by Peter James
He thought about Ross’s words.
Perhaps God would explain what he should do.
But after an hour, God said nothing more to him.
He had a feeling – just a sense – nothing that was coming to him loud and clear, though, that this visit from Ross, and these items, were connected to the doubts he had been having about faith – and his concerns for the world.
He felt an overwhelming sense of duty to his nephew to protect these two items. Yes, he knew, he could request them to be buried with him. But equally he was aware of the parlous state of the finances of this monastery. Just twenty-three monks, including himself, in a monastery built to accommodate very many more. In a few years perhaps it might be sold. Perhaps turned into a country house hotel with a golf course? He understood how the world worked. A property developer would not care about the graves. Brother Angus needed to do something to respect his nephew’s wishes. To ensure the preservation of these two items, undisturbed, for ever.
Perhaps it was God now telling him. Or was it his own common sense?
The idea he’d had earlier was taking root. The one person he knew whom he could trust and was in a place of complete safety. As he laid the objects in the cupboard by his bed, the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.
He would go and ask the Prior. If he said no, so be it.
But God would surely guide him to agree.
72
Tuesday, 14 March
The green line on the map on Ross’s satnav screen directed him round the maze that was Spaghetti Junction. Was this the world’s ugliest and most complicated road junction ever constructed? Surely, somewhere in the heart of the person who designed it, he pondered, must have resided a sense of basic decency and community spirit – however much that was lacking in the end result.
The map vanished and was replaced by a fat white line curled round on itself and pointing backwards. It was accompanied by the stentorian satnav female voice ordering him to make a U-turn.
Yep, great. ‘I’m on a sodding motorway!’ he replied to her, feeling frazzled from his long drive – and having his lunch interrupted by smooth Stuart Ivens from MI5. The pelting rain wasn’t helping his mood, either.
His phone rang. He hit the button to answer it on hands-free.
‘Ross?’ It was Imogen, her voice sounding uneasy.
‘Hi! How are you?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Somewhere outside Birmingham and about to drive up my own sodding backside. What’s up?’
The map reappeared and the satnav arrow indicated the turnoff coming up; it was accompanied by the woman’s voice ordering him to turn at the next left. He did so and then saw he was heading exactly where he did not want go. On the southbound M6. The direction he had just come from. Damn.
‘There’s a man turned up at the office,’ Imogen said.
Had she had a visit from the MI5 guy, Stuart Ivens, too?
‘Who was he – what did he want?’ Ross peered through the windscreen for any sign of the next exit.
‘Someone called Monsignor Giuseppe Silvestri, it sounded like. He arrived in a chauffeured car and claimed to be representing the Vatican. He said he needed to speak to me in private, so I took him into a conference room.’
‘And?’
‘He told me if you can prove what you have is real, they would be willing to buy the items. He pretty much implied you could name your price.’
‘The Vatican?’
‘Ross, why don’t you do that? See what they offer – then we can distance ourselves from this whole thing.’
‘Name my price?’
‘Yes! I got the feeling they would pay serious money – very serious money.’
‘Imo, look, I don’t have—’
‘Ross,’ she implored. ‘Please, listen. Whatever you – we – are into, this is scaring me witless. You’re smart, and a great reporter, but whatever the truth of this story you’re pursuing, it’s too dangerous. At least meet with him tomorrow and listen to what he has to say.’
‘Let me have this meeting up here in Birmingham and then I’ll see, OK?’
The next exit was coming up.
‘I’m not sure I want to be a part of any of this any longer, Ross.’
‘Look, I’ll call you as soon as I’ve met Anholt-Sperry again, OK? I’ve got to focus on the road.’
‘OK,’ she said, bleakly. ‘Call me back when you can. When will you be home?’
‘I should be back by seven or so.’
‘You’ll be home before me. Take Monty out for a walk if you can. I won’t be back until after ten – I’m having a bite with an old school friend who’s in town for a conference.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Jennie Elkington – haven’t seen her since sixth form.’
‘OK, great, have fun,’ he said. He’d never heard her name before, and however much he tried there was always the nagging doubt in his mind. Wondering just who she might really be meeting.
There was something about the way she had started behaving – quite some months ago now – that brought back memories of the time she’d had the affair. She’d confessed some while later that it had been going on for many months and, thinking back through that time, as he had done often in the aftermath, he realized he had seen the signs before he’d gone to Afghanistan, but ignored them. The same signs he was seeing again now, even though she was pregnant.
Or was he seeing ghosts?
73
Tuesday, 14 March
Twenty-five minutes later, Ross pulled up in a parking space a short distance along the road from the offices of Anholt-Sperry Brine. He stepped out and hurried along the pavement, ducking his head against the rain. He passed a parked Ducati motorcycle with two panniers, ran up the steps to the entrance porch and pressed the buzzer.
Almost immediately there was a sharp click; he pushed the heavy black door open. A figure who looked like a courier, clad in black leathers, wearing a full-face motorcycling helmet with the visor down, and holding a small briefcase, barged past him without any apology. As he did so, Ross felt a strange, invisible pull towards the man, like an unseen hand, just for a brief instant, and the St Christopher’s medallion that Imogen had given him years ago felt as if it was tugging against the front of his shirt. Or had he imagined it?
