Don Pendleton: State Of Evil

Or maybe not.

In any case, Val had survived, but at a price. She carried new scars on her psyche, from her brutal treatment at the killer’s hands, and Bolan wasn’t sure if they would ever truly heal. He knew some women bore the strain better than others, and while Valentina ranked among the strongest people he had ever known, nobody was invincible. Some wounds healed on the surface, but could rot the soul.

Bolan had checked with Johnny over time, received his brother’s reassurance that Val had recovered from her ordeal. She was “okay,” “fine,” “getting along” with Jack’s rehab and other tasks she’d chosen for herself.

But now she needed him again.

And Bolan wondered why.

“HOW’S JACK?” he asked as lunch arrived.

“Retired,” Val said. “I guess you knew that, though. He’s doing corporate security and helping me with some of my projects.”

“Which are?”

“I teach a class at community college now and then. Do some counseling on the side. I’ve also established a mentoring program off campus.”

“That must keep you busy,” Bolan said.

“I’m thinking of letting it go.”

He began to ask if that was part of the reason she’d summoned him here, but it didn’t make sense and he kept to his agreement to eat first and ask questions later. The food was a cut above average but nothing to write home about. Bolan ate his meal, drank some coffee and went through the motions when the waitress brought their fortune cookies.

His read, “You will take a journey soon.”

There’s a surprise.

Bolan picked up the check, dismissing Val’s objections, then accepting her reluctant thanks. Reluctance seemed to be the order of the day, in fact. Val had a vaguely worried look about her as they left the Chinese restaurant.

“Are we still driving?” Bolan asked. “My rental’s parked around the corner.”

“Mine’s right here,” Val answered, moving toward a year-old minivan. “I’ll drive.”

Johnny kept pace on crutches, telling Bolan, “I can drive, but Val says no. She’s such a mom sometimes.”

“I heard that,” Val informed him. “If it was supposed to be an insult, you need new material.”

“No insult. I’m just saying—”

“That you’re handi-capable. No argument. Just humor me, all right?”

“Okay.”

Johnny maneuvered into the backseat, while Bolan sat up front with Val. He didn’t mind the shotgun seat. It let him watch one of the minivan’s three mirrors as Val pulled out from the curb. They had no tail, as far as he could see, but he kept watching as she drove.

Habits died hard.

Soldiers who let them slip died harder.

“Do we need to sweep the van for bugs, or can we talk now?” Bolan asked.

Val cut him with a sidelong glance. “I didn’t want to get the restaurant mixed up in this,” she said.

“Mixed up in what?”

“I told you that I do some mentoring, aside from classes.”

“Right.”

“I doubt that you’ve had time to keep up with the trend,” she said. “It sounds like simple tutoring, but there’s a lot more to it. Counseling, sometimes. Guidance toward long-term life decisions if appropriate.”

“Is there some course you take for that, like special training?” Bolan asked.

“I have my counseling credential, plus the teacher’s certificate,” she answered, “but it’s mostly personal experience and observation. Listening as much as talking, maybe more. I don’t come out and tell students they should be lawyers or mechanics. If they have an interest, we address it and discuss the options. If they have problems, we talk about those, too.”

“So, how’s it going?” Bolan asked, sincerely interested.

“I’ve lost one,” Val replied.

“Say what?”

“One of my students.”

“Val—”

“I don’t mean that he’s disappeared,” she hastened to explain. “For that, I would’ve gone to the police.”

“Okay.”

“I know exactly where he is. Well, not exactly, but within a few square miles. And what he’s doing. That’s the problem.”

“Maybe you should start from the beginning.”

“Right. Okay. But promise you won’t think I’m crazy.”

“That’s a safe bet going in,” said Bolan.

“All right, then. His name’s Patrick Quinn. He turned twenty-one last weekend, but I haven’t seen him for three months. It’s thirteen weeks on Friday, if you need to pin it down exactly.”

“Close enough,” he said, and waited for the rest of it.

“He comes from money. Anyway, a lot by how they measure it in Sheridan. His parents raise cattle. They have a few million.”

“Cattle?”

“Dollars,” Johnny answered from the backseat. “Four point five and change.”

“You hacked their bank account?” Bolan asked.

Johnny shook his head. “Bear did it for me.”

Meaning, Aaron Kurtzman, boss of the computer crew at Stony Man Farm, in Virginia.

“So, the Farm’s involved in this?”

“I asked a favor,” Johnny told him. “Strictly unofficial.”

Ah. A backdoor job. But why?

“Still listening,” he told them both.

“Pat’s father wanted him in law school, but he didn’t like the paper chase. Premed was too much science. What he really wanted was a job that let him work for the environment. Something like forestry, the conservation side. It made for stormy holidays at home, to say the least.”

“And he wound up with you,” Bolan said.

“Right. First in a class I taught last year, then counseling after he set his mind on dropping out completely.”

“I guess it didn’t take?”

“We made some headway, working on a new curriculum, before the Process came to town,” Val said.

“You don’t mean that satanic outfit from the sixties, tied in with the Manson family?”

“Wrong Process,” Val corrected him. “At least, I’m pretty sure. This one’s a sect run by an African—Nigerian, I think he is—named Ahmadou Gaborone.”

“Never heard of him,” Bolan admitted.

“He’s spent a lot of time flying below the radar,” Johnny said. “No flamboyant outbursts like Moon or Jim Jones, no public investigations. He’s been sued twice on fraud charges and won both cases.”

“Fraud?”

“The usual,” Val said. “Some youngster donates all of his or her worldly goods to the Process and the parents go ballistic, claiming undue influence, coercion, brainwashing, you name it. Gaborone’s been smart enough, so far, to only bilk legal adults, and they’ve appeared for his side when the cases went to court. All smiles and sunshine, couldn’t be more happy, the usual.”

Bolan shrugged. “Maybe they are,” he said, catching the look Val gave him. “Some folks don’t function well alone. They need a preacher or some other figure of authority directing them, telling them what to think. You see it in the major churches all the time. It’s what your basic televangelists rely on, when they beg for cash.”

“This one is different,” Val informed him. “Gaborone’s not just collecting money, cars, whatever. He’s collecting souls for Judgment Day.”

“You lost me,” Bolan said.

“Recruits—converts, whatever—don’t just pony up whatever’s in their bank accounts. They also leave ‘the world,’ as Gaborone describes it, and move on to follow him. He used to have three communes in the States, in Oregon, Wyoming and upstate New York, but all his people have been called to Africa. The Congo. He’s established a community they call Obike, also known as New Jerusalem.”

“You said the Process had a compound in Wyoming,” Bolan interrupted. “Am I right in guessing that your protégé was part of it?”