The Reality Conspiracy (21 page)

Everything was in position.

Everything was ready.

I offer this as a symbol
, he thought.
I offer this as a sign and as a symbol
, he prayed.
I offer this to show my devotion, to show my commitment and my determination, to show that I am ready for the greater sacrifices that are to come
.

The ten-inch Sabatier blade was solid in his hand. The steel was still cold though he had removed it from the refrigerator fifteen minutes ago. He had sharpened it that morning, cleaned it with alcohol, and stored it on white linen. Now its ebony handle felt like ice within his sweating palm.

McCurdy studied the hand. The fingers and wrist were a forest of tiny hairs. Thick blue veins bulged like glutted snakes. He poked the expanse of skin with the point of his knife. It dented. A pinprick of red appeared when he took the blade away.

Swabbing the hand with alcohol, McCurdy readied his mind for the sacrifice. Carefully, he positioned the thickest part of the blade across the little skin and bone bridge that separated the first and second joints.

"Oh my dear Lord," he whispered, "I offer this to show that I am strong."

Then he pushed!

Leaning heavily, he added his body weight to the cut.

It happened so fast! Blade hit stone, skidded along the polished surface now slick with blood.

He had time to think that the severed digit looked like a french fry before the impact of pain brought tears to his eyes.

He screamed.

McCurdy lifted his damaged hand from the stone slab, plunged it into the nearby bowl of ice water.

"It is done," he whispered through clenched teeth. "It is done. It is done. It is done."

Tears splattered against the bloody stone cutting board.

McCurdy smiled. He was very happy.

Montreal, Quebec

Thursday, June 23

T
he redheaded man crouched beside the dirty little girl with the drooping lips. Neither spoke. Motionless as stone gargoyles, they waited amid the depth of shadows outside the cold masonry wall.

Soundlessly, the man put his duffel bag aside and stood up. The little girl followed his lead. With one hand on each side of her waist, he lifted her to his shoulders so she could peer over the wall and look at the hospital. For a moment he sensed her confusion.
It doesn't look like a hospital
, she thought,
it just looks like some big old three-story house
.

Without exchanging words, he knew she could see lights in some of the second-story windows. Somehow, he also knew the window they were looking for was not on this side of the building. So much the better; the building's back side would be invisible from the road. They would not be troubled by passing cars or pedestrians. What they had to do would be hidden completely.

He let her down, feeling the skin of her knees tear as it scraped against the rough masonry. She made no sound.

In near-perfect unison the man and girl dropped and flattened themselves against the ground. With the man in the lead, pushing his duffel bag before him, they crawled like lizards through the damp dark passage formed between the lowest cedar branches and the base of the wall.

In time the man came to realize that the eight-foot wall completely surrounded the hospital building. He also knew that the wall would be interrupted here and there by wrought-iron gates. Some gates would be narrow enough for pedestrians, some wide enough for vehicles. But it was nighttime now; all the gates might be closed, maybe locked.

Still, the wall was more a convention of seventeenth-century architecture than a genuine defense fortification. The man was confident that even if all the gates were locked, they could get in with little difficulty.

He tried to clear his mind, hoping to receive some message or signal. He needed some indication about which of the many windows looked out from the room they were searching for.

The man rounded a ninety-degree corner, still slithering along under the protection of heavy vegetation. Without having crawled much farther—surely no more than ten feet—he came to an opening. With his left cheek pressed tightly to the earth, he looked up. Above him there was a spiked iron gate. A quick push with his fingertips proved it was unlocked. The gate swung heavily; its rusty hinges groaned. The man, like an obese serpent, crept through the opening and into a garden. The little girl slithered along behind him.

Scanning the dark face of the building, the man was somehow certain that none of the four lighted windows was the one they were seeking. His eyes kept pulling toward a darkened window at the far end of the second floor. When he fixed his gaze on that window everything else vanished from his attention.

The window was less than three feet wide. It was five feet tall, maybe more. Its irregular shape was not a problem. Nor was its distance from the ground—almost twenty feet.

Behind the window there appeared to be a faint green incandescence, like the glowing face of some electronic instrument. Also, he saw a point of white light inside. It seemed to be reflecting off glass; maybe it was a bottle or some shiny metal surface.

But somehow he knew, there was no question: he was looking at the right room!

It wasn't necessary to inform the girl; if he knew something, she would know it as well. Her unblinking eyes had locked on that same distant spot of light.

Hidden by the fathomless shadow of a magnificent oak tree, the pair dashed to the side of the building and flattened themselves against its cold stone surface.

Backs to the wall, they moved silently, invisibly, toward a narrow wooden door.

In a moment the man's hand was on the latch. He tried it. Found it locked.

With the girl standing watch, the man opened his duffel bag and removed a small hydraulic jack and two twelve-inch lengths of iron pipe. He screwed the pipes together, making a two-foot bar. This he attached to a fitting he had welded to the head of the jack. He positioned his creation horizontally, running from one side of the door frame to the other, just in front of the lock. Then, with a crank he had fashioned in his workshop, he began to turn the jack. The jack lengthened until it held itself in place. It extended some more. As pressure increased, both sides of the door frame strained and creaked. Soon the ancient wood began to split. Slivers popped out like tiny switchblades. Within moments the vertical door frames started to bow, screeching as the wood bent outward.

When the man tried the door again it opened easily, now too narrow for its widened frame.

