The Second Coming of Lucas Brokaw Page 6

  The newspaper article that morning had been a routine announcement of Warren Tanner's appointment to the foundation staff. But the public never tired of reading about the Brokaw legend; anything concerning his millions, however trivial, created instant world news. An entire column on the front page had been devoted to the story, relating in detail the provisions of Brokaw's will and the fact that his fortune had now swelled to the astronomical sum of $512,000,000. It was this figure that had caught Birkhead's eye and led him to read further.

  Jill seldom read anything, particularly newspapers, and the connection still escaped her. "Honestly, Monk, I hate to sound dense, but even if Curt was born that night . . . so what?"

  "So nothing!" Birkhead threw up his hands in disgust. "I just mentioned it at the office, that's all. Tried to explain to him that lots of people believe the switch—you know, the reincarnation—takes place at the moment of death. I wasn't even serious, for chrissakes! It was just the date and everything, and . . . well, you'll have to admit, it's a hell of a coincidence."

  "Oh, I see!" Jill beamed. "Because of the coincidence there's a chance Curt might be Brokaw. That's what you meant, right?"

  "Yeah, right. Except when I bring it up again tonight he starts lecturing me on the yo-yo mentality of anybody who takes it serious. Are you ready for that? Like I'm a fucking missionary or something!"

  Ruxton laughed, one eye cocked askew. "Don't try to weasel out of it, you big schmuck. You weren't joking. You were serious, and you damn well know it, too!"

  "Easy, tiger." Jill purred a kittenish growl and playfully ran her hand under his shirt. "Monk didn't mean any harm. And besides, maybe the idea isn't so far out after all. You and Brokaw do have the same sign, and there's lots to be said for that." Her lips brushed across his cheek and she smiled suggestively. "Know what I mean, luv?"

  "Cool it." Ruxton pulled away, his tone brusque. "We'll get it on later, but first things first. We still haven't settled Monk's zombie theory. Right, old buddy? The mummy walks again and all that."

  "Now it's zombies! Birkhead groaned. "Get your head out, will you? I'm not into that hoodoo voodoo crap. All I'm talking about is the possibility of reincarnation. Go on and laugh your ass off, but I'm telling you . . . it's the spooks that'll have the last laugh!"

  Jill suddenly rose from the chair, casting Ruxton a hurt look, and glided spectrally across the room, like a small girl playing the role of femme fatale.

  But if her smoldering sensuality was an act, there was nothing artificial about her beauty. She had ash blond hair and exquisite green eyes, along with sculptured buttocks, long sumptuous legs, and full youthful breasts. A victim of her own sexual fantasies, she believed that these attributes alone, beauty and flesh, made every man her slave. It was a daydream she had nurtured as a girl on the family farm in South Dakota, and it had worked marvelously well on country boys. Her first year in San Francisco it had even performed wonders on a succession of ultracool executive types. Yet now, like Monk Birkhead, she fooled no one. Not even herself.

  Their world orbited around Curt Ruxton, as the earth around the sun, and by tacit agreement it was understood that they were creatures of his will. While he was infinitely tolerant, never obtrusive, he nonetheless exerted that will at his pleasure.

  With casual expertise, he had orchestrated a modeling career for Jill and arranged the capital for Birkhead, who held a black belt in karate, to finance a martial arts school. In time, Ruxton had quit his own job as a stockbroker. Employing a mix of business acumen and hucksterism, he had then franchised nearly thirty karate schools throughout the Bay Area. By virtue of franchising fees and an exorbitant percentage of the gross (which were reinvested in a bullish stock market), he had parlayed the public's craze for mayhem into modest wealth. Equal partners in the venture, he and Birkhead were worth something more than $400,000.

  Appearances aside, however, there was no partnership either in the business or at home. Ruxton was the catalyst, the element that held it all together. A man of soaring intellect and a flair for the dramatic who forever played to a captive audience. The star of their little threesome.

  Jill flopped down on the sofa beside Birkhead and he put his arm around her, patting her rump with a swat of endearment. As she snuggled closer, it occurred to her that Ruxton was baiting the big man, toying with him. And the saddest part of all was that Birkhead went along with it, almost as though he enjoyed it, derived some perverse kick of his own by allowing himself to be mocked.

