Part 9 (1/2)

There was a whump whump and a roar. Then Jerry Cochran came into full view, tall, grim, his eyes crazy, his face so rigid it might be made of stone. In his hand was a black blowtorch gus.h.i.+ng fire. Alex turned and twisted on the rocking bed-stead. His mind swarmed with terrors. In the deep of the night when he was all alone he had sweated out the possibility of just this martyrdom, death by fire. and a roar. Then Jerry Cochran came into full view, tall, grim, his eyes crazy, his face so rigid it might be made of stone. In his hand was a black blowtorch gus.h.i.+ng fire. Alex turned and twisted on the rocking bed-stead. His mind swarmed with terrors. In the deep of the night when he was all alone he had sweated out the possibility of just this martyrdom, death by fire.

”If you answer my questions, I will first garrote you,” Jerry Cochran said softly.

Alex wept openly. He already knew what he would do, he had thought all this out very carefully.

Inquisitors must understand themselves well enough to know what they will do under torture. ”I'm sorry, Jerry,” he said between sobs. Then he fixed his mind on the Jesus prayer, his only weapon against the agony of the flames: ”Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus, thou art with me, Jesuss-oh! Oh, G.o.d! AAAHHH!”

Jerry had held the flame against Alex's chest. There was a stink of burnt hair. ”You're very sensitive, Alex. I hardly touched you.”

Alex felt his bladder let go. But they had prepared for that. He could feel that a towel was stuffed between his legs. ”Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus, thou art with-”

The flames sent tidal waves of razor-sharp agony up his thighs as Jerry played the flame along his legs.

Skin popped and crackled. Oily smoke rose.

”We know your drinking companion is a reporter, Alex. What is his name?”

”Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus, thou art with me.” Alex stopped in confusion when the next application didn't come. To his utter horror he felt Jerry pulling away the towel that had protected him.

”The Judists are celibate, I think,” he said. ”Well, I don't suppose it matters one way or the other, does it, my friend? No more worries about keeping your vow.”

When he felt the fire this time it was as if his insides were being torn out, as if all the flaming stars of heaven had fallen on him. Wild with torment he shrieked, he bellowed until his throat cracked, he jerked and twisted on the iron bedstead.

n.o.body could hear him, not out here on one of the Night Church's vast country estates.

”Name him!”

”Qui-i-st! QUIST! QUIST!!”

”Ah.”

”Stop! Jerry, I told you! Stop! Stop!”

With lazy strokes, Jerry moved the tongue of flame up and down Alex's legs from his crotch to the searing, crackling bottoms of his feet. ”QUIST! QUIST! OH, G.o.d!”

Jerry gazed at him with the hooded eyes of great pa.s.sion. His face was flushed. ”Now we'll get started on your belly, OK, Alex?” He smiled a little. ”Maybe if you tried the Jesus prayer some more it would help.Or if you told me the names of the other sc.u.m in your cell!”

”I told you, QUIST!”

”He was a recent contact. A reporter indeed. What an amateurish attempt to harm us-attracting the attention of a reporter. I want to know the other names, Alex, all of them!”

To give up his cell was the ultimate failure of an Inquisitor. Desperate, knowing his own weakness, Alex tried to knock himself senseless by banging his head against the iron bar beneath it. But Jerry had thought of that. A leather collar restrained his neck. ”Look, Alex, you're suffering so much I'll offer you another deal. I'm afraid you've been too difficult to deserve garroting, but you give me the names and I'll do your face with the torch. It'll be over very quickly.”

”Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus-”

When the flames came this time they pierced his belly and made his stomach boil. His bowels exploded inside him, mixing their torment with the searing of the flesh. Hot steam rushed up his throat and scorched his mouth and nose.

Jerry stopped. ”You may be wondering why all this pain doesn't just knock you out. We loaded you up with amphetamines, Brother Alex. You cannot escape into unconsciousness.”

That did it. He had been hoping to faint, even to go into a coma from the pain and the damage. This was just too much. Even in his worst imaginings he had never dreamed torture would be this bad. It was almost incredible that the human body could endure such agony. Sick at heart, facing his own miserable failure, Alex listed the names of the people in his cell. ”G.o.d forgive me. Brother Julius Timothy is one, Brother George Yates the other.”

”That's all? Why such a small cell?”

”Holy Spirit was a backwater a.s.signment.”

Jerry nodded. ”So we thought. That's why we use it so much.”

”You're very clever.”

”I know we are, Alex.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Alex sought the eyes of his torturer. There was contact between the two men then, the anguished victim and his tormentor. In Jerry Cochran's eyes Alex saw so many things: hate, enjoyment, self-loathing, and deep down in the sparks and the shadows, a scared little boy who had been lost for a long time.

”G.o.d forgives you, my son, and I forgive you too.”

Jerry laughed. As sad a sound as Alex had ever heard. ”I ought to give you the full treatment for that.”

He turned up the blowtorch until it bellowed out a great gust of flame.

For a moment he hesitated as if undecided. He pointed the torch at Alex's chest. ”Jesus, thou art with me, Jesus-”

But something had moved that hard man, and he suddenly changed the direction of the flame. For an instant Alex saw fire, then he felt a red-hot poker go down his throat, then he was all in cool. He fell away into timeless blessedness.

Jerry directed the work crew to complete the cremation and bag the body. Then they returned to Queens and entered Alex's apartment with the remains. They replaced them in Alex's bed, which they then set afire.

Twenty minutes later the fire department arrived. Ten minutes more and steam was pouring out the window of Alex Parker's apartment. Mike arrived on the scene with Terry Quist clinging to him like a baby.

When he saw the charred, wet remains of Alex Parker being carried out of the building Terry grabbed fistfuls of his own hair.

The cause of death was listed as burns and asphyxiation. The agency was a mattress fire. The means of ignition was theorized to have been a cigarette.

Officially, the martyr was listed as having died because he smoked in bed.

Terry Quist left the scene a haunted, stricken man.

Mike Banion watched him go. And he wondered.

Chapter Six.

THE PERMANENT GLOOM of Rayne Street surrounded Jona-than the moment he turned from busy MacDougal. Rayne was a narrow cobbled lane between MacDougal and Sul-livan, like Gay Street and Aldorf Mews one of Greenwich Village's hidden streets. Here NYU had placed its data storage facilities in the enormous black hulk of the house that dominated the short block. In the bas.e.m.e.nt they had found room for Jonathan's lab. He hated the place, hated its dampness, its inconvenient distance from campus, and above all, the dark gargoyled ugliness of the building itself. The sun never shone on Rayne Street, not even at high noon. It was one of the few New York streets still cobbled with the round stones that had seen carriages and wagons and had resounded to the clatter of hoofs. Jonathan's foot-falls were the only sound that disturbed it now. He looked up at the front of the house. At least the place was well kept. A small bra.s.s plaque on the door announced NEW YORK UNI-VERSITY DIGITAL DATA STORAGE FACILITY.

Under the stoopwas another door, this time with a plastic sign: PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY DEPT. LAB B.

Jonathan was expecting the lock to be stiff”. He hadn't used it in three weeks, but it turned easily. The iron door opened without a squeak.

The hallway beyond was pitch black, Jonathan fumbled for the switch, found it, and turned it on.