The reception area was rammed, with every chair taken, reminding him of a doctor’s waiting room. Several members of an Asian family were seated in a group, all in earnest discussion. A gloomy young couple sat holding hands and staring vacantly ahead. An anxious-looking man in his fifties was surreptitiously holding an e-cigarette and vaping. On another chair sat a woman in a burqa, with a screaming baby.
The same harridan he recognized from his previous visit was perched behind the tall wooden counter, and gave Ross a frosty look as he walked up to her.
‘Yes?’
‘I have an appointment with Mr Anholt-Sperry.’
She riffled through an appointment sheet. ‘Three o’clock?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s chaos here today and his secretary never turned up. I just saw his last appointment leave.’ She pressed an intercom buzzer. Then she shook her head, her expression thawing a little. ‘He has no idea how to work this. You’d better go up – you know the way.’
‘I do.’
He strode up the three flights of narrow, rickety stairs, and knocked on the right-hand door when he reached the top.
There was no answer.
He knocked again, harder, and waited. There was still no response. He pushed the door open, slowly, and saw the same cluttered office he remembered from his previous visit, with stacks of files scattered around the floor and piles of papers on the desk.
Robert Anholt-Sperry himself sat very upright behind it, with his heavily jowled face, moles and threadbare comb-over, his hands resting on the leather top of the desk. He was dressed, as before, in a frayed checked shirt and badly knotted Old Harrovian tie, and
was staring, blankly, ahead of him, with a bemused expression.
‘Oh – sorry to barge in – your lady downstairs said to come up.’
There was no response from the solicitor.
The man was utterly motionless. His eyes unblinking.
‘Mr Anholt-Sperry?’
He took a step closer. And now he could see the man wasn’t breathing.
Ross felt as if he had stepped into a deep freeze and someone had closed the door behind him. He raced downstairs to the receptionist.
74
Tuesday, 14 March
As Brother Angus entered the Prior’s grand office – he’d never stepped foot in here before in all the years he had been in this monastery – he stared around in awe. At the book-lined shelves, the comfortable leather chairs, the computer, printer and the wall-mounted television.
It could have been the office of the chief executive of a multinational corporation, rather than of the man who was the custodian of twenty-three disparate monks. It reminded Brother Angus of all he had left behind when he entered holy orders. But it also served to remind him that he missed none of this.
The simplicity of his life of contemplation – or to be exact his second life, after his wild youth – had given him a peace and contentment he had never found in all the drug-fuelled years of playing gigs, sleeping with groupies and earning ridiculous amounts of money. There had been a time, back then, when the idea of death had terrified him. It had all changed when he entered the monastic commune of Mount Athos and discovered his faith, and that had strengthened even further when he had come here after burying his mother.
No fears. No anxieties. No responsibilities beyond his daily prayers for the world. Soon his body would be buried, too, like his mother’s. Just an empty shell. His spirit, his soul, called to a higher purpose.
‘Your silent contemplation has been interrupted already today, Brother Angus,’ the Prior said in his richly engaging voice. ‘Please take a seat at my desk. Make your phone call. Something is happening in your life, is it not?’
‘Something, yes, Prior.’
Angus sat down, grateful to be able to conserve some energy.
‘I feel it also, Brother Angus. The Lord told me today in my morning prayers that you are tasked with something extremely important for all of us. Would I be correct?’
‘I believe so, Father Raphael.’
The two men were silent for some moments. The Prior knew the rules of privacy here, and did not try to pry.
‘Brother Angus, my door is always open. I will leave you alone to make your phone call. If you ever wish to talk, please come to me. Don’t leave it too late. Will you assure me?’
‘I assure you, Father Raphael.’
The Prior went out of the room and closed the door.
Brother Angus stared at the modern handset lying in its base unit. It was a long time since he had last made a telephone call. He opened out the piece of folded paper he had carried in his hand, flattened it on the desk, and then picked up the receiver with trepidation and dialled the overseas number.
There was a long silence. Perhaps it was no longer in service, he thought.
Then he heard a single beep. Followed by another. Then another.
Finally, he heard a click, followed by a gruff, suspicious Greek voice. During his years in the monastery of Simonopetra on Mount Athos, he’d had to learn basic Greek in order to communicate with most of the monks there.
In Greek he said, ‘Hello, my name is Brother Angus, I was a resident some years ago. I need, very urgently, to speak to my cousin, the American, Brother Pete. He is still with you?’
The voice remained gruff and suspicious, as if irritated by the intrusion. He informed Brother Angus that Brother Pete was indeed still with them, still the monastery’s Guest Master.
‘It is very important,’ Brother Angus said. ‘This is ordained by God.’
After a long silence the monk at the other end said, ‘You may call at ten minutes to seven this evening, after our evening meal. I will tell Brother Pete he has permission to speak to you – if he wishes to.’
Brother Angus thanked him profusely.