  She tuned out on the conversation, no longer interested. Yet she continued to watch Ruxton with a certain bemused fascination, unable to break the hold. He was like a conjurer, forever dazzling her with his tricks. There was a distant quality about him, never more apparent than when they were in bed. Then, always the man of moods and masks, it was as though his emotional nerve center had been short-circuited, leaving him wholly detached even in the act of love. Which was not the worst of faults, perhaps, considering that he was gentle and protective and so intensely vital the rest of the time. And of course she loved him. There was always that. Birkhead's voice, somehow strained and oddly defensive, intruded on her thoughts. She recognized it for what it was—not just a weakening, but that final spasm of capitulation. The way it always happened. With the big man loud and blustering, as if he really hadn't surrendered but was merely conceding a standoff. An amiable truce.

  "You know what your problem is, Curt? You're an egghead! One of them pointy-eared whiz kids always trying to make two plus two equal five. Loosen up, for chrissakes. Half the people on this earth believe in reincarnation. Did you know that? Hell, maybe more than half. So don't block it out. Relax! Let your mind expand.''

  "And the other half," Ruxton noted dryly, "believe in baby Jesus and the pearly gates. So what does that prove?"

  "You really wanna know what it proves? It proves what I've said all along. You're not even a card-carrying atheist. You're a heathen. A bloody infidel! And on top of all that, you're the stubbornest sonofabitch I ever ran across."

  Birkhead laughed a wild, braying laugh and jack-knifed to his feet, dragging Jill along with him. "C'mon, hotpants, time for fun and games." The lopsided grin reappeared, and he gave Ruxton a lewd wink. "How about it, ace? Might as well join us and make it a party."

  "No, not now." Ruxton waved them off as if dusting away a cloud of gnats. "Have fun. I'll catch up with you later."

  Birkhead shrugged and led Jill toward the bedroom. She glanced back over her shoulder—a wistful, little-girl-lost look—but Ruxton was already preoccupied rolling another joint. As they went through the door, he lit up and took a long drag, inhaling on a deep whoosh of breath.

  Embers crackled in the fireplace and a tomblike silence settled over the room. He seemed to fall asleep with his eyes open, but after a while he blinked, focusing on the distant flicker of bridge lights. Suddenly a blurred image came swimming forward in his mind. It assumed shape and substance, and in an instant of recognition, he knew it had been there all along, stuck back in some dim comer, dusty and forgotten, waiting all these years.

  A thin smile creased his lips. Then he nodded, inspecting it more closely, mildly astonished that he hadn't seen it before.

  Yes, indeed. An extraordinary idea. Not just the way Monk had intended: That was probably impossible. But worth consideration. To be exact, half a billion considerations. After all, it was not without precedent.

  Lazarus had done it before him.

  VI

  Tanner knew the man was a fraud all along.

  His name was George Haskell. Unlike most claimants, he had called the foundation beforehand requesting an appointment with the director. That was on a Monday morning a week ago, and his appearance in the office that afternoon created quite a stir.

  A man of considerable presence, Haskell had impressed Stacey from the outset. Hardly an eccentric, he seemed respectable and very businesslike. Tall and immaculately groomed, his hair prematurely flecked with gray, he had all the earmarks of a
young, upwardly mobile business executive. Which squared perfectly with the details of his personal background. An entrepreneur by profession, he dealt mainly in imports and exports, acting as middleman for various concerns on the world commodities market.

  And the tale he told concerning the Brokaw legacy was just offbeat enough to make it credible.

  Under constant business pressure, he had recently turned to transcendental meditation as an outlet for stress and mental fatigue—the by-products of success.

  According to his guru, he had a latent gift for this ancient philosophy and was soon able to achieve what amounted to a self-induced trance. It was during one of these periods, while chanting his mantra, that he had been transported to the highest level of psychic consciousness. And in a blinding moment of clarity he had seen revealed the vision, an immutable truth from beyond the veil.

