Fallen Masters (13 page)

“You—you know something about this?”

“I know that you have been chosen,” Mama G said.

“Chosen by who?”

“By the good guys.”

“Mama, you aren’t making a lot of sense.”

Mama Greenidge smiled. The image of her face filled his entire screen. After all, she did not yet know completely what her mission was, but she felt she was doing exactly the right thing in reaching out to Dave Hampton. She felt it with all the passion she possessed, even though she couldn’t prove any of it—yet.

“Yes, I am, Dave, and you know that I am making a lot of sense because you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“All right, maybe I do have an idea. But if the—let’s call them the Forces of Light—chose me, what exactly have they chosen me for? What do they want me to do?”

“They want you to rally the people.”

“All right, I’ll do that. I suppose in a way, I am doing that now. But to what end?”

“As I understand it—”

Dave held up his hand to stop her. “Wait, before we go any further. You say as you understand it. Why do you understand it? Where are you getting your information?”

“From the same source you are,” Mama G said. “The only difference between us is that I’ve had a lifetime of living with that world! Or should I say, the
real
world, as well as
our
world. And so I am better able to interpret it.”

“All right,” Dave said. “I interrupted you, I’m sorry. As you understand it, to what end am I to rally the people?”

“There is a war brewing, Mr. Hampton. A war of celestial forces and with consequences far beyond the sum total of all the wars ever fought by man.”

“Who will be fighting this war?”

“Good versus evil.”

Dave laughed out loud. “Good versus evil? Excuse me for laughing, but isn’t that the cliché of all clichés?”

“Hardly a cliché. Think about bullying, lying, all kinds of crime that are committed every day. Think about a good kid in school trying to do the right thing or a policeman risking his life to keep somebody safe. Good versus evil isn’t a cliché, it is a fact,” Mama G said. “It will require the combined good of every soul that has ever lived, as well as every soul that is alive today. The forces of evil will be recruiting from the same pool of souls, living and dead. We must unite if we are going to defeat them.”

The smile left Dave’s face and now he stared at Mama G with an expression of fear and worry.

“I believe you,” he said. “I don’t know why I believe you, I just know that I do. I will do everything in my power to make this happen. But I’m going to need help.”

“You will have help,” Mama G said.

“From you?”

“From me, from the Council of Elders, from the combined good of every created soul, living and dead. Each person has the choice to use their free will to choose the positive life force, which we know as love, or the negative or evil in their everyday lives. This is where it matters most—one choice at a time. And we have help, if we are willing to look and listen. Great minds from our past have glimpsed reality and will coach and guide us and the others who are being contacted even as we speak. The Council is using all the means at its disposal. All for the good.”

Dave had tuned her out for a moment as she spoke. He wrote out some numbers in bold marker on a sheet of paper and held it up to the Skype cam. “This is my cell number, my home number, and my private number here at the studio. How may I find you, stay in contact with you?”

Mama G nodded. “I’m easy to reach,” she said. “I am here to help. So are you. More light will come in through two windows than through just one.”

Dave felt a moment of warmth. He didn’t know exactly what was being asked of him. But he felt relieved from being anxious and expectant, if even for a brief flash of time. “And, for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone else about my little—uh—experience with my mother’s friend.”

CHAPTER

25

Long Island

It had been exactly nineteen months, two weeks, and three days since the death of her beloved husband, Ryan, and Charlene’s grief had not gone away. She was someone who lived her life with words, powerful words that, set to music, could soothe the troubled soul. Hers and her fans’, so they told her. But there were words she never wanted to hear again, words that were also powerful, but evil in their construct, words like
cancer, metastasize,
and
malignant.
Even such words as
chemotherapy
and
radium treatment,
words that were supposed to cure cancer, were painful because the treatments did not work.

“Inoperable means terminal,” Ryan said once during the extreme nausea of his chemotherapy. “So why am I having to put up with this?”

