Fallen Masters Read online

  “Modern man believes himself to be wise and full of knowledge, and it is true that through his hard work and study, the human being has progressed far beyond anything I achieved, and more people today know far more than the average person three centuries ago. However, you have not recovered the lost knowledge that I pursued in my time. No one has—yet.”

  “What ‘lost knowledge’?” Tyler found himself more baffled, yet more intrigued with each passing minute of this bizarre conversation. He almost couldn’t believe it was happening. He hoped Rae would show up and see this fellow and hear what they were talking about.

  “Since the fall of man and woman in the Garden of Eden—”

  “That’s all great, but I’m not religious in any way, shape, or form.”

  “Nor am I,” the figure stated. “Where I am now is beyond religion but is pure spirit.”

  “I’m no philosopher. I just want to understand the world around me. But it gets more confusing rather than less so, the older I get. And science is even more complicated, raising more questions than answers, as far as I’m concerned. So where do I look for the answers? How can anyone tell me why I lost Karen, or why the President of the United States was assassinated?”

  “There is always a reason behind every action and reaction. It goes back to the first movement of energy at the first moment of time, if you will. We all are here for a divine purpose and a spiritual end.”

  “Many people today think the end is near—very near.”

  “It is always near, and becoming nearer, because the beginning is increasingly far away—but only in time. Time does not really exist, as such, but is a concept of measurement conceived by man. Like an inch in your system of measurement. Does an inch exist, as such? No. But you can certainly measure a tabletop in inches, and if I tell you that a tabletop is thirty-six by forty-eight inches, you have a clear idea of the size of the surface. A real tabletop—that one over there, for instance—” The speaker pointed at a coffee table right in front of Tyler. “—exists, whether or not there is any way to measure it or to talk about it in terms of its size and shape.”

  Tyler wasn’t overly impressed; he vaguely remembered his college philosophy courses and some of the systems of thought and logic to which he had been exposed. At the same time, he had not been a philosophical thinker himself ever in his life. And never had he considered how science and philosophy could be—perhaps should be—blended in order to understand the world.

  “How does all this relate to what is happening today?” For a change, he was thinking not only of his own life but all that was happening around him and around the world. He sensed that the globe was shifting on its axis and something was about to explode. Did this visitor have the answer for him?

  “We are all related to one another as players on an eternal stage, each with his own role in his own time. You, my medical friend, are called to be present at the final confrontation.”

  Before he could respond to the philosopher, Tyler heard the doorbell. It was Rae. When she came in, she gave him a hard hug and stood back to look at him. “Mikey, you’re looking rather peaked. Did you see a ghost or something?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Oh, I get it. Hearing voices and seeing visions. Well, I guess that’s part of the package.”

  He told her exactly what he had experienced.

  “Any new conclusions? No? Well, let’s get some music on, and I’ll fix up a bite to eat. You need food in that skinny stomach.”

  * * *

  After a late supper, Rae and Tyler watched the eleven o’clock news together. The anchor read a news bulletin from overseas:

  “In Tokyo, a Shinto splinter sect is apparently responsible for an attack on the city subway system that has claimed at least sixty-seven lives today. The terrorists used sarin gas in a coordinated assault on twenty trains throughout the city during the early rush hour. Police officials say it is a near-miracle that more people were not killed, since literally millions use the subway during this time. They fear it is the first of a planned series of gas attacks and have placed the entire city on alert for a repeat of the incident.”

  “The whole world has gone crazy,” Rae intoned.

  “Then let’s try to stay sane, Nurse Loona. For what it’s worth.”

  “Oh, it’s worth a lot, Dr. Michaels. Now you need to go beddy-bye. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER

  70

  New York

  “Now, stay with me on this,” Dave Hampton said during the Critical Update segment of his show.

  “Camera two, move in,” the director said.

  The set disappeared and the screen was filled with a close-up of Dave’s head and shoulders. This allowed the viewers at home to see the sincerity in his eyes.

  “I’m not sure how I know this—to be honest with you, I can’t actually say that I do know it. But I feel it. I feel it with every bone in my body.

  “There is some connection between the earthquakes in Turkey and India, and the assassination of President Jackson. I know, earthquakes are natural disasters and the assassination was an act of man, yes, but both were influenced by, maybe even created by this Dark Force.

  “Think about it, we’ve always had disasters and there have been wackos aplenty who wanted to take down political leaders. But the level of events are coming fast and furious, folks, and you only have to look at your local news to see how the level of insane crimes has jumped in the last few weeks.

  “I have to believe that this is part of a bigger picture, something the likes of which we’ve never seen. I know I sound like a nut-job, but I have become convinced that we are facing nothing less than a Dark Force.

  “What is this Dark Force? Is it something physical and scientific, like dark matter? Dark matter exists, we know this. Is this Dark Force something more metaphysical, such as the religious concept of a dark force of evil?

