“It won’t take long, Mahajad,” Matt says. “We need to search these last places. Against the torment you just mentioned.”
“You’ve searched everywhere in this city, haven’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
Mahajad sighs deeply, setting his dark hands on his big thighs. The women take his hands in theirs.
He looks at Matt with his usual forbearance and curiosity.
“Let us end your torment, then. I have houseguests, but come. It won’t take long.”
The swami’s residence stands on a knoll on the far commons, bathed in moonlight. The bell tower presides beside it, lit from below, its blue dome shining. Matt hears the Vortex generators humming.
The barefoot swami climbs his porch steps, then turns.
“Give me a minute to prepare my guests,” he says. “We were not expecting company this late.”
“We’ll help you,” says Bruce, taking off his Stetson.
“You are very distrustful of your swami,” says Om.
“We won’t take long,” says Matt.
“I hope not,” says the swami, shaking his head sadly and opening the right-side double door. Matt holds the door for the women, then follows them in. He looks behind him for the white suits but they’re gone.
The foyer is tile-floored, high-ceilinged, and dimly lit: white plaster walls with wrought iron sconces, its round archway framing a great room. Matt steps down to the hardwood floor, his eyes drawn to the enormous Persian rug in the great room’s center, to the large river-rock fireplace filled not with burning logs but with burning candles and incense. Seated on the heavy rustic furniture are the Sungaards, Bayott, and Danielle. Two white suits now stand in the darker recess of the big room. Two of the four, Matt notes.
Bruce is already at it with the guests, hat in hand, introducing himself in his best loud drawl.
“And this is my beloved son, Matt, with whom I am well pleased. Just kidding, I’m not God, but I am proud of Matt, only sixteen, and we’ll be out of here in a jiffy. I just have to make sure my daughter Jasmine hasn’t stowed herself away in this fine place — which I’m sure her mother, my ex-wife, would have done at Jasmine’s age. In a heartbeat. Anyway, we’ll make this quick, you weird fucking people.”
Matt sees the amusement on the Sungaard faces but they say nothing. Danielle shakes her head derisively. Bayott nods to Matt in recognition.
“My disciples in white must be with us at all times,” says Mahajad.
“Disciples?” asks Bruce, unbuttoning his jacket. “Is that what they are?”
“We will be leaving now,” says Bayott, standing with the Sungaards and the girl.
The women have disappeared. The second two white-suited disciples await them in the dining room.
Matt follows his father and Om into the dining area, passing a formally set table, where the silverware shines dully in the sparse light of an electric chandelier turned low.
He takes in the strange, dark, stuck-in-time home. He senses the disciples behind him but doesn’t turn to look. He’s aware of the heavy pack. When he thinks of what’s inside it, his breathing tightens and his strong legs feel undependable. He wonders if this is really happening.
Outside, a vehicle starts up then crunches slowly down the gravel drive. Through a window Matt watches the gray Mercedes van roll away. He wonders why people as rich as the Sungaards would be hanging around a spiritual center. Especially this late, on a weeknight. With a teenaged girl. The Sungaards aren’t spiritual. An orgy hostess and a money manager / surfer / bulk LSD purchaser? With their private squad of phony Interpol cops even the Hessians couldn’t handle? What do they need with Purity?
And what have they done to his sister?
In the big and well-lit kitchen, Matt watches two stout women conversing in Spanish while they wash dishes. The smell of carnitas lingers in the air, meat and onions and chilis.
“Buenas noches,” says Bruce.
“Buenas noches, señor,” they answer together.
Matt, with four years of Spanish under his belt, listens closely as his father converses with the women. No, they know no Jasmine Anthony. They have not heard of a kidnapped girl. His eyes wander the room as he imagines the great meals they must prepare here. He eyes the pantry and wonders what treasures wait behind the closed door.
The downstairs master bedroom is spacious and richly furnished, the bath small.
A short hallway leads to three smaller first-floor bedrooms, all neat and empty.
Matt has that feeling again. Not quite hopelessness, but almost. He tries to banish it, make room for willpower and optimism. Pictures Jasmine, age seven, coming through the fortified security door of the bomb shelter to rescue him. And at the beach by the bonfire, singing for her friends. Brushing her mother’s hair.
I can do this.
Back in the great room, Matt follows his father and the swami up the hardwood stairs. Bruce’s boot heels pound and echo. Two of the disciples look down from the dark recess of the landing above.
Matt looks into the first room: children’s bunk beds, two small dressers, Om shaking his big head as Bruce opens a closet door. Matt listens for the sound of the white-clad men but hears nothing.
Curious, he drifts back to the landing. Sees that the two disciples lurking upstairs a moment ago are now downstairs without having taken the stairs. He would have heard them. As he hears them now, clearly, as they stride into the great room from the direction of the kitchen, crossing paths with the Mexican cooks as they head for the front door.
“Adios, señors.”
“A good night also to you.”
Matt hears the man’s accent, similar to that of his boss. The swami’s mother-daughter assistants now sit by the cavernous, candle-filled fireplace, the mother on a chair and the daughter on the floor, legs crossed, meditating.
Then his father and the swami are back, and Matt follows them back down the stairs to the great room.
Om’s smooth baritone is edged with annoyance as he orders the mother and daughter out of the house.
“You have insulted away my guests and employees,” he says to Bruce. “And it is getting late. I shall be happy when you go and the Vortex is pure again. I have seen the cold weapon at your back, Mr. Anthony. They are not permitted here.”
“I need to see the bell tower,” says Matt.
The swami regards Matt with a wet black stare. “It is a useless relic of Christian-capitalist excess. The bells are gone. We have long ago boarded the door. You can pull on the wood with all your strength and it will not open, Matt.”
“I’ll try.”
56
Standing at the foot of the bell tower Matt considers the two-by-six boards nailed horizontally across the door and into the heavy wooden frame. Seven of them, the lumber unpainted, and the nails rusty. The generators in the squat building beside the tower are surprisingly loud up this close.
He chooses one chest-high board, clamps his hands tight and pulls hard, then harder.
“I can see that’s not going to budge, son.”
Matt braces his feet on a lower board, bringing his body weight into play. His eyes close and his muscles quiver as he pulls with his arms and pushes with every bit of strength he has in his paper-route legs, the legs that moved eight thousand pounds of logs up and down Sara Eikenberg’s driveway, the legs that kicked him out of a riptide and all the way to shore fighting a fifty-pound fish trying to pull him out to sea.
He throws back his head and screams.
But lands on his back, gasping and looking up at the stars.
“True strength is only achieved through purity,” says Mahajad.