SECRET RADIO blog

Gabriel James, named for the magnificent herald of the heavens, mashed down the clutch of the great truck. He threw one glance to the mirror at the right, then one to his left, and slowly eased the monster of waste collection backward to the loading dock where the supermarket dumpster, overflowing with extra sacks, waited. With an expertise born of 30 years experience in maneuvering massive trucks backwards through tiny concrete corridors, he smoothly slid the truck into place. It didn't even bump. Never did.

Across the two-lane highway, two school boys waiting for the bus, their heads capped in wooly red and blue, watched. Be educated men, someday, he thought. Further along than him, but he could still show them how a man developed skill and hard work. Not enough kids knew you had to work hard. But school, he thought wistfully, was pretty good too.

Visible in the left rear view mirror, Bobby, his lanky frame swaddled in a gray hooded sweatshirt and a denim coat over that, leaped off the back. He grabbed the two nearest sacks from the overflow and threw them in back. Poor Bobby, riding in the wind on raw days like this. Eighty days and still sober, God bless him, Gabriel thought, and sent a prayer again for Bobby to keep with it.

Gabriel glanced forward at the kids. They pointed at the truck and talked, trying to figure out the controls he used to sound the warning signal, open the hatch in back, execute the lifts to snare the dumpsters, and bring down the hydraulic press that compacted the waste. Like most little boys, they got excited and animated as they tried to work out what it must be like to be master of such a rig.

Time was, if he had a minute, he could give a little boy a boost into the seat and let him try the stick shift. No more, Gabriel thought. Couldn't even talk to kids any more. Couldn't boost him up into the cab and let him pretend he was master of the rig. Too much evil in this old world, he thought. Getting in the way of normal kindness. Everybody a stranger now.

Pounding on the glass alongside him brought him back. Bobby, eyes like Oreo cookies in his stark white face, plastered himself against the door and shouted words that were blunted by the window.

Gabriel waved him back and shoved the door open into the raw air.

Bobby leaped up and down on the pavement. "Gabe! It's a body! It's a body! Come back and help me!"

Gabriel slid out. "You call the dispatcher!" he said. "Lemme take a look!" He prayed it was just a drunk, somebody who crawled into the sacks to stay warm and sleep it off.

But as Len boosted himself into the cab to call the dispatcher and Gabriel climbed up the back of the truck and then onto the loading dock, he saw the shoes with the feet in them. Men's shoes, like they wore in offices, and dark socks. And he knew, all in an instant, that it was a body. All the warmth drained out of him. And he realized that the evil of this old world was even worse than he'd thought.

* * * *

"What do you make of this, Rolande?" From behind his massive, immaculate desk, the Director leaned forward and passed a dark metal object over to the tall, white-haired man who was sprawled comfortably in a plush office chair.

Dr. Caroline Drake eyed her colleague as he examined the talisman that the Director had given to him. Other than the three of them, the office was silent. Bars of morning sunlight lay in long, narrow stripes across the deeply piled carpet. Jo Brandt, the new SAS programmer and statistician, entered with a tray of coffee for the men, tea for Caroline Drake, and set it down on the Director's desk. As she turned to Miles Courtney, a ray of morning light hit the silver cross on her lapel and turned it into a tiny bright star for an instant. "Need anything else?" she asked.

"No, and thank you for pinch hitting." He stood to pass around the mugs. Jo Brandt smiled at him, avoided Caroline Drake's eye, and cast half a glance at Rolande, who smiled blandly without quite looking at her. She walked out.

A newcomer to America, Carrie did not understand why a competent young woman in a professional staff position had been assigned to serve coffee and tea. But she understood, or at least recognized Jo Brandt's fear of her. Everybody feared her here, or at least maintained their distance.

She should not, she thought ruefully, have insisted that the younger staff call her Dr. Drake. Americans didn't do that. They were so amazingly informal. Miles Courtney himself, the Director, had earned the nickname of "Corky," and everybody but the very youngest members of the staff called him that. He never objected.

Rolande, his eyes keen in his long, lined face, turned the metal object over and over. He had huge hands, but they were skillful: a surgeon's hands. "Chinese symbol," he murmured. He glanced at her. "Take a look at this, Carrie. Can you make anything of it?"

He surprised her by rising from his chair to hand her the object. She was grateful. At this hour of the morning she did not feel equal to moving about. Dr. Rolande afforded her a slight smile as he returned to his chair.

Carrie Drake wondered if the Director called this 0700 meeting just to remind her that he was in charge. For a moment she stared at the bars of sunlight on the carpet and wondered why she had come to the United States.

But she set her mug of tea onto the edge of the Director's desk and squinted at the talisman, then shook her head. "I can't make anything of the shape," she said. "I mean, it's a Chinese character, and they double as symbols, so I would guess a fertility symbol or good luck charm. But the metal--"

She hefted it in her hands and then carefully traced along the edge with a finger. In spite of irregular indentations cut into the surface, the edges themselves followed uniformly straight lines. "Made to look hand chiseled and hand finished," she said thoughtfully. She paused. She squinted along the longest edge of it. "Die cast," she said at last. "Not hand made."

Courtney, the Director of REACH Research, cocked a single eyebrow at how rapidly she reached her conclusion. "Are you certain?" he asked.

She spoke coolly. "Ninety percent certain. My guess is that it has been marketed to appear hand made." She looked over at Rolande. His gray eyes settled onto her with an attitude of amusement. He'd already figured out it wasn't hand made, she thought.

She wondered at this bit of gallantry in letting her speak first. According to local legend in Research Triangle Park, Dr. Rolande was a difficult man to work with, even more difficult than she, with stories abounding about his mercurial temper. It was said he single-handedly drove out five UNC interns from his lab, and the university refused to send him any more.

