Fallen Masters Page 10

  Dave Hampton was sitting in his high-backed, overstuffed leather chair sipping a root beer as he listened to Gaye Mullins, the assistant to the president of the American News Channel network.

  “You are beginning to make some people nervous,” Gaye said. “Your conspiracy theories have been great theater up until now, and the more you were reviled against, the better your ratings. But this theory that you’ve been pushing lately, musing about this…”

  “Sinister shadow?”

  “Yes.” Gaye brushed back a fall of blond hair. “Dave, what are you doing with this—this doom and gloom thing? Where are you going with it?”

  “I wish I knew,” Dave replied. “I could be flippant and say that I’m going wherever it takes me, but I have no idea where that may be.”

  “Do you know there is a movement under way to boycott businesses that advertise on your show?”

  “How could I not know that? I’ve probably gotten ten thousand emails on that subject.”

  “You can see then, can’t you, why we at ANC would be a little concerned?”

  “Have my ratings dropped?”

  “No,” Gaye said. “Quite the opposite. They have increased by almost twenty percent since you started on this.”

  “Then why is ANC concerned?”

  Again, Gaye brushed her hair back, mostly a nervous gesture.

  “Because the negative publicity about your show is increasing exponentially, and by extension, that publicity is reaching the entire network.”

  “You know what they say, Gaye. All publicity is good publicity.”

  “Dave, let me ask you something. And this is a personal question, from me to you. I’m not representing the network on this.”

  “All right, ask.”

  “Do you believe what you are saying? Do you believe the world is about to come to an end?”

  “I don’t believe I have said that, Gaye.”

  “No, but you are certainly implying it.”

  “No such implication is intended. I am merely reporting on something that nobody else seems to be covering. Something is going on, Gaye. I don’t know what it is, but it is wide, deep, and it is reaching out across all humanity, regardless of nationality, religion, or race. And it is very frightening.”

  “You are frightened?” Gaye asked.

  “I’m terrified.”

  “I, uh, please, Dave. Tone it down just a bit.”

  “I’ll do this,” Dave promised. “I won’t speak of it again until I have something more to talk about. Something more concrete.”

  “Thanks,” Gaye said. “I think.”

  Gaye left the room, and Dave, having finished the rest of his root beer, crushed the can and launched it in a basketball shot toward the waste can on the far side of the room. It dropped in.

  “Three points in any auditorium,” Dave said under his breath.

  CHAPTER

  24

  New York

  “Mr. Hampton, we just got a call from a woman in Grenada who wants to speak to you. She has been calling and Skyping all day, and she won’t stop until she gets you. She’s on your Skype now. She says she has some important information for you,” Julie said. Julie was a smart twenty-one-year-old intern who believed, sincerely, that her internship here would be a gateway to a television career of her own.

  “I’m not sure working for me is going to get you anywhere,” Dave had told her back when she signed on. “As you will discover after you’ve been here awhile, I’m considered somewhat of a kook.”

  “A kook with more viewers in your time slot than all the other cable networks combined,” Julie had replied.

  “That’s true.”

  “What’s the woman’s name?” Dave asked.

  “What’s her name?” Julie asked into the phone. She nodded, then looked back at Dave. “She won’t give a name.”

  “So I’m supposed to talk to any kook who comes in asking for me? Tell Jerry to send her away. That’s what we hired him for, isn’t it?”

  “He can’t talk to her,” Julie said. “What? Tell him what? Are you crazy? I can’t tell him that.”

  “Tell me what?” Dave asked. “Now you’ve got me curious.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Now you’ve really got me curious.”

  “She says when you were fourteen, you had a—uh—” Julie blushed and stopped in midsentence.

  “I had a what?”

  “You lost your virginity to your mother’s friend.”

  He turned redder than a radish, blushing as he was put firmly in his place. “My God! How could anyone know that?”

  Julie laughed and quickly covered her mouth with her hand. “You mean you did? Your mother’s friend? She’s old!”

  “She wasn’t always old, kid,” Dave said. “Tell Jerry to connect her.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Dave reached out for the phone.

  “Jerry? Yes, this Dave Hampton. I’ll have Julie brief her over Skype. What does she look like?” Dave laughed. “Lena Horne? You old fart, how is Julie supposed to know what—? Never mind. I’ll tell her.”

  Five minutes later Julie reported back to her boss that the older, regal-looking light-skinned woman was very much for real. Dave said, “Thank you, Julie,” and he switched on his desktop.

  “I can stay here if you need me for anything.”

  “Thank you, Julie,” Dave repeated, and he took Julie by the arm, then escorted her out of his office.

  “Good evening,” Dave said, half looking at his computer screen and multitasking by reading some papers on his desk and punching in a text message on his handheld mobile phone. “I didn’t get your name.”

  “My name is Patricia Rose Greenidge, but everybody calls me Mama G.” Her voice was soft, melodic, and had a strong Caribbean accent.

  “Mama G? You are Mama G? I’ve heard of you, your radio broadcasts, your webcasts.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell Jerry your name?”

