They continued south on Route 95, which soon brought them to the outskirts of Providence, although they did not take any of the exits leading into Rhode Island's capital city.
"Lovecraft country," Stark said, as if to himself.
Mary Margaret Doyle's brow furrowed. "Excuse me?"
"H.P. Lovecraft. He used to live in Providence."
"Is that someone I should know? He's doesn't work on the Hill, does he?"
Stark gave a growl of laughter. "No, he's been dead a long time. Lovecraft was a writer. Still quite well known, in some circles."
"I don't think I've ever come across his work," she said. Clearly, if she hadn't read Lovecraft, he wasn't worth reading.
"Good to know that there are some gaps even in a Vassar education," Stark said. "Lovecraft wrote a lot of stories, back in the Twenties and Thirties. Pulp fiction, I guess you could call it, but well done, nonetheless."
"That's interesting." Her tone said otherwise.
Stark ignored her sarcasm. "Lovecraft wrote a lot of his stories about this race of creatures he called the Great Old Ones."
"Sounds like the Foreign Relations Committee," she said, smiling.
"Lovecraft's guys were even older than some of my esteemed colleagues," he said. "The Old Ones were supposedly on Earth long before man. They were immensely powerful, almost like gods. Eventually, some savvy humans found a way to control them, to lock them away where they couldn't do us any harm. But in Lovecraft's stories, the damn things keep getting loose, despite man's best efforts."
Mary Margaret Doyle drove in silence for half a mile or so, then asked her boss, "Is there a moral in there somewhere? Some point you're trying to make, however obliquely?"
"No, I don't think so," Stark said.
"I mean, if you don't want to go through with this, I can take the next exit and turn around. We can stop for coffee somewhere and then head back to Boston. Believe me, I'd understand. I'm a little frightened at the prospect of doing this, myself."
Frightened
did it. "No, keep going, damn it," he said. "We started this, we'll see it through. If this guy turns out to be a fraud, it'll be something we can laugh about later, maybe."
"Maybe," she said softly. "Maybe we will."
They left Interstate 95 a little south of Warwick. After that, it was all secondary roads, past innumerable fields bordered by low stone walls. The frost covering the plots of farmland twinkled and sparked in the moonlight.
There were few road signs to guide them, but Mary Margaret Doyle never hesitated at any intersections or forks in the road. Finally, a little west of Kingston, she slowed the car and began peering at the road's right shoulder. A few moments later, she murmured, "Ah, there we are," and made a right turn that took the car down a narrow dirt road, tall pine trees lining both sides like sentinels.
"We're almost there," she said.
"Good," Stark replied, and almost sounded as if he meant it.
Another quarter-mile brought them to the clearing, and the house that stood within it. If Stark was expecting Castle Dracula, he was disappointed. The place looked like it might have once been a farmhouse, although what there was to farm in the middle of this forest was anybody's guess. In the abundant light from the full moon, he could see that the building was not quite ramshackle - the outside walls badly needed re-staining, but were all upright nonetheless; the roof appeared to be missing a few shingles, but was still intact; the porch steps groaned when subjected to Stark's weight, but they did not break.
Since Mary Margaret Doyle had set this meeting up, he let her do the knocking at the weathered front door. It was opened almost immediately.
The man silhouetted in the doorway smiled. "Miss Doyle, I presume," he said smoothly. "What a pleasure to meet you in person, at last. Please - come in."
They entered what seemed to be a living room, its rugs faded, the furniture old and a little shabby. As their host turned back from closing the door, Mary Margaret Doyle said, "Dr. Hassan el-Ghaffar, I'd like you to meet Senator Howard Stark."
The men shook hands. Hassan el-Ghaffar, who looked to be about fifty, was over six feet tall with a build that was slim bordering on skinny. His hair, black with a few touches of gray, was combed straight back from his forehead. The skin tone was on the swarthy side, and his face bore a few tiny craters that spoke of an early acquaintance with chicken pox, or maybe smallpox. A carefully-trimmed goatee covered el-Ghaffar's chin and upper lip. The only incongruity was the pale blue eyes, a color sometimes seen among the Berbers of Northern Africa.