The telephone rang. It was probably her mother, or her manager, or one of her friends trying to cheer her up.

They didn’t understand. She didn’t want to be cheered up. She wanted to wallow in her grief; she found a perverse comfort in it.

She heard Sue answer the phone.

Good for Sue. Sue Bailey was her personal assistant, and was adept at running interference with the many newspaper reporters, magazine feature writers, television talk show producers, and would-be authors who thought that Charlene “owed her story to the public.” This was at least the fourth time the phone had rung already this morning, and it was still early. She was thankful to Sue Bailey, who was utterly proficient and professional in dealing with each call.

Charlene saw Mr. Fitzpatrick run across the lawn, then dart up a tree. Mr. Fitzpatrick was what she had named the resident gray-tailed squirrel. At least she thought it was the same creature.… The squirrel went inside a hole in the tree, disappearing, then reappearing a moment later with a nut in his mouth. Sitting on the limb of the tree, the squirrel looked around to make certain that he was safe; then he held the nut between his two front paws and began gnawing on it, totally content with his environment and life.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Charlene said to herself. “But, at this moment if I could, I would trade lives with you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. You have a warm nest to live in, a limb that gives you a beautiful view, and a supply of food. You have no one to grieve over. Do you even know what grief is?”

“Charlene, the cook wants to know if you want breakfast,” Sue said, coming into the sunroom then. Sue was a healthy-sized Southern lady, not fat but strong looking. She was more than Charlene’s personal assistant; she was her traveling companion while on tour, and more than once she had, by sheer presence and strength, opened up a path for her through grasping fans and aggressive paparazzi.

A few moments earlier, Charlene had moved from the white leather sofa to the window box seat, and she was sitting there now with her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped around them, and her head resting on her knees.

“Maybe some toast and a cup of tea,” Charlene said.

“Charlene, you have been living on nothing but toast and tea for how long now? How about a good breakfast this morning? I know you like cheddar cheese and mushroom omelets. I’ll tell him to fix that for you.”

“Really, I don’t think I could hold it down,” Charlene said.

“You don’t have any say in the matter,” Sue said. “If necessary, I’ll hold you down and have Lucien spoon-feed you.”

Charlene chuckled. “All right,” she said. “Tell Lucien to fix me an omelet. I’ll try to eat it.”

“Thank you,” Sue said. She turned away, then looked back toward Charlene. “Don’t think I couldn’t hold you down, missy. And I wouldn’t need Mule to help me.”

Mule was James “Mule” Bailey, Sue’s son, and an all-pro defensive lineman for the New Orleans Saints.

Sue ate at the table with Charlene. Lucien Garneau, the cook, had gone all out with the omelet, perfectly prepared and perfectly presented. Lucien had been the head chef at La Provence Restaurant, a small, exclusive, and very pricey restaurant in the East Forties in Manhattan. Ryan and Charlene had eaten there shortly after they were married, and Ryan was so taken with the food that he hired Lucien away at three times his restaurant salary. He was an unnecessary extravagance now: since Ryan had died, Charlene rarely invited guests over, and her own eating was sporadic at best. Often she would have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk. But when Lucien prepared even that for her, he did so with panache, trimming off the crust, cutting it into fourths, and spearing each quarter with an orange twist. She kept him on, not only because she felt an obligation to him, but also because having him here reminded her of Ryan.

After breakfast Charlene returned to the sunroom, then walked over to the window to look for Mr. Fitzpatrick, the squirrel. When she didn’t see him, she felt a sense of loss.

“Are you all right, Mr. Fitzpatrick?” she asked. “Please tell me that you didn’t wander off and get caught by a dog. You do know to stay out of the street, don’t you? Do you have anyone to worry after you?”

CHAPTER

26

London

Asima had been so proud of Muti and Omar for assimilating themselves into the culture of London. By building three Persian restaurants and planning to open a fourth, they had become very successful. They were living the true Western dream.

