Kaleidoscope Page 9

  Reluctantly she accepted the effigy and held it, closing her eyes. For a moment there was silence and then she said, "Each stroke of the knife that carved this was done with a terrible hatred and—yes, jealousy. Insane jealousy. A young man, I feel."

  "White or black?" inquired Dr. Idowi. "Black," she said, and shivered. "Take it away, please." Dr. Idowi nodded. "Funtua, I would suspect. You canceled your sub-Sahara trip, Mr. Hendricks, but ironically met with a member of the Chaamba tribe from the sub-Sahara, and you mentioned that Funtua was a Chaamba. This is a tribe known for the power of the spells they cast—love potions, yes, and amulets, but also for the very powerful spells they are able to cast on victims both near and far away."

  This met with a stunned silence. "But he was so friendly," protested Hendricks.

  Dr. Idowi nodded. "And I would guess very jealous of your relationship with Colin, as you spoke of old times together. He had to share you with his hero, his mentor, his friend— perhaps his only friend—and he felt abandoned, left out. Hate is very much a component of jealousy. And you say you slept each night with this beside you?"

  Hendricks said, "But you really think—so many continents away?"

  "I think yes," the doctor told him gravely. "It's been known to happen. The test will lie in what happens to you when this effigy is removed from your presence. This carving has to be destroyed; I'll have to do some research on that, it's a dangerous process, I suspect, but in the meantime it stays here, Mr. Hendricks, for me to deal with, and I suggest you begin a cleansing of your body. ..."

  "How?"

  'Acupuncture, perhaps... A reliable herbalist. Vitamins. . . But I believe you will begin to heal, I really do."

  Hendricks drew a deep sigh. "I will pray for that."

  Dr. Idowi smiled faintly. "Prayer helps too, my friend. My nurse will send my bill if you leave your address with her, but I'll charge you only for the lab work." To Madame Karitska he said, "You have brought me a very interesting case, but I shall hope you bring me no more."

  "Granted," she told him, and rose to shake hands with him.

  It was three weeks later, when Madame Karitska was eating her breakfast, that she heard a knock on her door. "It's open," she called, thinking it was Kristan, but it was Jason Hendricks who entered. A very different Jason Hendricks, and she rose from her chair in surprise. He stood by the door beaming at her, his face a normal color, his stance erect, his eyes bright with the boyish look of someone bringing a gift—and it was a gift, seeing him look younger and healthy again.

  He said, "I forgot to pay you. I had to come and show you how I am now, but to think I walked away, so skeptical and ill, that I didn't remember to pay you!"

  "I quite understood," she assured him gravely.

  "I've just left one hundred dollars with Daniel," he told her, "and an armful of books for his store, and for you .. ." From behind him he brought out a bouquet of red roses. "My payment's in the envelope tucked inside the roses. It could never be enough, though, when what I owe you is my life." He hesitated and then abruptly sat down on the edge of her couch.

  "I didn't know what to do about my friend Colin in the Peace Corps," he told her, frowning.

  She nodded, waiting.

  "I felt he ought to know. I mean, if circumstances changed, Colin could be in danger, too."

  "You wrote him?"

  He shook his head. "I had the awful feeling my letter might be intercepted by Funtua. I telephoned the District Officer in the nearest town and asked him to send a message to Colin to come to this town and phone me collect." He added wryly, "I gave only my phone number, not my name, and said it was a family emergency. Which," he added, "is how paranoid I've grown."

  She smiled. "On the whole, I think that very sensible. You've heard from Colin?"

  Hendricks nodded. "It was several days before he was able to leave the village and call me, and it cost a small fortune convincing him about the poison and the effigy. He admitted that Funtua could be what he called 'tiresomely possessive' at times, but he had no idea—I mean, he found it hard to believe what I'd gone through. He was alarmed enough to think of leaving at once, quickly, secretly. Afraid Funtua might guess what he'd learned. But then—"

  "But then?" asked Madame Karitska.

  "Then he realized he'd have to return to the village for his passport and money, and he decided that he'd tell Funtua he must go back to the States on a family matter, a funeral." He hesitated, frowning. "I reminded him—told him—that Funtua might not like that, might not like that at all, and to be careful, very careful what he ate and drank before he left."

