by Rob Byrnes
But then he walked up the sweeping staircase to his office—the two black SUVs parked out front barely registering in his brain—and immediately noticed the void in the center of the room.
The Desk of Christ was gone.
First, he was confused. Had he walked into the wrong…?
No, of course not!
Then he was enraged, and became even angrier when he saw that the elegant wood railing enclosing his terrace had been destroyed.
Only then did he remember those black SUVs, and wondered what they had to do with this outrage.
He stepped out of his office and onto the landing, on his way downstairs to confront Enright, when a door burst open in the foyer below him. Hurley stepped back into the shadows and watched from above as two men—undoubtedly FBI, he thought, sizing up their clothes and shoes—filed out, followed by that Cason fellow they’d hired as a security guard and…
Is that Leonard Platt?
They didn’t look in his direction, and he took advantage of that lapse to step closer to the polished oak railing and get a better look.
And, yes, that was indeed Leonard Platt.
What the hell was he doing there?
Hurley watched the quartet leave the building, and even with a largely obstructed view could tell that they’d walked past the black SUVs and out onto the campus. When they were gone, he scrambled down the stairs until he reached the elderly security guard, who was now so confused he was considering which no-good relative should get power of attorney, because all this craziness could only be taking place in his head.
“Is Enright down there?”
The guard judged his immediate mental condition to be passable. “Yessir.”
Hurley stormed down the stairs without a thank-you and entered the Security Office without a hello.
“Enright, what the hell is—?” He stopped when he saw two unfamiliar faces, both also obviously FBI and both also obviously armed.
“Who’s this?” one of the agents asked Enright.
“Mr. Smith,” said Enright. “The choir director.”
Hurley started to object, but noticed the strange way Enright was sitting in the chair, with his hands clasped behind his back. Whatever was going on, Hurley knew it wasn’t a good thing. And he knew he had to play along.
“Yes, I’m the choir director. Mr.…uh…Smith. May I have a moment to speak to Captain Enright in private?”
“I’m afraid not,” said the second agent. “Captain Enright stays here, and we stay with Captain Enright.”
“Well…can we speak?”
The agents looked at each other and shrugged.
Hurley tried to pretend they weren’t there. He wanted to ask about the Desk of Christ, but knew he couldn’t. For some reason, Enright was trying to protect him by hiding his identity; it would do neither of them any good—and it especially wouldn’t do him any good—if he acknowledged he was Hurley. If the FBI had confiscated his desk, it would be back soon enough.
But he had other questions.
“Did I just see Leonard Platt leave the building?”
Enright nodded. “He wouldn’t say what he was doing here.”
“Where did he and, uh, those other gentlemen go?”
“The Great Cross.”
“The Great Cross?”
Another nod. “Officer Cason was abducted tonight. He thinks by militant atheist homosexual terrorists. When they had him taped up…”
“Taped up?”
“They bound him with packing tape. He had to chew his way out. Anyway, Cason overheard his captors talking about the cross.”
Color drained from Hurley’s face. “For…uh…what reason?”
“Cason got the impression they were gonna use it to commit a terroristic act.” He shook his head slightly. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Dr.—Mr. Smith. He’s excitable.”
Hurley looked heavenward, but knew his prayer wouldn’t be answered. This was one of those times he hoped God was going to help someone who helped himself.
27
It took a while to find it in the dark, mostly using the sense of touch, but—when Chase finally felt that familiar crinkly combination of cotton and linen—he let out a loud shout. Grant stumbled through the blackness and soon they were both running their hands over the cash.
It was one thing—and a very nice thing, indeed—to finally touch it, but their eyes deserved to see it. Grant aimed the flashlight and then they were staring at pile upon pile of stacked bills. Singles, fives, tens, twenties…no doubt there were more than a few fifties and hundreds there, too.
“That look like seven million to you?” asked Chase, running the light over pile after pile.
Grant kissed Chase’s cheek. “We can count it later. After we get it out of here.” He paused. “But, yeah, that’s gotta be the haul we’ve been looking for.”
Chase returned Grant’s kiss. “I found it! I mean, we found it!”
Grant pretended not to hear the dig, and taking the light from Chase, ran it over the cash one more time. “That’s a lot of money. We’ll have to make a lot of trips up and down those stairs.”
“You up to it?”
“Not really. But I guess…” He rubbed his sore thigh, then shined the flashlight down the horizontal section of the cross. Besides the cash, which was in a box set on a pallet inches above the hard concrete, it looked mostly empty.
But then the light glimmered off something almost hidden by the darkness at the far end, and soon they were brushing off two large footlockers, lined side by side against the wall and rendered almost invisible by years of dust.
“What the hell are these doing up here?” asked Grant.
Chase shrugged. “Probably got left behind by whoever built the cross. And probably for the same reason we don’t want to keep going up and down those damn stairs.” He gently touched Grant’s shoulder. “C’mon, I think I saw some plastic bags in the other section we can use.”
To which Grant said, “I have a better idea.”
