Spellbinder (3 page)

“Yes, the mission to Africa was our most ambitious crusade for Christ. We wanted to go directly into the heart of that dark, savage land. And we needed your help. We needed money. Lots of money—a half million dollars, just to start. Just to get the boat, and to get it into the water.

“So we asked you for the money we needed. Just like, so many years ago, my Daddy asked those poor, humble folk in Peoria for help to buy his tent. And you responded, friends. In only six months, you sent us
more
than a half million dollars. We bought our steamer, and we named it the
Sister Katherine
, after my helpmate and partner in the service of God for so many years. We sailed the
Sister Katherine
down the Nile, and we talked to the natives. And they listened, and they understood. And they believed.

“That was in 1972. And the
Sister Katherine
is still at work, plying those dangerous waters in the service of the Lord.

“But that was six years ago. This is 1978. Our missions in South America, and in the Philippines, and in the heart of Africa are still steadily winning victories for the Lord—still expanding those circles that the Apostles started, so long ago, when Jesus first cast that holy pebble of His gospel into the great pool of life.

“But what victories, you may ask, are we planning for the future? You may ask whether we’ve decided that we’ve done enough—that we’ve decided to let others fight God’s battles, bringing His word to the world’s unbelievers.”

Another ponderous pause, as Holloway looks out beyond the footlights. Then: “If some of you have asked yourselves that question, then I’m ready today with your answer. Yes, my friends, today I’m ready.” The voice is ennobled by a deep, fervent tremolo. “Today—now—I’m ready to reveal to you that, during these last six years, we’ve been planning our greatest victory for Christ. Because I’m ready to reveal to you, here and now, before this audience and in front of these all-seeing TV cameras, that our battle plans have been drawn. And, with God’s hand still on my shoulder, I am determined to take our crusade for Christ to the most populous nation on earth.”

In the silence, a murmur runs through the audience like a hum of high voltage electricity.

“Yes, my friends—” He looks hard into the camera—the commander now, taking his place at the head of his legions. Almost unnoticed, the strains of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” have begun, played on the organ. “Yes, my friends. With your blessings—with your help—I will take Christ’s holy word into the People’s Republic of China—the most populous country on earth, where nine hundred million human souls live and work and raise their children without knowledge of the one true God, or the teachings of Jesus Christ, His Son.”

The manager blinks, shakes his head admiringly. Writes neatly on the pad:

TOTAL WAR.

E
YES CLOSED, AUSTIN HOLLOWAY
slumped against the marble shower stall, letting the coarse spray beat hard on his chest. Outside the stall, his blue suit had been taken away. Bath slippers, shorts, casual slacks and a terrycloth robe had been laid out on a bench, together with the leather-bound prayer book and his alligator wallet. In the hallway outside, discreetly on guard, Mitchell waited for him to finish showering. Down the hallway, in the conference room that adjoined the Temple’s public rooms, the Council waited for the video taping session to begin.

Instant replay …

As football teams profited by videotape, so did The Hour. God’s work used any tools.

With an effort, Holloway pushed himself away from the smooth, wet marble. Still with his eyes closed, he stepped closer to the shower stream, letting its full force strike his face. Water could help. Water could cleanse the body, restore the spirits, make the mind whole again.

But not now. Not today.

Today, his legs were dead weight. His arms hung heavy at his sides. Pain throbbed across his chest and down each arm, like cat claws raking the flesh of a helpless enemy. Behind closed lids, his eyes burned. He could feel his heart laboring. Its uneven rhythm was working against itself; its work was going badly. Daily, now, he felt the pain. According to the electrocardiogram, the heart was failing him. After sixty-three years of service, doing a good job, the heart was finally running down.

If he willed it, he could die. If there was really a God up there, waiting for him, he could arrange a meeting. He was convinced of it. Eyes closed, shutting out the world, he could move backward until he felt the wet marble against his back. Then, carefully, he could lower himself until he sat on the tiled floor, head hanging low in the stream of water. Sitting like that, gracelessly, he would will his heart to stop, setting his soul free. He wouldn’t say a prayer before dying, either. He wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t try to strike one last bargain. He would simply die. Water would wash away the excrement released when his bladder and his sphincter relaxed. When they found him, he would be cleansed. More than that, maybe he couldn’t ask.