75
Tuesday, 14 March
Pastor Wesley Wenceslas sat in his suite at his Leeds hotel, accompanied by Lancelot Pope, watching the final edit of his weekly YouTube broadcast on Wesley Wenceslas Ministries Faith TV. The pastor was drinking Krug, with the bottle in an ice bucket on the table, and Pope was sipping a single malt. The remains of their hamburger dinner lay on the dining table.
The video, with soul music playing over, showed Wenceslas, his prematurely greying hair beautifully coiffed, elegantly attired in a black, mandarin-style Armani suit, with a black shirt and white dog collar. He was holding a microphone and pacing around in front of the seventeen-hundred-strong congregation that packed his Leeds church. It was intercut with carefully selected tight close-ups of people there, and relayed on huge screens behind him. Faces of people of all races, ages and genders, either singing hymns, praying or listening with rapt expressions.
‘And the Lord saith thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. And the Lord saith, love money, yes, he does! Because One Timothy Six, verse ten, tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil, but – listen good! If the Lord’s money is sowed back into the Lord’s ministry, our Lord, being no man’s debtor, has promised us in the Holy Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verse 30, that he will give us one hundred times more than the amount we put in the offering plate!’
The pastor continued to pace around in silence, allowing time for his worshippers to absorb this very important fact. Then he continued. ‘Marriage is ordained by God and it allows a holy sexual union between just a man and his wife. Any other sexual union thy God saith is an abomination.’
He paced around again in silence, turned away, then turned back to face, challenge and exhort everyone in the room.
‘Join hands!’ he said. ‘You want it? Take it in Jesus! The glory of the Lord will descend on us tonight in waves. Take it, take it.’ He began singing, ‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah!’
The crowd joined in as one.
‘Who wants anointing tonight?’ he asked.
A middle-aged man in a blue suit stepped forward.
Two of Wenceslas’s minders moved discreetly forward, also. One positioned himself behind the man.
‘Your name is?’ the pastor asked him.
‘Brian.’
‘Are you ready to embrace Jesus tonight, Brian?’
The man nodded in supplication.
Moving his hands round Brian’s bowed head, Wenceslas said, ‘Brian, what God will do with you now will stay with you for the rest of your life. Oh, Jesus all-glorious, prepare in us your temple!’ He tapped the man on each of his shoulders, and he bowed even further forward. ‘What the Lord is telling me now is precious, totally precious, Brian! Put your faith in the Holy Ghost, He is with us all tonight.’
Wenceslas turned round to face the altar, which was covered in huge floral displays and crystals, and illuminated in shades of fluorescent blues and greens. To one side sat a fifteen-piece orchestra. He was snapping his fingers. ‘Jesus, all-glorious, create in us your temple!’
He turned back to the man and tapped him again on his shoulders. ‘Are you ready to receive him, Brian? What the Lord is telling me is so precious.’ He stifled a sob. ‘So precious. Totally precious!’
With his hands clasped together, the man tumbled onto the floor and lay on one side, motionless.
‘What God is doing with him now is completely precious!’ Wenceslas continued, his voice in a high pitch of emotion. He paced around, wiping tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffing. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, sniffing again, and addressed the congregation. ‘Lift your hands and pray, please. Come on! Sometimes we plan things but God changes it. All of you lift your hands and pray to the Holy Ghost, God is not done yet. God has saved Brian here tonight, but can He sa
ve all of you? Only those of you who want to be saved. Those who do, God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost ask that you step forward but first hear me. Hear what is happening. The Great Beast – the Antichrist – may already be among us, masquerading as it says in the Bible as our saviour. I have to fight him, for Brian, for all of you, for all of mankind. Who among you will help me expose this Beast?’
He jabbed a finger at random members of the audience, to rapturous cries of ‘Me! Me! Me!’
‘Matthew Twenty-four, verse twenty-four, tells us, “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”’ He opened his arms wide. ‘That’s you all here. The elect. But I know I can trust you because you are the Lord’s Soldiers! When you go home tonight, mail me a handkerchief and a cheque for twenty-five pounds and I’ll pray over it and send it back to you, and you keep that with you always, it will be your soldier’s shield. And don’t forget my special “Pay for a Prayer” service. Every penny we raise goes towards keeping this ministry going. Always remember, by sowing seeds into the ministry you will reap the harvest of God’s blessing.’
On a wide screen behind him flashed the message, along with a phone number: PAY FOR A PRAYER. ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED.
‘And now let us pray to our Lord and protector!’
As the video ended, Pope looked at his boss. ‘Good performance – what do you think?’
‘It’s fine,’ Wenceslas said, still angry at the man over the ridiculous cup and tooth he had presented to him this morning. ‘You know what I really think?’
‘I’m all ears, O Great Master.’
‘I think I deserve to unwind with some pretty company tonight.’
‘Well, in that case, it seems like Divine Providence! I have two very lovely young ladies currently sequestered in a room two floors above us.’
For the first time today, Pastor Wesley Wenceslas smiled. Then, with a frown of caution, he said, ‘And you are confident they do not know who I am?’
