The Breath of Suspension (17 page)

“Poor fat Mustafa,” Solomon said sadly, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “The heat. Too much wine.”

“A load,” I said, enjoying the act. “He is a great, sodden load.”

“His wives will slaughter us,” Solomon said. “But as his friends, we have no choice.”

“Woe is us,” I agreed. “His wives are cruel.”

“And he is heavy.”

Our litany turned the unconscious body of Mann from a victim into a figure of fun. Shopkeepers laughed and waved to us, and small boys ran alongside, making fun of fat Mustafa. Solomon cuffed them and chased them away. “Insolent children! Do not make fun of your elders.”

We entered a cul-de-sac. Solomon felt in front of himself carefully, his face grave. He then signaled to us, and we brought the body forward. Gently, maintaining a precise angle, he rolled it toward the wall. It was a difficult matter to send someone through a wormhole without actually carrying him through yourself. Mann, just waking up and muttering, vanished down the wormhole. I looked up at Solomon. Sweat had beaded his brow, and he was shaking. Rachel, silent for once, rubbed his back. The Bishop avoided my glance.

“It is a terrible thing,” Solomon said. “But necessary.”

I was starting to suspect something. “Where did you send him?”

“A place,” he said. “A certain place.”

“
Where?
”

He stared off into space. “I told you that there are certain wormhole exits known to local inhabitants, who use them for their own purposes, like those men who attacked you. The other end of this wormhole is in Mexico, in the mountains north of Guadalajara, in the year 5304 by our calendar, 1543 by yours. The Spaniards have everywhere prohibited the old religion, which entails human sacrifice to the god Huitzilopochtli. The sacrifice is followed by a cannibal ritual, an important part of the diet of the priesthood. Victims have grown scarce. Yet a small temple survives, even flourishes, in a hidden valley, a place where mysterious people suddenly appear from nowhere.”

I thought about Mann’s fate and shuddered. He’d somehow never realized his game of religion had turned serious.

The Bishop choked. “May God have mercy on our souls.”

“I would not be surprised if He doesn’t,” Rachel said. She tugged at Solomon’s sleeve. “Let us go. Chelm is far from here.” Solomon nodded silently and, not looking at us, allowed her to lead him away. They walked out the end of the street, turned the corner, and were gone. The Bishop and I just looked at each other.

“Did you manage to get it?”

He reached into his shirt, and let me catch just a glimpse of the Tunic of the Virgin. “Martin will aid me in replacing the fraud that lies within the reliquary at the Cathedral. He is an accepting soul, and miracles are of little consequence to him, as they are to any man of true faith. But I have been long enough away, and it is time that I returned.”

“Wait,” I said. “I still have a job to finish. Where is Kinbarn?”

He smiled. “Venerating St. Josaphat, as I think you overheard me tell Martin.”

Great. Now he was being coy. “Please don’t play games with me, Bishop.”

He chuckled. “Ah, how soon humor leaves when the joke concerns ourselves. St. Josaphat is not a true saint. He is based on a rumor of a most holy man, who lived in India. His faith, however, was not Christian, which should have prevented his canonization. In the early days of the Church, such things were not always administered with proper rigor. You know him better, perhaps, as Gautama Buddha.”

“Thank you very much, your Reverence.” I knelt, and he blessed me. We went through three wormholes, and arrived in Chartres in 1227. He proceeded to the Cathedral, and I went through the wormhole that led from that time and place to the central highlands of Ceylon, in 810. St. Josaphat. I should have remembered that. It could have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble.

❖

I emerged in a garden. I couldn’t see it, because it was night there, but I could smell the ponderous aromas of night-blooming flowers and hear the chuckle of a running spring. Birds whooped at each other. The air was warm, and damp, and I stood there waiting while my eyes adjusted to the darkness and the moon rose over the mountains to light my way. I was on a wide grass-covered path that ran through the garden. The spring flowed into a small ceremonial pool intended for ritual ablution. My need for washing was considerably more than symbolic, and I took advantage of it. I hadn’t had a bath since Rome, however long ago that had been.