Mitchell would find him.

Discreetly, Mitchell would tap at the bathroom door—as he’d tapped before, over so many years, at so many different doors for so many different reasons. In Chile, stricken with diarrhea, writhing on his bed in a blur-of stomach-heaving pain, he’d heard Mitchell’s early morning knock on his bedroom door, and had been marvelously comforted. Mitchell would help him. Mitchell had always helped him. Whatever he required, Mitchell would do. In Denver, years ago, thrust deep into the flesh of a woman named Stella, he’d heard Mitchell’s warning knock on the door of her hotel room—then heard the sound of fighting from the corridor outside. Mitchell had knocked her husband unconscious, allowing Holloway to escape. The next day, in a plain white envelope, he’d given Mitchell a hundred-dollar bill. Silently. With thanks.

In Tallahassee, Mitchell had taken a knife thrust intended for him. Bleeding from a stomach wound, Mitchell had drawn his revolver and killed the assailant with a single shot. Then he’d collapsed on the sidewalk, murmured his mother’s name and fainted. He’d been on the operating table for three hours, in the hospital for five weeks. But, as soon as he could walk, Mitchell was back on guard: a somber, hulking presence, with him wherever he went. For more than twenty years, Mitchell had taken care of him better than a son could take care of a father.

So, today, it would be fitting that Mitchell would find him.

Mitchell would enter the bathroom, turn off the water, lift him and carry him next door to his small bedroom. Mitchell would lay him out carefully on the bed, and close his dead eyes. Mitchell would fold his arms across his chest, and then discreetly cover his lower body with a blanket.

And then, quietly and privately, Mitchell would cry for him.

Mitchell wouldn’t raise his voice, or rend his clothing, or protest God’s final judgment. No one would ever know that Mitchell had cried for him.

Yet, among all the others, only Mitchell’s anguish would be real. The rest of them—Katherine and Elton and Denise among the family, and Flournoy, his manager—all of them would gaze upon his dead body and secretly rejoice. Katherine would finally have her revenge. Elton would have his chance. Denise would have her freedom from the guilt she felt, forsaking him.

And Flournoy, with his thirty percent of Austin Holloway Enterprises, would finally have the opportunity he sought: to do battle with Elton, may the best man win.

All of them—each one of them—had betrayed him. Katherine had denied him her body, forcing him to risk disease and discovery and disgrace. Elton and Denise had denied him the love of children for a father. And Flournoy had denied him loyalty. Flournoy was the Cassius in his council, the serpent slithering in the grass, silent and venomous. Flournoy watched. And waited. And secretly schemed.

Holloway leaned away from the torrent of water still cascading over him, head to toe. He opened his eyes, shook out the water, reached forward and turned off the shower. During the last few minutes, imagining his own death scene, the pain in his chest and arms had lessened. Miraculously, the water had helped. His heart was calmer now, his thoughts more ordered. He was ready to watch himself on the video screen as he proclaimed his last, his greatest crusade.

Today, the show should be something special.

He watched his video image grow smaller as the camera drew back from the stage. The choir came into the screen on the left. His wife and his son, holding hands, were smiling into the camera from the right. Superimpose the starred spotlights, then one rapt middle-aged face in the audience, then himself, close up. He was looking full at the camera, his eyes serious, his mouth firm, his jaw squared, his chin lifted. He was in command.

Then cut to a longshot. And then the stars. And then the audience solemnly attending him. And once more himself, lips moving soundlessly—praying for them, they thought. And then the longshot.

And, finally, fade.

Had the image of himself seemed somehow smaller than last week’s image? Was it the blue suit, diminishing him?

Or had he mysteriously lost substance since last week?

He’d told them, in the final words, that the camera saw everything—God’s miracle, the all-seeing eye: remorseless, omnipotent, inevitably revealing the truth, harm whom it may.

Was he, then, the camera’s victim?

