Chapter 4
As nice as it is to hear someone say the words “Everything is going to be okay,” your confidence starts to wane once you’re in the police car. Something about sitting in the back, with Officers Kennedy and Fitzgerald up front, makes you aware of how alone you are. That and the fact that, if Layla was telling the truth–two police officers now have you in custody.
You take out your phone.
“What are you doing?” Officer Fitzgerald asks.
He didn’t chase Layla down the street; he returned not even moments after she left, not out of breath at all. He hasn’t spoken to you much since you got in the car.
As soon as Layla was out of your sight, you began to calm down a bit. You were probably overreacting–certainly overreacting. While she might have violated your privacy, she didn’t actually do anything to hurt you. Just being out of the situation was an improvement.
You don’t want to press charges. You don’t even think that there are real charges to press. You have no evidence that she did anything aside from know which apartment you lived in and who you spoke to this week.
And she knows Steven. So how well does Steven know you? And where did she get this information?
“I’m calling my mother,” you say. You are not, after all, a British citizen. It occurs to you that you are not entitled to protection from the British police.
“Why?” he asks.
You lower your phone and rest it against your shoulder. “Because… she’s my mother?” You offer. It’s not like your mother can do much overseas–it must be around one or two PM her time–but she’ll want to know that you’re in police custody. She’ll also want to know that strangers are apparently tracking your home address.
“Don’t bother. We’re here,” he says, and you look up, and this is not a police station
This is, in fact, a dark alley.
It’s not that big a deal, you tell yourself. These are police officers. They showed you their badges and everything. And–even if you’re the only one here, other people at the restaurant saw you go off with them. They can’t make you vanish, right?
Officer Kennedy parks the car.
“Uh, where is here?” you ask, as she turns off the engine and gets out.
She comes around to your side of the car and opens your door. Despite no longer being trapped in a police car with two unknown entities, this doesn’t make you feel any safer.
“Come on,” she says without answering your question.
Oh god. Okay. Does she have a gun? If you were in the states, she would have a gun.
Your phone beeps and lets you know that you’ve gone to your mother’s voicemail. You tuck it into your pocket without turning it off. You don’t know how long the voicemail will run.
“Uh, Officer Kennedy,” you say, pitching your voice a little louder in the hopes that the recording will pick you up. “Officer Fitzgerald. Where are we?”
Neither of them answers.
You swallow. “What are we, ten minutes from the restaurant?” Does that mean anything in London traffic? They don’t measure distance in units of time here, so much. Apparently that’s an American thing.
“Here we go,” says Officer Kennedy, and she leads you around the corner into a parking lot.
There’s a man standing there.
He has his cane in front of him, both hands on the handle.
You take a deep breath through your nose. You are rapidly reassessing the trust you’ve allocated this evening.
“Hello,” he says. “I’m sorry for this confusion.”
Officer Kennedy walks up to him and touches him on the forearm. It’s a comradely sort of gesture. He reaches out in turn and touches her shoulder. Then Officer Kennedy turns to go back to the police vehicle. You lurch toward it automatically–you have no desire to be left alone with what Layla called the dangerous man–but the sight of Officer Fitzgerald looking at you from the passenger seat causes you to throw on your brakes hard.
Slowly you turn to look at the strange man with the cane.
“I certainly feel very confused,” you confess.
The police vehicle reverses down the alley, leaving you there.
The man smiles at you. “Let’s see what I can do to help with that.” He holds out his arm to you. “Please.”
It’s not like you have much of a choice–you jettisoned that earlier when you summoned the police for Layla. Loath as you are to get within arm’s reach of him, you decide to see if playing nice can deescalate the situation. It looks like you’re on your own here. Best to get as much information as you can.
“You can call me Arthur,” he says. He’s wearing a gray shirt with a round collar tonight.
This is not the same as “my name is Arthur.”
“Arthur,” you repeat, thinking absurdly more of the aardvark than of the King of Camelot. You swallow and say, “About six feet tall, late forties, early fifties–”
He interrupts you with a laugh. “It’s all right. There’s nothing to fear here. Please.” He smiles. “You can even keep your phone on.”
“–chin-length brown hair,” you finish. “Graying.”
He purses his lips as though at some petty insult. “Would you say that you’re a fan of the films of Liam Neeson?”
You blink. “Not especially,” you say, but your parents did have a lot to say about you going to work in Europe. Brexit hasn’t changed that. You’ve seen Taken in pieces, on TV.
