it.

  She also knew that blond man had been watching her. Her second cup of coffee had lulled him into thinking he could take a bathroom break.

  Wrong.

  She straightened and rushed through her routine of deleting cookies and erasing her browser history. It wouldn’t stop anyone really serious about finding out what she’d been up to, but would foil run-of-the-mill snooping. She pulled her flash drive from the USB port and shoved it into a pocket. Normally she’d delete everything, then fill the drive to capacity with junk—overwriting all the memory—then delete all that to make sure none of her original files were recoverable, but no time for that now.

  She rose and hurried toward the door.

  Outside she paused and looked around. The air-conditioning in the café had been set a little too low for her and the hot air on the sidewalk felt good. The nearest corner lay to her right so she headed that way at a trot. The sooner she was out of sight of the café, the better.

  She’d broken a little sweat by the time she rounded the corner. Out of shape. Well, what else could she expect from a sedentary life spent reading from either a page or a monitor?

  She glanced back. No one following.

  She slowed her pace. Had she lost him? Had she truly had anybody to lose?

  Even if she’d been wrong, she’d just had a good drill on staying alert. She couldn’t allow herself to become complacent. Not with what she knew.

  Another glance back and she almost tripped over her own sneakers as the blond man rushed into sight at the corner. He stopped, looking around. His movements seemed jerky, almost frantic.

  As if desperately looking for someone.

  She wasn’t imagining it. He was after her.

  Panicked, she ran blindly. She cut toward the street and felt someone grab her arm.

  Another!

  She twisted free and increased her speed. If anything happened to her, her brother would check her house and read the note . . . the note that told him to contact Jack.

  3

  “All right, lissen up.”

  Jack stood on the Lexington Avenue sidewalk with a dozen typically scruffy Kickers and pretended to pay attention as Darryl gave them their marching orders. Darryl’s scraggly brown hair had grown longer as he’d grown progressively thinner over the past couple of months. He didn’t look well, but he was as enthusiastic as ever as he handed out the sample chapters of Hank Thompson’s bestseller, Kick.

  Jack always saw him around on his regular visits to the Lodge. Hadn’t ever spoken to him, but he didn’t seem a bad guy. Thompson’s gofer. Kind of the Jar Jar Binks of the local Kicker enclave.

  His first encounter with Darryl had been in the basement of the Kickers’ borrowed clubhouse back in May on the night all hell had broken loose. Jack had been clean-shaven then and had had a foot planted in Darryl’s back. No way he’d ever recognize him today.

  “Now,” Darryl said as he scratched his arm with his free hand, “I think you’ve all been here before, so you all should know the drill. But just in case one of you’s a newbie, here’s how we play it. We’re gonna go across the street and stand in front of the Dormie building there and hand this sample chapter of the boss’s book to anyone going in or coming out.”

  Jack stared at the art deco front of the Dormentalist Temple on the far side of Lexington and scratched his new beard. Relatively new. It had filled in nicely since he’d stopped shaving a couple of months ago. He’d needed to change his appearance and it had worked. With his hair cut short—not much longer now than his beard—he looked like a different person.

  Thompson, the Kicker leader, was the reason. Their last meeting had not gone Thompson’s way. Nothing he’d like better than to extract a little payback from Jack’s hide. He’d probably spread his description among his followers, so Jack wasn’t taking any chances.

  He glanced down at the faux tattoo on the thumb web of his left hand.

  Thanks to Gia’s deft touch with a black Sharpie, he looked like a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool Kicker.

  “You can’t miss the Dormie members,” Darryl was saying. “They got the Michael Jackson jackets on.”

  “Faggots,” said Hagaman, a long-bearded, barrel-chested biker type to Jack’s left. “Just like their boss man.”

  “Former boss man,” Jack said.

  Indelicate photos involving Luther Brady, the Dormentalists’ disgraced Supreme Overseer and Acting Prime Dormentalist—now former SO and APD—had surfaced last fall. He was awaiting trial on a variety of charges, sexual misconduct the least of them.

  Hagaman sneered. “Bet the new one’s a faggot too.” He squinted at the entrance to the temple. “And what’s that bullshit over the door? I seen it a dozen times but what the fuck’s it mean?”

  The desires of the worthless many are controlled by

  the desires and knowledge of the decent few.

  Plato

  Jack shrugged. “It’s Plato. And Plato didn’t always make a lot of sense.”

  He’d never understood how anyone had ever bought into that shadows-on-the-wall stuff.

  “Yeah,” Hagaman said with a derisive snort. “What can you expect from Mickey Mouse’s dog?”

  Jack laughed, then noticed Hagaman’s sharp look. “You were kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “Play-toe—the philosopher.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. Him. What’s his first name again?”

  “He’s just known as Plato.”

  “Just one name? Who’s he think he is—Madonna?”