  He was silent and then he added in a troubled voice, "I just hope he got away in time."

  9

  It was the next morning when her good friend Mr. Faber-Jones knocked at her door. "Is this a bad time for you?" he asked anxiously. "I should have telephoned first, but—"

  "But something has happened," she said, nodding. "You know I'm always delighted to see you, and I've no appointment until nine o'clock."

  It still amused her that this small, plump, middle-aged man, so impeccably dressed and wealthy, had suddenly discovered in midlife—and very much against his will—that he had become psychic. She had met him only a few weeks after she'd hung her sign in the window, and with no money to pay her next month's rent she'd reluctantly agreed to replace a fortune-teller at a charity party on Cavendish Square

  , given by a Mrs. Faber-Jones. Once placed under a tent in the garden she'd been intrigued about the questions asked of her by an onlooker, and she in turn had questioned him.

  He was Mr. Faber-Jones, he'd said, and miserably he admitted that a few months ago, on leaving his office in the Pratt Building, he'd had a very bad fall on the ice and had been taken unconscious to the hospital, and when he'd finally regained consciousness ...

  But she had already guessed what upset him and nodded. "The blow to your head had changed you."

  "The things I saw!" He'd groaned, and she had looked at this conventional businessman with interest. After attempting to comfort him over a period of weeks, she had suggested that he use this gift of clairvoyance that had so astonishingly overtaken him in midlife. There had been evenings when he and young Gavin O'Connell, still a student at Saint Bonaventure's, had come to her apartment to help him practice concentration and how to direct it, but he had refused to be called anything but Faber-Jones, which had mystified them until at last he confided that his first name was Polonius. Faber-Jones he had remained.

  Now he dropped to her couch and said nervously, "You've not forgotten my dinner party Sunday night?"

  "Of course not," she told him, "I'm bringing baklava, remember?"

  "Oh yes," he said, and sighed. "And there'll be one guest you'll find interesting, ex-CIA, ex-State Department, I've known him for years."

  "My friend," she said gently, "what is it?"

  He stifled another sigh. "You know my history, how obsessed I was with business that I neglected my wife and my daughter, and both of them drifted away from me."

  Madame Karitska nodded. "Absent father, absent husband. But your daughter—Laurie—has left that commune in Vermont now, and is back in Trafton at college, isn't she?"

  "Yes," he admitted, "and we'd been getting along so well; I visited her there just last week and we had dinner together. Now she's gone."

  "Laurie's gone?"

  He buried his face in his hands. "I should have been more worried when I saw her at college, but she looked . . , looked so happy, said she'd finally found what she's always been looking for, a sense of community and love. A young man named Derek—not one of the students—had helped her to find it, she said. And I thought—stupidly—she'd been speaking of being happy at college."

  "One would," agreed Madame Karitska. "I take it not?"

  He said miserably, "She left two days ago to join a group called the Guardians of Eden, and just sent me a note, didn't even call to tell me. To live there, apparently .., for a while, she said—this Derek,
I suppose. I drove over there at once yesterday afternoon, and I wasn't allowed to see her. 'Come back in a week,' they told me. My daughter."

  Madame Karitska had stiffened. "Guardians of Eden," she repeated. "This is not the first time I've heard that name, but who are they?"

  Faber-Jones lifted his head to say dryly, "Apparently guardians of an Eden devised by another human. Their estate is in Edgerton. I went to the police station there, and asked about them after being turned away."

  "And?"

  "So far as they know, the place is well financed, by whom they don't know. It's a heavily gated community; the electrician is the only one who's gained entry lately—and left," he added in a worried voice. "I asked the address of the electrician and talked to him last night. He wouldn't say much, didn't want trouble, said they paid him really well but he didn't much like the place. Too many closed doors, he said."

  "It's not one of those Armageddon places, is it? The end of the world, and all that?" she asked.

  "The police didn't think so, said their motto was 'Peace of the Heart.' " He shook his head. "It's my guess Laurie thought it another hippie commune, like the one she lived in before, in Vermont, which shocked me at the time but seems downright wholesome now in comparison . . , grew their own vegetables, went in for weaving, that sort of thing. If only I could give her what she seems to need!"