“It’s all right. I know that you’ve had something of a scare this evening. Let me see if I can clear some things up for you.”
Some clearing up sounds great–disregarding the source it’s coming from. He transported you to a secondary location–one you willingly went to, when you thought you were so smart–so everything he says has to be taken with a grain of salt.
“Why did you come up to me last night?” you ask. “I was minding my own business, why go to all this trouble?”
“I just have a few questions for you,” says the kind of man who you don’t want to be asking you questions.
“Yeah, you asked some of them last night,” you say.
“Please,” he says, extending his arm once more. “We can go someplace… public.”
For some reason that idea seems so much less secure than when you had it earlier this evening.
“Okay,” you say. You follow him, but you don’t take his arm.
He leads you through a neighborhood. There are people out on the street at night, which is a bit of a shock. He says, “Good evening,” as he passes them.
People laugh and greet him back, saying, “Hey, Arthur.”
Somewhere someone is playing a violin. He tells you a bit about the history of this place–its previous high crime rates.
“Now people don’t lock their doors at night,” he says. “They feel safe.”
Absurdly–probably because you were trying not to think about him, since he’s a dangerous topic–you remember Steven’s apartment door with its assorted locks and its strip of blue painter’s tape. You know that feeling safe is not the same as being safe, and that locking your doors at night is just a good sensible thing to do, but the way that he’s describing it makes it sound like there’s nothing more natural than wandering in and out of other people’s homes.
There are a lot of trees in this little area. A community garden. Tiny livestock.
Oh god, you realize. This is a cult.
“But people don’t wanna hear good news,” he says. “They wanna cling to their fear, cling to their pain.”
You bite your lower lip. There’s no way of knowing whether he knows that “Good News” is something of a loaded term in the United States. Door-to-door proselytizing often involves people knocking and asking if the resident has heard the good news–that of Jesus Christ.
You think that if he starts talking about Jesus, you can probably bullshit your way through the conversation. You wouldn’t consider yourself a particularly devout person; you aren’t particularly beholden to any religious practices, but it’s almost impossible to grow up in the United States without passing familiarity with Christianity.
He takes you to a dining hall. It’s a big dining hall. You’re a fan of community soup kitchens, but he recommends food to you and everything. “I made it myself this morning,” he says.
“Oh, I’m not hungry,” you lie. Your head is starting to ache with low blood sugar.
He nods but gets a big bowl himself. You’re a little concerned that there might be something in the food. You’ve heard of how in cults, when they’re doing their re-education process, they feed their victims lots of carbohydrates. Apparently the simple sugars keep them light-headed and dependent.
“So I’m sure you’re wondering how this all happened,” he says, gesturing around at the happy people who seem to be having movie night.
You blink. “Community outreach?” you guess.
He smiles and carries his tray over to a table. God, this is just like college.
“You could say that,” he says. “It’s a form of commitment, to ourselves and to each other. Are you familiar with the concept called Ma’at?”
“I am not,” you say.
You are about to be indoctrinated–or, subjected to doctrine, certainly. You brace yourself. Cults are dangerous. You are not smart enough to be immune to cults. The moment that you think you can outsmart them is the moment you have lost. There is a cult out there whose doctrine will be convincing enough to you that it will sound reasonable and living by its dogmas makes sense. You just have to remind yourself that this isn’t that one.
“It was one of the central tenets of ancient Egyptian life,” he says.
Your mouth opens despite yourself, and then you close it. You shouldn’t engage.
“Go on,” he says.
You shake your head. “Sorry. It’s just funny that you say ancient Egyptian.” Not in the least because he looks about as Egyptian as you are, which is to say, not at all.
He smiles as though he understands the joke, but goes on without further commentary. “Ma’at represented a principle by which all citizens of Egypt lived their daily lives. I know that you Americans like to talk about the melting pot–” You blink; the melting pot is not such a commonly-accepted concept once most people graduate eighth grade history. “–but truly, ancient Egypt was the home of many diverse peoples. They had to find some common goal for everyone to work towards together. Something to encourage all the people to live in harmony together.”
He points at the table, marking an imaginary dot. “The individual.” He draws a circle around that dot. “The family.” Another larger circle. “The community.” A third circle. “The nation.” Fourth. “The environment.” When he draws the fifth circle, he doesn’t even bother looking down at the tabletop, just looks at you. “The god.”
