Holy Terror (36 page)

‘So you and Ramon thought that Dennis Evelyn Branch's sign from God – like, what
did
you think? Don't tell me you
believed
it? A sign from God? Ears of wheat, all blowing the same way? That was sufficient justification for robbery and blackmail and murder?'

‘Mr O'Neil – you forget that I didn't have enough money in my purse for a single hot dog, and when you are like that, you are ready to accept almost any justification that anybody offers you.'

Their espressos arrived. ‘You're one hundred per cent sure you're not eating?' asked the waiter, snippily. Conor gave him a look that – given two or three centuries – could have worn down granite. ‘Well,' said the waiter, unnerved. ‘If you change your mind.'

Magda tinkled her spoon in her cup. ‘Victor Labrea saved us. That's what we thought, anyhow. And it wasn't only the money. It was the chance to practice hypnotism again, to control other people. It was the power.'

‘You're telling me that hypnotism is all about
power
?'

‘Of course. The power to heal. The power to hurt. The power to make people look ridiculous. A hypnotist can turn your whole life upside down.'

‘So what about ethics? What about morality?'

‘Nobody has ethics any more, Mr O'Neil. Nobody has morality. Who knows … perhaps that's what Dennis Evelyn Branch is trying to bring back, with his crusade.'

‘So how did you plan the Spurr's robbery?'

‘The same way we planned all of the other robberies. We called up, we made enquiries about safety deposit box facilities and then we made an appointment to meet your deputy Salvatore Morales.'

‘And? What are you trying to say to me? He offered to help you steal all those safety deposit boxes?'

‘At first, no. We put him into a trance to find out what kind of material we might expect to find in the boxes and what your security measures were. Easy.'

‘Easy?'

‘Oh, yes. In some of the law offices we visited, it was very difficult to find out about their confidential files. The staff were defensive, loyal and resistant to hypnosis. But with Salvatore, it was easy. He had a passion to get his revenge on Spurr's; and once he was out of the trance he helped us of his own free will. He hated you, by the way. He thought that you had ruined his whole career. He said you were
imperioso
.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't mean to be.'

‘I don't know. It's sad that he died. Did you hear me say “sad”? I don't say “sad” very often because I'm not a person who believes in sadness. But he gave us all the information we needed and he even helped us to empty those boxes.'

‘Would you be prepared to testify to this in court?'

Magda looked horrified. ‘In court? No, no. What
are you asking me? You're mad! If I testify against the Global Message Movement, they'll kill me for sure.'

‘The fact remains, Magda, that apart from Darrell Bussman, who's still in a coma, you're the only person in New York who can prove my innocence.'

‘I understand that. I'm sorry. I know. But I don't want to die.'

Conor finished his coffee. ‘You've come to me asking for my protection. What are you going to give me in return?'

‘I can help you. I can use my gift. Also … I think I know what Dennis Evelyn Branch is planning to do.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘I don't know very much. Victor used to talk on the phone to him almost every morning. Always in the morning. Sometimes he left his bedroom door a little way open so that I could hear bits and pieces of what he was saying. It was strange, though. It didn't sound as if they were talking about religion at all. More like – I don't know –
science
.'

‘Science? What kind of science?'

‘Victor kept saying something about “keeping it isolated, at any price”. I don't really remember much more. Oh – he used the word “biohazard” a lot.'

‘Is there anything else you remember?'

‘There was one thing … in every conversation he kept mentioning “
she
”, like they were discussing somebody else who was involved in what they were talking about. Like, “I don't know what she's going to think if we don't get this work finished up by the end of October.” Or – I remember once – “How is
she today? Not too much fire and brimstone, I hope”.'

‘Anything else?'

Magda dabbed her mouth with her napkin, leaving a pale coffee-colored kiss on it. ‘Victor said once, “I want to know that Mrs Labrea and me are going to be safe. I want your assurance”. Then there was a pause, you see, like somebody is talking on the other end of the phone. After that, Victor said, “You're telling me that millions of people are going to die. I'm just making one hundred per cent certain that one of those millions isn't me”.'

