George Chesbro: The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

Oh-oh. "How do you know what I've been doing in the past week, Tommy?" I asked in as mild a tone as I could muster.

"You're marked, Mongo, remember?" Tommy Carling said with what I thought was just the faintest trace of a humorless smile. "It's not only the scar on your forehead that marks you, but your stature. Garth's People are everywhere; they know who you are, and they very much fear that you mean to cause Garth harm. They repeat things."

It could very well be that Mrs. Daplinger had told Carling about my visit to her, but it was also possible that the K.G.B. had been tailing me. Or Harry August. Or both of us. It would explain Carling's attitude, and sudden lack of pretense. Game time had been over before I'd ever walked in the bathhouse door, and I hadn't even known it. The only question that remained was how much Tommy Carling knew I knew-or had guessed. Staying around to explore that question didn't seem like a good idea.

"What I did last week, or last year, is none of your business, Tommy," I said evenly. "I'll see you tonight."

"Good-bye, Mongo."

Exit stage right, very quickly. I'd feared that Carling would try to escort me to the door, but he seemed content to remain where he was as I turned and walked back up the hall. It was only after I had made my way through a knot of TV technicians that I abruptly turned left and ducked into the first stairwell I could find. It led down, which was fine with me; I had no idea of the dimensions of those sections of the bathhouse I hadn't seen, and in my search for Garth one direction seemed as good as another.

I emerged from the stairwell into a narrow, musty corridor that went both left and right. I went to the right, and passed through the first door I came to; it was a huge boiler room, complete with a tangled network of pipes and ducts, two enormous furnaces, and what sounded like a battalion of rats that scurried away as I found and turned on the light switch. I rummaged around inside the grime-encrusted room, but found nothing but more doors opening on to more corridors. All had to be checked out.

Lugging around the attache case, I felt like a stockbroker on his way to work. I opened the case, took out the set of lock picks I had hidden under the red felt padding. Then I put Whisper into her scabbard, slipped it into the waistband of my jeans, behind my back, before going back out into the main corridor.

Working my way through the bowels of the bathhouse was dirty work; more important, it was maddeningly time consuming. There were a number of corridors, and in each a number of locked doors. I knocked at each locked door and called Garth's name, but the lack of a response didn't mean that I could go on; Garth could be bound and gagged, or drugged into unconsciousness. Each lock had to be picked, the room searched. Most were storerooms.

Sweaty and grimy, I was into my second hour, my fourth corridor, and inside my ninth room when Marl Braxton's voice came from the doorway behind me, chilling me.

"Stop right there, Mongo."

I wheeled around, found Braxton standing behind me just inside the door. His head and shoulders were cloaked in the shadow of a duct pipe, but I could see that his face looked drawn, his dark eyes haunted. He'd lost weight, and there was a marked tremor in both hands.

"Hello, Marl," I said quietly.

"What are you doing here, Mongo?"

"I'm looking for Garth. What are you doing down here?"

"Looking for you," the man with the haunted eyes said in a curiously halting voice. Marl Braxton, I thought, was in bad shape.

"Tommy Carling sent you, didn't he?"

Braxton nodded. "You didn't pick up your gun. Didn't you think Tommy would check to make sure you'd left?"

"I thought he might, fervently hoped he wouldn't. Do you know where Garth is, Marl?"

"Yes."

My heart began to beat faster. "Where, Marl?"

"He's in retreat, preparing himself for the moment when he will announce to the world that he is the Messiah, sent by God to save humankind."

"Wrong, Marl. Tommy Carling has him locked up someplace, and if I can't find him, he's going to die. I could use your help."

"You're a liar. You're the one who wants to harm him."

"Tommy Carling is a K.G.B. officer, Marl. So is Sister Kate."

"You lie."

"It's the truth. What the hell do you think I'm doing down here, if not searching for Garth? Did Carling explain that to you when he sent you after me?"

"You're hiding, waiting until Garth appears upstairs so that you can kill him."

"Marl, look at me; I'm covered with about fifty pounds of grease and spider webs. If I wanted to hide down here, don't you think I've have hunkered down before this?"

"You could be planting explosives."

"If you were going to explode anything down here and be assured of killing anyone, much less a particular individual, it would have to be an atomic bomb. Does it appear to you that I'm carrying an atomic bomb? You have to believe me, Marl-and you have to help me. You can move around through this building a hell of a lot easier than I can."

"Garth is the Messiah," Braxton said distantly.

"Help me find the Messiah before Tommy Carling kills him."

But Marl Braxton, deprived of Garth and his medication and removed from the psychiatric support system that had nurtured him for decades, had drifted beyond the meaning of anything I was going to say to him. Words could not pierce the gathering darkness of his madness.

"I will not let you kill him, Mongo," Braxton said in a low, barely audible voice. "I must stop you."

"How, Marl?" I said quickly as I watched him reach with his right hand across his body for the button on his left sleeve. "Will you kill me in the same way you killed Bartholomew Lash and Timmy Owens?"

That got his attention, and his hand froze with his fingers on the button. He stepped forward into the light, and I could see by the astonished expression on his face that my something less than totally wild guess had hit the target dead center. "How did you know?" Marl Braxton whispered hoarsely.

"I suspected for a while, but I wasn't sure until now," I said, speaking rapidly, playing for time as I searched for something I could say that might break through the roiling, murderous clouds in Marl Braxton's mind. I did need his help; and I didn't want to kill him.

"Having both of those TV preachers die of the same thing, both within twenty-four hours after attacking Garth and calling down God's wrath on him, was just a bit too much of a coincidence for the deaths to be natural," I continued in a flat, matter-of-fact tone which I hoped might be mildly hypnotic. "God certainly didn't kill them, which meant that someone else did. K.G.B.? Why not? Except that the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like a move which might be just a bit too cute for them. Both of those preachers were big-time celebrities, which meant that the mansions they lived in were at least moderately guarded. There is no question that the K.G.B. has the personnel needed to pass through that kind of security and carry out an assassination, but why should they bother? Why take the risk? So, who else did I know who had the sort of special training that would be needed, and who could kill a man and make the death look natural? Who else did I know who might want those men dead, who might think that the men posed some kind of real threat to Garth and deserved to die? You, Marl. You see yourself as Garth's avatar on earth, his protector. If I wanted to ask around here, or if I wanted to take the bother of checking airline records, I'll bet I could tie you to those deaths."

Braxton started to unbutton his sleeve.

"Leave your maid of constant sorrows where she is, Marl!" I snapped.

"Satan speaks to you!" Braxton shouted as he pulled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a thick, three-inch wire embedded in a stubby wooden handle wrapped in black tape and strapped to the inside of his forearm.