Carrion Comfort (97 page)

Behind the gray lace, the face turned Natalie’s way, the snapping-turtle mouth making wet, smacking noises.

The clown-nurse behind Natalie whispered, “I am growing younger, am I not, Nina?”

“Yes,” said Natalie. “Soon I will be as young as when we all went out to Simpls before the war. Do you remember that, Nina?”

“Simpls,” said Natalie. “Yes. Vienna.”

The doctor moved them all back, closed the door. The five of them stood on the landing. Culley suddenly reached out and gently held Natalie’s small hand in his huge fist. “Nina, darling,” he said in a girlish, almost coquettish falsetto. “What ever you wish me to do shall be done. Tell me what to do next.”

Natalie shook herself, looked at her hand in Culley’s. She squeezed his palm, patting his arm with her free hand. “Tomorrow, Melanie, I will pick you up for another ride. Justin will be awake and alert in the morning if you wish to Use him.”

“Where are we going, Nina, dear?”

“To begin preparing,” said Natalie. She squeezed the giant’s callused hand a final time and forced herself to walk rather than run down the infinitely long staircase. Marvin stood by the door, no recognition in his dulled eyes, a long knife in his hand. When Natalie reached the foyer, he opened the door for her. She stopped, used the last of her willpower to look up the staircase at the insane tableau arrayed there in the dark, smiled, and said, “Adieu until tomorrow, Melanie. Do not disappoint me again.”

“No,” said the five in unison. “Good night, Nina.”

Natalie turned and left, allowing Marvin to unlock the outer gate for her, not turning or looking back even when she passed Saul in the parked station wagon, taking deeper and deeper breaths as she walked, keeping them from becoming sobs by sheer force of will.

B
y the end of the week Tony Harod was sick and tired of mingling with the rich and powerful. It was his measured decision that the rich and powerful had a pronounced tendency toward assholism. He and Maria Chen had arrived by private plane in Meridian, Georgia, the sweatiest seventh circle of desolation Harod had ever encountered, early on the previous Sunday evening only to be told that a
different
private aircraft could take them to the island. Unless they wanted to take a boat. It had been no decision for Harod.

The fifty-five-minute boat ride had been rough, but even hanging over the railing waiting to lose his vodka and tonic and airline snacks, Harod had preferred bouncing from whitecap to whitecap to suffering the eight-minute flight. Barent’s boat house, marina, what ever it was, had to be the most impressive shed Harod had ever seen. Three stories tall, the walls of gray weathered cypress, the interior as open and majestic as a cathedral with stained glass windows reaffirming that image and casting shafts of colored light on water and rows of gleaming brass and wood speedboats with crisp pennants furled at the bow, the place was perhaps the most ostentatious obscure structure he had ever passed through.

Women were not allowed on Dolmann Island during Summer Camp week. Harod had known that, but it was still a pain in the ass for him to go fifteen minutes out of their way to drop Maria Chen off at Barent’s yacht, a gleaming, white thing the length of a football field, all streamlined super-structure and white-domed bulges and arrays housing radar and Barent’s ubiquitous communications equipment. Harod realized for the thousandth time that C. Arnold Barent was not a man who liked to be out of touch with things. A streamlined helicopter looking as if it had been designed for the mid-twenty-first century sat on the fantail, rotor idle but not tied down, obviously ready to rush islandward at a whistle from its master.

The water was full of boats: sleek speedboats carrying security men with M-16s, the bulky radar picket boats with antennae turning, various private yachts flanked by security vessels from half a dozen countries, and, becoming visible as they came around the corner of the island toward the harbor, a U.S. naval destroyer a mile out. The thing was impressive, slate gray and shark sleek, slicing through the water toward them at high speed, radar dishes turning and flags whipping, giving the impression of a hungry greyhound closing on a hapless rabbit.

“What the fuck’s that?” Harod shouted to the man driving their speedboat.

The man in the striped shirt grinned, showing white teeth against tanned skin, and said, “That’s the U.S.S.
Richard S. Edwards
, sir. Forrest Sherman class destroyer. It’s on picket duty here every year during Heritage West’s Summer Camp as a ser vice to our foreign guests and domestic dignitaries.”

“The same boat is?” said Harod. “The same
ship
, yes, sir,” said the driver. “Technically, it’s conducting blockade and interdiction maneuvers here each summer.”

The destroyer had come around so that Harod could see the white numerals 950 on its bow. “What’s that box thing back there?” asked Harod. “Near the rear gun or what ever that is.”

“ASROC, sir,” said the driver, swinging their speedboat to port and toward the harbor, “modified for ASW by taking out their five-inch MK 42 and a couple of three-inch MK 33s.”

“Oh,” said Harod, clinging tightly to the railing, spray mixing with sweat on his pale face. “Are we almost there?”