  “My name doesn’t always open doors.”

  Dave chuckled. “I must confess, Mama, you came up with one hell of a way of opening this door. How did you know that? How could you possibly have known it? I was so embarrassed, I never told a soul. Not my best friend, and certainly not my mother.”

  “My guides told me. They tell me all sorts of stuff when necessary. And that was necessary for me to know to get through to you. They also revealed to me that dark forces are descending upon us. And you know this, too.”

  “You—you know something about this?”

  “I know that you have been chosen,” Mama G said.

  “Chosen by who?”

  “By the good guys.”

  “Mama, you aren’t making a lot of sense.”

  Mama Greenidge smiled. The image of her face filled his entire screen. After all, she did not yet know completely what her mission was, but she felt she was doing exactly the right thing in reaching out to Dave Hampton. She felt it with all the passion she possessed, even though she couldn’t prove any of it—yet.

  “Yes, I am, Dave, and you know that I am making a lot of sense because you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “All right, maybe I do have an idea. But if the—let’s call them the Forces of Light—chose me, what exactly have they chosen me for? What do they want me to do?”

  “They want you to rally the people.”

  “All right, I’ll do that. I suppose in a way, I am doing that now. But to what end?”

  “As I understand it—”

  Dave held up his hand to stop her. “Wait, before we go any further. You say as you understand it. Why do you understand it? Where are you getting your information?”

  “From the same source you are,” Mama G said. “The only difference between us is that I’ve had a lifetime of living with that world! Or should I say, the real world, as well as our world. And so I am better able to interpret it.”

  “All right,” Dave
said. “I interrupted you, I’m sorry. As you understand it, to what end am I to rally the people?”

  “There is a war brewing, Mr. Hampton. A war of celestial forces and with consequences far beyond the sum total of all the wars ever fought by man.”

  “Who will be fighting this war?”

  “Good versus evil.”

  Dave laughed out loud. “Good versus evil? Excuse me for laughing, but isn’t that the cliché of all clichés?”

  “Hardly a cliché. Think about bullying, lying, all kinds of crime that are committed every day. Think about a good kid in school trying to do the right thing or a policeman risking his life to keep somebody safe. Good versus evil isn’t a cliché, it is a fact,” Mama G said. “It will require the combined good of every soul that has ever lived, as well as every soul that is alive today. The forces of evil will be recruiting from the same pool of souls, living and dead. We must unite if we are going to defeat them.”

  The smile left Dave’s face and now he stared at Mama G with an expression of fear and worry.

  “I believe you,” he said. “I don’t know why I believe you, I just know that I do. I will do everything in my power to make this happen. But I’m going to need help.”

  “You will have help,” Mama G said.

  “From you?”

  “From me, from the Council of Elders, from the combined good of every created soul, living and dead. Each person has the choice to use their free will to choose the positive life force, which we know as love, or the negative or evil in their everyday lives. This is where it matters most—one choice at a time. And we have help, if we are willing to look and listen. Great minds from our past have glimpsed reality and will coach and guide us and the others who are being contacted even as we speak. The Council is using all the means at its disposal. All for the good.”

  Dave had tuned her out for a moment as she spoke. He wrote out some numbers in bold marker on a sheet of paper and held it up to the Skype cam. “This is my cell number, my home number, and my private number here at the studio. How may I find you, stay in contact with you?”

  Mama G nodded. “I’m easy to reach,” she said. “I am here to help. So are you. More light will come in through two windows than through just one.”

  Dave felt a moment of warmth. He didn’t know exactly what was being asked of him. But he felt relieved from being anxious and expectant, if even for a brief flash of time. “And, for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone else about my little—uh—experience with my mother’s friend.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  Long Island

  It had been exactly nineteen months, two weeks, and three days since the death of her beloved husband, Ryan, and Charlene’s grief had not gone away. She was someone who lived her life with words, powerful words that, set to music, could soothe the troubled soul. Hers and her fans’, so they told her. But there were words she never wanted to hear again, words that were also powerful, but evil in their construct, words like cancer, metastasize, and malignant. Even such words as chemotherapy and radium treatment, words that were supposed to cure cancer, were painful because the treatments did not work.

  “Inoperable means terminal,” Ryan said once during the extreme nausea of his chemotherapy. “So why am I having to put up with this?”

  The telephone rang. It was probably her mother, or her manager, or one of her friends trying to cheer her up.

  They didn’t understand. She didn’t want to be cheered up. She wanted to wallow in her grief; she found a perverse comfort in it.

  She heard Sue answer the phone.

  Good for Sue. Sue Bailey was her personal assistant, and was adept at running interference with the many newspaper reporters, magazine feature writers, television talk show producers, and would-be authors who thought that Charlene “owed her story to the public.” This was at least the fourth time the phone had rung already this morning, and it was still early. She was thankful to Sue Bailey, who was utterly proficient and professional in dealing with each call.