$ $ $
Hurley stood in his dark office, pacing the empty space once occupied by the Desk of Christ and waiting for Merribaugh to answer his phone. It only took four rings, which felt like twenty, before the call was picked up.
“We’ve got problems,” Hurley said before Merribaugh had a chance to say hello. In the background he heard nuns-who-were-no-longer-nuns singing, which made his body involuntarily shudder. “So many problems I don’t even know where to begin. The FBI is here…and Leonard Platt…and some other characters. I don’t know who they are, except they’re going to the Great Cross.”
Merribaugh gasped. “The cross? But no one knows…”
“Someone knows. Somehow, these clowns seem to know they can get inside the Great Cross.”
“But I don’t know how…”
“Dennis, I am not calling to have a conversation with you. I am calling to tell you that we need to act quickly. So get your ass to the damn cross and make sure no one gets inside!”
“What if someone’s already inside?”
“Then make sure they don’t get out.” Hurley cut off the call.
Merribaugh looked at the silenced phone in his hand. He’d spent a lifetime lying, stealing, and—above all—improvising on the spur of the moment, but he had no idea how he was going to resolve this crisis.
But he was ready to rise to the challenge. Because he had seven million dollars on the line.
$ $ $
Flashlights blazing, Special Agents Waverly and Tolan made their third rotation around the base of the Great Cross and still saw nothing.
“Are you sure your abductors said they were going into the cross?” Tolan asked Chris Cason for the fourth time.
“They did, sir. Indeed they did. Absolutely. As God is my witness…”
“Okay, okay, okay.”
Tolan kicked the dirt at the base. “I just don’t see how…”
“The thing is solid,” Leonard said, also for the fourth time. He’
d been nervous when the FBI had arrived, but now he was starting to get bored. He wondered if this was how Cousin Paul and his confederates had grown so blasé. “Solid concrete. The only way someone’s getting inside it is with a tunnel borer. I should know. I mean, I worked here for seven years.”
“Maybe they’ve got one,” said Cason. “You can’t put anything past those terrorists. It’d be just like them to use a tunnel borer to get inside, and then blow us all to Kingdom Come!” He leaned into Waverly. “Like in my screenplay.”
Waverly gently pushed him away.
“You wrote a screenplay?”
Chris Cason didn’t pick up the skepticism. “A secret agent builds a tunnel borer and uses it to drill up from under the Earth’s surface…”
Waverly shook his head. “You’ve been watching too many James Bond movies, kid.”
“…and then he attacks the Ant-Women…”
Waverly looked back at the cross, then at his partner. “We’re wasting our time, Ollie. Let’s pick up Hurley and Merribaugh and get the hell out of here.”
Chris Cason stopped babbling. “You’re looking for the Rev. Mr. Merribaugh?” Waverly nodded and the man pointed to the back door of the auditorium. “There he is. Right over there!”
Waverly and Tolan followed his finger to where Merribaugh stood, staring back at them with a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes as he stood on the loading dock.
Like Hurley, he knew FBI when he saw it.
“Mr. Merribaugh?” Waverly took his leather shield holder out of his breast pocket and held it in the air. “Waverly, FBI. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Merribaugh didn’t wait for those questions. Instead, he broke into a wobbly run toward the windowless basement door.
$ $ $
“Hey, Farraday! Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.” The faint answer from 160 feet below echoed off the cement walls and metal railings until it sounded like a small chorus of Farradays. “You find it?”
“Yup,” Grant confirmed. “It’s coming down now, and I need you to look out down there.”
There was a long pause as Grant’s voice echoed down through the center of the Great Cross.
Finally Farraday called back. “What?”
Grant turned to Chase. “Screw him. He either gets out of the way or he doesn’t.” The footlockers—heavy, rusty, but very useful now that they’d been cleared of discarded tools, rags, empty soda cans, a few old extension cords, a battered power drill, six losing lottery tickets, and a dozen plastic bottles of past-the-expiration-date motor oil—were now full of cash, and Chase pushed the closest one to the edge of the stairway.
“This is gonna be a pain in the ass,” he said.
“Would you rather make twenty or thirty trips up and down these stairs?” Chase shook his head. “Anyway, this will be faster. Just shove a box and let it slide. When it gets stuck, get it unstuck and shove it again.” He tapped his head. “I invented this gravity thing, and it’s awesome.”
“Yes, you’re brilliant, Grant.” Chase planted a kiss where Grant had tapped his head and said, “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Chase pushed, and the footlocker rolled over the lip and began sliding down the spiral staircase. After grinding its way down a half dozen steps, it came to an abrupt stop.
$ $ $
Merribaugh locked the basement door behind him and, for extra measure, threw the deadbolt. That was the easy part; the hard part would be getting out.
He raced through the tunnel to the core of the Great Cross, trying to analyze the strange grinding—almost metal-on-metal—he heard from the stairwell. It had to be true; somehow, someone had breached his security.
For nine years no one had known about the hollow core of the Great Cross except himself and Hurley. Not even Enright had known. But now someone had not only discovered their secret, they’d found the way in, which Merribaugh always considered a double—maybe even triple—security measure.
