The Trinity (39 page)

“How couldn’t it be true? Millions of Jews died. I’ve seen all kinds of movies, and in school, I learned about it in history. American soldiers liberated concentration camps and saw them. It is true.”

The priest shakes his head with a bemused smile and glances at his watch. “America has long been dominated by a Jewish elite. Jews control the media and Hollywood. Their political influence reaches deep, all the way from the White House to what America’s children learn in school. You have been taught a lie; you have been entertained by a lie. They claim six million Jews died. Hogwash. If that were true, the number of Jews in the world would be scarce, and as you can see, they are all over the planet, in Detroit, in Omaha and in Scotland. Additionally, the Nazis weren’t capable of containing that many Jews; they did what they could. I don’t necessarily espouse a holocaust, though if the races aren’t separated—and the lands of the whites aren’t left for the whites—then we should proceed by any means necessary. This is a war, and the stakes are very high.”

“Hell, yeah,” says Brad, moved by the priest’s sermonizing.

Crowley smiles. “I suggest you get moving. It is early, but you have a lot of geography to cover in a short amount of time.”

Wordlessly, Brad and Chris go to the quarterdeck. There are no taxis queued this early on a Sunday morning. They use the payphone outside the quarterdeck, a yellow British Telecom phone inside an old-fashioned red phone booth with multiple panes of glass. It looks very peculiar amidst the drabness of the uniform buildings of the base.

After nearly half an hour and three cigarettes each, the cab arrives and they ride in silence to Montrose and board a train first for Edinburgh and then for Aberdeen. Brad directs Chris to Salisbury Road and amidst the pedestrian traffic, Brad puts the letter in the mailbox of the synagogue as people turn to stare. Chris keeps his head down, his eyes on the sidewalk.

They then take the train to Aberdeen, a long trip. Chris stares at the scenery in the dim sunshine of the early spring day. He has brought his portable radio and he finds a news program. He and Brad exhausted their reserves of small talk hours and months ago, and their mission at hand cannot be discussed, as the train is nearly full.

The newscaster makes mention of the rash of anti-Semitism that has plagued the country. A rabbi from the synagogue in Edinburgh is interviewed. Chris can tell immediately that his accent is not Scottish, but more of an aristocratic English, of the kind he heard during those programs on public television back home. An accent that he imagined the whole of this British isle would speak. “Ours is a religion that is used to suffering, to persecution. We will not be frightened,” the rabbi says.

Then there is a reference to the cab driver, murdered outside the cemetery gates. The body of the deceased was discovered when a fire truck tried to get the cab to move, as it was parked in a fire lane. It of course could not.

And Chris makes the connection with horror. His heart starts to beat very fast and his palms perspire. He recalls in an instant how the priest remained in the cab for more than a few moments while he and Brad stood on the sidewalk outside the cemetery.

He knows now that the priest murdered the cab driver.

In a panic, he rips off the headphones, as if being caught listening to the story would associate his guilt. He whispers in Brad’s ear.

“The cab driver—remember the cab driver in Glasgow?”

Brad turns and stares at Chris, irritated by the fact that Chris has disturbed a daydream. He notes Chris’s even paler face, his trembling hands and lips. “Yeah, so?”

“He killed him. Father Crowley killed him! Strangled him, the radio said.”

Brad removes his gaze from Chris and plops the back of his head against the cushion of the seat. “Yep, I know. Didn’t mean for you to find out, but Father told me about it when you was in the bathroom or somethin’. Collateral damage. He could’ve recognized us. That’s why Father picked a cab driver that was kinda little, so he could overpower him if he had to. Plus, he was a quarter-Jewish. What are you gonna do?”

Chris is ready to throw up. He is as nauseated by Brad’s casual air about the whole thing as he is about his proximity to the act of murder itself. The priest has always talked about wars and blood and things of that nature, but he never thought these things would mean anything literally. They have. He now knows that the sailor in Dundee was probably ordered dead by the priest, and god only knows the whole truth about Rodgers.

He has always dismissed these things as coincidental impossibilities. The priest had always seemed too kind, too softhearted to do anything heinous. He is still nothing but paternal to Chris, and Chris admires him. But murder—murder is too much.

Or is it? After the initial shock of the brutal realization, after his heart slows down and his hands and lips stop quivering, he somehow rationalizes it all. He likes his life now, more than before. He has friends, places he goes. He has some semblance of a life. To run away from the Trinity, to ignore the priest and Brad, would lead to a return to his old life of days and nights in the barracks, looking forward to work to disrupt the tedium.

Besides, he hasn’t killed anybody. He didn’t see it happen. He’s done no more than what could be interpreted as harmless pranks, some graffiti here, a little arson there, nothing too incriminating.

Still, he doesn’t feel good. Before the train arrives in Aberdeen, he retires himself to the lavatory and vomits.

Without emotion, he deposits the letter in the mailbox of the synagogue that he visited with Father Crowley in what seems so long ago. He was different then. Innocent, his mind unstained by the horrific.

Crowley drives home from Mass slowly. He is happy but nervous about the task he has just sent Brad and Chris on. Neither of them have traveled so far in this country without his guidance, and he knows what a parent feels like when a child ventures far away from home for the first time.

