The Veteran

by Frederick Forsyth

  ‘“But after a year went by the city’s mood changed. People began to refer to her as Caterina della Misericordia, Catherine of Mercy. Anonymous donations began to arrive from the wealthy and the guilty. Her fame spread through the city and beyond the walls. Another young woman of good family gave up her wealth and came to join her. And then another, and another. By the third year all Tuscany had heard of her. More and worse, she came to the attention of the Church.

  ‘“You must understand, signore, that these were terrible times for the Holy Catholic Church. Even I must say so; it had grown venal and corrupt on too long a diet of privilege, power and wealth. Many princes of the Church, bishops, archbishops and cardinals, led lives of earthly princes, dedicated to pleasure, violence and all the temptations of the flesh.

  ‘“This had already created a reaction among the people, and they were finding new champions; it was a movement they called the Reformation. In northern Europe things were even worse. Luther had already preached his doctrine of heresy, the English king had broken with Rome. Here in Italy true faith was like a boiling cauldron. Just a few miles away in Florence the monk and preacher Savonarola had been burned at the stake after terrible tortures to make him recant, but even after his death the mutterings of rebellion went on.

  ‘“The Church needed reform but not schism, yet many in power could not see it that way. Among them was the Bishop of Siena, Ludovico. He had most to fear because he had turned his palace into a scandal of carnal pleasures and gluttony, corruption and vice. He sold indulgences and granted final absolution to the rich only in exchange for all their wealth. Yet here in his own city, almost beneath his walls, lived a young woman who by her example put him to shame and the people knew it. She did not preach, she did not incite, as Savonarola had done, but he began to fear her nonetheless.”’

  From the judges’ stand in the Piazza del Campo the treasured Palio was ceremoniously handed down to the leaders of the winning Contrada and the banners bearing the device of the porcupine waved frantically in triumph as they prepared to chant their way to the Victory Banquet.

  ‘We’ve missed it all, honey,’ said the American wife as she tested her damaged ankle again and found it much better. ‘There’ll be nothing left to see.’

  ‘Just a tad longer. I promise we’ll see all the celebrations and the pageantry. It lasts till dawn. So what happened to her? What happened to Catherine of Mercy?’

  ‘“The bishop’s chance came the following year. It had been a summer of intense heat. The land parched, the streams ran dry, animal and human filth lay thick in the streets, the rats exploded in numbers. And then a plague came.

  ‘“It was another incidence of the dreaded Black Death, which we now know as bubonic or pneumonic plague. Thousands fell ill and died. Today we know that this disease was spread by the rats and the fleas that lived upon them. But then people thought it was the visitation upon the people of an angry God, and an angry God must be appeased with a sacrifice.

  ‘“By then, to distinguish herself and her three acolytes from other sisters in the city, Caterina had devised an insignia which all four wore on their habits: the cross of Jesus but with one broken arm to signify His grief for His people and the way they behaved to each other. We know about this because it was carefully described by the old father confessor who wrote down his memories years later.

  ‘“The bishop declared this design to be a heresy and fomented a mob, many of them paid with coin from his own coffers. The plague, he decreed, had come from that courtyard, spread by the mendicants who slept there but thronged the streets in the daytime. People wanted to believe that someone was to blame for their sickness. The mob descended on the courtyard.

  ‘“The old chronicler was not present, but he claims he heard what happened from many sources. Hearing the mob coming, the three acolytes threw ragged blankets over their shifts and fled for safety. Caterina stayed. The mob burst in, beating the men, women and children they found there, hounding them out beyond the city walls to live or die on the starving countryside.

  ‘“But they reserved their special rage for Caterina herself. She was almost certainly a virgin, but they held her down and violated her many times. Among them must have been soldiers of the bishop’s guard. When they had done with her, they crucified her on the timber door at the end of the yard and there she finally died.”

  ‘That was the story,’ said the faded man, ‘that Fra Domenico told me in the hotel coffee room seven years ago.’