"I am delighted you could be here this evening, Senator," el-Ghaffar was saying. "And Miss Doyle, too, of course." The last was said almost as an afterthought, which led Stark to suspect that the man shared the common Arab attitude toward women.
Too bad for him
, Stark thought. Any man who underestimated Mary Margaret Doyle usually regretted it sooner or later.
"I'm not entirely sure if 'delight' describes my own feelings about this evening, Doctor," Stark said. "I suppose that will depend on what you have to show us."
"Ah, a skeptic!" el-Ghaffar said with an enthusiasm that Stark suspected was rehearsed. "I derive great satisfaction from introducing skeptics to the mysteries of the Nether World. It is always interesting to watch them readjust their
weltanschauung
to the new reality that is revealed to them."
"Readjust their
what
?" Stark was not going to be intimidated by some intellectual's command of ten-dollar words.
"'World view,'" Mary Margaret Doyle said absently. "Literally, it refers to a comprehensive way of seeing the world, as well as humanity's place within it."
Both men turned and looked at her.
"Well, whether my world view is due for adjusting remains to be seen, Doctor." Stark said. "But if you're willing to make the attempt, I'm willing to observe."
"Of course, of course," el-Ghaffar said. "I think you will find it an interesting experience. Rather like that enjoyed by those observing the first test of the Manhattan Project." He gestured toward a door in the living room's far wall. "Come, let us descend."
As el-Ghaffar led them down the creaking basement stairs, Stark said, "It's interesting you should mention the Manhattan Project. I saw a documentary last month on the Discovery Channel or someplace. I hadn't realized before then just how much uncertainty there was about the test explosion, out there in New Mexico."
"Really?" el-Ghaffar said. "They didn't know what would happen when they set off the bomb?"
"Apparently not. I gather there were serious disagreements among the scientists. Enrico Fermi, I think it was, was betting that the nuclear blast would set the atmosphere on fire and burn up all the planet's oxygen."
"I hope the others were smart enough to take his bet," Mary Margaret Doyle said, stepping gingerly in her two-inch heels.
"Why 'smart'?" Stark asked. "You figure they should have known Fermi was wrong?"
"No," she said. "They should have known that if he was right, they wouldn't have to worry about paying up."
The two men laughed, perhaps a little louder than the witticism deserved.
"Well, you need have no such fears about this little demonstration, Senator," el-Ghaffar said. They had reached the bottom of the stairs now. "This is not the first time I have performed a summoning, and there is no real danger involved, as long as we follow a few elementary safety procedures."
The basement, which consisted of one room, was larger than Stark would have guessed. It might have been designed as a 'rec room' by the architect long ago, but it was clear that whatever went on in there now would not be considered 'recreation' by anyone - except maybe Johannes Faustus.
There was the pentagram, of course. Stark had done enough reading to recognize one, and this specimen was at least ten feet across. It had been drawn on the concrete floor using a liquid that appeared brown in the uncertain light. At each point of the star was a squat red candle, unlit, about eight inches high.
The altar was off to the right, covered with a scarlet cloth into which a variety of symbols had been woven in black. Stark thought he recognized a few of them, like the figure eight on its side that was the Greek symbol for infinity, but most of the rest were a mystery.
Atop the altar were a small charcoal brazier, a copper bell, several small ceramic bowls, an old-looking book bound in cracked leather, two candles similar to those surrounding the pentagram, and a long sword with a curved blade. Stark recognized the sword as an Arab implement called a scimitar.
On the floor behind the altar was a circle about three feet in diameter, the same color as the pentagram. Ten feet to the left, two more circles were inscribed on the concrete. It was to these that Hassan el-Ghaffar led his guests.
"Senator, if you will take your position within this circle here," he said, gesturing. "And Miss Doyle, inside this one, if you please."
Dr. el-Ghaffar stepped back a couple of paces. "Very good," he said. "Now, in a moment I will seal each of your circles." He held up a cautionary hand. "Nothing that will induce claustrophobia, I assure you. But you will each be effectively protected against the demon that I will summon. It will not be able to escape from the confines of the pentagram in any case, but one always takes extra precautions when playing with fire, so to speak." He grinned briefly, the gleaming white teeth an odd contrast with the black goatee and café-au-lait complexion.
