Relic of Time

by Ralph McInerny

  There was a huge Carrara marble crucifix over the main altar of Saint Peter’s. A Mass was being said, and scattered through the pews were secretaries, bank clerks, bag ladies, the homeless. Along the sides were confessionals, and over one a small light glowed. Red. Someone inside. He went immediately there and waited. No need to examine his conscience. His sins were on the tip of his tongue.

  The door of the confessional opened and an old woman emerged. Lloyd waited for her to let the door close and then, pulling it open, stepped in and was alone in the dark. He knelt before the grille and was aware of voices, a penitent on the opposite side. He waited. On the long walk over, he had rehearsed, seeking ways to express the sins he had committed. The grille slid open.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  He stopped. He felt a sudden panic. The priest was waiting. Lloyd leaned forward, his head against the grille. “I don’t know how to begin.”

  “We’ll start with the capital sins then.”

  “It was a woman, Father.”

  He began to babble, trying to say it all at once; the priest—he could make out his profile through the grille—was old. He nodded through the recital. A moment of silence.

  “Will you see her again?”

  “No!”

  A pause. “Make an act of contrition.”

  The familiar words came trippingly to his tongue. The priest began the formula of absolution. Lloyd felt that he was standing under a shower of grace and forgiveness.

  “Take this, son.” A little slip of paper appeared beneath the grille. “For your penance, pray that psalm. And ask Our Blessed Lady to help you.”

  Outside the confessional, he went to a pew and looked at the sheet the priest had given him. Psalm 51. “Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. In your compassion, blot out my of-fense. O wash me more and more from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin.”

  He hurried through the psalm, feeling lighter than air. When he was done, elation left him. It had all been too easy. Three days with Catherine and after a few humbling minutes, it was all wiped away. Now that he had confessed, he longed to make up for what he had done in some dramatic way, a more demanding way. Once, penitents had been sent on long pilgrimages, to shrines. . . . He thought of Lourdes, he thought of Fatima. And then an image over a side altar decided him. Our Lady of Guadalupe.

  III

  Penitents sat on benches.

  Mexico City lay in a blanket of smog, looking unreal. Lloyd went to his hotel, to his room, and then immediately back to the lobby, where he asked the clerk for directions to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She handed him a brochure; obviously his request was a familiar one. In minutes he was in a cab and on his way, hurtling through the city, taking no notice of it.

  In the square outside the church, he stood staring at the facade. It was a great round church, somewhat reminiscent of the stadium of the New Orleans Saints. Just an observation. He had not come here as a critic. There was a large bronze statue of Pope John Paul II off to the right, commemorating his visits here. Lloyd crossed the square and entered the church. His eye was drawn immediately to the image of Our Lady, behind and above the altar. That was the point of the circular design; from no matter what part of the church, the eye was drawn to the miraculous picture of Mary. Lloyd hurried toward it.

  Centuries ago, Juan Diego had encountered a beautiful lady who instructed him to speak to the bishop. The bishop’s reaction to the illiterate peasant was doubtless understandable. He wanted proof. Again the lady appeared to Juan Diego and asked him to fill his cape with beautiful roses, which, despite the season, were there in abundance. The roses were to be the proof the bishop asked for, but when Juan opened his cape and the roses spilled out, there on the cape was the image of the lady he had seen. That image was what Lloyd and other pilgrims had come to venerate. The Lady of Guadalupe.

  There was a moving belt beneath the image, so pilgrims would not cluster beneath it. Many were sighing, a man was weeping. Lloyd got in line, his eyes lifted to the image that had been miraculously imprinted on the cape of Juan Diego. The moving belt took him all too swiftly past the image. He went back and got into line again. Three times he moved beneath the image, prayers forming on his lips—no need to conceal his gratitude here—and then went to the back of the basilica. There were confessionals there and lines of penitents waiting. Lloyd joined them. He wanted to confess again here. Tell God once again that he was sorry, that he would never again offend Him. He could not have formed a clear image of Catherine if he tried.

  Penitents sat on benches, sliding along toward their turn in the confessional. Lloyd sat and closed his eyes, wanting to be just another pilgrim, another sinner, one of the vast army of believers who throughout the ages had lifted their hearts in joy and sorrow to the one who created them from nothing.

  Some commotion began at the front of the church. There were shouts, screaming. And then gunfire. Lloyd sat frozen on his bench. What in the name of God was going on? Pilgrims were scattering from behind the altar and then a ladder was lifted, more gunfire sounded, and, incredibly, the image disappeared. Guards had arrived and there was more gunfire. Some terrible desecration was in progress. Lloyd rose to his feet and ran toward the front of the church. Whatever was happening had to be stopped.

  He was almost to the altar when a gunman with something pulled over his face emerged, followed by others like himself carrying something. The first man came running toward Lloyd and he planted himself in the aisle. The masked man turned his weapon on him.