  “What does all this portend? That, my friends, I cannot say, because I do not know. I know only that it is there, and it has caught me up in its whirlpool. But I am determined to keep talking about it, to bring you folks information so that you can think about what this might mean and if we somehow can come up with a plan to combat this force that might very well threaten all our lives.”

  Dave held his hand up, palm facing the camera.

  “This is Dave Hampton saying, good night, America.”

  Leawood, Colorado

  It was so simple, yet so important to do it—and to do it right.

  Scott Dryer had quit the Boy Scouts after a couple of years because, as he told his mom, he felt they didn’t go far enough. It wasn’t tough enough for him.

  He wanted a challenge. He wanted results. He wanted to make a mark on the world. His mark.

  He hated people who didn’t try, who had things handed to them, or who whined and complained that they were persecuted. They were a drag on everyone else. Most especially, they were a drag against Scott Dryer’s big plans for success. They should be punished.

  Scott’s world was getting smaller by the day. He was nineteen and had no idea where he was headed. He had dropped out of high school in his senior year and had no plans of going back for his diploma. His parents were at a loss, but they let him stay home because he had nowhere else to go. And he was their only child.

  They sent him to therapy, but that had been a disaster. After two sessions, the psychiatrist suggested he seek treatment elsewhere. He never told Scott’s parents why.

  He was driving his father’s car, without permission, and didn’t have money for gasoline. But he had enough money for supplies. Black spray paint and kerosene. He didn’t know whether kerosene was the best or most efficient fuel, but it sounded right, and he knew it was flammable. He had a book of paper matches that he had found in a kitchen drawer. He also took possession of the matches without permission.

  My choice. My decision. My destiny.

  After sunset, Scott drove to the B’nai Shalom Temple and pulled around to t
he rear of the structure. Within just a few minutes, he ignited a pile of linen and blankets soaked in kerosene that he had packed against the back door. Without hesitation, he drove around to the front of the building again and jumped out of the car, leaving it running.

  On the concrete front wall he spray-painted a huge swastika under the illumination of a bright streetlight. He didn’t particularly care if anyone saw him doing it. It was more important to get the job done, whatever the consequences.

  It was more important to send a message that these people must go. And if they did not go of their own volition, Scott Dryer would make sure they were eliminated however he could. It had been a vague idea in the back of his mind, but lately the messages were getting stronger and Scott knew that he had been chosen for something very special. His life would have meaning and his actions would make such an impact as to change the world.

  He tossed the spray can into his dad’s car and drove home. He got there by nine o’clock and hoped he would see the results of his handiwork on the ten o’clock news that night.

  Constitution City, South Carolina

  Emmaline Dixon never got to bed before three o’clock, but she never got up later than six o’clock in the morning. Most days, as a matter of fact, she rose before that hour, refreshed after no more than two or three hours’ sleep.

  At eighty, it was what she knew and how she had lived her life. Her twenty-seven grandkids were all nearly grown, and seven great-grandkids were already big fans of Grandmom Emma. Her best friend, a younger white lady named Genevieve Farley ( just plain Jenny to Emmaline), could barely keep up with her, though she tried valiantly.

  After midnight, Emmaline and ten or twenty volunteers drove around the city in donated Dodge vans and collected uneaten, unsold food from behind restaurants and supermarkets and delivered their bounty to kitchens and homeless shelters for the poor.

  Over the years, since the idea had first occurred to the widow lady in the 1990s, the restaurants and stores had gotten on board with her. So she and her friends no longer had to climb in and out of Dumpsters the way they did early on. The restaurants even contributed a nominal percentage of their profits to Emmaline for gasoline and transportation expenses. A few delivered the excess food themselves. And the stores offered special coupons and supplies to food pantries and other charitable organizations who signed on to the loosely organized effort Emmaline Dixon had founded.

  This was what she had been called to do. Anyone would say that she had earned her rest and that she should let others carry this load. But Emmaline knew in her heart that this was the right thing to do. It was something that she would do until the day she died, God willing.

  CHAPTER

  71

  Washington, D.C.

  The eleventh body had just been discovered when the director summoned Special Agent Bobby Anderson to a one-on-one meeting at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Bobby held an unusual at-large status within the Bureau that did not tie him to one office or city but allowed him to take on important investigative assignments on an ad hoc basis anywhere in the world.

  He and the director had served together for more than twenty years and knew each other well. More important, they trusted each other.

  “Bobby, sit here,” the director said when the agent entered his vast office—the same one that had been occupied by the legendary and notorious J. Edgar Hoover for a few years after the headquarters building had been constructed.

  “Thank you, sir,” Anderson said, shaking hands with his boss.

  “I’ve been following the serial murder case in Belfast.” He gestured in the direction of a stack of files on his desk. “Update me on the latest in that case, if you would, Bobby. I want to know what’s in your gut—not just on paper.”

  “Well, sir, it’s pretty complicated.”

  “I’ve got time,” the director said.

