Pandora's Temple (22 page)

Katie felt a flutter in her stomach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Homeland Security’s on their way down now.” Hurst spun a chair around from the table and sat down, straddling it. “This stays local, maybe I can keep them off you.”

Katie remained silent.

Hurst shook his head and shoved the chair hard against the table as he rose. “Hey, lady, just don’t blame me when they make you disappear.” Heading for the door now. “Send me a postcard from Guantanamo,” he added, before it closed behind him.

Shinzo Asahara, son of the great martyr Shoho Asahara, practiced his martial arts kata in front of the full-length hotel mirror. He was naked save for his boxer shorts and ever-present mitten on his left hand.

The practice made him feel alive, joined his mind and body in ways that led to an enlightened sense of the world from which his greatest ideas had been birthed. For Shinzo, life itself meant nothing; he had effectively died the same day his father had been executed and his father’s spirit, the great man’s very essence, had become melded to his own. In that moment, Shinzo had inherited his cause, Aum Shinrikyo, along with the cult’s overriding goal to destroy the world in all its ugliness.

He had long believed that his father’s near blindness had imbued him with the ability to see what other men couldn’t; specifically, in this case, a vision of a world that had betrayed itself. Shoho spoke and preached about doomsday often, but the truth was that Aum Shinrikyo under his leadership had never managed to strike a balance between that stated goal and resulting deeds. The subway attack was as close as they came, feeble and ultimately pointless, leading only to the arrest and ultimate death of a great man and thus serving no purpose at all.

Shinzo’s goal, on the other hand, was nothing less than the complete realization of Aum Shinrikyo’s true purpose that lay in the destruction of the world as it was known. Not individual attacks that branded the group as no different from any terrorist organization, but one single, final destructive action that would see the world burn.

Shinzo continued his movements, lithe and graceful before the mirror, his skin now glowing with perspiration. He had turned the room’s heat up as high as it would go, thirsting for the discomfort he equated with pain and punishment for his failure so far to finish his great father’s work.

He could not close his perpetually cold left hand into a fist; some days he could barely move the fingers at all. The accident had happened when Aum Shinrikyo had infiltrated a Japanese laboratory conducting experiments into re-creating the big bang theory even before CERN was up and running. Shinzo’s sources had told him that the Japanese lab, actually housed in China, had managed to isolate a minuscule quantity of dark matter. If the lab had managed to uncover the means to contain it as well, Aum Shinrikyo might at last have the means they needed to achieve their desired ends. Never mind feebly releasing toxic gas into the Tokyo subway system. Let enough dark matter loose in the world and doomsday, the group’s cherished goal and purpose, would finally dawn in the shadow of an instant.

Shinzo recalled the day of the Tokyo subway attack with painful clarity, the memories striking him hard and fast once more as he turned to study the precision of his moves in the mirror.

And his father looked back, eyes narrowed and squinting, disapproving as always.

“What are you doing, my son?”

Shinzo went cold, in spite of the sweat now soaking his body in the stifling heat of the hotel room, the blinds closed over the windows to shut out the light of the day. Was this an apparition, a product of his imagination, a ghost?

“I am practicing, refining, perfecting.”

“I speak of your actions out of view of this mirror.”

“As do I, Father. To finish your work, to realize the dream on which Aum Shinrikyo was founded.”

“The end of the world . . .”

Shinzo bowed slightly, in affirmation as well as respect.

In the mirror his father shook his head disparagingly.
“You miss the point of all my teachings.”

“But, Father—”

“Do not speak; listen. My time with you is limited.”

“I am listening, Father.”

“I too once sought this same goal. It was my life’s singular purpose, what I believed I had been born for. Why else would I have been born without sight if not to destroy a world I could never lay eyes upon? But I learned the world itself is without sin—it’s man who has corrupted and soiled all of existence. It is man who must pay. The attack on the subway was meant to be a test, nothing more. To poison those who have corrupted and soiled while leaving the world itself intact to find its own second chance.”