Slowly, carefully, the man collapsed the jack and removed his apparatus from the doorway. He disassembled it and returned it to the bag.

Then he and the little girl entered the building.

They stood in the center of a long unlighted corridor that ran left and right the entire length of the building. The closed door directly in front of them probably led to the main hall.

Following a powerful instinct, the man ignored this nearby door and went left. He knew they'd quickly find a stairway that would take them upstairs and almost to the room they were looking for.

Rapidly he led the girl along the shadow-crowded corridor. They were in luck! Everything was exactly as he'd imagined.

They climbed the steps as quickly and quietly as they could. At the top they stopped and peered through a doorless opening that would admit them to a dimly lighted hallway.

As the man transferred the duffel bag from one hand to the other, the pipes it contained clanked together. He stepped back quickly, his heart pounding.

In French, a woman's voice said, "What's that? Who's there?"

The man held his breath as a white-garbed figure carrying a flashlight and a stethoscope scurried toward them.

He grabbed the little girl and threw her out into the corridor. She stumbled, her bare feet skidded, and she hit the floor. There she began to cry softly. The white-clad figure hurried to assist her.

"What's this?" said the nun. "Who are you, child? What are you doing here?"

From the shadows, the redheaded man watched the nun kneel to comfort the fallen child. "What has happened here, little one? Oh my heavens, you're filthy dirty! Come, child, let me clean you up."

The girl lifted her head until she faced the nun.

Seeing the child's ruined face, her blackened eyes, her grotesquely distended lips, the nun recoiled in surprise. At that moment the man seized her. His left arm coiled around her neck, jerking her upright. His right hand slapped across her mouth. He spun her around and pushed her headfirst against the rock wall. Her knees gave out. As she slumped, he snatched his duffel bag and slammed it against the back of her head.

Then the man and the little girl ran down the corridor toward Father Mosely's room.

Hobston, Vermont

T
he persistent electronic beep wrenched Father Sullivan from a troubled sleep. This was his first night at St. Joseph's rectory and he'd never been able to sleep well in unfamiliar surroundings.

When the electronic trill sounded again, Father Sullivan realized it was the telephone. "What's the matter with good old-fashioned bells?" he mumbled. "At least a man can tell what he's listening to." Before summoning the energy to open his eyes, he groped for the bedside lamp. His floundering hand knocked over the half-full glass of water on the bedside table. He knew the tumbled glass had emptied its contents into his slippers.

"Damn," he muttered, and begrudgingly let his eyes open—just a slit—to discover it was already light in the bedroom.

The phone rang.

Sullivan poked at the various objects on the table looking for his watch. He found It on his wrist. Ten after six in the morning!

He flopped back on his pillow, thinking how great it would be if he could just sleep another couple of hours.

The phone rang.

This time he managed to grab the receiver without lifting his head from the pillow. "Yes? Hello? Good morning?"

The voice spoke in French. It sounded a long way off. "Hello, Father Sullivan?"

"Yes."

"This is Sister Marie from Hospital Pardieu in Montreal . . . ."

"Yes, Sister. Good morning."

"I am calling for Father LeClair. Can you wait please?"

"Yes, Sister, of course." They wake me up and put me on hold! Where is the justice?

Sullivan heard the familiar French-accented tones. "Father Sullivan? Bill? It is Gaston LeClair. I am sorry to have awakened you at this hour, Bill. But . . . well, we have had the strangest thing happen. Of course I am aware of your interest in Father Mosely, so I have called you at once."

"Something's happened to Father Mosely?"

"Bill, he is gone—"

"Dead?"

"No. He is gone. Vanished. Someone broke in here last night and took him—how do you say?—kidnapped him."

"Kidnapped him? That's crazy."

"Yes. Crazy. The police are here now."

"Didn't anyone see what happened? Didn't you hear anything? I mean to kidnap an old man in a coma . . . ?"

"Sister Elise was hurt—"

"Oh good God. How bad?"

"She is unconscious. The doctor is with her." Father LeClair's voice cracked, "They were brutal, Father, and she is not a young woman. They . . . they smashed . . . with her head . . . against the stone wall. Made her unconscious. Her nose is broken. Teeth, too. She will be scarred, Father, disfigured . . . ."

"Dear God."

"Bill, the police want to talk to you. They want to know if you have any idea who could have done such a thing. And why? What reason can there be to kidnap an old man in a coma?"

"I don't know, Father. I have no idea. But I promise you this: I intend to find out."

Boston, Massachusetts

A
t exactly twenty-three hundred hours the automatic timer locked Dr. McCurdy in his office.

The precise metallic click of the mechanism jolted him from his reverie and reminded him that he was the only person in the Academy building.

Metal window blinds clattered shut, his FM radio switched off, the electric circuits to his office—all save one—disconnected. A single electronic tone told him the telephone line was inoperative. No incoming calls, none going out.

Although he couldn't hear it, he knew that low-frequency electromagnetic waves were eliminating any possibility of electronic surveillance.

His pulse throbbed in the bandaged stub on his left hand. Nervously he picked at the white surgical tape.

"Okay, boss," he said to himself. "You're on."

He pressed a good half of his cigarette against the marble ashtray and brushed an accumulation of ashes from the front of his cardigan.

Standing up, McCurdy stretched, yawned, then walked away from his desk, moving to the computer terminal that was appearing from behind a rising panel on the far side of the room.