0513485001343534196 christopher fowler (7 page)

Presumably they were all members of this crazy church. The sight chilled him to the bone. For the first time he felt that something genuinely weird was going on. Furious, he rang the number Elias had given him.

Over at the Church of the Phoenix, Elias answered the call.

'Keep your congregation the hell away from my house,' warned Brett,

'or I'll get a restraining order put on you and your "church". I'd like to know what your leader thinks about this.'

'We have no leader.' The old man spoke so softly it was difficult to hear him. 'I know it must all seem very strange to you.'

'Then perhaps you'd like to explain what's going on.'

'I can't talk on this line. There's someone else in the building, and I think he's listening in. I'm in great danger, Mr Ellis. I've received the true sign at last, only...' he paused uncomfortably, 'only it wasn't at all the sign I'd been expecting, and now I think something terrible is going to happen.

I've been so blind. I've been used, Mr Ellis, duped. My life may even be at risk. I need your help. I can't trust the congregation here any more.

Please meet me somewhere and I'll explain.'

'I'm not going to meet you, not now, not ever,' Brett replied, slamming the receiver down, even though Elias sounded genuinely terrified.

On the TV news the next morning, the Ellis family heard how a man's body had been found hacked to pieces and thrown in a dumpster. A short-order cook had discovered the corpse in the car park of a sleazy strip-joint near the airport. As they watched the screen, a photograph of Elias appeared inset in the corner.

Feeling partly to blame for the death of a man who only wanted to watch over him, Brett decided he had to do something. He did not want to spend several hours in a police interview room. The LAPD still had a long way to go to win respect from the local populace. Instead, he decided to head downtown and pay a visit to the church.

As his shiny blue Mercedes coasted the intersections across town, Brett began to realise how far away he had grown from his roots. He never visited areas like this any more. His life was a rat-run from home to the agency and back. The strangeness of the streets and the people bothered him. He eventually located the clapboard church on a dusty litterstrewn backstreet. It was one of many fringe denominations that existed in the run-down Spanish area. Apart from two teenaged boys hanging out beside an abandoned truck, there was no-one around. Brett double-checked the alarm on his Mercedes.

The door of the church was open. Inside it was clean and smartly kept, lit by natural light alone. An attractive young woman in jeans and a white T-shirt stepped out of the shadows by the vestry, making him start.

'I'm Lisa Farrell,' she said, brushing her hair from her eyes and shaking his hand. Her voice surprised him. She had a middle-class English accent.

'I know who you are. We all do. Come in back, I'm making some tea.

'I only recently joined the Phoenix,' she explained as they sat across from each other, sipping from hot mugs. 'I have to get this tea sent out from London. You can't buy it here, and it still doesn't taste right because of the water.'

'I heard what happened to Elias.'

'It's a terrible world, Mr Ellis.' She shook her head in bewilderment and sipped. 'The police say they have some leads, but I'll be very surprised if they do.'

'Aren't you rather a long way from home?'

'My father invited me over. He lives here with his new wife. Originally I had only planned to study Phoenix for a sociology project, but I came to believe in quite a bit of what they were teaching.'

'And what is that, exactly?'

'Elias and his followers believe in the eventual heavenly redemption of mankind. From their own "scriptures" and other archive sources, they've selected a group of people who are somehow going to lead the world into a new dawn of enlightenment.'

'How convenient. Just in time for the new millennium.'

'That's right,' she said, missing the irony in his voice, 'commencing in this year of 2000. They have dates for each of the big events, worked out accurately to the hour.'

'I guess they failed to predict the murder of one of their members. Tell me something I'd like to know, Lisa. Why have I been selected for a part in all of this? I'm an advertising executive, not a politician. Even if such a crackpot theory had some grain of truth, how could I have any influence on world events? I met Mel Gibson once at a premiere. That's about as far as I go in the "six degrees of separation" chain.'

'Well, there you have me. Elias didn't tell his congregation everything.'