And if they wanted to get into the cross that badly, that could only mean they knew what he and Hurley had been secreting there for almost a decade.
He stepped into the well at the base of the staircase and that grinding from above—accompanied by loud bangs, as if something heavy were being dragged down the metal staircase—became louder. He looked up, but could see nothing in the gloom. Still, he had a job to do…for himself, as well as Hurley.
“Who’s there?” he yelled, knowing it was unlikely his voice would carry over the noise above him. Which is why he was surprised by a voice coming from above him, but not too far above.
“Who’s there?” was the gruff answer.
Merribaugh swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I demand you leave. Leave, or I’ll call the police.”
“No, you won’t,” growled the other man’s voice.
Well, he was correct, after all. He wasn’t going to call the police, and the man knew he wouldn’t, because then Merribaugh would have to explain why approximately seven million dollars in United States currency was hidden in the Great Cross.
Point to the stranger.
Still, he had to get them out of there. His next bluff had better work.
$ $ $
They stood at the locked door to the basement for a few minutes, not quite sure what to do until Tolan shrugged and dryly said, “Want to shoot our way in?”
“You know,” said Waverly, “Fifteen years on the job and I have never fired my service weapon. Isn’t that something?”
“Never?” Tolan lifted an eyebrow. “I think I killed four people in my first couple of months alone.”
Leonard, standing on the periphery, sighed. “You guys really don’t have to put on an act for me. I believe you have guns, and I believe they work.”
Tolan grinned. “Just toying with you, Platt. Want some peanuts?” Leonard shook his head. “Good. I’m out.”
“So anyway,” said Waverly, running a hand quickly along his forehead, smoothing out his hair, “you’re sure there’s no other exit from the basement?”
“Pretty sure,” Leonard said grimly. “It’s been a while since I was down there, but to the best of my recollection it’s just a storage room. Only one way in, and one way out. Not even any windows.”
Waverly spotted Chris Cason running across the lawn toward them and said, “Guess we’re about to find out how good your memory is. Oh, and before Cason gets here, are you working with those guys he says abducted him? The ones he thinks are atheist homosexual terrorists?”
Leonard shook his head. “I have no idea what he’s talking about. But I highly doubt there are terrorists running around the Virginia Cathedral of Love.”
“And why are you here, again?”
Now that he realized law enforcement was all about repetition, Leonard’s nervousness was rapidly dissipating. No one knew repetition better than a bookkeeper, except maybe a CPA. “Again—for maybe the hundredth time—I missed the place. I spent a lot of time here over the years, and I figured tonight—”
“Would be a good time to visit, what with all the people around who came to see The Sound of Music.”
“Exactly.”
Waverly smiled. “Okay. Just checking. You see, we know you’re gay, Leonard. And that’s just great. Seriously, not a problem for us. But Cason talks about homosexual terrorists, and you’re a homosexual. You don’t look like the terrorist type to me, Leonard, but…”
“How do you know my name, anyway?” That still bothered him.
“You’d be surprised what I know.” He turned and greeted Cason. “Did you get the keys?”
“Captain Enright told me that Mr. Merribaugh has the only set.”
Waverly turned and ruffled his freshly neatened hair, deep in thought. “Okay, now we have a problem.”
$ $ $
There was a long metal-on-metal squeal, and then a half dozen loud bangs, and Merribaugh found himself covering his ears. This madness had to come to an end.
“I
’m coming up,” he announced to the darkness. “And I have a gun.”
“I’m here,” said the other man. There was a brief pause before he added, “And I don’t need no gun.”
Which took a considerable amount of wind out of Dennis Merribaugh’s sails. Still, he climbed a few steps.
Maybe both of them were bluffing. That’s what he hoped, at least.
$ $ $
One hundred forty feet above Merribaugh—and maybe 130 feet above Farraday—Grant and Chase worked in near darkness to correct the angles of the heavy footlockers on the narrow staircase. When the loads were repositioned, first Chase and then Grant used their feet to encourage gravity, and the boxes groaned down another half dozen steps before coming to an abrupt stop, again wedged between the railing and wall.
“This is getting ridiculous,” said Grant. “I’m starting to think two dozen trips up and down the stairs would have been a better idea.”
“If there was only some way to…Wait a minute!”
“What?”
Chase thought his brainstorm through, and only when he was satisfied it was good said, “The oil!”
“Huh?”
“The motor oil we took out of the boxes!”
“What about it?”
“Maybe we spread it on the stairs and the toolboxes slide more smoothly.”
“It’s expired,” said Grant. “Like, three years ago.”
“For engines, maybe. But it can still lube the stairs.”
Grant thought about that, then smiled. “I think you might’ve just saved us a lot of work and time. Good job.”
“I’ll go get it. Be right back.”
$ $ $
A small caravan of black SUVs—identical in every detail to the vehicles that had brought Waverly, Tolan and the junior agents to the Virginia Cathedral of Love—finally turned off the highway and onto Cathedral Boulevard. If Waverly hadn’t stopped checking his watch, he would have been annoyed to know they were more than a half hour late.
