Service. That, and acing the Foreign Service Officers’ exam. The fact that she’d inherited her mother’s flair for languages and had snagged a graduate Fulbright scholarship to study Mandarin at Peking University hadn’t hurt, either.
Her linguistic skills had led to her first assignment as a cultural affairs officer in Beijing. Those three years had been exciting as hell but convinced Jilly she wasn’t the stuff bureaucrats are made of. She’d loved the people she worked with and fully appreciated the positive effects of cultural exchanges but hated the paperwork.
She’d returned from Beijing undecided about a career with the State Department. The months she’d spent filling in for Elizabeth Wells had settled the matter. As an OMEGA operative, she could still travel to exotic locations, still engage with people of all nationalities and political persuasions. But she wouldn’t have to write a twenty-page report after every contact.
Since she’d handed in her State Department ID along with her resignation, she had to wait at the visitors’ entrance for an escort. He emerged from the inner sanctum moments later and greeted her in fluent Mandarin.
“Nee hao, Gillian. Ching shou, nee huey lai dao State!”
Laughing, she shook her head and answered in kind. “Sorry, Don. I’m not returning to the fold. I’m here as a civilian. And a supplicant.”
Don Ackerman huffed in disappointment. He was one of several senior Foreign Service Officers who staffed the China desk. He’d tried every stratagem in his considerable repertoire to keep Jilly in his sector, including outright bribes and her choice of assignments.
“What can I do for you?” he asked after he’d signed her in and she’d processed through security screening.
“Point me to whoever’s handling radical religious cults these days.”
“You’re kidding, right? You know very well two thirds of our antiterrorist division is working that threat.”
“This one doesn’t sound jihadist, unless they’ve gotten into animal sacrifice.”
“Animal sacrifice?” Don scratched his chin and led the way down a long corridor. “We’ve got several of those. The most visible is the Santeria sect in south Florida. But the Supreme Court decided their ritual sacrifice of chickens during ceremonies is an expression of religious freedom, so we don’t classify them as radical anymore.”
“How about monkeys? Or small apes?”
Ackerman’s lips pursed. He was a big man, going soft around the middle these days, but still possessed the encyclopedic knowledge of world cultures that had made him a legend at State.
“That sounds more like the Vhrana Sect.” He came to a full stop in the hallway. “They’re bad news, Gillian. What’s your interest in them?”
Although she suspected State had received the same urgent missive Lightning had, Jilly hadn’t been cleared to discuss it with anyone outside OMEGA. All she could tell Don was a basic version of the truth.
“I’m doing some research for the agency I now work for.”
His penetrating gray eyes drilled into her. “You’d better talk to Sandra Hathaway. She’s our Vhrana expert.”
Sandra Hathaway was a dark-haired, intense analyst. The kind, Jilly guessed, who doled out information sparingly to folks in the field. She hunched over her computer and made no effort to disguise her annoyance at the interruption. Her irritation morphed instantly into a closed, guarded expression when Don mentioned the Vhrana.
He overrode her bureaucratic caution with a blunt order. “Gillian was one of our own until she bailed. Despite that serious lapse of judgment, I’ll vouch for her. Give her whatever information you can about the sect.”
“Whatever” turned out to be scary as hell. The Vhrana, Jilly soon learned, were an even more dangerous splinter group of the religious fanatics who set off chemical bombs in a Tokyo subway some years back.
“The Vhrana believe the only true path to enlightenment is to cleanse the world of evil, as they see it,” Hathaway related. “They practice rites that derive from Buddhism and ancient forms of Hinduism, with a dash of Turkish Sufi thrown in. The more ‘advanced’ in the sect go into trances and spin around for hours.”
“Like whirling dervishes?”
“Precisely.”
“And they also practice animal sacrifice?”
“In ancient times, they sacrificed humans. Usually enemies captured after a battle. The Vhrana drank blood from the vanquished warriors’ skulls to imbibe their valor before devouring their hearts and livers.”
“Nice guys.”
“Don’t delude yourself. The women in the sect were—and still are—every bit as bloodthirsty. You don’t want to get crosswise of a Vhrana priestess. Nowadays, of course, human sacrifice has been outlawed. So has animal sacrifice, for that matter, but the Vhrana still practice it on holy days. They’re rumored to offer up a variety of animals, but their sacrifice of choice is a monkey or ape.”
The picture of the little gibbon flashed into Jilly’s mind.
“I thought most Hindus revere monkeys. In fact, I remember reading about the hordes of monkeys that now overrun New Delhi because the devout feed them peanuts and bananas.”
“The Vhrana have perverted that reverence. Or elevated it, I guess you could say. Since primates are the closest things to humans, they believe they’re honoring the animal by sacrificing them to their gods.”
“Do you have a fix on the Vhrana sects in the U.S.?”
“We’re tracking seven different branches. The largest is in California.”
Where the dead gibbon was found. A frisson of excitement jumped along Jilly’s nerves. She didn’t have the training or field experience of a seasoned agent, but every scrap of intuition she possessed told her she was on the right trail.
“The second-largest sect is right across the state line,” Hathaway continued, “in Baltimore. It draws most of its followers from the D.C. area.” Swinging around, she clicked a few keys on her computer. “Here’s a shot of the exterior of their temple.”
Jilly studied the windowless brick building. “It looks like a warehouse.”
“It is. We’ve ascertained that the owner has no idea what goes on in his building between the hours of midnight and dawn. His night manager takes over then.”
Another click brought up a shot of a handsome man in the turban of a Sikh. Next to him was a smiling, doe-eyed female in a turquoise sari and veil.
“That’s the night manager’s wife, the current high priestess. We’ve been told she wields the knife at the altar. We hope to verify that tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“It’s the first night of the second full moon since harvest. One of their holiest days.”
“Who’s going in?”
“Special