Oh jeez. Okay. Oh boy, this is it.
“I see,” you say slowly.
“And so they formed this moral and ethical principle to hold society together. Honor. Truth. Order.” Slowly he lets his hand come to rest on the table. “Equality. Feeding the hungry, clothing the sick.” He gestures at the dining hall around him. People are taking notice of you now. Some of them are standing up from their tables, their movie night. “You can see how well it’s worked out here.”
“Mm,” you agree. You try to be as uninteresting as possible. Don’t engage.
“Now, the way that Ma’at was measured,” the man says, “was after death, for the ancient Egyptians. The god Anubis would take the heart of the deceased, and weigh it against the feather of Ma’at–of truth. And if the heart was heavier than the feather, then it was not pure. You see, how actions against harmony weigh on the soul?”
“Mmm. Sure.” You nod. For a man espousing ancient Egyptian mythology, what he’s describing sounds an awful lot like a certain Christian concept of sin.
“When the heart was impure, it would be devoured by the goddess Ammit. The deceased could not be allowed to travel on towards the god Osiris and immortality. There could be no peace for those who were not in harmony with Ma’at.”
Well, this sounds distinctly dangerous. You nod very slowly.
“But the limitations of this arrangement,” he says, “are that justice could only be done after harm was committed. I mean murders, untruths, theft, victimization–these were things that Ammit had no power to stamp out. She had to stand by and wait for those perpetrators to come to her justice. There was no protection for those who were living purely. They were mowed down by those who had no compassion towards their fellow man.
“What I am working towards,” he says, “is a better world. A kinder world. One where the temptation to do evil will be taken away entirely, because the choice will no longer be there. Imagine–a society entirely full of people working towards their good and everyone else’s.”
You wonder if it’s just the reactionary American in you that makes you wonder if what he’s describing sounds like communism. You’re not sure you know enough about communism in the finer details to be certain.
“And so,” he says, “everyone here… has submitted to Ammit’s judgment.” He rolls up one sleeve.
On his forearm is a tattoo of a pair of scales.
He picks up the cane. For a moment you fear that he’s going to strike you with it. But instead he hooks it over his forearm and holds out his other hand to you, his scale tattoo still on display.
“Will you do the same?”
You open your mouth, not sure what the right answer is here. If you say yes, you’re participating, encouraging him. If you say no–you glance at all the people around you. There is not a single soul in this community space who is not looking at you.
“I don’t understand,” you say. You are reluctant to touch him. “When you say that… the choice to do evil will no longer be there… what does that mean?”
He lowers his hand to the table again. His smile now is small, understated. Even fanatical. “That is the beauty of Ammit. She reviews a life in its entirety, from the moment of birth to the moment of death. She can see everything that you have ever done, are doing, will ever do. Everything that goes into your heart so that it should not weigh only as much as the feather of truth.”
You swallow. “But I thought–didn’t you say that Anubis did the weighing?” You’re engaging, but you think you have to, in order to stall.
“The scales are her domain,” the man says. “Her judgment is the judgment of the impure.”
You smile to show your understanding. “Sorry,” you say. “I’m not an expert.”
“We are all learning,” he says. “Everyone here has committed to learning at least three languages, so that we are better able to live alongside each other in harmony.”
You raise your eyebrows a little and nod. “Oh.” You still don’t want to touch him. You sense that it might be dangerous. You draw your hands close to your chest and touch your palms together. “This is all… very unexpected.” You take a deep breath. Your head is starting to buzz. “I don’t think… I just don’t understand why you’re interested in me.”
“There are those… working counter to our purpose,” he says. “Those who do not wish to submit to judgment. When I mentioned our mutual acquaintance, I was speaking of just such a person.”
“Right,” you say. He still hasn’t taken the cane from its hook across his forearm. The waiting ritual makes you nervous–well, more nervous. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember the name.”
This is a lie. You are going to remember the name Marc Spector until you die.
“Marc Spector,” says the man. “But I believe you may know him by another name. Steven Grant?”
He actually managed to surprise you. Sure, Layla brought up Steven. But she didn’t say that Marc Spector was his other name.
“You mean, like, a fake name?” you ask despite yourself. “Steven has a fake name?”