If she didn't know, she didn't seem particularly curious, either. 'Your future has already been decided for you, Mr Ellis, just as it has been decided for me and everyone else. All you have to do is go along with it.

Decisions will be made for you that are entirely beyond your control.'

Lisa did not look or sound crazy. Despite his scepticism at her blind faith, he found himself drawn to her. She was very attractive. She replaced her mug and rose, holding out her hand once more. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, it's been a long day, what with the police.. .'

As he left, looking back at the shabby little church from his car, he noticed the iron phoenix on the roof that acted as a weather vane. He did not expect to see it, or Lisa, again.

But the strands of a strange fate were shaping themselves around Brett.

For some time he had been thinking of moving the family out of Los Angeles and starting afresh elsewhere. His company had a vacancy in their Chicago office. The move would force Mara into a decision about their relationship. Brett discussed the possibility of a transfer with his boss, and two weeks later was in the middle of making all the appropriate arrangements when his son suffered an odd accident. Davey was kicking a football around in Griffith Park when a bird became trapped in a wire-mesh compound where leaves were being burned.

Trying to rescue the panicked creature, whose wings were alight, the boy's face and arms were seared. His nanny, who had only stepped away from his side for a moment, managed to drag him clear of the fire, saving his life.

The doctors told Brett that his son could not be moved from his hospital bed. The family's relocation would have to be delayed, or possibly even cancelled. Brett resigned himself to staying in LA, at least for the immediate future.

It was an odd feeling, that his life was somehow no longer his own. He could find no way to explain it, nor his decision to contact Lisa Farrell and ask her about Elias. Specifically, he wanted to know what the old man foresaw that made him locate Brett in the first place.

Lisa asked if they could meet at her apartment; she had something to show him. She lived in a rented mock-Tudor Santa Monica condo of astonishing ugliness just behind the freeway. Here they knelt on the kitchen floor going through stacks of Elias's documents and hardcopy computer files. Brett was amazed that the old-timer had even known how to switch on a computer.

'All churches are on-line these days,' Lisa explained. 'You should take a look at the fringes of cult worship on the internet some time. Talk about scary. There's a group of obsessives who translate prophecies, supposed

"seers" who monitor signs of the coming cataclysmic change. They mostly preach new age gobbledygook, but there's this one priest among them who refers to the Book of Daniel, the only book of the apocalypse in the Old Testament - Revelations is in the New - and he points out that Daniel dreamed of four beasts who came to lay waste to the peoples of the earth. He and Elias found corroborative evidence from a variety of independent sources pointing to four people who will eventually change the fate of the modern world. Not by healing or restoring faith, though, but by "a cleansing test of righteous fire".'

'Are you trying to tell me...'

'That's right, Mr Ellis,' said Lisa with a smile. 'You're one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.'

'The sixth chapter of the last book of the New Testament, The Revelation of St John the Divine, tells of the seven-sealed scroll held in God's right hand. When the first seal is opened the four horsemen will appear, and represent the hardships the world must face before judgement, specifically conquest (pestilence), famine, war and death. The horses are white, red, black and yellow-green.

'The world as we know it will then cease, wiped free from the poisonous effects of humanity so that life has a chance to grow anew.

That's why nature has been reacting so favourably to you, Mr Ellis.'

Father Matthew paused before a bush of English tea roses and checked the buds for damage. The manicured emerald lawns behind the church seemed to be the only green life left in this part of the San Bernadino Valley. The priest was clearly ill, and walked with difficulty. His skin was the colour of the pale dead petals that littered his rose beds. 'The final cataclysm will be triggered by events occurring to four people in four different locations,' he continued. 'We know that one of those locations is Los Angeles. Even the stars foretell this. The area is pinpointed by everything from ancient biblical scrolls to NASA maps.' He paused for breath, leaning on Lisa's arm. 'Any one of the acts occurring around the world could lead to a catastrophic disaster, but all four deeds must occur in order for the conditions of the Apocalypse to be fulfilled. The writings are most specific on this point.'