“There can be no second chance; you taught me that.”

“As I learned it myself too late to make a difference, a task that now falls upon you.”

“And so it will be done, Father.”

His father’s spectral visage seemed to regard his covered left hand.
“In spite of the terrible price you have already paid to fulfill my legacy.”

“That price fuels my desires even more.”

“I only wish I was there to stand by your side on your great day of victory.”

“You will, Father, in death instead of life.”

“Prove it to me.”

“How?”

“Tell me of that day, my son, the day you were changed forever.”

Shinzo looked down at the mitten covering his left hand. “It was not long after your death.”

“Clouding your judgment, perhaps.”

“We were not expecting to encounter resistance.”

“But you did.”

“We were prepared.”

“And many died, some from Aum Shinrikyo’s own ranks.”

“Martyrs to the cause,” Shinzo said sadly. “
Your
cause.”

The apparition ignored his final comment.
“All that death while you ventured to the main laboratory.”

“We’d come at the perfect time, right in the midst of their most advanced experiments into isolating dark matter. It was panic, everything I’d hoped for!”

“You got our wish.”

“Yes, Father, yes! I managed to reach the main lab before lockdown was fully achieved.” Shinzo realized his left hand felt even colder than normal, more numb. “The experiment involving dark matter was under way in a huge vacuum chamber. There was a feeling in the room—a heat, an energy—I could feel in the pit of my stomach. I thought something was trying to steal my breath. An inspiration gripped me. I thought if I broke the seal on that chamber, if I freed the dark matter, our goal would be achieved.”

“Our legacy, my son.”

“You died for it, Father,” Shinzo told the cloudy shape in the mirror before him. The apparition had turned fluttery now, as if losing strength. “My thoughts were of joining you in the afterlife as I threw open the seals to the laboratory’s supercollider.”

“And the price you paid for this?”

“A terrible one, Father, yet one that will forever remind me of my duty and obligation to complete your work, to realize your dream. I won’t let you down. I must be true to your legacy.”

“It is your own legacy, Shinzo, that concerns me more, and accepting failure is no legacy at all.”

“I have not accepted failure, Father! I will never accept failure!”

“And yet you stand before me now without purpose or plan.”

“Tell me what I must do, tell me my next step.”

“You already know it, my son. Even if I was still blind, I’d be able to see it.”

“Then show me what escapes my own vision.”

“Face your fear, Shinzo.”

“I am not a coward.”

“And yet you cannot see the answer that lies literally before you. Because going back confronts you with the day that changed you forever. But that is what you must do to finish the work I began. So speak of it to me. Tell of how it happened so you might purge your fear.”

Shinzo’s left hand was starting to itch now, but scratching never brought any relief or even feeling. “Inside the laboratory, I threw open the seals, and the heavy doors to the vacuum chamber blew outward. I felt something slam into me, thought it would blow me backward. But then I felt as if I had been lifted into the air, hovering above the floor when in reality my feet remained planted in place. I realized I’d thrown my hands up to protect myself against whatever force I suddenly felt passing straight through me as if I was made of water. I felt weightless. I remember looking at the hands still raised protectively before me. I remember feeling great joy that I had achieved the fate you yourself had long contemplated.”

“Then what, my son?”
the apparition challenged.

“I blacked out. When I woke up, I was being tended to in the van. That’s the first time I realized . . .”

Again Shinzo glanced at his covered hand, his voice tailing off.

“
We are close, my son, closer than we have ever been before. Find the woman again. Learn everything she knows about the oil rig to plan your next steps.”

“The police have her now, Father. But she has been transferred to the custody of Homeland Security,” Shinzo said, reporting what he’d learned from e-mailed reports from the agency’s New Orleans office. His specialty had always been computers and hacking, chosen to complement his father’s skills in the expectation they’d wage their battle side by side for years to come.

“Then you know where they’ll be taking her.”

“I suppose.”

“Don’t suppose—do! Use your men, your resources.”

“A suicide mission. The headquarters is impregnable.”