But lately little things did not seem right to her. Conversations stopped in midsentence, whispered telephone calls, expressions of hate and disdain for the West that the brothers made no effort to hide. She did not want to admit it. It couldn’t possibly be true, could it? Could she have been taken in by Muti and Omar?

The location for the newest restaurant in Piccadilly Circus, the Times Square of London, opposite the theaters and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum attracted thousands of people every day. Had they chosen this location for the traffic it would bring to their restaurants? Or was there a more sinister purpose?

Muti seemed different and Asima recognized the change in him. She tried desperately to get him to speak, to let her in on what was troubling him. He would not share his private thoughts; at least not with her. This lack of discussion and conversation was deepening, and to Asima, a communication specialist, the silence was deafening.

*   *   *

Muti was speaking; he just wasn’t speaking to Asima. He and Omar, though, were plotting their future actions, following a plan laid out for them by a person they referred to simply, as “the One.”

The One had appeared to them one night when they were discussing the wrongs that had been done to them by the West, and to their family and friends, grieving over brothers whom they would never see again in this lifetime. He had sat at a corner table in their restaurant, hunched over a single steaming cup of coffee that never seemed to diminish, though they watched him drink it, and never cooled, though it had sat for over an hour without being refreshed.

The One was dressed in black, with a black hooded jacket. He remained in the restaurant after everyone else had left. Muti and Omar approached him.

“We are closing, sir,” Omar said.

“I will leave after we have spoken,” the One said.

“But if we leave the door unlocked and the blinds up, those who pass will think we are still open, but we have closed the kitchen and can feed no more.”

“Your door is locked and your blinds are down. No one will come in,” the One said.

“No, I haven’t yet…,” Muti started to say, but when he looked toward the front of the restaurant he saw that the blinds were down, and the
CLOSED
sign had been turned in the door.

“Omar, did you—?”

“No,” Omar said.

“You two have been chosen,” the One said. “This is a call to action.”

“Who has called?”

“You have been called,” he said without answering the question.

“What have we been called to do?”

“It is a call to action against all mankind, not just Christians, or any specific Muslim sect, or any religion—but all mankind. It is a cleansing of those not on our path of righteousness.”

“A cleansing,” Omar said. “A much-needed cleansing. I have been saying this all along.”

“Yes. A necessary cleansing. You will need a martyr. A young martyr. I believe you have such a person in Shakir. Can there be a more noble beginning for a boy of faith?”

“Surely you mean an ending,” Muti said. “For if Shakir martyrs himself for the cause, for his uncles, will it not mean his death?”

“It will be his rebirth in the other world, a world where he will be received with honor, and glorified, and empowered beyond anything imaginable on earth.”

“What would you have him do?” Omar asked.

“Omar, this is one of my children,” Muti said, wondering how this being would know anything of his family, much less have the authority to announce that his firstborn son was to be a martyr to some nameless cause.

“And you are my younger brother,” Omar reminded him. “You will do as I say. And I say that Shakir will be martyred.” Muti stared at his brother in dismay, and then turned and looked into the eyes of the One. And recognized the passion—and something else—that he had been seeing in his brother’s eyes for some time. Tears came to his own eyes as he realized that he had already embarked on a path that he could not abandon.

“Do you read the papers?” the One asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you read of the murders in Belfast?”

“I have read of them.”

“The sign for you will be the twelfth and final murder to take place in Belfast. The heart of each of the victims has been removed. When the twelfth murder takes place, the last heart will be procured and the circle will be complete. The hearts have been buried and the placement of the bodies from an aerial perspective will to point to a date in the future … when the planetary lineup is completed. Then, my followers, when the last body is found with its inscription of a glyph, it will be the call to action not just for you, but for an organized cadre around the world, a thunderous movement that will shake the world. Fear and panic will rule. And that will lock the code to our cleansing. When that happens, you and many others around the world will launch coordinated attacks against mankind. We will see justice, and humanity will finally be set on the right path.”