  Charlene saw Mr. Fitzpatrick run across the lawn, then dart up a tree. Mr. Fitzpatrick was what she had named the resident gray-tailed squirrel. At least she thought it was the same creature.… The squirrel went inside a hole in the tree, disappearing, then reappearing a moment later with a nut in his mouth. Sitting on the limb of the tree, the squirrel looked around to make certain that he was safe; then he held the nut between his two front paws and began gnawing on it, totally content with his environment and life.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Charlene said to herself. “But, at this moment if I could, I would trade lives with you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. You have a warm nest to live in, a limb that gives you a beautiful view, and a supply of food. You have no one to grieve over. Do you even know what grief is?”

  “Charlene, the cook wants to know if you want breakfast,” Sue said, coming into the sunroom then. Sue was a healthy-sized Southern lady, not fat but strong looking. She was more than Charlene’s personal assistant; she was her traveling companion while on tour, and more than once she had, by sheer presence and strength, opened up a path for her through grasping fans and aggressive paparazzi.

  A few moments earlier, Charlene had moved from the white leather sofa to the window box seat, and she was sitting there now with her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped around them, and her head resting on her knees.

  “Maybe some toast and a cup of tea,” Charlene said.

  “Charlene, you have been living on nothing but toast and tea for how long now? How about a good breakfast this morning? I know you like cheddar cheese and mushroom omelets. I’ll tell him to fix that for you.”

  “Really, I don’t think I could hold it down,” Charlene said.

  “You don’t have any say in the matter,” Sue said. “If necessary, I’ll hold you down and have Lucien spoon-feed you.”

  Charlene chuckled. “All right,” she said. “Tell Lucien to fix me an omelet. I’ll try to eat it.”

  “Thank you,” Sue said. She turned away, then looked back toward Charlene. “Don’t think I couldn’t hold you down, missy. And I wouldn’t need Mule to help me.”

  Mule was James “Mule” Bailey, Sue’s son, and an all-pro defensive lineman for the New Orleans Saints.

  Sue ate at the table with Charlene. Lucien Garneau, the cook, had gone all out with the omelet, perfectly prepared and perfectly presented. Lucien had been the head chef at La Provence Restaurant, a small, exclusive, and very pricey restaurant in the East Forties in Manhattan. Ryan and Charlene had eaten there shortly after they were married, and Ryan was so taken with the food that he hired Lucien away at three times his restaurant salary. He was an unnecessary extravagance now: since Ryan had died, Charlene rarely invited guests over, and her own eating was sporadic at best. Often she would have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk. But when Lucien prepared even that for her, he did so with panache, trimming off the crust, cutting it into fourths, and spearing each quarter with an orange twist. She kept him on, not only because she felt an obligation to him, but also because having him here reminded her of Ryan.

  After breakfast Charlene returned to the sunroom, then walked over to the window to look for Mr. Fitzpatrick, the squirrel. When she didn’t see him, she felt a sense of loss.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Fitzpatrick?” she asked. “Please tell me that you didn’t wander off and get caught by a dog. You do know to stay out of the street, don’t you? Do you have anyone to worry after you?”

  CHAPTER

  26

  London

  Asima had been so proud of Muti and Omar for assimilating themselves into the culture of London. By building three Persian restaurants and planning to open a fourth, they had become very successful. They were living the true Western dream.

  But lately little things did not seem right to her. Conversations stopped in midsentence, whispered telephone calls, expressions of hate and disdain for the West that the brothers made no effort to hide. She did not want
to admit it. It couldn’t possibly be true, could it? Could she have been taken in by Muti and Omar?

  The location for the newest restaurant in Piccadilly Circus, the Times Square of London, opposite the theaters and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum attracted thousands of people every day. Had they chosen this location for the traffic it would bring to their restaurants? Or was there a more sinister purpose?

  Muti seemed different and Asima recognized the change in him. She tried desperately to get him to speak, to let her in on what was troubling him. He would not share his private thoughts; at least not with her. This lack of discussion and conversation was deepening, and to Asima, a communication specialist, the silence was deafening.

  * * *

  Muti was speaking; he just wasn’t speaking to Asima. He and Omar, though, were plotting their future actions, following a plan laid out for them by a person they referred to simply, as “the One.”

  The One had appeared to them one night when they were discussing the wrongs that had been done to them by the West, and to their family and friends, grieving over brothers whom they would never see again in this lifetime. He had sat at a corner table in their restaurant, hunched over a single steaming cup of coffee that never seemed to diminish, though they watched him drink it, and never cooled, though it had sat for over an hour without being refreshed.

  The One was dressed in black, with a black hooded jacket. He remained in the restaurant after everyone else had left. Muti and Omar approached him.

  “We are closing, sir,” Omar said.

  “I will leave after we have spoken,” the One said.

  “But if we leave the door unlocked and the blinds up, those who pass will think we are still open, but we have closed the kitchen and can feed no more.”

  “Your door is locked and your blinds are down. No one will come in,” the One said.

  “No, I haven’t yet…,” Muti started to say, but when he looked toward the front of the restaurant he saw that the blinds were down, and the CLOSED sign had been turned in the door.

  “Omar, did you—?”