“So you’re giving up.”

Shinzo swallowed hard.

“Concede and all you’ve suffered will be for naught. Show me the source of your suffering. Show me what you show no other.”

Shinzo tugged off the thin black mitten from his left hand with his right and held both up to the mirror for his father to see. But the ghostly specter was gone, revealing only his own form reflected in the murky light and steaming warmth of the room. Arms held upward, palms out, to reveal the price he had paid for the relentless pursuit of his father’s goals:

Shinzo Asahara had two right hands.

Folsom parked in a red zone in front of the police building on North Rampart.

“Perks of the trade,” he announced to McCracken and Wareagle.

The five-story, clay-colored building looked bland but functional, with dozens of equidistant windows indicating a simple design of like if not identical and interchangeable office spaces. A parking garage rose parallel on the building’s south side while its north overlooked a side street closed off to vehicular traffic.

Folsom’s Homeland Security ID got them quickly through lobby security and into the reception area leading into the squad room where the real police business actually went on.

“More of you?” the clerk, a large-jowled man with thick glasses that still left him squinting, said to Folsom.

“What do you mean more of us?” Folsom asked him.

“I just checked another two agents from Homeland Security through a few minutes ago.”

“Lock the building down, Folsom!” McCracken ordered.

“It’s probably—”

“Just do it!”

“They had IDs exactly like yours,” Detective Hurst said, handing Folsom back his identification.

They had reached the interrogation room the two imposters from Homeland Security had entered mere minutes before. Uniformed officers stood on either side of the door with guns drawn, three more standing slightly behind them while McCracken and Wareagle hung back ready to push their way forward as soon as it became necessary.

The officers, led by Hurst, burst through the interrogation room door in the next instant, guns raised and ready. Folsom followed, McCracken and Wareagle staying exactly where they were but still close enough to see inside.

The room was empty.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Folsom asked McCracken. “You knew they’d be gone.”

“Men like this don’t stick around any longer than they have to.”

“I’ve ordered the building and surrounding block closed off. Nobody in or out.”

“Knock yourself out, Folsom.”

“You have a better idea,
sir
?”

“We check out the building security station. Then, Hank, you get the chance to work some of your Homeland Security magic.”

“That’s them,” McCracken noted, as the police tech froze a picture of two men escorting a woman between them across the third floor of the adjacent parking garage. “I recognize the woman too.”

“She calls herself Katie DeMarco,” said Folsom. “But that’s not her real name.”

The tech zoomed in and clicked his mouse, enlarging the shot so the grainy, underpixelated quality masked any identifying features.

“See the way the men are holding her?” McCracken asked, pointing at the screen.

“One on either elbow,” Folsom answered. “So what?”

“So the man on the right’s positioned behind her, the way I would be if I were holding a knife or gun against her back.”

Folsom regarded the screen again. “The way you would,” he repeated.

“Tough world out there, Hank. You should visit it some time.”

According to the
Deepwater Venture
work logs and preliminary police report, Katie DeMarco was the rig’s assistant to the operations manager, and as such was privy to pretty much all its inner workings. McCracken had already reviewed a picture of her exiting a boat upon its return to the Port of New Orleans from a resupply run to the
Venture
. Pulled off a security camera as well, it was similarly grainy but provided just enough resolution for him to be certain the women captured in both shots were one and the same, a match for the woman he and Johnny Wareagle had saved yesterday at K-Paul’s from figures nearly identical to those impersonating Homeland Security agents here at the police station.

“Who are you really, Katie DeMarco?” McCracken asked out loud.

Folsom had arranged to run the young woman’s likeness through the massive databases maintained by Homeland, but as of yet the software had yielded nothing. Apparently an e-mail had reached the
Venture
two nights before the incident asking Assistant Operations Manager Paul Basmajian to detain her, since her fabricated identity didn’t pass the muster of a more detailed background check. Obviously Baz never saw the e-mail, because if he had, McCracken was sure the woman never would have gotten off the rig.