  ‘That was it?’ asked the American. ‘There was no more that he had to say?’

  ‘There was some more,’ admitted the German.

  ‘Tell me, please tell me everything,’ asked the tourist.

  ‘Well, in the words of the old monk, this is what happened.

  ‘“The very night of the murder there came upon the city a terrible storm. Thunderheads rolled up at last beyond the mountains, so dark that the sun, then the moon and stars, were blotted out. Soon it began to rain. It was rain like no-one had ever seen. It had such a force and fury that it was as if all Siena were being subjected to a pressure hose. It went on all night and into the morning. Then the clouds rolled over and the sun came out.

  ‘“But Siena had been cleansed. All the accrued filth had been scoured from every crack and crevice and washed away. Torrents ran down the streets and out through the venting holes in the walls to cascade down the mountainsides. With the water went the filth and the rats, washed away as the sins of a bad man in the tears of Christ.

  ‘“Within days the plague began to abate, and soon passed away. But those who had taken part in the mob felt ashamed at what they had done. Some of them came back to the courtyard. It was empty and deserted. They took down the torn body from the door and wished to bury it in the Christian tradition. But the priests feared the bishop and his accusation of heresy. So a few braver souls took the body on a litter out into the countryside. They burned it and threw the ashes into a mountain stream.

  ‘“The father confessor of the house of Petrucci, who wrote all this down in Latin, did not give the exact year, and even less the month and the day. But there is another annal which mentions the time of the Great Rain most exactly. It was in the year 1544, the month was July and the rain came on the night of the second day.”’

  CONCLUSION

  ‘The day of the Palio,’ said the American, ‘and the Day of Liberation.’

  The German smiled.

  ‘The day of the Palio was fixed later, and the departure of the Wehrmacht was coincidence.’

  ‘But she came back. Four hundred years later, she came back.’

  ‘I believe so,’ said the German quietly.

  ‘To tend soldiers, like those who raped her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the marks on her hands? The holes of crucifixion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The tourist stared at the oaken door.

  ‘The stains. Her blood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said the tourist. He thought for a while, then asked, ‘And you maintain this garden? For her?’

  ‘I come every summer. Sweep the flags, tend the roses. It is just a way of saying thank you. Maybe she knows somehow. Maybe not.’

  ‘It is the second day of July. Will she come again?’

  ‘Perhaps. Probably not. But this I can guarantee to you. No-one, man, woman or child, will die in Siena this night.’

  ‘There must be out goings,’ said the tourist. ‘Costs . . . to keep it going looking like this. If there is anything . . .’

  The faded man shrugged. ‘Not really. There is an offertory box, over there on the bench by the wall. It is for the orphans of Siena. I thought she would have liked that.’

  The American was as generous as all his race. He delved into his jacket and produced a thick billfold. Turning to the offertory box he peeled off half a dozen bills and stuffed them in.

  ‘Sir,’ he said to the German when he had helped his wife to her feet, ‘I wi
ll leave Italy soon and fly back to Kansas. I will run my ranch and raise my cattle. But I will not forget, all my life, that I was here in this courtyard where she died, and I will recall the story of Caterina della Misericordia as long as I live. C’mon, honey, let’s go and join the crowds.’

  They left the courtyard and turned down the alley to the sound of the celebrations in the streets beyond. After a few moments a woman emerged from the deep dark shadows of the cloister where she had remained unseen.

  She also wore stone-washed denim; her hair was braided in cornrows and ethnic beads hung from her neck. Slung across her back was a guitar. From her right hand dangled a heavy haversack and from her left her own tote bag.

  She stood by the side of the man, fished a joint out of her top pocket, lit up, took a long drag and passed it to him.

  ‘How much did he leave?’ she asked.

  ‘Five hundred dollars,’ said the man. He had dropped the German accent and spoke in the tones of Woodstock and all points west. He emptied the wooden box of the bundle of dollars and pushed them into his shirt pocket.