The trail ran up the hill toward the looming bulbous shapes of dagobas, which housed Buddhist relics. Below me, in the darkness, I could now hear the lazy rumble of a river. As the hill became steeper, the trail became stairs, which climbed among the low wooden buildings of the Buddhist monastery surrounding the dagobas. All was darkness and silence.

“May I be of assistance?” a voice said. Behind me. Again. This time I didn’t even bother to turn around. I just stopped and let him walk around in front of me. He was a tiny, bald, ancient monk in a saffron robe. He smiled at me, shyly and toothlessly, and bowed, or rather bobbed up and down repeatedly, like some sort of foraging bird.

“I’m looking for—” Oh, hell. Why not? “I’m looking for a four-foot-high black demon covered with diamonds. Seen any lately?” He tried to appear sad, but his eyes glowed joyfully. The result looked like mockery. “You are too late.”

Damn, damn, damn. Always too late. “Where has he gone?”

“Nirvana!” he said, and stood up straight. He was not much taller than Kinbam. “His soul has left the Wheel. Follow me, you will see.” I walked behind him, slowing my pace to his tiny shuffling steps. We walked past several of the dagobas and into a hut perched precariously on a cliffside. Inside, it was pitch-black. I heard a faint humming sound. My guide struck a flint and lit several lamps inside the hut. It grew bright enough to see.

Kinbarn sat in the middle of the room, in full lotus position. His three eyes stared off into nothingness. The faint hum came from somewhere inside of him, soft but unceasing. I walked up and touched him. He did not react. An empty bowl sat next to his left knee.

“We feed the body,” the monk said. “Rice.”

I thought about shouting, “Come with me, pal, you’re under arrest!” It didn’t seem quite appropriate. I stood and watched him for a long time, letting that hum penetrate, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. It felt like something I’d been hearing all my life, but never noticed. The basic sound of the universe, maybe. The echoes inside my own skull. I didn’t know. All I knew was that hearing it, out loud like that, was going to drive me crazy. I thanked the monk for his trouble, and left. He smiled after me. He did have one tooth, I saw in the lamplight, at the right, way in back.

So much for Kinbarn. The basic problem with using an addict as your runner and contact man, no matter how good he might be, is that sooner or later, being so near the stuff all the time, he’ll overdose.

I pushed my way into the jungle around the monastery toward a wormhole, trying not to think about panthers and snakes. It was time to return to the rendezvous point.

Marienbad was waiting. He lay on the bottom of a large swimming pool behind an elaborate Moorish mansion in Beverly Hills, 1923. It was midmorning. The house seemed to be deserted, though I could hear the hiss of sprinklers and the low conversation of Mexican gardeners somewhere behind the hedges. I sat down in one of the chairs by the side of the pool. “I want a daiquiri,” I said.

Marienbad chuckled. “It is the houseboy’s day off, I fear. He is assisting at a party at Cecil B. deMille’s house. They are celebrating the release of his film
The Ten Commandments.
It is good to see you again, Mathias. Where is our miscreant?”

I gave him the story, both barrels. The Bishop, Solomon, R. E. Mann, Korans in New Kingdom Egypt, golden calves, Nirvana.

“Astounding!” he said. “I must say, I had half suspected such an operation.”

“Why didn’t you warn me about it then? You could have saved me a lot of grief.”

“Mathias! And prejudice you? That would not have been professional. But you have done an excellent job, nonetheless. Leaving the well-larded Mr. Mann to be repasted by hungry Aztec religionists was a stroke of genius. I applaud you. But, as you may have concluded, our job is not yet finished. We have uncovered a smuggling operation, incredible for its great size and its lack of scruples. Religious faith! Parents spend their family’s monies on sacrifices and ritual vessels, children become intoxicated with dogma and doctrine. The social fabric of life is rent apart. A young lad begins with a few of Loyola’s
Spiritual Exercises
in the bathroom between classes, and before he knows it he has a cross on his back and is converting the heathen to support his own vile habit. We must put a stop to this!” His voice quivered with outrage.