‘You're sure he said that?'

‘I'm sure. You want to hypnotize me? You want to hear those conversations right out of my brain? I don't mind. I won't resist you, Mr O'Neil. I'll let you in.

She took hold of his hand. ‘You trust me, don't you?'

‘I'm not sure yet. What else do you know about Dennis Evelyn Branch?'

‘I know where he is. I have his address in Norway.'

‘You're kidding me.'

‘Of course not. He called Victor one morning and Mrs Labrea answered the phone. She didn't realize that I was using her bathroom, so that I could overhear everything that she was saying. She asked him what the weather was like, and how he liked his new apartment. She asked for his address and she wrote it down. She went off to find Victor – I sneaked out of the bathroom – and I memorized Dennis Evelyn Branch's address as I went past the phone.'

‘Are you going to give it to me?'

‘Are you going to protect me?'

‘I'm not so sure that I can. You have to remember that
I'm
being hunted as well, no thanks to you.'

Magda passed a Post-It note across the table.
Hammerfestgata 17, Rodelokka, Oslo
.

‘I think he's very serious. I think he's going to kill a lot of people. I think that what he's trying to do will make Jonestown or Waco seem like nothing at all.'

Magda looked away. There were tears brimming in her eyes. ‘I wish that I had never helped them now. It would have been better to stay in that horrible apartment. It would have been better to starve. I am so shocked. How can I tell you how shocked I am? Ramon – I can't forgive myself for what happened to Ramon. Such a fool. Strut, strut, strut. And yet I loved him so much.'

Conor watched her for a while. The tears sliding down her cheek. He didn't feel sorry for her. If it hadn't been for her, he wouldn't be a fugitive, and he wouldn't have lost Lacey, and Sidney wouldn't be fighting for his life. All the same, he understood how she felt. He knew what it was like to open Pandora's box. He knew how impossible it was to close it.

‘Listen,' he said, ‘I've already arranged to fly to Oslo tonight.'

Magda stared at him. ‘You're crazy. You're going to
go after
these people?'

‘Why not? I spent my whole life tracking down criminals, mafiosi especially. And let me tell you: the safest thing to do is to find them first, before they find you.'

‘They'll kill you. I never saw such heartless men, even in Romania.'

‘Magda – for my own sake, it's something I have to do. If you want my protection, you're going to have to come with me. If you want to help me, you have to come with me. I can't force you to come, but what's your choice? Either you face these people down, or else you spend the rest of your life running from them.'

Magda stared at him. ‘You would trust me?'

‘No, I wouldn't. But right now I need all the help I can get.'

‘You can trust me, I promise. After all, you find me attractive, don't you?'

‘What?'

‘You find me attractive. You wonder what I'm wearing beneath this long black skirt. Maybe I'm wearing nothing at all. Maybe some kind of underwear that you could never imagine, designed to arouse anyone who wears it. Black, with laces and chains.'

‘Magda—'

‘Look at me. Look at my eyes. Where are you going when you look at my eyes?'

‘I don't know. Where am I going?'

‘You are going into my soul, that's where you're going. Deeper and deeper. It's dark there. It's totally silent. You can't see anything and you can't hear anything and you can't feel anything. Nothing at all. You don't even know which way is up and which way is down.

‘And you feel very happy now that I'm coming along with you. Very relaxed

‘And

‘You want to make love to me, but you don't want to say it just yet. That's a goodie to save for later.'

Conor was aware of the chatter and the bustle all around him. He was aware that Magda was trying to hypnotize him. He felt strong, he felt controlled, but he knew that he couldn't move until Magda told him to. Even Sidney's trances hadn't been as irresistible as this. He felt that if she had told him to stop breathing, he would have done that, too.

‘I'll come with you,' she said. ‘We can find Dennis Evelyn Branch and you can take your revenge on him for what he did to your friends; and I can take revenge on him for what he did to Ramon, and to me, too.

‘You'll do that, won't you? You'll hunt him down; and when the moment comes, you won't have any pity. When you get your chance, Conor O'Neil, you'll kill him.'