He cleared his throat as he swiveled to face the Council, seated in their appointed order around the conference table: Elton on his right, Flournoy on his left. Cowperthwaite, the director, sat on Elton’s right. Weston—Pastor Bob—sat on Flournoy’s left. Next came Reynolds, the publicist. Below Reynolds, in order of descending rank, sat the music director and the Temple’s floor manager. At the foot of the table, still dressed in her white satin gown, Sister Teresa sat like a bloated toad, complacently watching him. Last week, Columbia had offered her an album contract:
Sister Teresa Sings the Spirituals.
The news had made both
Variety
and the
Hollywood Reporter
, page one.
Time
had interviewed her, too.

They were waiting for him to speak first. As always. And, as always, he turned to Weston. For a moment he stared at the familiar face: broad and seamed, with a low forehead, a spectacular thatch of thick white hair and eyebrows to match. The friendly blue eyes were surrounded by an intricate network of deep, folksy crinkles. At age twenty-two, Bob Weston had killed an Arkansas sharecropper with a shovel, and had spent fifteen years on a chain gang. Today, seventy-one years old, he looked like a prophet. And acted like one, too. In all of evangelism, there wasn’t a better warmup man than Pastor Bob. He could cry one moment and stomp the next. He could bellow like Jove on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts with both hands. When Pastor Bob turned over a congregation, the faithful were soft of eye and sweaty around the collar. If evangelism named an all-star team, Bob Weston would be everyone’s second choice.

“What’d you think, Bob?”

Weston reflectively tapped his cigar ash into a crystal ashtray. “China, you mean?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“What do the Chinese say? Will they let us in?”

“Why wouldn’t they? They’re letting in everyone else.”

Somberly, Weston nodded, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar. At her end of the table, Teresa flapped a hand at the smoke and frowned.

“If it works, it’d make history,” Weston said. “No one else has ever thought of it, so far as I know. Much less done it.”

“Maybe there’s a reason,” Elton said. His heavy face, prematurely jowly, sagged skeptically as he spoke. His dark brown eyes, inherited from his mother, had narrowed. As always, Elton gave away nothing. Elton would await developments, keeping his options open, calculating his chances for gain—cutting his down-side risks. He’d always been devious, even as a child. Instead of snatching candy from his sister, Elton would discover where she’d hidden it, biding his time. He’d always had a plan.

“There’ve been missionaries in China for years,” Teresa announced. When she spoke, even casually, her voice had a coloratura’s fullness and form. Everything Teresa said had the ring of authority, real or imagined. “Fifty, a hundred years ago. At least.”

“We’re not talking about missionaries,” Flournoy said softly. “And, besides, the Communists aren’t exactly pro-Christian.” He looked straight ahead as he said it, giving no offense. Flournoy preferred to avoid arguments—so long as he got his way in the end. If Weston was carved from seamed, weathered wood, Flournoy was fashioned of thin, cruel steel.

For the first time, Cowperthwaite spoke: “Do they have TV in China? Consumer TV, for the public? Is it widespread?”

“Not really,” Flournoy said, still speaking softly. Now his gray eyes, cold as ice, remained fixed on the small spiral notebook that lay open on the table before him. At the end of the table, Teresa moved in her chair, shifting her massive buttocks for a better purchase. The signs were clear: a confrontation was coming, Teresa vs. Flournoy. Teresa would bluster and blow, running up and down the scale. Flournoy, with his slim, elegant dagger poised, would watch for his chance. Teresa would never feel the thrust. She always thought she won.

Holloway rose heavily to his feet, leaned forward and pressed the “off” button on the small console that controlled the tape recorder. Still standing, arms braced wide on the table before him, he remained for a moment with head silently bowed, compelling their attention. Then, slowly raising his head, he looked at them each in turn before he began to speak:

“I’m sixty-three years old. I’ve got more money than I’ll ever be able to spend. When I was a boy, I had to sleep with my brother until I was twelve years old. In the winter, we had to pile overcoats on our bed, to keep warm. And, winter or summer, we had to use an outhouse. We were almost the only family in town that didn’t have indoor plumbing.

“Now I’ve got a house that has ten bedrooms and six bathrooms and a private projection room in the basement. I’m rich, and I’m famous. My name is in the papers, sometimes in the headlines. I’ve been to the White House. Every Sunday, coast-to coast, I preach for the people. I preach, and they listen. And we both profit.