He stopped, as if suppressing a belch. 'In other words, kill the fuckers that did this, amen.'
You've got to take us there,' Heather said.
'Sorry, ma'am, but all the money in the world wouldn't get me back to Liberty'
'A fourteenyear-old girl is missing. You are the only person we know who can go into that town and work out where we might find her.'
He shook his head. 'They'd shoot me down for the apostate I am. Mormonism, and fundamentalism in particular, are pretty Old Testament in their oudook. Dissent isn't tolerated. Dissenters even less so.' He finished another beer. And what do you think I'd find out anyway? I doubt very much this has anything to do with anyone in Liberty.
Few of them venture more than ten kilometres from their home. How the hell do you think they got to London and did what you think they did?'
'Sarah and Horton made it.'
He nodded as if to say, touche. 'I just don't see it. I'm sorry. I'd like to help. Any other help you want that I can give, I'll do my best. But as for walking back into Liberty, that'd be signing my own death warrant.'
Heather appeared to relent. The four of them fell silent.
Heather shook her head. Well, I'll be going up there first thing tomorrow.'
'Good luck,' Pettibone said. 'Take your sunglasses.'
Nigel gave him a bewildered look. 'You'll see what I mean,'
he said cryptically and laughed quietly to himself again.
If the residents rarely left their town, Nigel wondered if they had access to any material that would allow them to research genealogy, to trace the ancestral path cut by Sarah and Horton, though he wasn't sure how, given how difficult he had found it with all the tools at his disposal -- though, crucially, he had not known where to start.
'Do you know whether the TCF have any access to computers, reference books, that sort of thing?' he asked.
'They didn't even allow televisions when I was there.
Maybe they do now. They do have a website -- I've seen it.'
He shook his head sadly but with the same wry bewilderment that characterized most of his actions and words.
'They have a website?' Nigel was astonished.
Pettibone nodded, eyes dancing with amusement in reaction to Nigel's disbelief. 'I know. Fucking crazy, huh?'
'Nearly all these groups have websites,' Donna drawled in agreement. 'Go and search and you'll see. They're competing.
You ban TV and everyone else having a PC because you don't want your believers to be led astray, but you need to let people know what you believe so the cult down the road doesn't snatch your recruit - if you don't grow, you can stagnate and d
'I just thought these groups were a bit incestuous,' Nigel explained. 'That you had to be born into them.'
'No, your friend here is right,' Pettibone said. 'They want new blood. Usually female - or it's OK if you're already married and you don't mind sharing your wife. Or your daughter, for that matter. You just have to move to the ass-end of nowhere to sign up.'
'One thing I don't understand,' Heather interjected.
'The fire, yes it loomed large in the minds of the people of the TCF. It led directly to them setting up their Church.
But I don't see why the mainstream Church has withdrawn all reference to it. Why airbrush history when the history doesn't reflect that badly on you.'
'That's my Church,' Donna interjected. 'Think of these splinter groups as very embarrassing, ultra- embarrassing kid brothers. You don't even want to pretend you know them when they get into trouble or do something to shame you. You like to pretend they don't even exist. The Church is trying to distance itself as much as possible, act like they never were even Mormons in the first place -- get rid of the information, then you stop people following the trail. But one thing you can't do is stop living, breathing people passing it on by word of mouth.'
11
Foster was at his desk when his phone burst to life. He had been kicking his heels, as bereft of inspiration as the rest of the team. It was Heather; she was almost stumbling over her words in her eagerness to pass them on to Foster. Blood atonement, she kept repeating excitedly.
Blood atonement.
Foster managed to make her slow down and explain.
She told him what she had learned from Josiah Pettibone, about the splinter sect formed from the ashes of the 1890
tragedy, and their teachings.
'You've got to go there,' he said. 'Take a look around.'
She said she planned to at first light the following day, given the lateness of the hour in the States. 'They're pretty cut off from the world,' she explained.
Well, take care. Let me speak to Harris and let's see if we can open a channel with the US authorities. We might need them.' He paused. 'Do you think Naomi's there?'
'I doubt it. I mean, how? Unless he managed to change her appearance and get her a new identity in a week. Or rowed her here himself.'
She was right. It was doubtful. It was more likely that a former member of the TCF, or someone seeking to set up an offshoot, was doing it in their name. Heather's mind appeared to be heading in the same direction.
'They may keep themselves to themselves but they do have a website. There could be contact with the outside world. Maybe you could have a look and pass that on to the Americans - see if there's been any particular regular traffic to the site?'
Foster took a note. Heather rang off, but not before he'd wished her luck and urged caution once more. Neither of them knew what she might find when she got to Liberty City. He woke his computer from its snooze and hunted for the website of the True Church of Freedom. He found it immediately.
It was basic in design, and didn't play the theme from Deliverance as it loaded. The home page was rudimentary, a few pictures of the town and the rolling hills that surrounded it. There was a brief history of the Church and a set of links to one side. One was a link outlining their difference with mainstream Mormonism. The next was a list of revelations regarding the Church above and beyond those experienced by Smith, Young and Taylor. It included Orson Walker senior, Orson junior, and two successors.
Most of it seemed to be justifying their position as the one true Church and condemning the main Church as apostates.
Orson junior's first revelation, of June 1891, Doctrine and Covenant 143, caught his eye: Revelation given to the fifth prophet and fourth President of the Church, Orson Walker junior, concerning the oath of vengeance, which was only part of the temple endowment ceremony, but which, after the death of his father and members of his family as a result of a grievous fire, was, according to the Lord, to become scripture.
1. I say thus: Thou shalt seek and never cease to seek to avenge the blood of our Prophets on this nation, including the blood of my servant Orson P. Walker, and you will teach this to your children and your children's children unto the fourth generation.
2. If ye believe it, then let it be, Amen.
He read the revelation again and again.