  Jack turned away and spotted a couple of Dormentalists walking toward their temple. Their steel-gray, double-breasted jackets were buttoned all the way up to their high collars. Some wore military-style cords draped across the front or around a shoulder. He was pretty sure they weren’t going for the Michael Jackson look. Maybe Sergeant Pepper.

  “We’d like to convert the members,” Darryl was saying, “but we’re most interested in the ones going in and out who ain’t in uniform. Those are recruits. And we want to get them before the Dormies do. We want them to be Kickers instead of Dormies. All they gotta do is read that chapter and they’ll want to read the book. And once they read the book, they’re ours. So concentrate on them.” Darryl grinned. “And if the Dormies give you any trouble, well, you just give it right back. Got it?”

  The Kickers cheered, Hagaman the loudest.

  Jack knew the possibilities for some rough-and-tumble were what drew these guys up here. Most of them were bunking at the Kicker HQ downtown and it gave them a chance to earn some Kicker “community service” points in exchange for their keep.

  For Jack it was a chance to stay in touch with the group. He sensed they’d coalesced around Hank Thompson for some purpose. They t
hemselves didn’t seem to know what that was, but he wanted to be nearby when they found out.

  As they trooped across the street, a dreadlocked Kicker who Jack knew only as Kewan—and who knew Jack only as Johnny—sidled up to him.

  “Hey, Johnny, got a light?”

  A smile creased his deeply pocked cheeks . . . a face like the surface of the moon—the dark side.

  “Sure.” Jack fished out his Bic and handed it to him.

  Kewan grinned. “Great. Now, got a ciggie?”

  Jack had guessed that was coming. A lot of these guys had little cash, so he always made a point of carrying a pack of Marlboro Reds. Kewan had lit up by the time they reached the other side.

  They split into two groups of a half dozen each and flanked the doors. As the universally smiling and pleasant Dormentalists emerged or approached, the Kickers pressed them to take the sample chapter and read it. To a man and woman they refused. They knew they were being watched from inside.

  Last year Jack had become involved with the Dormentalists—he wasn’t alone in thinking of it as a cult rather than a church—and knew what went on behind the walls of this tightly controlled, globe-spanning organization that touted its costly programs as steps toward self-realization. By contrast, the Kickers were a loose organization of disparate types brought together by a bestselling book.

  The so-called Kicker Evolution that Hank Thompson touted in Kick embraced all socioeconomic strata, but the lower echelons seemed to return the clinch with the most fervor. Many of them—including their leader—had had brushes with the law.

  The Dormentalists had been in long-term competition with the Scientologists—known in Kicker circles as “L. Ron Hubtards”—over who could cull more depressed and lost sheeple from the human herd for fleecing. Then Hank Thompson had appeared on the scene with his Kick manifesto, urging people to “dissimilate” from society and join the Kicker Evolution. Millions had responded, decimating the ranks of both the Dormentalists and Scientologists. But Thompson wanted more. Right now another group of Kickers was over on West 46th Street at the Scientology building handing out chapters and spoiling for a fight.

  After ten minutes of harassing the Dormentalists, Jack checked his watch. Any second now . . .

  Sure enough, right on time, a group of Temple Paladins spilled from the entrance. Their military jackets were a deep burgundy instead of gray. Known as TPs, they functioned as the cult’s security force.

  “All right, you Wall Addicts. How many times do we have to tell you? Move away from the door!”

  “We’ve got as much a right to be here as anybody!” Jack shouted, for the simple purpose of establishing his presence among the Kickers.

  The usual pushing and shoving match began. Soon the NYPD would arrive and break it up. Jack always made it a point to be gone by then.

  A super-size TP, looking like a grape Kool-Aid pitcher, appeared in the doorway carrying a cardboard box.

  “Attention TPs!” he bellowed. “They’ve been declared ‘In Season.’ Come and get ’em!”

  In Season . . . Dormentalese for an enemy of the cult who was to be eliminated by any means necessary.

  The TPs surrounded the new guy and pulled billy clubs from the box. Then they charged. The Kickers outnumbered them, but the Kickers were unarmed.

  A TP with short blond hair and bad skin took a diagonal swing at Jack’s head. Jack shifted to the side and grabbed the guy’s arm as the baton went by. He pushed it farther in its present direction and brought his knee up against the back of the elbow, hyperextending it. The TP screamed and dropped the nightstick. As Jack grabbed for it, he saw another TP taking a grand-slam swing at him.

  Why was he so popular? Because he’d shouted?

  He pulled the first TP into the path of the blow, hearing him grunt as it hit his shoulder. He picked up the first’s nightstick and rammed it into the second’s solar plexus, doubling him over. Then he jabbed him in a kidney. The guy went down.

  “Hey, you’re pretty good with that.”

  He looked around and saw Hagaman grinning at him. Behind him on the street he saw someone step out of his car and raise a camera.