  Madame Karitska considered this. "If one could remove her, somehow, I can think of how she might find what she needs."

  "What? Where?"

  But Madame Karitska only shook her head. "She's firmly at Eden for the moment. You mentioned a Derek?"

  He nodded. "She met him at college but he's not enrolled there and nobody could tell me his last name. He just hung around the college, they tell me," and added bitterly, "recruiting vulnerable students, no doubt."

  Madame Karitska nodded. "Perhaps our friend Pruden might be of some help here."

  Faber-Jones brightened. "Of course, of course! He and Jan are coming to my dinner party Sunday; I'll ask him." He rose from the couch to say, "Thank you, thank you for listening. And I'll see you on Sunday."

  "Yes," she assured him, smiling. "And with my baklava."

  .. V* Madame Karitska had been looking forward to Faber-íT* Jones's Sunday dinner party, and being not without her share of vanity she also looked forward to wearing the long brocade skirt she'd found at a flea market. Its shades of pink and mauve became her, and to this she added a black velvet jacket that matched her dark hair, which she wore parted in the center and drawn severely back into a knot.

  With the exception of the stranger whom Faber-Jones had mentioned, she was already acquainted with his circle of new friends. There would be his modest and likable medical doctor named Berkowitz, and of course Lieutenant Pruden and his delightful fiancée, Jan Cooper Hyer. His newest addition would be Tanya Jamison, the business manager of his newly formed Pisces Record Company, whom he had enticed away from a very successful recording studio. Already she was promoting Pisces Record Company with instinct and flair, a vivacious young woman whom Madame Karitska had met twice and liked very much.

  And to this party she brought herself and her baklava— with hazelnuts, so difficult to find in Trafton.

  It was a smaller house on Cavendish Square

  that Faber-Jones lived in since his wife had left him, but he'd kept his valued cook and her husband with him. The living room was huge, bright with the last of the day's sunshine, and at its farthest end stood a long mahogany refectory table gleaming now with silver candlesticks, place settings, and flowers.

  It was Dr. Berkowitz who opened the door to her and greeted her warmly. "Dear Madame Karitska," he said, "how can I ever forget the last dinner party we shared here?"

  She smiled. "It was . . , well, surprisingly dramatic, wasn't it. You've been well?"

  "As well as one can be at my age," and with an air of mock conspiracy he added, "I hear that our appetizer is to be quail's-egg tartlets again, which will make us all very well indeed."

  She laughed. "Mr. Faber-Jones spoils us, doesn't he."

  "And you have brought baklava, I hear, but you've missed the latest news . . . Detective Pruden tells us there's been a Brinks robbery today, so we're fortunate he could take the evening off to be with us."

  "Fortunate indeed," she said, and having removed her shawl she placed her contribution on a chair until it could be rescued by Faber-Jones's cook.

  From the couch Tanya Jamison called, "I hear good news; John Painter's album is just out, and is selling marvelously well."

  Jan Cooper Hyer walked over and gave Madame Karitska both a hug and a kiss; Pruden waved and smiled, and Faber-Jones, deep in conversation with the only stranger among them, leaped to his feet, and taking her by the arm led her to him, a tall and trim-looking man with deep-set piercing eyes. Faber-Jones said, "I've already warned everyone how careful we must be; this friend of mine is in intelligence at a very high level. Madame Karitska, Roger Gillespie."

  "Yes, very dangerous," said Gillespie with a charming smile. "Delighted to meet you."

  Over cocktails they made desultory conversation on current politics, and on an outbreak of flu that occupied Dr. Berkowitz, but it was impossible to avoid the news that Pruden had brought to them of a Brinks robbery.

  "It's so astonishing that he disappeared," said Tanya. "Tell us the rest of it, Lieutenant Pruden. I mean, you said the man simply vanished, like a Houdini?"