A souped-up golf cart with a driver in a blue blazer and gray slacks drove Harod from the dock to the Manse. Live Oak Lane was a broad avenue of grass clipped as close as a putting green between two lines of massive oaks stretching off to where they seemed to meet in the distance, huge limbs crisscrossing a hundred feet overhead to create a shifting canopy of leaves and light through which glimpses of evening sky and clouds offered a pastel counterpoint to green foliage. As they glided silently down the long tunnel created by trees older than the United States, photoelectric cells sensed the twilight and switched on an array of subtle floodlights and softly glowing Japanese lanterns hidden among the high limbs, hanging ivy, and massive roots, creating an illusion of a magical forest, a fantasy of a wyrwood alive with light and music as hidden speakers lifted the clear sound of classical flute sonatas into the evening air. Elsewhere in the oak forest, hundreds of tiny wind chimes added elfin notes to the music as a breeze from the ocean rustled the foliage.

“Big fucking trees,” said Harod as they glided through the last quarter mile of oak lane toward the extensive, terraced garden at the northern base of the south-facing Manse.

“Yes, sir,” said the driver and drove on.

C. Arnold Barent was not there to meet Harod, but the Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter was, a tall glass of bourbon in his hand, his face flushed. The evangelist crossed an expanse of black and white tile in an empty main hall that reminded Harod of Chartres Cathedral even though he had never been there.

“Anthony, m’boy,” boomed Sutter, “welcome to Summer Camp.” His voice echoed for seconds.

Harod leaned back and gawked like a tourist, looking up at an immensity of space bounded by mezzanines and balconies, lofts and half-glimpsed corridors, the open space rising to an arched roof five and a half stories above that was braced by exquisitely carved rafters and a maze of gleaming buttresses. The roof itself was a parquetry of cypress and mahogany set off by a stained glass skylight, darkening now so the reds struck dark wood with the deepening hues of drying blood, by dormers, and by a massive chain supporting a central chandelier so solid that a regiment of “Phantoms of the Opera” could have swung on it to no effect.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” said Harod. “If this is the servants’ entrance, show me to the front door.”

Sutter frowned at Harod’s language while a servant in a blue blazer and gray slacks clicked across an acre of tile to lift Harod’s battered carry-on bag and to stand at attention.

“Would you prefer to stay here or in one of the bungalows?” asked Sutter.

“Bungalows?” said Harod. “You mean like cabins?”

“Yes,” said Sutter, “if you consider a cottage with five-star accommodations, catered by Maxim’s, a cabin. A majority of the guests opt for the bungalows. It is, after all, Summer Camp week.”

“Yeah,” said Harod, “forget that. I’ll take the cushiest room they have here. I’ve served my time as a Boy Scout.”

Sutter nodded at the servant and said, “The Buchanan Suite, Maxwell. Anthony, I’ll show you the way in a minute. Come over to the bar.”

They walked to a small, mahogany-paneled room off the main hall while the butler took an elevator to the upper levels. Harod poured himself a tall vodka. “Don’t tell me this place was built in the seventeen hundreds,” he said. “Too damn big.”

“Pastor Vanderhoof’s original structure was impressive for its time,” said Sutter. “Subsequent owners have enlarged the Manse a bit.”

“So where is everybody?” asked Harod. “The less-important guests are arriving now,” said Sutter. “The princes, potentates, ex-prime ministers, and oil sheiks will be arriving for the customary Opening Brunch tomorrow at eleven in the morning. We get our first glimpse of an ex-president on Wednesday.”

“Whoopee,” said Harod. “Where’s Barent and Kepler?”

“Joseph will be joining us later this evening,” said the evangelist. “Our host will arrive tomorrow.”

Harod thought of his last sight of Maria Chen at the railing of the yacht. Kepler had told him earlier that all female aides, adjutants, executive secretaries, mistresses, and a few wives who could not be jettisoned earlier were welcome aboard the
Antoinette
while their masters let their hair down on Dolmann Island. “Is Barent aboard his boat?” he asked Sutter.

The airwaves minister spread his hands. “Only the Lord and Christian’s pilots know where he is on a day-to-day basis. The next twelve days are the only ones on our host’s yearly calendar where a friend— or adversary— would know where to find him.”

Harod made a rude sound and took a drink. “Not that it’d help an adversary,” he said. “You see the goddamn destroyer on the way in?”

“Anthony,” warned Sutter, “I’ve told you before about taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

“What are they guarding against?” said Harod. “A landing by Russian marines?”

Sutter replenished his bourbon. “Not too far from the mark, Anthony. A few years ago there was a Russian trawler prowling around a mile off the beach. It had come up from its usual station off Cape Canaveral. I don’t have to tell you that, like most Russian trawlers near American shores, this was an intelligence craft loaded down with more sneaky listenin’ devices that you could shake a Communist stick at.”