If that smile's meant to be reassuring,
Stark thought,
then I think it needs a little work. He's as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
El-Ghaffar picked up a canvas sack the size of a ten-pound bag of flour. Bending at the waist, he carefully poured what looked like sand around the perimeter of Stark's circle, then Mary Margaret Doyle's, before repeating the procedure on the larger circle behind the altar. The sand, if that's what it was, appeared to be shot through with small bits of blue stone. Stark noticed that el-Ghaffar was careful to create an unbroken circle each time he laid the sand down on the concrete floor.
"Once I start the summoning," el-Ghaffar said, straightening up, "do not leave your circle for any reason, until the ritual is completed, the demon has been dismissed, and I tell you it is safe. This is
vitally
important." He looked each of them in the eyes. "If you disregard my instructions, you will place yourselves in very great hazard."
"What kind of hazard?" Stark demanded. "You just said that this demon that's supposedly going to show up will be trapped inside the pentagram, right? So what does it matter whether I stay inside the circle or walk around the room on my hands, holding a rose between my teeth?"
"I am a cautious man, Senator," el-Ghaffar said. The patience in his voice was clearly forced. "It is true that this work involves some risks, but they are always calculated risks, which means I employ every protection available."
"That's what I don't get," Stark said. "What
are
the risks? What's the worst that could happen if something goes wrong?"
"The worst that could happen?" The Arab shook his head. "Senator, I ask you to believe me when I tell you this: you do not want to know."
"Well, why -"
El-Ghaffar held up his hand. "Please! I would enjoy discussing this issue with you at length, but our time grows short. We must be ready to begin by midnight. So let me ask you this: have you seen that famous movie about the shark,
Jaws
?"
A shrug from Stark. "Sure."
"Then I ask you to consider what you would do if you were in the position of the young man in that film, being lowered into the sea in a shark cage. This water, remember, contains an immense Great White, to which you would be little more than an appetizer, if it could reach you. Now, you are in the cage, you trust the cage, the manufacturer claims that it is proof against any shark in the world. But, as you are about to be lowered into the water, someone asks you if you would like a tube of shark repellent, just for a little extra protection. Tell me, Senator - would you refuse it?"
The two men stared at each other for several seconds. Then Stark shrugged. "You draw a nice analogy, Doctor, although I'm not sure you've established your premise." He sighed, then said, "All right, no more questions for now. We'll stay in our circles until you say otherwise. Right, M.M.?"
Mary Margaret Doyle had been silent throughout this contest of wills. "Of course we shall," she said. "I never contemplated anything else."
El-Ghaffar checked his watch and walked quickly over to the altar, saying, "There is still time, but I must hurry."
A steamer trunk sat on the floor fifteen feet behind the altar. El-Ghaffar reached in and brought out a garment of black cloth with red adornments. With a quick, practiced motion, he slipped it over his head and passed his arms through the armholes so that the robe fell into place, its hem just above the floor. Stark noticed that the symbols on the robe were the same as those on the altar cloth; only the color scheme was reversed. El-Ghaffar then came up with a skullcap in the same scarlet color as the altar cloth. As the Arab carefully positioned the cap atop his head, Stark noticed that it bore the 'infinity' symbol in black, exactly in the center.
El-Ghaffar took his position behind the altar, making sure that both his feet were well within the circle. He opened the ancient-looking book to a page that had been marked with a black ribbon. Looking over at his guests, he said, "I will perform the ceremony in Arabic, since my
grimoire"
- he reverently touched the book - "is written in that language. Also, it is my native tongue and I am least likely to make any mistakes that way. It will be incomprehensible to you, but be patient. You will find things becoming interesting before long."
El-Ghaffar produced an ordinary plastic lighter and lit the altar's two candles. Then he passed his left hand over them several times, reciting something in a language that Stark assumed was Arabic, although the words themselves meant nothing to him.