Brett tried to tell himself that this was absurd, insane. But facts fitted with a terrible inevitability. This was the news the priest had broken to Elias that had led to his death; that he was not guarding a latter-day saint but protecting someone destined to participate in the world's destruction.

'If you and Elias knew about me, who are the other three chosen

"horsemen"?'

'One is a woman working for the World Health Organisation in Africa.

Another is a European minister of trade, currently residing in Brussels.

The third is a Chinese military leader.'

'Then I'm the odd one out.'

'It would appear so.'

'Who do you think killed Elias?'

'When I told him the truth, that he was protecting a man who would eventually be instrumental in destroying civilisation, he was horrified by his misunderstanding of events. Obviously he was murdered by someone who wants to protect you.'

'Your life could also be in danger.'

'I suppose so, but I don't think you'll hurt me. I haven't very long to live.' The priest guided them to an arbour shaded from the fierce valley heat, sat in his favourite armchair and fell into an uneasy doze.

Mara simply refused to listen to her husband, citing his behaviour over the last few weeks as a form of mental breakdown. 'For God's sake, will you just listen to yourself?' she cried, pacing the lounge. 'You're talking about astrology, predictions of fate! It's ludicrous, Brett! Your son is lying upstairs in a state of trauma and you're running about all over town taking advice from these - cranks!' A sudden thought occurred to her. 'Are you giving them money? Are they getting funds out of you for all this mumbo-jumbo?'

'You've seen the signs, Mara! You've been there when it happened!'

'I want you to see someone, Brett, get some professional help. Until you do, I can't talk to you. You're not making any sense. Try to see things from my point of view. I'm as upset about Davey as you, but this is

- no way to react.'

'I have to go on with this, Mara.' He shrugged, picking up his jacket. 'I believe it. I just know it's all true.'

That night he stayed in a West Hollywood hotel. The next morning, he began researching the church's accumulated evidence in order to discover how the other three 'horsemen' might unwittingly change the world.

The information was surprisingly easy to come by. All three cases were well-documented in the international press. It was simply that nobody had thought of connecting them.

The Chinese military leader was a member of the new hard right, an anti-Semitic fascist currently precipitating a dangerous conflict with Russia and the USA over failure to declare unofficial chemical warfare sites -

there was no doubt that he was the Horseman of War.

The Belgian minister had agreed to allow the creation of an amalgamation of charities that would distribute food mountains to starving areas - but the man he had gullibly entrusted with the task was a crook, now facing trial. The scheme had gone broke, stranding millions without food he had to be the Horseman of Famine.

The woman in Africa was a doctor's assistant, moving from town to town trying to cure sickness, but without realising it she had been causing fresh outbreaks of a particularly virulent form of bilharzia, the second most widespread illness in the world. It was a water-borne germ, and she had been discovered accidentally spreading the lethal new strain as her medical convoy moved across the plains, their jeep-tracks filling with water, the virus following in the path it created. Newspapers reported that the disease had caused such depopulation in certain areas that opportunistic dictatorshipswere moving into power - the poor woman who unwittingly started this was without doubt the Horseman of Conquest.

Which made Brett Ellis the Horseman of Death.

Brett realised that the church's idea of a 'fresh start' for the world involved burning away the existing debris of humanity. According to Father Matthew, there were plenty of priests who were perfectly happy with the idea. No wonder Elias could be so easily sacrificed. Uppermost in Brett's mind was the need to discover what single act he could be responsible for that would lead to destruction on a massive scale, but it was hopeless. He had no idea where to begin. He tried usingnews networks sited on the internet. He trawled the LA newspaper archives. He attempted to check out the other three 'horsemen', and even managed to reach the medical team travelling with the WHO, but they were unable to return any of his calls. The other two were even less reachable. For all of the world's advances in global communication, it was still virtually impossible for an ordinary citizen to access people in power.