As White as Snow (8 page)

Blaze didn’t kiss her, though. Lumikki felt something metallic in her palm. She felt as Blaze closed her fingers around the object and released his grip. Lumikki opened her eyes, lifting her hand and looking at the object. It was a silver brooch with a perfect dragon coiled on it.

“It’s for you. Because everyone should have their own personal dragon,” Blaze said quietly.

Tears welled in Lumikki’s eyes. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t have said anything, even to thank him.

She still had the brooch, but she could never bring herself to look at it. Even so, she remembered its every detail, its weight in her hand, how the cool metal of the delicate scales warmed against her skin.

Her own personal dragon.

But what was she supposed to do with a dragon if the fire was missing from her life?

SATURDAY, JUNE 18

There is no such thing as a benign cult. That was the conclusion Jiři Hašek had come to after months of research. He’d spent many sleepless nights reading studies, reports, personal accounts, biographies, and online message boards. In some way or another, they were all dark and disturbing, every last one of them. Even the ones that advocated for nothing but love and flowers and fluffy bunnies and peace on earth. Or pretended to. Somewhere in the background, there was always something off. Greed, sexual abuse, drugs, dangerous rituals, or at the very least, strange dietary practices and bad hygiene.

Jiři had studied the signs of a dangerous sect or cult, which included black-and-white thinking, an authoritarian structure, and social isolation. Rare was the sect that held together without a powerful, charismatic leader and rigid views on what was good and what was evil, what was right
and what was wrong. It was precisely the assurance that their sect’s truth was the only truth that kept people in them and made them believe that a better future was reserved for them and them alone. Sometimes in the afterlife, sometimes on another planet. They were the chosen ones. The elect. The ones who would be saved from perdition.

Heaven’s Gate was one of the main groups Jiři had researched for background. Founded in the early 1970s by Marshall Applewhite, this American cult combined Christianity and a belief in UFOs. The cult members called each other “brother” and “sister,” and lived together in a large mansion they rented in California, which they refereed to as their “monastery.” Cult members were permitted virtually no contact with outsiders. Applewhite had himself castrated, and five other members of the sect followed his example. Members of the group believed that aliens from outer space would bring them peace and offer them a home on another planet.

Not that there was anything wrong with that. People could believe whatever they wanted and do whatever they wanted to their own bodies. The story took a tragic turn, though, when Applewhite convinced the others that a spaceship was hiding in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet and that souls of the cult members could catch a ride on it. Over a three-day period in March, 1997, and under Applewhite’s direction, nearly forty members of Heaven’s Gate committed suicide.

Unfortunately, Heaven’s Gate was far from unique. Jonestown, the Branch Davidians, the Order of the Solar Temple . . . The names sounded gentle, some even beautiful, but all of their stories ended with tragedy and death. Then
there were the cults that weren’t satisfied with killing their own members and had to look for victims outside. In 1995, a group called Aum Shinrikyo planned and carried out a gas attack in the Tokyo subway, killing twelve people and injuring thousands.

The more information Jiři gathered about these religious sects, the more they repulsed him. If he could play some small part in thwarting the plans of just one of them, he could feel like his work had meant something.

Jiři looked at the man sitting in front of him and wondered when he had lost his faith and decided to break the code of silence. The man’s appearance brought to mind an emaciated dog who had been beaten every day of its life. He was frail, his narrow shoulders looking even narrower due to his slouch. His dark eyes constantly scanned the other tables and customers in the café, and Jiři had a hard time keeping the man’s attention for more than a few seconds. He looked like he was about fifty, though he was probably only in his forties. Had there been a time when this man really believed that he was one of God’s elect? There had to have been. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have stayed in the cult all these years.

The man revealed very little about himself. Not his name, of course, but Jiři hadn’t expected that. Jiři had received a tip from his boss that the man might possibly be coaxed into doing an anonymous video interview. His boss hadn’t divulged where the connection to the man had come from, and Jiři hadn’t asked. He’d learned it was better not to ask too many questions. If someone offered up a key informant for your big exposé on a silver platter, you didn’t go second-guessing
it. Grab whatever opportunities come along. That had been a guiding principle in Jiři’s life.

“So no one will be able to recognize me?” the man asked for the umpteenth time.

Jiři held in his exasperated sigh and explained patiently, “That’s the whole idea of an anonymous interview. You’ll have your back to the camera, and we can even blur your silhouette or dress you in a large hoodie or something to make identification even more difficult. And your voice will be changed completely.”

At the corner table in the dimly lit café, the man nervously clasped his hands as if in prayer and then pulled them apart again, rubbing the back of one hand with a thumb and then picking at his cuticles. Jiři noticed how dry the man’s skin was. The cult might have rules about using cosmetic products like hand cream.

“There are twenty of us in all. We live a little ways outside the city,” the man said in muted tones.

“Where exactly?” Jiři asked.

The man shook his head violently.

“I can’t tell you that.”

Maybe not yet,
Jiři thought, but he intended to get this man to trust him so completely that he would voluntarily divulge the exact location of the house. Right now, it was best not to press. Jiři moved on to something else.

“How long have you been involved?”

“From the beginning. About twenty years. At first, there were just a few of us, but over the years, we’ve found new family members.”