  By whatever karma, he was Lucas Brokaw reincarnated.

  What followed was not the most grueling interrogation Tanner had ever witnessed. Yet it was subtle and exhaustive, and cleverly done. Stacey and the director spent nearly two hours grilling Haskell. Working as a team, they badgered and bullied, goading him the entire time. Their technique was to skip back and forth, subjecting him to a barrage of questions concerning both his own life and little-known aspects of Lucas Brokaw's life.

  Haskell submitted with equanimity, cooperative to a fault. But while his answers were sometimes fragmented, lacking in detail, they were unable to rattle him. Nor were they able to discredit his claim.

  When it was over, Haskell left as he had entered, slightly apologetic and still properly awed by the enormity of what he'd undertaken. The director, on the other hand, was a bundle of nerves. He ordered an immediate investigation into the man's background.

  Tanner never for a moment believed Haskell's story. Even as he had observed the interrogation, his sixth sense had begun vibrating. There was something phony about that man. A fixity of speech and appearance that was too pat; the look of an articulated mannequin impersonating the dynamic young tycoon. Worse yet, Tanner had the very disquieting hunch that George Haskell went by many names, none of them his own.

  Still, for all his misgivings, Tanner was positively elated by Haskell's arrival on the scene. Since joining the foundation he'd done little to earn his salary; after a month on the job he had slowly come to think of himself as an overpaid gumshoe. Not that there was any dearth of claimants, but his time was consumed investigating an assortment of weirdos and small-time con men. None of them were even remotely legitimate, and he found it difficult to justify either the time or the effort involved. To compound matters, the director's inflexibility merely underscored the deadly routine of the job.

  Unless a claimant was certifiable, Hamilton Knox insisted on a cursory investigation at the very least. Tanner's objections were constantly overruled. Thoroughly frustrated, he spent his days constructing files on kooks, petty chiselers, and an occasional religious freak.

  Nor was his luck with Stacey anything to rate hosannas. While he'd taken her to dinner several times, she had thawed only by degrees. He had yet to make it past her front door. On their last date, genuinely confused by her ambivalence, he'd put it to her point blank, urging candor. And candor was precisely what he got.

  Yes, she admitted, she was interested in him. But her experiences with hard, aggressive men had invariably ended on a sour note—primarily because she refused to play the game—and she was wary of plunging headlong into the same old trap. However attractive she found him (and despite herself, she was attracted), any involvement would have to develop gradually.

  It was encouragement of sorts, although far short of what he'd had in mind. But to his own amazement, he didn't press her further, and that's how the evening ended. Nothing resolved. No promises. Merely an agreement to take it slow and see where it led them. She had scuttled his immediate campaign to get her into bed and left him to ponder the vicissitudes of quaint rituals in a liberated age.

  So George Haskell had been a ray of sunshine just in the nick of time. Between the frustrations of the job and Stacey's wary attitude, Tanner desperately needed a diversion—something to clear the cobwebs and break the tedium. He was looking forward to a game of wits against a sly and cunning opponent.

  All too quickly, however, it proved to be a mismatch. George Haskell was smoother than most, perhaps a better actor, but he still couldn't outrun his past or cover his tracks. In attempting to do so he had merely outfoxed himself.

  Tanner accomplished it with nothing more incriminating than a water glass, which Haskell had used during the interrogation. The local police chief was delighted to cooperate, and after the glass had been dusted, the fingerprints were transferred to the FBI in Washington. The government computers went into action, and early next afternoon a complete dossier spewed out of the telex in Palo Alto.

  George Haskell was a con man nonpareil, with so many aliases his record resembled a platoon roster. His real name was Alberto Santini, born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and his cultured manner was as phony as his business credentials. Although there were no warrants outstanding, Interpol suspected him of several recent capers on the Riviera; the Customs Bureau verified his return to the United States earlier in the year. A quick check revealed that his import-export company, located in downtown San Francisco, had rented a plush suite of offices less than a month later. The firm was conspicuous by its lack of clients.