  Anderson held nothing back in his verbal report to the director. “I have never been part of an investigation like this one.” From the discovery of the first few bodies and the embedded messages to the arrangement of the victims in the open field in a near-perfect circle to the careful gruesome mutilations of the corpses and removal of “souvenirs”—the details were numbing to recite and equally numbing to hear.

  “The message of the killer—and I believe it is a single killer, or a single mind and motivation behind the murders—is sourced to ancient superstition and prophecies about the end of time and a final war between good and evil. He is telling us that the war is at hand.”

  “Another end-of-the-world prophecy, eh? The last several haven’t borne out. Is this one linked to any particular religious group? Every day there’s some new prediction from this sect or the other. I happen to believe the Mayan calendar. Now there was a smart group of people.” The director smiled wanly at his own poor joke.

  “We’ve just begun analyzing the eleventh corpse on the wheel. We’re close to cracking the code and understanding what the murderer is telling us. If we can solve the riddle, we may be able to prevent the twelfth killing—and the ultimate cataclysm the killer or killers plan to unleash.”

  The FBI director leaned back in his chair and regarded his colleague and friend. “You’ve got to solve this one. Our opposite numbers in Scotland Yard are stumped just as we are.”

  “Believe me, I know they are. I talk to them every day, as well as the local homicide people. Even the most experienced cop on the ground there is baffled. But all of us know one thing: There is more to come, and it’s only going to get worse.”

  The director furrowed his brow and closed his eyes momentarily. Then he said, “Well, as if you don’t have enough on your plate right now, Bobby, I have another investigation that needs your immediate attention.” He retrieved a thin file from his desk. It was clearly a brand-new case. He handed it to Anderson. “Highly sensitive. You’ll see why.”

  Bobby quickly opened the file and saw immediately that “sensitive” didn’t come close to describing this one. The son of the late President had disappeared. He looked at the director, who said, “This is a screwup of major proportions. It is unclear just how this took place, and we have been scrambling ever since the event happened.”

  “Director, I can’t take this on top of the Belfast case. Either one is all-consuming. Both are impossible. Besides, I know the boy and his family. We were close at one time. There could be a conflict of interest.”

  “I know you can’t be in two places at once, but we have to put our best in the field to find the President’s son. We don’t have any time with Marcus Jackson. And I’ve already decided there is no conflict of interest. The other case, while horrific, is now months old. That’s harsh but true. We have to resolve this one ASAP. The nation is still reeling from the president’s death, and this abduction is likely to cause even more distress, and maybe even panic. We need to find the boy. Now. And do everything in our power to make sure that when he is found he’s alive.”

  Bobby Anderson’s mind raced ahead. Over his many years as a cop he had developed a sixth sense, which he actually called his “seventh sense,” about crime patterns. He scanned the file on the Marcus Jackson abduction. There was no ransom demand and there had been no physical evidence at the scene of the abduction.

  A deep doubt or instinct nagged at Bobby. Something told him that he should have anticipated this. That it was not a random act, and that it had less to do with the President or with politics than with … something else. What? What?

  He scanned the documents in the file again. The few facts were there, but they added up to a whole lot of nothing. He would have to go to the scene and start interviewing witnesses. Except that there were no witnesses. At least none that had been identified so far. Damn!

  “Director, you’ve got me in a box. You know I can’t abandon the Belfast investigation. But this—there’s something very strange going on here. It’s not a simple political kidnapping or a terrorist act. It seems very personal, and at the same time … very glob
al.”

  The director smiled wryly. “You see, that’s why I need you on this, Bobby. For your golden gut.”

  “My golden gut is going to get sick in a minute.”

  “Don’t go soft on me now. I have to trust you. In fact, you’re the only one I can trust.”

  “You shouldn’t put yourself in that position, Dave. What if something happens to me?” Even though he was a good friend of long-standing, Bobby rarely called the director by his first name, unless they were out together socially, having a drink or hunting—increasingly rare occurrences.

  The director said: “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Bobby. The only credible lead we have is this: a possible witness sighting in Los Angeles, by one of our informers. I want you to get out to Los Angeles and find that kid. You know the First Family better than anyone. You can still work on the Belfast thing remotely—that’s what we have computers for these days, eh? Will you do this for me?”

  “Of course, Director. That’s why you sign my paycheck, I suppose.” He gave his friend and boss a lopsided grin.

  “There’s one more thing. And this is something I will deny having said to you if I am ever asked. I suspect there may be an element within the FBI or CIA, or both, behind this abduction. Just as I am seeing more strands of evidence that the same bunch may be responsible for the assassination of the President. It may sound far-fetched to you now, but I want you to be aware of this theory—just between you and me—as you follow the facts here.”

  Bobby Anderson had no response to the director’s final statement. He could think of nothing to say.

  Within three hours, he was on a flight to LAX, during which he slept and dreamed of confronting the mad killer who had slaughtered eleven innocents and would kill who knew how many more if he failed. And in his dream state he already was trying to find a way somehow to rescue a young man who had already lost his father and was thrust into new danger just because of that relationship.