  "So far, yes," Pruden said grimly. "And clever, definitely. "They work in twos, you know, making the rounds of banks and stores to collect their money. This man, John Mayfield, made the collections and rode in the back of the Brinks truck between stops. Around half past two their next stop was at a popular restaurant, where his coworker said Mayfield had a crush on one of the waitresses. Mayfield went in, collected the cash and came back, said wait a minute, he had a present to take to the waitress, and he wheeled in a carton labeled 'champagne' and never returned. Seems that during their stops in the morning, while he was in the back, he'd cut open all the bags of cash they'd collected that morning— untraceable cash, no securities—and what he wheeled away was not a case of champagne but a small fortune. If he went into that restaurant nobody saw him, and no one noticed a uniformed Brinks guard anywhere in the neighborhood."

  "And he just. . , disappeared?" said Madame Karitska.

  Pruden nodded. "After ten minutes his coworker put out an alarm. We have all the airlines watched, and his home under surveillance. Just before I left work his car had been found parked neatly in the Brinks lot."

  "What about that waitress?" asked Jan.

  He shook his head. "Pure fiction. We were told that he never spoke to any of them, only the manager and the cashier, both men."

  Gillespie nodded. "An accomplice, surely, waiting for him in a car?"

  Pruden nodded. "Has to be. The search goes on all night, and will be waiting for me tomorrow. We'll find him—have to—if we can't the bonding company will have to make up the loss. But don't let me spoil your appetite," he added with a smile.

  It was when they sat down to dinner that Faber-Jones said abruptly, as if he could wait no longer, "I hate to bother you when there's so much on your mind, Lieutenant Pruden, but what do you know about the Guardians of Eden out on Amber Avenue in the Edgerton section?"

  "Oh dear," said Jan Cooper Hyer.

  "Why 'oh dear'?" demanded Faber-Jones.

  Turning to Roger Gillespie, Jan explained, "I work at the Trafton Settlement House," and to Faber-Jones, "We've lost two of our volunteer people to the Guardians of Eden—but I didn't mean to interrupt."

  Pruden nodded. "We do know something about it, yes. It's called a retreat, although one of our men rather flippantly refers to it as a Happy Farm, presumably for the disillusioned."

  "Who runs it?" asked Madame Karitska.

  "A doctor of some sort. Calls himself Brother Robin. He's written a book pretty much condemning the absence of any sense of community in the modern world . .
, rather a lot about the need to return to purity of mind and soul, that sort of thing. Why?"

  "Because," said Faber-Jones indignantly, "my daughter Laurie seems to have suddenly left college to live there, and when I drove over at once to the estate on Amber Avenue

  they refused to let me see her. 'Come back in a week,' they said, but I'm not sure I believe them."

  Pruden frowned. "That's new to me, and certainly very strange, not allowing a father to see his daughter."

  Faber-Jones said bitterly, "Afraid they'd lose her, no doubt. She has her own bank account. I'm growing suspicious."

  Tanya Jamison nodded. "As any parent would be, yes. It would be interesting to inquire at the bank if she still has her account there, or if it's been emptied."

  Pruden said, "If that should be the case, we'll certainly have to look into it." He shook his head. "Gangs we have, unfortunately, but a cult—"

  Roger Gillespie said, "Cults can be very attractive these days. We've created such an impersonal and complicated world for our children, too dependent on forces we can't control, leaving us vulnerable, extremely so."

  "Vulnerable?" murmured Dr. Berkowitz.

  Faber-Jones said, "I might further explain that Roger is our government's top intelligence expert on terrorism."

  "Terrorism!" exclaimed Tanya. "We move from robberies to terrorism?"

  "Cults often lead to terrorism," pointed out Gillespie, "depending on what their emphasis may be, of course, whether purity of soul or destruction and hate. In Japan, fanatics from the religious cult AUM boarded subway trains with bags of sarin, and in releasing them killed people and injured thousands. And, as you know very well, we've bred our own crop of terrorists: the Oklahoma City bombers, the Heaven's Gate cult, and before that Jim Jones and his mass deaths in Guyana, not to mention Charles Manson earlier, on a smaller scale."

  Dr. Berkowitz, frowning, said, "But you mentioned forces we can't control. What did you mean exactly?"

  "Tell them, Roger," Faber-Jones said, and to the others, "He's given interviews and talks on this, so it's no secret."

  Gillespie nodded. "What I'm saying is that as terrorists grow more sophisticated, and electronic experts more ingenious, as reality becomes 'virtual' reality, we enter a dangerous world."