Rothmann in the hyena head mask raised his whip high and the crowd fell silent. I was ready for a sermon, some rant about the glories of Lucifer, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he looked toward the door at the side of the barn. Shrieks broke out when the woman came in. I peered at her and, stomach shrinking, recognized who she was. She wore a black gown with her breasts bare but, although she had a pair of long horns on her head, she had no mask. She was carrying a knife with a thin, curved blade. Nora Jacobsen.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. The old woman had shown how dangerous she was in Portland. But seeing her here, features daubed in what looked like ash and mouth set hard, still made my skin crawl. She bowed almost to the ground in front of Hyena-Head, then put the fingers of one hand around his erect penis. The crowd erupted again and I wondered if I was going to have to sit through a porn show. Fortunately, Nora Jacobsen let go after a few seconds and walked over to the woman on the inverted cross. She crouched down and wrenched the sack from round the prisoner’s head.
I recognized Mary Upson immediately despite the battering she had taken. Again, I was thrust back into my seat by the guards. Before I could move, Nora Jacobsen had cut a vertical line between her daughter’s breasts, then a horizontal one under them. Blood dripped over her face and onto the stones supporting the cross. So much for family.
Now Rothmann started to talk. ‘Followers of Lucifer Triumphant! True followers, who have cast out the false leaders!’
I didn’t know if he had been expecting applause or other forms of approbation, but they didn’t come. The faithful were silent, their faces strangely impassive. I wondered how many of them had been brainwashed by the Rothmanns’ conditioning process and how many were just old-fashioned religious lunatics.
‘We gather here for the great annual rite, at which we renew our vows to Lucifer and pledge ourselves to the increase of his glory in the months to come. Your Master has already made preparations to strike a blow that will bring the misguided government of this land to its knees. With your participation, the Antichurch will gain the power it deserves.’
Again, the congregation remained silent. Perhaps they had been told in advance, but it didn’t look that way because Rothmann was looking from side to side as if he was trying to elicit a response. There was a long pause before he got going again.
‘And now, for the greater glory of Lord Lucifer, I bring you the new ritual that has been promised-a ritual that will bring us all closer to the life of the underworld-closer to death! Once a year, Our Lord requires self-coffining. Our sister here will give herself to Lucifer.’
There was a wave of what seemed to be discomfort across the faithful, but Nora Jacobsen wasn’t waiting. She went to the empty cross, grasped it with one hand and then stabbed herself in the chest with the knife she was holding in the other. Her body dropped with a crash into the coffin that lay underneath.
Mary Upson’s shrill cry split the air. Rothmann strode over to her and beat her with his whip until she was reduced to sobbing. The congregation remained quiet but, again, I sensed they were unhappy. So did Rothmann. He picked up the bloody knife that had fallen from Nora Jacobsen’s hand and headed for Quincy. I was held down by the guards when I moved.
‘Members of the Antichurch,’ the Master yelled, ‘here is an example of the races that are destroying this country. Watch as his animal heart is removed!’ Then he turned to me.
I felt a tingling over my skin even before he spoke, which showed how much power he could exert. When it came, the word was almost superfluous.
‘Schalk!’ Rothmann screamed. ‘Schalk! Execute the negro!’ The crowd roared its approval.
The trigger affected me immediately. The part of me that was beyond his control-the part that still remembered the ones I had lost-separated from my body and rose above the people in the hall. I watched as the guards allowed me to stand. I walked stiffly to the man in the hyena mask, my right hand extended. There was nothing I could do from my vantage point. I moved toward the cross from which Quincy was suspended. I tried to scream, tried to distract my corporeal self, but no sound came. The congregation had fallen silent. Transfixed, I raised the knife and then plunged it straight toward Quincy’s defenseless throat.
Peter Sebastian had spent most of the last two hours talking to the Bureau’s people in Houston. He had finally pressed the panic button at 5:00 p.m. Either Matt Wells or Quincy Jerome should have been in touch during the afternoon. He had called and sent text messages to their cell phones, but there had been no reply from either of them. He knew that the signals from their tracking implants might have been poor in the Big Thicket, so he gave Wells and Jerome a few more hours. That now looked like a mistake.
Houston’s people in the vicinity had also lost contact, having held back to allow Matt and the sergeant a clear run at the Antichurch. By the time they found the tree to the east of Warren with the inverted cross carved on it, there was no sign of anyone in the vicinity. Quincy Jerome had attached a positioning device to his BMW. That led them to a clearing south of Warren. The vehicle was empty. Agents were spreading out across the area, but it was dark and there was little chance of sightings.
Sebastian had considered sending Arthur Bimsdale to Texas to keep an eye on things, but decided against that. His assistant would be of more use in Washington, especially since Sebastian himself had an urgent appointment that evening. As usual, he hadn’t been given much notice. The message on the secure site that he accessed every midday was as terse as ever, providing only a time-8:00 p.m.-and a location-Room 13 in the Happy Trails Motel, a mile north of Middleburg, Virginia. He had never been there before. Checking his road map, he saw it was about thirty-five miles west of D.C. He’d allow himself an hour. Arriving late was not an option.
If Bimsdale was surprised by his departure from the office, he didn’t show it. His assistant had proved himself to be perfectly capable of working unsupervised, even if this operation was a lot more sensitive than anything he’d dealt with in the past. It wasn’t ideal, but Sebastian had no choice. The worst of it was that he would be turning off his cell as soon as he left the Hoover Building, even though that was contrary to standing orders. There were other priorities for him.
Driving onto I-66 from the Beltway, Sebastian thought about Matt Wells. Had he blown it by using an amateur? He still didn’t think so. The fact was, Rothmann was bound to want Wells back, both to find out what he knew and to complete the conditioning process. The Englishman might have been aware of those factors, but he seemed only to want revenge for his family. That was why it was so essential that they kept track of Wells before he managed to strike at Rothmann. Sebastian himself needed to catch Rothmann to justify the Director’s faith in the operation. That was now looking in serious jeopardy.
In the last five miles, he took a circuitous route to the motel, stopping several times to see if he was being tailed. He wasn’t, at least as far as he could ascertain. He had developed a talent for countersurveillance over the years, among other things checking his car for bugs every morning before he left home. His wife had found him doing that once, but he’d scared her off by saying he was looking for bombs. It was two minutes to eight when he drove into the motel’s parking lot. He parked as far from reception as he could and took in the scene. Number thirteen was at the end of the long building, deliberately chosen for that reason. Resting his hand on the butt of his Glock, Sebastian walked to the door. There seemed to be no one around.