  ‘That’s a great story,’ said his partner, ‘and I love the way you tell it.’

  ‘I rather like it myself,’ conceded the hippie modestly, as he hefted his rucksack and prepared to leave. ‘And you know? They always fall for it.’

  THE CITIZEN

  The home run was always his favourite. In more than thirty years driving large aluminium tubes around the world for British Airways he had seen over seventy major cities, most of them capitals, and the original appetite had long faded.

  Thirty years ago, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with the two rings of a Junior First Officer gleaming new on each sleeve, he had relished the far and foreign places. During the generous stop-overs he had explored the nightlife of Europe and the USA, taken the offered tours of the temples and shrines of the Far East. Now, he just wanted to get home to his house near Dorking.

  Back then, there had been brief but torrid affairs with the prettiest stewardesses until Susan had married him and quite rightly put a stop to that sort of thing. Five thousand nights in hotel beds had long left only the desire to roll into his own and smell the lavender scent of Susan beside him.

  A boy and a girl, Charles the honeymoon baby, now twenty-three and a computer programmer, and Jennifer, at eighteen entering York University to read History of Art, had given him stability and an extra reason for coming home. With two years to retirement the prospect of swinging his hatchback into the drive on Watermill Lane and seeing Susan at the door waiting for him far superseded any appetite for foreign parts.

  Across the aisle in the crew bus his stand-in captain was staring at the back of the driver’s head. To his left, one of his two First Officers was gawping with still unsated curiosity at the bright neon sea of Bangkok as the city slipped away behind them.

  Filling the rear of the crew bus, cool in the air conditioning, protected from the sticky heat outside, were the cabin crew: one Cabin Service Director and fifteen stewards, four male and eleven female. He had flown with them all from Heathrow two days earlier, and knew the CSD would handle everything from the door of the flight deck back to the tail fin. That was his job and he too was a veteran.

  Captain Adrian Fallon’s task was simply to fly another Boeing 747–400 Jumbo with over 400 passengers who paid his salary from Bangkok to London Heathrow, or, as his log book would soon record, from BKK to LHR.

  Two hours before take-off the crew bus swerved into the airport perimeter, was nodded through by the guards on the gate and headed for the BA office. It was a long lead-time, but Captain Fallon was a stickler and the word from the BA office was that Speedbird One Zero, out of Sydney at 3.15 p.m.

  (local) would be landing bang on time at 9.45 p.m. Bangkok local. In fact it was already on final approach.

  A mile behind the crew bus there was a black limousine. It carried one passenger, seated in comfort in the rear behind the uniformed driver. Both car and driver came from the exclusive Oriental Hotel where the impeccably accoutred senior executive had been staying for three days. In the boot reposed his single suitcase, a hard-frame case in genuine leather with solid brass locks, the case of a man who travelled lightly but not cheaply. Beside him rested his attaché case, real crocodile.

  In the breast pocket of his beautifully cut cream silk suit rested his British passport in the name of Hugo Seymour and the return half of a ticket from Bangkok to London, First Class of course. As Speedbird One Zero eased off the runway to begin its taxi roll towards the BA departure lounge, the limousine purred to a stop outside the check-in hall.

  Mr Seymour did not push his own luggage on a trolley. He raised a manicured hand and a small Thai porter hurried over. Tipping the driver, the businessman nodded to his suitcase in the open boot, then followed the trotting porter into the check-in hall and pointed to the British Airways First Class desk. He had been exposed to the sticky heat of the tropical night for about thirty seconds.

  It does not really take one hour and forty-five minutes for a First Class check-in. The young clerk behind the desk was attending to no-one else. Within ten minutes the single hide suitcase was on its way to the baggage-handling area where its tags would clearly identify it as heading for the BA London flight. Mr Seymour had been issued with his boarding card and given directions to the First Class lounge, situated beyond passport control.

