Devil's Eye (30 page)

“
What about this other one?” she persisted.

“
That too!” The man grabbed a small wooden elephant and thrust it towards Laura. “Here! Buy this! A nice souvenir.”

“
Well, I never….!” Laura feigned when Caine interrupted.

“
You won’t sell her this nice pendant?” He fingered the silvery symbol soldered into a square. Actually, it looked quite mundane and artless to him.

The man stared at him wordlessly.

“
Even though you have a dozen more just like it?”

“
It’s a free country,” the man replied belligerently.

“
It’s not nice to turn away customers. Bad for business,” Caine said sarcastically with emphasis on
business
. The man’s face froze into a sullen, challenging sneer. “I do what I have to do.”

Similar words played in Caine’s memory.

Laura tugged at his arm and led him quickly away. They turned at the nearby corner.

“
He’s one of them!” she declared breathlessly. “Those pendants he wouldn’t sell are symbols in necromancy!”

“
Necromancy?”

“
The black arts. Divination to call up the devil. Through a dead body.”

“
I’ve heard of it, but—“

Caine turned back around the corner. The vendor was gone. Only the card tables with the black velvet tablecloth stood empty on the curb. Next to them a brown and black dog was sniffing at one of the plaster cobras.

“
Uncle Jonas is right! Different vendors around Washington have those pendants! I remember seeing them. All of them are different— different symbols—and none are for sale! I’ll bet we find more and I’ll bet they’re on the axes uncle talks about!”

Caine nodded assent, but thought, “Then what?” He eyed the dog, which was now sitting next to a plaster tiger. He suspected it might be the one at Laura’s door the night before. It wasn’t worth provoking on a busy sidewalk.

“
First, I want to meet your uncle.”

Before she could say, “He’s at the Library of Congress,” they were already hurrying towards his roadster.

“
We can catch a late breakfast on the way,” he offered.

She tapped his arm in playful reproach.

Chapter 29

Within twenty minutes they were driving along 17th Street N.W. past the White House grounds and around the Ellipse to Connecticut Avenue. Laura kept her eyes peeled for anyone she thought might look like a devotee of the occult. She noticed nothing among a number of people along the way, particularly those lingering in the vicinity of the Ellipse and Lafayette Park.

The Colonel sped along Connecticut Avenue to 2nd Street and turning south approached a guarded entrance booth for one of several parking areas around the Library of Congress. He showed the attendant special identification and was waved through.

“
Good morning, Professor Mitchell,” the attendant said smiling to Laura.

Caine glanced at her with a bemused smile. “I guess you’re pretty regular around here?”

“
Oh, yes,” she replied matter
‐
of
‐
factly.

Inside Caine displayed his special identification again, the guard recognizing that he could carry a weapon into the building. “Good morning, Laura,” the guard said as he gestured them past the security desk.

She led him to her uncle’s basement office tucked beyond shelves out of the way and rarely used. The door was open to add visual space to the cramped, but cozy quarters.

“
Uncle Jonas!”

Jonas Mitchell had already heard footsteps and was at the door. He eyed Caine as he hugged his niece. “And you must be the handsome young officer she spoke about.”

“
Uncle Jonas,” she chided.

“
At my age, I have to take shortcuts. I can’t be as presumptuous about time as you can. Besides, I haven’t seen such a sparkle in your eyes for a long while.”

“
Uncle Jonas!”

He hustled to his desk and opened a bottom drawer. “This is an occasion. You’re the only man she’s ever brought down here. It’s Mr. Caine, isn’t it? Christopher Caine?”

“
Yes, it is. I’m very pleased to meet you. Your niece has told me a lot about you.”

“
Well, I hope she hasn’t exposed me as a paranoid crackpot,” he said as he pulled a bottle of bourbon from the drawer.

“
No,” the Colonel said slowly viewing the bottle with a hint of a smile. “Quite the contrary.”

Jonas Mitchell placed the bottle unerringly on a rare uncluttered spot on his desk, then felt around the drawer and pulled out three crystal shot glasses.

“
Uncle Jonas. What are you doing?”

“
Nothing, Laura. Nothing. This calls for a celebration.” He poured three measures.

“
First and foremost, I want to thank you for the other night—the night you held off those hoodlums at the museum. I can’t imagine what would have happened otherwise.”

“
Thank you, sir, but I did it for both of us.”

“
Nevertheless,” Mitchell replied and raised his glass in a toast.

“
Uncle!” Laura started.

“
I believe it’s not polite to turn down a toast in one’s honor.” The Colonel picked up the glass and looked at her.

She shrugged her shoulders, satisfied that Caine did not appear affected by her uncle’s forwardness. They both looked at her expectantly.

“
Oh, I guess. Just this one.” She picked up the remaining glass. “Just because you’re toasting Chris.”

The two men downed their bourbon in a gulp while Laura took a tentative sip, then downed the rest. She grimaced.

“
You’re absolutely scandalous!” she declared. “In the Library of Congress, no less!” Her voice betrayed solicitous affection for her uncle.