But the gods are watching. The white lights were dancing over Brad and Chris’s heads while they sat in his office. He knows they will be fine.

As the thermometer has now reached fifty degrees, he rolls the window of the Allegro down as it sputters through the village of Lutherkirk.

He will have to get the car’s poor idle fixed before the thirty days expire, before he decides the fate of the Jews of Scotland.

His Sunday will be a solitary one: wine and records and sleep, interrupted only by frozen dinners from the commissary that he has stacked in his freezer.

He sees the car belonging to Constable Robertson outside his driveway, a pale blue Fiat 1100. His car stalls right next to it. It restarts after several seconds. He honks his horn and waves at the constable as he drives onto the gravel and rolls in front of his cottage.

Robertson, knowing his cover is blown, returns home. He tells his wife the bad news and drinks some tea morosely.

The constable calls Inspector Holliday almost immediately and tells him about it.

“Nay bother,” replies the Inspector. “We haven’t been granted the manpower to watch him, anyway. It would have been impossible—and exhausting—to do it yourself. At least he knows that we are watching him. If you can, just drive by once every few hours. See if he’s home or not. That way, if something happens, we will know whether or not he was home. Make sense?”

“It does,” replies the constable, who is embarrassed at his failure but somewhat heartened by the inspector’s reassurance. “You have a good day, Inspector.”

Wordlessly, Holliday hangs up the phone. Robertson drives by the priest’s cottage several times on this day. The car is in the driveway. The curtains are drawn. Robertson wonders what a single man can do home alone for several hours at a time. The loneliness must be agonizing.

Not for Crowley. He is joined by angels from the North. He hears the poetry of Odin floating through the air of his house, louder and clearer with each goblet of wine that he consumes.

Later that evening, as the constable and his wife conclude their supper, his phone rings.

It is Holliday, telling him that two letters in manila envelopes were found sticking out of the mailboxes of synagogues in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Each letter was identical to the one found in the cemetery in Glasgow.

Robertson reports to Holliday that the priest has been home all day and he last checked less than an hour ago. As there were Jewish services on Saturday, the letters had to have been placed today. Crowley couldn’t have done it.

Holliday is irritated by this discovery. “I guess we wait thirty days, and may God bless the Jews”

Crowley takes his car to the lone garage on High Street in Lutherkirk. He leaves it for two days. Two hundred quid later, he retrieves his car, which is worth little more than that. He has felt affluent, but two hundred pounds is nearly four hundred dollars. It hurts, cutting into money for wine and war.

He has three weeks to recover his losses, three weeks during which he will have to deal with Easter and all the ceremony required of him as the ranks of his congregants swell an additional third. He will see the part-time Catholics looking bored and lethargic in the pews, awkwardly taking communion, not sure how to receive the body, loudly sipping the blood.

During this time, he waits for a common weekend between him and Brad and Chris. He still wants to reward them.

On a Thursday night, he drives his car the forty minutes north to Aberdeen. It is a city he doesn’t know well, not like Dundee, whose industrial side, its grayer buildings, its working class air, has always attracted him more. He can feel the wealth of Aberdeen. During his recruiting days, he knew his ranks wouldn’t come from the haves, only the have-nots.

He must still avoid Dundee.

He finds a pub on the highway to Aberdeen, just as the city approaches along the A92. It is somewhat tawdry on the outside, down and out dingy on the inside. He receives some wine in a dirty glass and finds a ripped stool at the bar, electrical tape covering the tears in the vinyl covering and holding the padding in.

He chooses a seat next to a very slight man, perhaps in his forties, his black greasy hair combed to the side. The thin man’s slacks are made of polyester, his gray sweater is of wool, which he wears over a once-white t-shirt. Its yellowed neck protrudes just above the neck of the sweater.

Crowley can smell the history of the man. The stale smell of alcohol and sweat comes out of his pores and hangs over the air of the bar; he hasn’t showered in days. He is an out and out drunk, and that’s why Crowley chooses to sit next to him. Drunks, he believes, are honest. Their reason is destroyed by alcohol. A drunk will not be condescending, and that is important in his current search.

He is looking for prostitutes, his reward for Chris and Brad, the carrot he wants to dangle to keep them happy and looking forward on their quest.

They are both shamed by their apparent virginity, especially Chris. Shame is a distraction, an emasculation. He needs them to feel full of vigor. He knows human nature; nothing bolsters a man’s ego more than satisfying a woman.

Directly, Crowley asks the man, “Are there whores in this town?”

Unflinching, the man says, “Aye, my wife is one.”

Crowley laughs. “No, I meant for hire, prostitutes, or whatever you call them here.”

“You’re an American,” the man says, accusing the priest of his nationality.

“I am. So how about it? Are there any here?”

The man directs Crowley to the Aberdeen harbor, specifically Clarence Street, in between Church and Wellington, and there the lasses will be, after dark. Sometimes there are twenty and sometimes only two, but there they will be.

“How will I know if they’re prostitutes or not?” Crowley asks.

“I hope you’ll be able to tell,” replies the man.

“Thank you,” says Crowley. “Buy you a drink?”

The man nods and Crowley beckons the bartender. “Whiskey for my friend here.”

“Make it Glenmorangie, will ya?” the man asks, taking advantage of Crowley’s benevolence.