I had been afraid of that. “When do I get a vacation?”

“After all this fun, you wish a vacation? Oh, very well, Mathias. I know you are difficult. One week. Go to Elizabethan London. Take in a few plays, drink some sack, roister. That was a good time for roistering. But remember, when you return, you have your work cut out for you. The villain Mann has been masticated and digested. Rylieh, and justice, have yet to be served!”

The snowshoe hare’s
half-eaten carcass lay under the deadfall of the figure-four trap, frozen blood crystallized on its fur, mouth still closed around the tiny piece of desiccated carrot that had served as bait. The snow was flattened around it, the rabbit’s fur thrown everywhere. Jack London sniffed at the trap, laid its ears back, and growled. Canine bona fides reaffirmed, it settled on its haunches and looked expectantly up at the man. Part Samoyed, part husky, Jack’s thick white fur concealed a body thin from hunger.

Elam didn’t have to sniff. The stink of wolverine was malevolent in the still air. It turned the saliva that had come into his mouth at the thought of roasted hare into something spoiled. He spat. “Damn!” The trap couldn’t be descented. He’d have to make another. No animal would come anywhere near a trap that smelled like that. The wolverine probably hadn’t even been hungry.

He pulled the dry carrot from the rabbit’s mouth and flung the remains off among the trees. The deadfall and the sticks of the figure four followed it, vanishing in puffs of snow.

“That’s the last one, Jack,” Elam said. “Nothing, again.” The dog whined.

They set off among the dark smooth trunks of the maples and beeches, Elam’s snowshoes squeaking in the freshly fallen snow. The dog turned its head, disturbed by the unprofessional noise, then loped off to investigate the upturned roots of a fallen tree. A breeze from the great lake to the north pushed its way through the trees, shouldering clumps of snow from the branches as it passed. A cardinal flashed from bough to bough, bright against the clearing evening sky.

Elam, a slender, graceful man, walked with his narrow shoulders hunched up, annoyed by the chilly bombardment from above. His clothing was entirely of furry animal pelts sewn crudely together. His thick hat was muskrat, his jacket fox and beaver, his mittens rabbit, his pants elk. At night he slept in a sack made of a grizzly’s hide. How had he come to be here? Had he killed those animals, skinned them, cured their hides? He didn’t know.

At night, sometimes, before he went to sleep, Elam would lie in his lean-to and, by the light of the dying fire, examine these clothes, running his hands through the fur, seeking memories in their thick softness. The various pelts were stitched neatly together. Had he done the sewing? Or had a wife or a sister? The thought gave him a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach. He rather suspected that he had always been alone. Weariness would claim him quickly, and he would huddle down in the warmth of the bear fur and fall asleep, questions unanswered.

Tree roots examined, Jack London returned to lead the way up the ridge. It was a daily ritual, practiced just at sunset, and the dog knew it well. The tumbled glacial rocks were now hidden under snow, making the footing uncertain. Elam carried his snowshoes under one arm as he climbed.

The height of the ridge topped the bare trees. To the north, glowing a deceptively warm red, was the snow-covered expanse of the great lake, where Elam often saw the dark forms of wolves, running and reveling in their temporary triumph over the water that barred their passage to the islands the rest of the year.

Elam had no idea what body of water it was. He had tentatively decided on Lake Superior, though it could have been Lake Winnipeg, or for that matter, Lake Baikal. Elam sat down on a rock and stared at the deep north, where stars already gleamed in the sky. Perhaps he had it all wrong, and a new Ice Age was here, and this was a frozen Victoria Nyanza.

“Who am I, Jack? Do you know?”

The dog regarded him quizzically, used to the question by now. The man who’s supposed to get us some food, the look said. Philosophical discussions later.

“Did I come here myself, Jack, or was I put here?”

Weary of the pointless and one-sided catechism, the dog was barking at a jay that had ventured too close. It circled for a moment, squawked, and shot off back into the forest.