“He doesn’t have a name, but he says this chick told Toby that the Antichrist had been destroyed and doomsday was at hand. That’s when the wagon train rolled.”
“And?” I felt numb.
“The dog wasn’t invited.”
“Nothing else?”
“He says the lady is definitely mother superior.”
“Kathryn also spoke of a woman.”
“Name?”
“I didn’t ask. It just didn’t sink in at the time.”
“What else did she say?”
I repeated what I could remember.
Ryan placed a hand on mine.
“Tempe, we really don’t know anything about this Kathryn except that she’s spent her life with the encounter culture. She shows up at your place claiming she found you through the university. You say your address isn’t listed. That same day forty-three of her closest friends take a hike in two states and the lady does her own vanishing act.”
True. Ryan had voiced misgivings about Kathryn earlier.
“You never found out who pulled the cat trick?”
“No.” I withdrew my hand and went to work on the thumbnail.
For a while neither of us spoke. Then I remembered something else.
“Kathryn also made reference to an Antichrist.”
“How?”
“She said Dom didn’t believe in Antichrists.”
Ryan was quiet a long time. Then,
“I talked to the guys who worked the Solar Temple deaths in Canada. Do you know what went down in Morin Heights?”
“Just that five people died. I was in Charlotte, and the American media focused mostly on Switzerland. The Canadian end got very little press.”
“I’ll tell you what happened. Joseph DiMambro sent a team of assassins to kill a baby.” He paused to let that sink in. “Morin Heights was the kickoff for the fireworks overseas. Seems this kid’s birth hadn’t been approved by Big Daddy, so he viewed him as the Antichrist. Once the tyke was dead the faithful were free to make the crossing.”
“Jesus Christ. Do you think Owens really is one of these Solar Temple fanatics?”
Ryan shrugged again. “Or it could be some sort of copycat shuck. It’s hard to know what the Adler Lyons babble means until the psychologists work it out.”
A treatise had been found at the compound on Saint Helena. And a map of Quebec Province.
“But I don’t give a hog’s tit which looney is in the lead if innocent people are trailing along to their deaths. I’m going to catch this bastard and gut him and fry him up myself.”
His jaw muscles bunched as he picked up the magazine.
I closed my eyes and tried to rest, but the images wouldn’t settle.
Harry, buoyant and full of life. Harry in sweats and no makeup.
Sam, unnerved by the invasion of his island.
Malachy. Mathias. Jennifer Cannon. Carole Comptois. A charred cat. The contents of the package at my feet.
Kathryn, eyes pleading. As if I could help her. As if I could take her life and somehow make it better.
Or was Ryan right? Had I been set up? Was Kathryn sent for some sinister purpose of which I was unaware? Was Owens responsible for the slaughtered cat?
Harry had spoken of order. Her life sucked and the order was going to pull her clear. So had Kathryn. She said the order affects everyone. Brian and Heidi had broken it. What order? Cosmic order? An order from on high? The Order of the Solar Temple?
I felt like a moth in a jar, batting against the glass with random thought after random thought, but unable to escape the cognitive restraints of my own jumbled thinking.
Brennan, you’re making yourself crazy! There’s nothing you can do at thirty-seven thousand feet.
I decided to break free by dropping back a hundred years.
I opened my briefcase, pulled out a Belanger diary, and skipped to December of 1844, hoping the holidays had put Louis-Philippe in a better mood.
The good doctor enjoyed Christmas dinner at the Nicolet house, liked his new pipe, but did not approve of his sister’s plan for a return to the stage. Eugenie had been invited to sing in Europe.
What he lacked in humor, Louis-Philippe made up for in tenacity. His sister’s name was written often in the