  He ducked his head and handed Hagaman the baton.

  “Let’s see what you can do.”

  Time to move.

  As Hagaman charged into the melee, Jack turned and strode off. The Kickers would remember him as someone who spoke up when challenged and gave better than he got in the fight. His Kicker credentials were reconfirmed. No need to be on camera or present when the cops arrived.

  Time for a beer. He’d earned one.

  4

  Ernst Drexler ended his phone call and turned to find someone standing in his office.

  No, not someone. The One.

  He shot to his feet and broke out in a sweat as he always did in the One’s presence. The man—no, he was something more than a man—frightened him to the core, especially the way he entered and left rooms without warning whenever he pleased.

  “You’ve located the troublemaker,” the One said—a statement, not a question. “Who is he?”

  “Surprisingly, it was a woman.”

  “What is her name?”

  “We, um, don’t know yet. But she won’t be bothering us anymore. That I can guarantee.”

  “Nothing is guaranteed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In apparent deep thought, the One wandered the office. Ernst observed him as he waited for him to speak. His appearance had undergone subtle changes lately. His frame seemed smaller, his skin tones just a shade darker, his features softer, the brown of his hair deeper. All incremental, nothing dramatic, but right now he could pass for Hispanic. Ernst wondered why. Some reason beyond vanity. The One was anything but vain.

  Although he did seem to enjoy good suits. He wore dark blue silk today, with a white shirt and a maroon tie. He tended to look like a businessman.

  Ernst preferred the opposite. As a young man he had begun wearing white, three-piece suits, no matter what the season, and had continued the practice into his sixties. He did not feel his age, knew he did not look it, and was glad of that. He confessed to a modicum of vanity.

  Finally the One turned to him.

  “The Orsa is awake.”

  The news startled Ernst.

  “It is? I had no idea. I was going to check on it later when—”

  “I sensed it awaken a few hours ago. We must waste no time. The Fhinntmanchca process must begin as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, of course. This is wonderful.”

  “It won’t be truly ‘wonderful’ until the Fhinntmanchca successfully completes its task.”

  “Of course. The Order—”

  “I am not leaving it up to the Order. The High Council consists of seven egos who will have to agree on how to proceed. I want no delay. The Septimus Order deserves untold credit for its efforts so far.” He jabbed a finger at Ernst. “But I am putting you in charge. You personally, Ernst Drexler.”

  “I exist to serve.”

  As Ernst bowed his head, he fought to keep his knees from buckling. He had assumed that, as actuator for the High Council, he would do most of the work, but would share responsibility with the council. But now the One was laying responsibility for the successful creation of the Fhinntmanchca—something that had never been done before—entirely on his shoulders. Should he fail . . .

  He did not want to think about that.

  He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “Existing lore is vague on the precise purpose of the Fhinntmanchca. If I may be so bold to ask—”

  “You may. Should you succeed in your task, you shall have your answer. Should you fail, it will not matter to you.”

  Ernst swallowed. He did not like the sound of that.

  The One stepped to the window and looked out. “One of these Taints should provide suitable raw material.”

  Ernst moved to his side and saw the usual group of Kickers clustered outside the Lodge’s front entrance.

&nb
sp; Taints . . . the archaic term for people like the Kickers. And they should indeed provide ample raw material. After all, the Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order had loaned Hank Thompson and his followers the use of this Lower East Side Lodge. He was surrounded by Kickers.

  The question was: Which one fit the requirements?

  He looked around.

  The One was gone.

  5

  His sister didn’t answer his knocks, so he tried his keys. He heard the latch snap back as he twisted it in the last of the three locks on her door, but he didn’t push it open right away. He was afraid of what he might find.

  She called every day at six P.M. sharp. But not today. He didn’t always answer the six P.M. call. She didn’t expect him to. All he had to do was recognize her number on the caller ID and he’d know she was okay. Any other call he’d answer, but the sixer was just her way of checking in.

  No call today.

  His older sister—older by less than two years—was a loony bird but a punctual one. Her looniness had a compulsive component. She wouldn’t skip the call. Something was wrong.

  Earlier he’d been overcome by an uneasy feeling. He hadn’t had a clue as to why, but he’d felt as if something awful were about to happen. Then he’d glanced at his watch and seen that it read 6:07.

  She was late. And she was never late.

  So he’d called her home and heard only her voice-mail message. He’d called her cell and heard the same.

  Something was most definitely wrong.

  So here he was, outside her door, fearing what he’d find on the other side. Not violence. The door showed no sign of damage or tampering. Not that he expected to find any—ever. His sister’s fears that someone might come after her for what she knew were as unfounded as her wild conspiracy theories.

  His concern was more for her health. She didn’t take care of herself.

  Strange how time had changed them. As kids she’d been the slim, picky eater and he’d wolf down anything that didn’t wolf him down first. Now he carefully watched what he ate while she lived on takeout.