  The first shot missed him, and there was a scream at the back of the church. The second shot ripped into his chest. He was shot again as he fell, and then once more. But he was beyond feeling by then.

  PART I

  Holy Heist

  CHAPTER ONE

  I

  “And this is war, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Latin Americans, believers and nonbelievers alike, were stunned by the news that the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe had been stolen from its shrine in Mexico City. The borders between their various countries hark back to colonial times, but the Spanish and Portuguese had long since intermarried with the native Indian population. In the wake of the sacrilegious theft, the whole of Latin America experienced an almost mystic sense of solidarity. The Virgin who had appeared to Juan Diego was theirs. Her image appeared in haciendas and in hovels. The Mother of God figured in the furtive devotions even of unbelievers; everyone rendered fearful by natural disaster or turbulence at high altitudes, if only in his heart, prayed the familiar words: Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosostros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra morte. The outrage in Mexico City made it seem that their most powerful advocate with Her Son had been taken from them. Who in the name of God was responsible for such a sacrilege?

  In the days following the theft—and the incidental deaths of some half dozen pilgrims caught between the small band of thieves and the ineffectual basilica guards pursuing them—there came a series of denials of responsibility from various groups that might reasonably have fallen under suspicion.

  A political explanation seemed ruled out. Members of every party went to the shrine and advanced across the plaza on their knees, many clutching unfamiliar rosaries in their manicured hands.

  The nativist groups that sought to reassert the claims of lost Mayan and Incan civilizations? They issued emotional denials and vowed to sacrifice the perpetrators in the ancient way when they were apprehended.

  In the silence of those first days, the question in everyone’s mind was, why? Why would anyone commit such a sacrilege?

  Missionaries from the north who had been evangelizing zealously to wean the people from their superstitious religion (and meeting with surprising success, not least because they tried to fuse evangelical Protestantism with the simple devotions of the natives—many chapels were named after saints, and not a few bore the name of Nuestra Madre de Guadalupe) became the object of dark suspicions. These were somewhat allay
ed when evangelical missionaries and their flocks joined the great processions that wound through the cities of the south, led by a bishop in towns where there was a bishop, the monstrance containing the Eucharist carried aloft, banners with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe fluttering overhead while bands played music that was not even remotely liturgical. All this in public reparation to the Virgin for the terrible deed that had been done.

  Not many years before, in Mexico, priests had been hunted down and killed in a political effort to expunge the faith of the people and replace it with Marxism. Even after the persecutions ceased, it remained illegal for priests to appear in clerical garb. Now, in this hour of crisis, clad in glorious vestments, they led the procession through the streets as if the whole of Mexico City had become a cathedral.

  On the fourth day the terrible, infuriating revelation came, and offended piety gave way to rage. The Rough Riders, a militant group that had joined the Minutemen and others who had gathered on the southern border of the United States to do what the Border Patrol was either unwilling or unable to do—stop the flow of illegal immigration from the south—announced that the sacred image was in its possession.

  Theophilus Grady, head of the Rough Riders, called a press conference in El Paso to make his announcement. In jodhpurs, shiny knee-high boots, and a Sam Brown belt, with pistols on his hips, a black tie under the brown collar of his shirt, and a huge mustache beneath his meaty nose, Grady stared out at the assembled journalists through his steel-rimmed glasses.

  “Four days ago a brave band of Rough Riders took custody of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the shrine in Mexico City.”

  This was the first sentence on the sheet of paper he held. Before he could go on, pandemonium broke out, and questions were hurled at him. Grady waited calmly, then raised his hand. When something like silence was restored, he resumed his statement.

  “The United States has been under invasion along our southern border for years. The people have repeatedly expressed their desire that our politicians fulfill their constitutional obligation and put an end to this. All they have received in reply are words, empty words. There has been official collusion with this influx of illegals. They are accorded the benefits and privileges of citizens even though their illegal status is acknowledged. It is acknowledged and dismissed. Giant corporations and industrial farmers, small businesses, too, and the wealthy who employ and exploit them clearly favor this constant and unauthorized flow of cheap labor across our border. We Rough Riders and others have done what we could to put spine into the Border Patrol. No wonder they are demoralized. Two members of that patrol have been tried and sent to prison for doing their job. The time has come for decisive action. We will hold the image we have taken hostage until the Mexican government, and other governments, especially our own, put a stop to this invasion.”

  Throughout the tumultuous question period, Grady alone retained his calm, treating the members of the media as children, hostile children.

  He told them that the image was in a secure place, that no harm or damage would come to it. But it would be retained until . . .

  He was unruffled when he was told that by taking responsibility for what had happened in Mexico City, he was taking responsibility for those who had been killed during the theft of the image. He dismissed this as the collateral damage inevitable in war.