“How do you support yourselves? Do you work?”

“Some of us do. Everything we earn is shared and gets used for the common good of the family. No one gets any more than anyone else. When we join the family, we give everything we own to the family.”

“So it’s a little like communism?” Jiři asked, trying to lighten the mood.

The man looked at him long and hard. Any attempt at levity was clearly doomed.

“Our life is very austere. We don’t need much. Worldly things are all vanity in the end.”

There was a strange mixture of melancholy and pride in his voice. As if he knew he’d spent his best years living in inhumane conditions, but still felt he had been doing right.

Jiři didn’t want to rush the man, but he needed something more concrete. So far, he hadn’t heard anything particularly alarming, nothing that would indicate he had the makings of the story of the decade on his hands. People had every right to live in communes and spend all their time praying to God. That wasn’t a scoop. “Hey, everybody, look: we’ve got a bunch of weirdoes living here,” wasn’t the basis for a real story. People did like gawking at weirdos, but the most you could get out of that was a human interest piece, not a big exposé.

“Do you have children there too?” Jiři finally asked. “What kind of punishment is used if members of the religion are disobedient?”

“We don’t use the word ‘religion,’ ” the man replied quickly. “We’re a family.”

“Okay, let’s say ‘family’ then. What we call it doesn’t matter,” Jiři said.

“Yes, it does,” the man argued. “Because we really are a family. The White Family.”

Jiři wrote the words down in his notebook. The name might have some significance. But what mattered even more right now was that, by writing something down, he was demonstrating that he valued what the man was saying. It was all about trust.

“Does your family have any enemies? And I don’t just mean spiritual enemies. I mean physical enemies here on earth,” Jiři tried.

There had to be some reason he had been assigned to investigate this cult. Somewhere, there had to be a dark secret he could uncover.

The man glanced around, then leaned in and lowered his voice.

“Actually, here on earth we—” the man began.

Just then, someone walked past their table. The man jumped as if a balloon had just popped next to his ear. Jiři glanced at the passerby. Just a girl on her way to the restroom. Short brown hair and a tank top. Not someone he would glance at twice under normal circumstances. And she looked like a tourist, so she probably wouldn’t even have understood a single word even if she did overhear something.

Still, the atmosphere of trust had been shattered. The man’s eyes were full of a fear that Jiři wasn’t going to be able to drive away. He knew the man wasn’t going to say anything
more today. He’d learned to recognize the panic that made interviewees retreat into their shells.

“Do we have an agreement now that you’ll come for the video interview?” Jiři asked. “Tomorrow?”

The man didn’t reply immediately. He hesitated.

Shit.
Jiři tried not to let his impatience show. If he applied too much pressure, he might lose everything. The man would bolt and never come back, leaving Jiři with no story at all.

“Twelve o’clock, same place. From here, we’ll move to the studio, where no one but me will see the filming.”

Jiři kept his voice matter-of-fact. He tried to sound reassuring. He wasn’t asking or suggesting, he was just stating what would happen. He saw how his words and voice calmed the man. The man nodded. Slowly, but still, he nodded. Jiři extended his hand. The man looked at it for a long time, but then he took it. Jiři had to suppress his impulse to flinch at the touch of the man’s rough, dry skin. They shook firmly, sealing their agreement.

The man left first, as agreed. Jiři waited five minutes before following. When Jiři stepped out into the hot, bright sunshine, he felt as if he was in another world. He felt like doing a victory dance right there in the street, surrounded by all the cheerful people in their summer clothes. He had his interview. And Jiři was certain that this man had something real to tell.

The woman dabbed the sweat from her brow with a tissue. The oppressive heat had been portending thunder for days
now. The tabloid headlines screamed about a historic heat wave and drought, although in reality, the weather wasn’t especially out of the ordinary. Things were just slow on the news front. Usually it bothered her when things were too quiet, but not this time. A long silence would make the scream that broke it that much louder.

The woman looked at the cloudless blue sky. She had just received a phone call asking for confirmation of her instructions. The woman had assured the caller that he had understood correctly. They had plenty of information for now. The source was no longer necessary.

A hero story required danger and death.

The woman looked at the ornate chess board she kept on her table, despite not actually playing the game. She stroked the head of a pawn with a finger and then knocked it over with a gentle push. Keeping the game moving in the right direction often required sacrificing pawns.

Sunlight caressed the surface of the Vltava, making the river shimmer and shine. It was a beautiful day to die.

A stooped man walked quickly down the street, glancing around and over his shoulder so methodically it seemed as if no one and nothing could ever sneak up on him. He was crossing a small side street when a gray car sped around the corner out of nowhere. He had time to see the car, but not to get out of its way.

Many thoughts and feelings raced through his head at once. It felt unfair that this was happening right now, just as
he had finally found the courage to speak. He felt sorrow for everyone who would mourn for him.

Afterward, eyewitnesses gave conflicting accounts. Some of them thought the car braked, some didn’t. In any case, it hit him in the ribs with such force that he arced several yards through the air before slamming down on the cobblestone street. The man’s skull slammed against the pavement and, within moments, a dark red pool of blood began forming under his head. The first Good Samaritan to reach him recognized that the man had died instantly.