  The uniformed Thai immigration officer glanced at the burgundy-coloured passport, then at the boarding pass and finally at the face through the glass screen. Middle-aged, lightly tanned, freshly shaved, iron-grey hair barbered and blow-dried; a soft and sweatless white silk shirt, silk tie from the Jim Thompson shop, the upper section of a cream silk suit from one of Bangkok’s better tailors where they can run up a replica of Savile Row in thirty hours. He passed the identity document back under the glass screen.

  ‘Sawat-di, krab,’ murmured the Englishman. The Thai officer bobbed and smiled an acknowledgement at being thanked in his own language, usually impossible for foreigners.

  Somewhere out of sight the disembarking passengers from Sydney to Bangkok were filing out of the Boeing and down the long corridors to Immigration. They were followed by the transit passengers until the aeroplane was empty and the cleaning staff could begin to scour the fifty-nine rows of seats, a task that would yield fourteen binliners of assorted garbage. Mr Seymour, his crocodile attaché case at his side, proceeded sedately to the First Class lounge where he was welcomed by two stunningly pretty Thai girls, seated and brought a glass of crisp white wine. He quietly buried himself in an article in Forbes Magazine, one among twenty passengers in a large, cool and luxurious lounge.

  He had not seen, for he had not bothered to look, but as Mr Seymour presented himself at the First Class check-in desk he was just a few yards from Club Class check-in. The Boeing 747–400 in the BA seat configuration has fourteen First Class seats, of which ten would be occupied and four of these coming in from Sydney. Mr Seymour had been the first of the six boarding at Bangkok. All twenty-three Club Class seats would be full, with eighteen boarding in the Thai capital. These were the ones queuing a few yards from him in the check-in hall.

  But beyond them were the Economy Class queues, now delicately referred to as World Traveller class. At these desks there was a seething mass of shuffling humanity. Ten desks were trying to cope with nearly 400 passengers. Among them were the Higgins family. They hauled their own baggage. They had come by coach, where the press of fellow travellers and the heat they generated had finally defeated the air-conditioning system. The World Travellers were dishevelled and sweaty. It took the Higginses nearly an hour to reach the departure lounge, with a brief visit to Duty Free, and to settle themselves in the No Smoking area. Thirty minutes to boarding. Captain Fallon and his crew were long on board, but even they were preceded by the cabin staff.

  The captain and his crew had spent the usual fifteen minutes in the office covering the necessary paperwork. There was the all-importan
t flight plan which told him how long the flight would take, the minimum amount of fuel to be loaded and, over a number of pages, the details of the route he would be following tonight. All this information had been filed with the various air traffic control centres between Bangkok and London. A good long look at the weather for his route and in the UK revealed a quiet night ahead. He flicked quickly and with practised ease through the NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen), retaining the few pieces of information that affected him and disregarding the greater part which was irrelevant.

  With the last piece of ‘bumf’ either retained or signed and handed back, the four pilots were ready to board. They were well ahead of their passengers, and the departers from Sydney were long gone. The cleaners were still on board, but that was the CSD’s problem, and Mr Harry Palfrey would as usual cope with unflappable urbanity.

  Not that the gang of Thai cleaners was the CSD’s only concern. All the lavatories would be vented and scoured, then inspected. Enough food and drink for 400 passengers was being brought aboard and he had even managed a selection of the latest newspapers from London, just arrived from Heathrow on another jet. By the time Mr Palfrey was even halfway satisfied, his captain and crew were aboard.

  In summer Captain Fallon would have been accompanied only by two First Officers, but this was late January and the winter headwinds would spin the flight up to thirteen hours, chock to chock, triggering a requirement for a relief captain.

  Personally, Adrian Fallon thought it was unnecessary. At the rear of the flight deck, on the left-hand side, was a small room with two bunks and it was perfectly normal for the captain to leave the aircraft on automatic pilot and in control of two of the other pilots while he grabbed four or five hours’ sleep. Still, rules are rules and there were four of them instead of three.

  As the quartet marched down the last long tunnel to the almost empty aircraft Fallon nodded to the younger of his two First Officers.