orgy down the hall would last, or if the sentries’
circuit took them indoors. Speed was of the essence.
I searched the laundry room, the kitchen, the
members’ library, looked for hidden tunnels, false
walls, secret stairways. Found nothing.
Using a master key I discovered on the ring l’d
taken from Graffius, I conducted a fruitless search
of each room. Halfway through there was one false
alarm: sudden movement under the bedcovers of
one of the beds. For one heart-stopping moment I
thought my search was’ over. But the bodv tunder
the blanket was adult, male, hirsute, and tlick, the
face above it red-nosed,, openmouthed, and mot-tied:
a cultist sleeping off a cold. The man stirred
under the beam of my flashlight, passed wind, and
rolled over, dead to the world. I left quietly.
The next room was Delilah’s. She’d kept some of
her old reviews and press clippings in the bottom
of a drawer filled with plain cotton underwear.
289
Other than that her sleeping quarters were as barren
as those of the others.
I went from room to room, checking another dozen
cells bet:ore coming to the one I remembered was
Matthias’s. The door wouldn’t respond tQ any o£
the keys on the ring.
I used the crowbar. The bolt was a long one and
wouldn’t surrender until the door was nearly shattered.
Anyone passing by would notice the damage.
I slipped inside,,taut with pressure.
It was as before. Identical to the others except for
the small bookcase. Low ceilinged. Cool Walled
and floored with stone. Dominated by a hard narrow
bed covered with a coarse gray’blanket.
The humble domicile of a man who’d pounds rsaken
the pleasures o pounds the flesh for those of the spirit.
Ascetic. And’ pounds lse to the core.
For the man was anything but spiritual. Minutes
ago I’d watched him defile a .church, drunk with
power, cold as Luci pounds r. Suddeuly the books on his
shelves seemed to stare out at me. Mockingly. Righteous
tomes on. religion, philosophy, ethics; morality.
Books had revealed secrets once already, this eve’rang,.
Perhaps they would again.
Furiously, I emptied the shelves, examining each
volume, opening, shaking, searching pounds r pounds lse spines,
hollowed out pages, dues scrawled in margins.
Nothing. The books were pristine, bindings stiff,
pages crisp and unfoxed.
Not a single one had been read.
The empty bookcase teetered, shi pounds ed on its base.
I caught it before it fell. And noticed something.
-The portion o pounds the floor that had been under the
bookcase was a clearly demarcated rectangle, a shade
lighter than the rest. I knelt, pointed the flashlight,
ran my fingers over the edges, seams. Cut into the
stone. I pushed. Faint movement.
It rook some experimenting to find the proper
fulcrum. Stepping on one corner of the rectangle
Idf-ted the block sufficiendy to lodge the crowbar in
the opening. I exerted pressure. The slab rose and I
pushed it aside.
The hole was about eighteen inches by a foot,
four. reef deep and lined with concrete. Too small
for a boiy. But more than ample for other booty:
I found double plastic bags tightly packed with
powder in shades of choco/ate and vanilla: snowy
cocaine and a brownish substance that I recognized
as Mexican heroin. A metal strongbox full of sticky
dark resin.raw opium. Several pounds of hashish
in foilwrapped chunks the size of soap bars.
‘
And at the bottom of the hole, a single manila
folder.
I opened it, read it, .and slipped it into my shirt.
By now I was carrying more cargo than the Southern
Pacific. I turned off the flashlight, looked both
ways down the hall. Heard the sounds of human
voices. At the end of the corridor was a door leading
outside. I sprinted, as fast as I could and hurled
myself through it, lungs aching.
Cultists were streaming out of the sanctuary, most
of them still naked. I made it to the base of the
fountain without being seen and hid under the oak
trees. Matthias came out surrounded by women.
One wiped his brow. Another–Maria, the bland-faced,
grandmotherly woman who’d sat at the entrance
the day of my first visit—gave him a neck