George Chesbro: The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

"Satan and I may be drinking buddies, Marl," I said evenly, keeping my eyes on the shiv strapped to the other man's forearm, "but he never tells me a damn thing. Once I figured that you were a likely suspect, I had to ponder the question of how you-or anyone else-would have done it. There are drugs that can cause, or mimic, stroke and brain hemorrhage, but they're fairly esoteric and I didn't see how you could have gained access to them. Wielded by an expert, a needle shoved up a nostril and threaded through the occipital orb into the brain will also do the trick quite nicely. That was it. Having figured that out, the rest fell into place. I remembered that you'd threatened Mama Baker with a visit from your maid of constant sorrows; you specifically said that she'd 'stick it to him.' At the time I took it as the obvious sexual metaphor, and it was, but it was also more than that." I paused, pointed to the sharpened wire he was absently, nervously, stroking with his fingertips. "My guess is that's a straightened spring from your bed. The Koreans literally tortured you right out of your mind with needles, and-"

"How do you know that?!"

"I know it. A lot of that torture was probably genital, and they made you impotent-except, perhaps, for pain-oriented sex. That shiv is your 'maid of constant sorrows' because you use her at night to hurt yourself for sexual pleasure. But you were also prepared to kill with your 'maid,' if the need ever arose-as it did, in your mind, when those two tube boobs threatened Garth. None of this is important, Marl; I'm telling you things we both know to be true so that you'll believe the other things."

Tears streamed from Marl Braxton's eyes, rolled down his cheeks, and dripped off his chin as he slowly withdrew the shiv from its sheath. "Garth gave me back my mind and my life," he sobbed. "He'll be here tonight. You mustn't hurt him."

I reached behind my back, gripped Whisper's handle, and drew her from her scabbard.

Shhhh.

"The Great Knife," Braxton whispered, stepping back into the doorway and staring wide-eyed at Whisper as I held her, like a talisman, before me.

I sent the "Great Knife" flying through the air, and Whisper landed with a solid thunk in the wood frame of the doorway, two inches from Braxton's right ear.

"If I'd wanted to, Marl, I could have stuck the Great Knife right between your eyes," I said evenly. "But the Great Knife is not meant to kill you, but to help clear your mind. Take it; feel it."

Marl Braxton slowly reached up, gripped Whisper's handle, worked it back and forth until the blade slipped free of the wood. Then he held it in the palms of both hands, at arm's length, staring at it. I sat down on the floor and brought my knees up to my chin, resting my right hand on my right ankle, over my Seecamp. My somewhat unorthodox therapy session with the other man was just about at an end; if the sight of Whisper couldn't clear the fog in his mind, I was going to have to cure him of his psychosis permanently, with a bullet in the brain.

"Heft the Great Knife, Marl," I continued softly, watching him carefully. "She's yours if you want her, to give to Garth. But know by the power that you feel in that blade and the fact that I've made myself defenseless before you that Garth, and maybe a lot of other innocent people, are going to die this night unless you help me find him. Think, Marl. You know this building. Where could Carling have him locked up? For that matter, how might Carling be planning to kill him for the benefit of a worldwide television audience? You mentioned explosives. Could he have rigged the stage to blow up without anyone seeing him do it? Could he have rigged the entire hall to blow up? Think, Marl; help me."

But I'd overloaded his circuits, and he couldn't think. Suddenly Marl Braxton's mouth dropped open to form a great, round O, and he began to moan; the moan grew in volume and went up the scale. His hands began to tremble violently, and Whisper slipped from his grasp and clattered on the floor. But he maintained his grip on the shiv, and for one horrifying moment I thought he was going to drive the point of his maid of constant sorrows into his eye; instead, he gripped his head in his hands and began to scream. Then he turned and ran from the room.

"Marl!" I shouted, springing to my feet and running to the doorway. "Marl, wait!"

But Marl Braxton had already disappeared from sight, and all I could hear was the receding, ghostly echo of his footsteps as he ran through the basement of the bathhouse, perhaps to be swallowed up forever by the night in his mind.

I picked up Whisper, put her back in the scabbard in my waistband. Then I leaned against the doorjamb, wiped sweat and grime from my face, glanced at my watch. It was two o'clock. I had ten hours-perhaps considerably less time if Tommy Carling found out that the Marl Braxton card he'd played against me had become wild.

20.

I spent another ninety minutes in the catacomb of corridors in the basement, found nothing.

The good news was that nobody had found me. I'd worried that Marl Braxton could very well have gone running amok up in the main meeting hall, which could have triggered an intensive search for me by K.G.B. soldiers. But either Tommy Carling had not heard about what had happened, or he was short of help; the only sounds I'd heard in the basement since Braxton had run away had been my own heavy, anxious breathing, the scuffle of my feet on the dusty floors, my knocking on locked doors, the scratching of my picks.

There was a freight elevator at the end of one corridor. Not wanting to risk being seen or intercepted on a stairway, I got into the elevator, drew my Seecamp, and pushed the Two button. The elevator lurched upward, the doors jerked open onto the relative darkness of the stone balcony ringing the hall. I stepped out, pressed back against a wall, and glanced back and forth. There was nobody in sight.

But something was wrong. Music was playing from the suspended loudspeakers — Das Rheingold. I darted across the balcony to one of the flat steel braces that was part of the support system for the great glass dome, looked down over the railing, and felt my heart begin to beat more rapidly.

The hall was already half filled with people, and more were being admitted through the entrance far down the hall to my right. Hundreds of men, women, and children sat in the wooden folding chairs; some were quietly chatting with their neighbors, while others had their heads bowed in silent prayer or meditation.

I tried to convince myself that the fact Tommy Carling was filling the hall hours before the scheduled announcement was not necessarily ominous; it was cold, windy, and snowing outside, and Carling might simply have decided to provide the people with shelter.

Or the K.G.B. operative could have found out what had happened between Marl Braxton and me; rather than hunt for me and risk an embarrassing shootout that could have unknown consequences, he had simply decided to alter his timetable and move up the schedule.

If that were the case, I might have only minutes left, not hours.

There were four corridors branching off from the balcony, and one of them was right behind me, to the left of the elevator. I headed down it. There were doors on both sides, and the first one I tried was locked. Reasoning that Carling would have imprisoned Garth as far away from the centers of activity as possible, I immediately went to the far end of the corridor. I picked the lock on the door to my right, stepped into the room.

The room was really no more than a cubicle, probably formerly used for either dressing or sex. I had counted twenty doors on my way down the corridor; assuming there were as many rooms off the other three corridors, it meant I could have seventy-nine more locks to pick-with no guarantee that Garth was in any of the rooms. It was too many.