“Steven is a fake name,” the man says. “The person I’m looking for is Marc Spector, an American mercenary dishonorably discharged from the US Marine Corps, who then went to work as a mercenary in the Middle East and North Africa. He and his wife, Layla El-Faouly, have been involved in the illegal antiquities trade for their own profit for the last ten years. He’s a graverobber, a tomb raider, and an international fugitive from justice.”
You become aware that your mouth is open.
There’s a lot to unpack there.
“There must be some kind of mistake,” you say. “Steven Grant is a pretty common name. I’m… I’m pretty sure it’s Captain America’s name, actually. The Steven I know is… he’s from London, and he works at the British Museum, and he’s not a US Marine. Or… an ex-US Marine.”
“And you had a date with him on Saturday night,” Arthur says.
You open your mouth to agree, and then close it. You didn’t believe Layla–Steven’s wife?–when she told you that this guy had cops on his payroll, and then the cops brought you to him. It’s in your best interest to keep your mouth shut now.
Oh, shit, you already told him that Steven works at the British Museum.
And he knows the woman’s name! You… you probably said Layla’s name to the cops. Did you give them her full name? You don’t think you did; you can pronounce “Layla” just fine, but “El-Faouly” isn’t common enough for you to be confident saying it. Is that something that Arthur already knew from his surveillance of Steven, or is this something that he learned from watching you?
“And he didn’t show up on Saturday,” Arthur says. “You sat and ate curry by yourself. Like when you were stood up for homecoming in high school. Did it bring back memories?”
That gets your attention. You haven’t even thought about that in years–it was for a tenth-grade dance, and the guy was an underclassmen, and you ended up going with your friends anyway. So how could he possibly know about that?
“And then on Wednesday night, he called you. He called you very late. And you went out and picked him up at the restaurant. That’s…” He shakes his head slightly. “A lot of effort for a near-stranger, especially one who’s already disappointed you.”
Do you disagree with him? You know you don’t want to explain how confused Steven sounded. Not like a callous man at all, but like a frightened one.
“And then,” he says, “you drove him to his apartment. And you went upstairs with him.”
For a moment his serious tone goes right over your head, and you wonder if he’s about to accuse you of sleeping with a man before even the first date. Then you realize that that’s something that you have: Steven’s home address.
You don’t remember it.
But it’s definitely still in your GPS history.
“What did you see when you were up there?” he asks.
Oh, god, why does he want to know this? What could he possibly do with this information? Is it… was the ring of sand around the bed somehow a trick? Does he know that Steven is Not Okay and he wants to use this information against him?
Come to think of it, would Steven be a good candidate for a cult at the moment? He seems… sort of vulnerable.
“Uh,” you say. “A male living space. You know.”
He stares blankly at you, that vaguely pleasant smile still on his face. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. Could you explain?”
You shrug. “He had a bed. And a stepladder. And a smoke alarm that seemed to be working. It had the… the light on and everything.”
“You didn’t notice any noteworthy decor?” he asks.
The postcards. Maybe–maybe this has something to do with tracking someone’s movements? Maybe he wants to know where Steven has postcards from because he’s trying to track someone’s movements? Steven’s mother’s movements?
“He probably could have vacuumed more frequently?” you offer, because there was a big ring of sand in the middle of his apartment. “And he needs some kind of organizational system, because wow.”
“Do you think it’s likely that the apartment could be a front for the antiquities trade?” he asks. “Is there room for hiding spaces there?”
You blink at him. “I… don’t know,” you say. “It didn’t look like a front for organized crime. I don’t really know what a front for organized crime looks like–” Unless it looks like a dining hall and a community theater and a community garden for a group of people who don’t lock their doors at night in London. “--but I didn’t look at it and go, ‘this man is obviously involved in something criminal.’”
“I see,” Arthur says, and unhooks the cane from over his forearm. He sets it down and stands up, then holds out his hand to you. “Then perhaps you’d provide the brief use of your phone.”
You idiot, you realize suddenly. You don’t just have Steven’s address. You have his cell phone number in your call history. He wants to talk to him.
You look behind you at all the people standing around in a ring, watching.
“Actually, this is my work phone,” you say–which is a total lie; you’re not ranked highly enough in the company to have a dedicated phone for work. “And per company policy I’m–”
He grabs your forearm, moves your arm out of the way, and reaches into your pocket to take your cell phone. He holds it up to your face–you try looking away, but he gets you with the FaceID–and then he walks away, leaving you in the middle of the room with the cultists.
“This is a violation of GDPR,” you mutter, and wrap both arms about yourself and wait.