She paused for a moment, still holding his hand. Then she said, ‘You're awake. You remember everything we said. You're full of anger. You want to find Dennis Evelyn Branch and destroy him because of what he's done to you.'

Conor stared at her and said, ‘You hypnotized me. I was trying to resist you. You hypnotized me! How did you do that?'

‘It's not so hard, with a little practice. Sometimes you can use a person's resistance to hypnotize them more quickly. They're so busy locking horns with you that they don't realize you've crept up behind them and tied a firecracker onto their tail.
Bang!
from behind, their attention is distracted, and they're yours.'

‘Oh, sure,' Conor challenged her. ‘But who said I wanted to make love to you?'

‘You did,' smiled Magda. ‘You're a man, aren't you? You've been saying it ever since we sat down. Not with words, but here.' And she gently tapped her temples with her fingertips.

Conor didn't know what to make of her. Maybe she was telling him the truth. Maybe she was still working for Dennis Evelyn Branch. There was no doubt that she was a world-class hypnotist, and hypnotism was almost as good as firepower, as he had seen from Sidney's performance at the Richmond Inn. In fact, sometimes it was better, because it left no fingerprints, no fibers, no gunpowder burns, no forensic evidence of any kind.

You need her
, he thought. He wasn't entirely sure why. More than likely it was an idea which she had planted in his mind herself. But it seemed like common sense to take her to Norway. Maybe he needed her sophistication, and her ability to talk to anybody with ease. Maybe he needed her weirdness. More than anything else, maybe he needed her moral support. Emotionally, he was limping, at the moment. Lacey had left an empty space in his existence and maybe Magda Slanic had the strength to fill it.

After a long moment of indecision, he said, ‘We're leaving for Oslo tonight. Eleanor Bronsky and me. I'll book an extra ticket for you – that's always supposing you want to come. I don't know what the risks are going to be and how long we're
going to be there, so pack plenty of clothes. Meet us here at five o'clock. If you're not here, we'll go without you. No waiting.'

‘I'll be here, don't you worry.'

‘Sir – have you finished with this table yet?' the waiter wanted to know. ‘We're really backed up here and we have a whole lot of people waiting to eat.'

Conor stood up, and helped Magda up, too. He gave the waiter $10 and said, ‘I want to thank you. I hope you never realize what you've helped us to do here today.'

Only two hours after they had eaten dinner on the plane, the sky began to lighten outside the windows. Conor raised the blind and looked out over an endless continent of cloud. Not far away, another 747 was heading eastward, too, its lights flashing in the premature dawn. Beside him, Eleanor was asleep, wrapped in a blanket. Across the aisle, Magda was reading a book on mystical diets. She was wearing half-glasses, which made her look unexpectedly studious and vulnerable.

An hour before they landed in Oslo, they were given plastic cartons of reconstituted orange juice and damp croissants with strawberry jelly.

‘You should have flown to Europe in the days of the Stratocruisers,' Eleanor protested. ‘In those days you had a hot breakfast and the silverware was silverware, not plastic'

‘Sure,' said Conor. ‘But how long did it take you?'

‘That didn't matter. It was the style that mattered, not the speed. In those days you wouldn't dream of traveling in anything but your very best
clothes. Shelly Winters always used to travel in her mink. Now look at these people: jeans, sneakers, sweatshirts. Sometimes I wish I could have died before people started to dress like this.'

They arrived at Gardermoen airport twenty minutes early. Outside, the sun was shining and the sky was immaculate blue, but when they left the aircraft they immediately felt the difference in temperature. It was a warm August morning: 60 degrees, expected to rise to 69 degrees by lunchtime. There was a smell of pinewood everywhere, and brine from the Oslofiord.

As they drove into the city in the back of a Saab taxi, Conor felt as if he had arrived in a travel documentary, with neat houses and tiny yards and fir trees all around them. The highway skirted the Bestumkil, a wide inlet the color of dark blue marking ink, with tiny splashes of foam around the edges. Sailboats were already on the water, and water-skiers, too.