  “And this is war, ladies and gentlemen. A country that is invaded is eo ipso at war with the invader.”

  His calmness infuriated his audience. Who, he was asked, had appointed him protector of the border?

  “Who appointed the Minutemen? I use the phrase historically, not for our companions on the border.”

  When Grady left the press conference he was whisked away in a car to a waiting helicopter and disappeared to no one knew where. The camps of the Rough Riders along the border were gone. There remained only the Minutemen and others to confront the rage that boiled up from the south. Immigrants had always approached the border stealthily and stolen across to economic opportunity unobserved. Now armed bands approached the border and gunfire was exchanged. Paul Pulaski, head of one branch of the Minutemen, said that he and his followers would hold the border against these now armed invaders until federal troops arrived.

  But would federal troops be sent?

  From the White House came yet another condemnation of vigilante groups. An apology was sent to the Mexican government. It was returned. Only the restoration of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to her shrine could pave the way for diplomacy.

  Senators vied with one another in expressing at great length their condemnation of what had happened. In the well of the House it was suggested that if troops were sent to the border it should be to round up the vigilantes.

  The cardinal archbishop of Washington spoke to a disinterested group at the National Press Club about the Church’s teaching on just war. He did everything but apply the teaching clearly to what was happening on the southern border of the country.

  A day after Theophilus Grady’s press conference, things took a turn for the worse. The volunteers along the border found that they were under fire from the rear as well as from across the border. Miguel Arroyo, founder of Justicia y Paz, announced that he had authorized volunteer formations to come to the aid of their erstwhile countrymen who were pinned down by rifle and mortar fire along the border. Soon something very much like civil war raged. Men streamed to the scene of action, either to support the beleaguered Minutemen or to attack them from the rear. A dozen Border Patrol posts were taken over by vigilantes without resistance, perhaps with something of relief.

  Neither Mexican nor American troops were involved in the border war, both governments issuing promises of non-involvement.

  It occurred to cynics that the governments, by professing neutrality in the war that raged on their common border, assumed that the combatants would take care of the problem by wiping one another out. And the casualties grew. Medics and nurses were soon among the vigilantes, tending to the wounded. What the bloody skirmishes were for became problematical. The vigilantes were doing what they had long vowed to do, protect the border with force, but the bands from the south had no clear objective until Latinos already in the States came to their support. Talk began of a Republic of California. Arroyo piously promised to show leniency toward the illegal aliens currently firing on those who were once again his countrymen.

  Meanwhile the mass of Latin Americans wanted only the return of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to her shrine.

  II

  “I’ll find him.”

  “Get it!”

  The president had listened impatiently to their reports, asked what could be done, and then interrupted with that curt command.

  “Get it and get it back to them.” He hurried, bandy-legged, from the room, his right arm out from his body and slightly bent, as if he were about to draw.

  Vincent Traeger rose with the others and they left silently. Down by the gate in the media encampment, among cameras, bleachers, and umbrellas, reporters huddled in the rain. Traeger and the others went down the walk and through the gate and some minutes later were in the car and on their way.

  “Get it,” someone repeated.

  Traeger could see that his companions had no idea how they were to carry out that barked order from the commander in chief. Through the car’s tinted glass, Washington in the rain seemed to be melting as they sped through it. What the hell am I doing here? Traeger wondered. But he already knew. He had put essentially the same question to himself when he had been summoned by his old boss, Dortmund, to his new address.

  “A retirement home?”

  “Don’t call it that.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Third base. Maybe, stealing home.” With the plastic tubes feeding oxygen into his nostrils, Dortmund looked almost grotesque when he smiled. Good God, were they still relying on him?

  The topic, of course, was the unpleasantness along the southern border. Traeger
stirred in his chair. All this he could get from the media. Already he had the uneasy certitude as to why he had been summoned.

  “Grady,” Dortmund said. It might have been a groan.

  “Grady,” Traeger repeated.

  Theophilus Grady. What a cowboy. Traeger had watched the El Paso press conference on television and the sight of the maverick who had been drummed out of the agency made all the commotion seem a farce. Did Grady really have the stolen image?

  “He could just be taking advantage of the situation,” Traeger had told Dortmund.

  “Someone has that image.”

  Traeger nodded. If Grady was bluffing—and when wasn’t he?—the real thieves would not be happy to have their thunder stolen. Dortmund was shaking his head, and the plastic tubes caught the sunlight. They were in a little patio reached through sliding doors from the living room of his condo in what he refused to acknowledge was a retirement village. Dortmund continued to shake his head.

  “Not even Grady. I told them you were the man to track him down.”

  Traeger lit a cigarette and Dortmund watched him enviously. Even with emphysema, he looked as if he were about to ask for one. It had been thoughtless to light up before the old man.