  Clearly George Haskell, né Santini, had organized a legitimate front and done his homework on the Brokaw legend. Then, radiating confidence, he'd undertaken the very scam that had defeated hundreds of his brothers-in-larceny.

  Disappointed with the ease of his victory, Tanner was on the verge of exposing the man when he was struck by a sudden inspiration. Why not allow Haskell a crack at the cryptography machine? It couldn't do any harm—scores of claimants had already failed to outwit the machine—yet it would provide Tanner with a personal look at the device in action. In turn, that might shed some light on a riddle which still defied logic: Why Lucas Brokaw had purposely placed the machine in such a vulnerable spot.

  So Tanner kept the contents of the dossier to himself. Meanwhile, the director's fidgets increased by quantum leaps, and Stacey developed a severe case of gloom. But they really had small choice in the matter. The claimant had withstood rigorous questioning and a thorough investigation. In short, he qualified for a shot at the fortune. And now, a week to the day since his interrogation, George Haskell stood face to face with the cryptography machine.

  Stacey and the director flanked him on either side, and Tanner, leaning against the wall near the entranceway, regarded him with impassive curiosity. The outer chamber was deathly quiet. In the stillness Haskell's breathing was loud and labored. Descent into the subterranean crypt was an unnerving experience, even for a magna cum laude of Sing Sing, and he was obviously struggling to maintain his composure. At last, with a tight grip on his own nerves, the director addressed him in a slow, emphatic voice.

  "You may begin when ready, Mr. Haskell. But I caution you once again, you will be allowed only one attempt. Take your time and please be very certain to touch nothing but the keyboard. If you tamper with the machine in any manner, you will automatically disqualify yourself. Are my instructions quite clear?"

  Haskell nodded, and frowned uncertainly at the machine. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, and the silence suddenly became deafening. Alert, very intent now, Tanner's gaze narrowed as the man placed his fingers on the keyboard.

  Nothing happened. The keys failed to depress.

  Flustered, Haskell quickly scanned the control panel. Then he smiled sheepishly, and clicked the on-off switch to the on position. The machine came alive with a soft, purring hum. Muttering to himself, Haskell steadied his nerves and then resorted to the hunt-and-peck system. With one forefinger, gingerly, he tapped a single key at a time. It seemed an interminable exercise, with long, reflective pauses between each letter. But finally he stopp
ed, grunted something unintelligible, and stepped back. There was a moment of silence, then the machine buzzed and whirred, emitting three strokes on a bell, and an instant later coughed up a solitary line of plaintext printout.

  THIA IS RHE UW5L QM95D V3NCZ

  Stacey and the director exchanged a quick glance.

  Haskell cursed under his breath, staring at the printout with a look of profound aggravation.

  Tanner shifted away from the wall, taut and expectant, watching closely. He waited for the machine to self-destruct or disgorge another message. Or perform some startling feat of enlightenment.

  But the machine merely purred its soft, rhythmic hum, revealing nothing. Several seconds slipped away. Then the director smiled and flipped the panel switch to the off position.

  "I believe that concludes our business, Mr. Haskell." His sangfroid once again intact, Hamilton Knox ripped the printout from the carriage. "Unless, of course, you intend to claim that these jumbled letters somehow spell THIS IS THE REAL LUCAS BROKAW."

  "I suspect he's had his fill." Tanner fixed Haskell with a cold, purposeful look. "Haven't you, Mr. Santini?"

  "You knew!" Stacey said on an indrawn breath. "You knew all along he was a fake."

  The director stiffened, a glimmer of disbelief in his eyes. "Are you telling us that this man is not who he claims to be?"

  Tanner ignored them, concentrating on Santini, his voice harsh and cutting, demanding answers. The con man denied everything at first, registering shock, hurt, and righteous indignation. But as Tanner reeled off a chronology of his police record, Santini quickly wilted, and within minutes they had the entire story. He'd spent the past six months devouring everything ever written on cryptanalysis and the development of cryptography machines. And he'd almost succeeded! Gesturing at the printout, he laughed a bitter, defiant laugh and indicated how very close he had come to breaking the code. Given time and another session with the machine, he believed he could still break it. To the letter!