"I quite agree with Dr. Drake's opinion," Rolande said, using her formal title as a gentle reminder to Courtney that she was a skilled forensic expert, in spite of her comparative youth. "But what's it all about?"

"I need you to tell me where it came from," the Director said. "Where this particular object was actually manufactured." Once again, he had fallen into his habit of talking to Rolande as though Carrie were not there, or as though she could not answer. She pressed her lips together.

But Rolande also became sulky. "Well let Carrie assess it; she's got all that back ground in metallurgy."

She traced her index finger along its edges and then its surface. The finish on the blue-black metal was almost silky. She asked a question of her own: "Are you going to tell us how it came to you, Director? And why you are so interested in it?"

"Raleigh police lab has engaged us because they've found a link between some apparently ritualized killings that were being handled by a special Cults task force and a recent bank robbery," the Director said. She concluded that the satiny finish on the metal was acrylic resin. Yes, she ran a finger along the edge just to verify the feel. The tiny spurs along the corners were muted, not rough, as though they had been filled in with a resin.

"A bank robbery?" Rolande was amazed, almost amused. "Do people still do that?"

"These people do." The Director glanced at Rolande. "In the first investigation, there were four murders of apparently randomly chosen victims over a five month period. Bodies found in dumpsters---"

"No real attempt to hide them then," Rolande interjected.

Carrie glanced at him. "Possibly self-assurance of being untraceable."

The Director glanced from one to the other. "If I may go on?"

They nodded.

He hid his annoyance and continued: "The local police thought it was Satanism except that the bodies were not overly abused. But a symbol matching the pattern of that talisman---" And he nodded at the object in Carrie's hands--- "had been made of rope and twisted round the necks of the victims---"

"Strangulation?" Rolande asked.

The Director shook his head. "No. Just tied on and hung there. Death in three of the victims was from a lethal blow, precisely struck in the center of the forehead. The fourth was by strangling, but from a leather strap, apparently, not the rope hung 'round the victim's neck."

Yes, Carrie thought. Ritual murder. But it didn't sound like Satanism.

"And then just this past week several men tried to take over a very large bank," the Director added. "Killed a couple of security men. But one perpetrator was captured. The police found that object on him." And he nodded at the talisman. "Matches the symbols on the victims. They're trying to find a link between these boys and the murders. But the only thing the captured man told them was that he was a part of the Fighting Dead. Then he clamped up."

"Could be some kind of cult," Rolande murmured. "There are loads of them popping up all the time these days."

"Religion gone haywire," Carrie said.

The Director was curt. "Hardly."

"No I agree, Director," Rolande said. "Cults take one or two ideas out of a religion, inflate them way out of proportion, and then bow to them. But there's usually some charismatic figure behind it all. A lot of so-called religious cults are really personality cults. Built on a need in the followers. They need what he offers."

Carrie returned to examining the talisman as he finished his narrative. Yes, she thought, the object had gone through a metal casting impregnation process, in which acrylic resin was driven by high pressure into the porosities of the die cast metal. Few companies employed such a process, only one or two in Britain, and the same number in America.

"This was manufactured in the USA, most likely," she said suddenly. "Possibly Tennessee. Or maybe shopped out to smaller places in the Southeast, but we can probably get it traced today through the Tennessee distribution chain."

The Director frowned. He had no idea how she could have deduced its point of origin so quickly. Rolande looked even more amused, enjoying the Director's predicament of being dumbfounded at her acumen.

"Yes, well perhaps the two of you would be so good as to sum up your preliminary findings in a report," he said. "Something I can hand over to the formal investigation. And Rolande," he added. "If Dr. Drake is going to analyze the material, then any historic information you can give on the meaning of that thing would be helpful."

"If it were manufactured in Tennessee, I should hardly think it has any historic information," Carrie said. There was an edge to her voice. But this commentary was a mistake. Both of them ignored her opinion.

If some murderous cult has been killing the occasional victim and hanging inexpensive ropes around their necks," Rolande mused. "Why shift into high gear and rob a bank? Why take such an enormous risk?"

"To acquire an enormous sum of money," Courtney said.

Rolande tilted his head. "Yes, but why?"

"Perhaps they have plans to expand. The police have asked us to supply them with forensic information as quickly as we can. A change in the pattern of any dangerous cult spells trouble. Law enforcement wants to get all the facts and put these people under lock and key before they kill again or launch another coordinated attack on the public."

"Long hours again." The tall, white haired scientist sighed with false self-pity. "All right."

The Director glanced at his desk calendar. "Do you want Jo Brandt pulled onto your team?"

Rolande instantly shook his head. Jo Brandt, a born again Christian from what Carrie Drake had heard since coming on board two weeks ago, had been Rolande's only surviving intern from UNC. Courtney had hired her on permanent staff and then inexplicably moved her into the small IS department, where she ran the SAS functions for statistical analysis and metrics.

"If we need extra help later we can pull Jo on board," Rolande said. "Or perhaps Mike Franklin. Or both. But for right now, let's restrict the project to forensic information gathering."

The intercom on the Director's desk beeped. He pressed a button. "Yes?"

"A Detective Supina and Czerwinski have asked for you, Director. They're in the conference room," the Admin's voice said. Carrie frowned and tried to remember the girl's name.

"I wasn't expecting that," Courtney mumbled. He toggled the intercom. "Take them down to the coffee and tea, Barbara. We'll be down directly. He glanced at his two scientists. "Get yourselves presentable and we'll go down and meet them."

"What do you want us to do," Rolande asked. "Put on white lab coats and glasses?"