“
We came here to tell you we found one!” she declared.

“
Found what?” he asked absentmindedly.

“
The sentinels along the axis! The occultists!”

“
Of course. Of course! I knew you would!”

“
Yes. And Chris wants to know more.”

The elderly man picked up the bottle again and slowly poured two more measures of bourbon, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere.

“
Well,” he started as he sat down at his desk. “Laura’s probably told you that I’ve been doing research of many years—obsessing is more the word—about the influence of folk stories and legends in real life.”

“
She has mentioned it.”

“
To what extent they may have roots in actual events. What credence they have in technological societies compared with more traditional ones.”

He leaned forward and picked up his glass.

“
It’s about witchcraft and demonology,” Laura declared.

“
I’m sure it’s pervasive in primitive lands,” Caine agreed. “But I think modern society has outgrown that.”

“
That it has,” Jonas Mitchell said. “But there are curious historical parallels. Curious connections that have always intrigued me.”

“
You mean the so
‐
called ‘collective subconscious’,” Caine offered.

“
No. It’s not quite collectiv
e subconscious
,” the elderly gentleman said with a tone that was turning reflective and serious. “Being lately of an academic background, I’m almost afraid to say it—because it would seem unscholarly. However, it seems from years of research through obscure sources, that it’s turning out to be not so much subconscious
,
as—“

“
Conspiratorial!” Laura interjected.

He raised his glass to the Colonel, hesitated with a glance to his niece just long enough to indicate agreement and drained it.

Caine looked at him and raised his own glass in return. He tipped it slowly to his lips, as if taking in the man’s words with each sip.

“
To steady the other leg,” Mitchell said. “It’s an old Eastern European tradition.”

“
But with vodka,” Caine replied with a smile.

“
I know. When in Rome…. I have taken to drinking the predominant blend in Washington circles. It gives me more the appearance of an insider.”

Caine smiled knowingly at his observation.

“
Chris is in the military, Uncle Jonas. Don’t get him drunk, because he may be called to go halfway around the world at any time.” A hint of resentment shaded her voice over that possibility.

“
I was in the army once. A partisan army. I went straight from my studies in university to the forest.”

“
I presume this was in the Baltic area?”

“
Yes, it was. Not too many people know of that guerilla war against the Soviets who had occupied our country. The OSS—which became the CIA—and British Intelligence were helping us. The notorious Kim Philby was our liaison in British Intelligence—MI
‐
6. As you know he was a high ranking British traitor. He betrayed us to the NKVD from the very start. Still—we held off the Soviets for ten years.”

“
How did you end up here?” Colonel Caine asked with professional curiosity.

“
I was captured in an ambush and sent to Siberia to die. But I fooled them. The tundra could not do me in. I was lucky. I met a Russian there in one of the prison camps. He was an NKVD man whom I befriended—or he befriended me. It doesn’t matter.”

Laura’s eyes glistened as she heard her uncle once more recount his ordeals.

“
It was he who turned me towards folklore and old legends. Heaven knows we had time to get involved in esoteric subjects. Looking back now, I think that’s what kept me alive.”

“
That’s strange,” Caine interjected. “I wouldn’t give those old NKVD goons much in the way of abstract intelligence.”

“
It wasn’t that,” Jonas Mitchell replied. “He spoke of daily events, eerie events and old stories from life. Unnatural things. Things he heard in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Secret police whispers in the halls.”

Mitchell looked Caine in the eyes. “You know why I remember it all? Because it was so strange coming from a person who doesn’t believe in God.” He paused for emphasis: “But it seemed obvious he believed in the Devil.”

“
He spoke of an ancient cult located somewhere in the Middle East,” Mitchell continued. “A cult of cursed monks who had fallen prey to evil. Their goal through the ages was to turn the world to the worship of Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness. Throughout history they had sent agents into the world to influence events in their favor—directly and indirectly—until one time the whole world would be in their power. Some small, diabolical circle inside the secret police had apparently become a part of that cult. Supposedly, that mysterious monk, Grigori Rasputin, somehow figured into the genesis of that inner cabal.”

“
It sounds like the ultimate conspiracy,” Caine offered. “The Devil Theory of History.”

“
Yes, it does. And I’m glad you said it, not me,” Jonas Mitchell emphasized.

“
Because that’s the problem. Few people take it seriously— perhaps too few. Most people dismiss it with a laugh. There is no way to get a handle on it,” Mitchell said in frustration.

“
What if you don’t believe in the Devil?” Caine probed. “Or God for that matter?”

“
It doesn’t matter,” Mitchell asserted, as if expecting the obvious question. “People can do evil acts in the name of the Devil, or even in the name of God—like many religious fanatics do. The results are real. People are hurt. People die. It’s just as if there was a Devil—whether you believe in one or not. Just like people who believe in God—they do good, as if there is a God—whether there is one or not.”

“
Of course,” Caine agreed.

“
So, on earth, as we grope for the truth, we have to make sure that the people on God’s side win.”