“So what the hell could they hear from a mile out at sea?” said Harod. Sutter chuckled. “I imagine that that shall remain between the Russians and their Antichrist,” he said, “but it discomfited our guests and concerned Brother Christian, thus the big mean dog you saw patrolling nearby.”

“Some dog,” said Harod. “Does all of this security hang around for the second week?”

“Oh, no,” said Sutter, “what transpires during the Hunt segment of the summer’s entertainment is strictly for our eyes only.”

Harod stared hard at the red-cheeked minister. “Jimmy, do you think Willi’s going to show next weekend?”

The Reverend Jimmy Wayne Sutter looked up quickly with a flash of his tiny, lively eyes. “Oh yes, Anthony. I have no doubt that Mr. Borden will be here at the prearranged time.”

“How do you know that?”

Sutter smiled beatifically, raised his bourbon, and said softly, “It is written in Revelation, Anthony. It has all been prophesied millennia ago. There is nothing we do that has not been carved long ago in the corridors of time by a Sculptor who sees the grain in the stone much more clearly than we ever could.”

“Is that so?” said Harod. “Yes, Anthony, that is so,” said Sutter. “You can bet your heathen ass on it.”

Harod’s thin lips twitched in a smile. “I think I’m already doing that, Jimmy,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this week.”

“This week is nothing,” said Sutter, closing his eyes and holding the cold glass of bourbon to his cheek. “It is mere prelude, Anthony. Mere prelude.”

The week of prelude seemed endless to Harod. He mingled with men whose pictures he had seen in
Time
and
Newsweek
all of his life and found that— except for the aura of power that rose from them like the omnipresent scent of sweat from a world-class jock— they were visibly human, frequently fallible, and all-too-often asinine in their frenzied attempt to escape the boardrooms and situation rooms and conference halls and briefing sessions that served as the iron bars and cages of their rich and powerful lives.

On Wednesday night, June 10, Harod found himself lounging in the fifth tier of the Campfire Ampitheatre, watching a vice-president of the World Bank, a crown prince of the third richest oil-exporting country on the planet, a former U.S. president, and his ex-secretary of state do a hoola dance with mops for hair, halved coconut shells for breasts, and grass skirts made from hastily gathered palm fronds, while eighty-five of the most powerful men in the western hemi sphere whistled, shouted, and generally acted like college freshmen on their first public drunk. Harod stared at the bonfire and thought of the rough cut of
The White Slaver
, still on the editing reels at his workshop, now three weeks overdue for the laying down of a soundtrack. The composer-conductor was getting his three thousand a day for doing nothing but cooling his heels at the Beverly Hilton and waiting to lead a full orchestra in a score that was guaranteed to sound just like the score he had done for his past six movies— all romantic woodwinds and heroic brasses made even more indistinguishable by Dolby.

On Tuesday and Thursday, Harod had taken a launch out to the
Antoinette
to see Maria Chen, making love to her in the silk and paneled silences of her stateroom. Then talking with her before heading back to the evening’s Summer Camp festivities.

“What do you do out here?” he asked. “Read,” she said. “Work on the Orion treatment. Catch up on the correspondence. Lie in the sun.”

“Ever see Barent?”

“Never,” said Maria Chen. “Isn’t he ashore with you?”

“Yeah, I see him around. He’s got the whole west wing of the Manse— him and whoever the top guy is that day. I just wondered if he ever comes out here.”

“Worried?” asked Maria Chen. She rolled on her back and brushed dark hair away from her cheek. “Or jealous?”

“Fuck that,” said Harod and got out of bed, walking naked to the liquor cabinet. “It’d be better if he was screwing you. Then we might be able to get an angle on what the hell’s going on.”

Maria Chen slipped from the bed, walked to where Harod stood with his back to her, and slipped her arms around him. Her small, perfect breasts flattened against his back. “Tony,” she said, “you are a liar.”

Harod turned angrily. She slipped more tightly against him, her left hand cupping him gently.

“You want no one with me,” she whispered. “Ever.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Harod. “Pure bullshit.”

“No,” whispered Maria Chen, moving her lips along his neck between whispers. “It is love. You love me as I love you.”

“Nobody loves me,” said Harod. He had meant to say it with a laugh, but it came out a choked whisper.

“I love you,” said Maria Chen. “and you love me, Tony.”

He pushed her to arm’s length and glowered at her. “How can you say that?”

“Because it is true.”

“Why?”

“Why is it true?”

“No,” managed Harod, “why do we love each other?”

“Because we have to,” said Maria Chen and led him to the wide, soft bed.

Later, listening to the lap of water and host of subtle boat sounds that he couldn’t put a name to, Harod lay with his arm around her, his hand idle on her right breast, his eyes closed, and was afraid, perhaps for the first time since he was old enough to think, of absolutely nothing at all.