“And how is my atheist neighbor?”
“I’m fine.”
He drew back. “I meant Jason Phelps.”
“He’s taking his nap.”
“Wise man.”
What if she had come to visit Don Ibanez rather than Jason and poured out her troubles to him? The two old men were much alike, despite the deep divide between faith and . . . whatever you could call Jason’s outlook. When they left the church, Clare and George wandered away.
“You didn’t mean that about being an atheist,” Don Ibanez said. He had offered her his arm and they were walking toward the hacienda.
“Didn’t I?”
He walked in silence. “That is between God and yourself.”
Inside, he offered her a glass of his favorite red, and they were still sipping it when the young couple came in. Don Ibanez left them and Catherine felt suddenly like the uninvited guest she was. What would any of these three think if they knew she had been in bed with Jason Phelps not an hour earlier? She realized that she was sniffling. From a far room, the sound of a television set became audible. And then there came a great cry from Don Ibanez.
Clare ran to him and George and Catherine followed. No wonder Don Ibanez had cried out. There had been an assassination attempt on Miguel Arroyo.
CHAPTER TWO
I
“He didn’t quite say that, did he?”
When Traeger was called back to Washington, he had a long flight on which to think of what was coming. It seemed best to make his mind a blank. Did retired bankers remember the bad loans they had made, and lawyers their lost cases? His own career seemed more like that of a surgeon who had watched platoons of patients go off to their eternal reward. In his case, most of the deaths had been by violence. For the bulk of his career, working under Dortmund, the long twilight struggle had seemed to make sense. The agency had always been too full of Ivy League types trying to act like their movie counterparts, but there had always been a solid core for whom the stakes were clear; right against wrong, freedom versus slavery. The globe itself had seemed divided between the two sides. And then the Berlin Wall had come down, and the Soviet Union collapsed; it had seemed the victory they had sought. Dortmund had sense enough to retire then. Ever since, the agency had seemed in search of a cause. When he could no longer admire his superiors, Traeger followed Dortmund into retirement. Since then, whenever he had been reactivated, it was in response to Dortmund’s wish. And so it had been in the case of the theft of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the turmoil that followed. Illegal immigration was not of itself enough to stir him, but wondering what others might be concealed among the poor devils sneaking across the border in search of a better deal gave him pause. And the floundering of Homeland Security, of course.
He took a cab from Reagan and soon was in the same room with Boswell, once of the glen plaid suit, now in a blazer and checked open shirt, but the same Wizard of Oz expression.
“Mission accomplished, Traeger.”
“Weren’t the instructions to get it?”
“This will please you.”
He handed Traeger a letter from the White House, expressing the president’s gratitude.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Boswell looked wise. “The main thing is that it was done.”
“We have it?”
“The matter no longer seems urgent.”
Superiors had always spoken with forked tongues, Dortmund excepted, but he, too, had often been enigmatic. It was difficult for an agent not to become duplicitous, an occupational hazard.
“Will Crosby and I were there when Theophilus Grady was taken.”
“Crosby?”
“Perhaps you didn’t know him.”
“I knew him, of course. Did you enlist his help?”
“Our paths crossed.”
If Boswell was suggesting that Grady’s public denials were bullshit, Traeger figured he could be a little oblique himself. Didn’t the man realize that if Traeger had been on the scene at Pocatello, he had seen that package carried from the house and put into the Pontiac with the tinted windows? Boswell rose and extended a manicured hand across his desk. Traeger took it, as if they were making a bet. He took his presidential letter, too, for what it was worth, and walked to the Metro stop. He hadn’t been offered a ride.
He rode the Metro back to the airport, where he had checked his bag. When he had it, on impulse, he took a cab to the Mar-riott and checked in. Then, feeling like a tourist, he went for a walk. There were benches in Lafayette Park across from the White House and he sat there and fought the feeling that he had been discarded. And bamboozled. Mission accomplished. What the hell did that mean? The guerrilla war went on, Minutemen against enraged Mexicans, volunteers popping up here and there, vigilantes. It was a god-awful mess, and there was only one way to stop it. Get that picture back to where it belonged in the basilica in Mexico City. “Get it,” the president had said. If the agency had it, why hadn’t it been returned to its shrine? Traeger got out his phone and called Dortmund and told him he had been relieved.
“You don’t sound relieved.”
“I was asked to do something and I haven’t done it.”
“Can you come see me?”
“I was just going to suggest that.”
“Great minds.”
Traeger watched a pigeon strut by, seemingly pulled forward by the motion of its neck. “Tomorrow.”
He had dinner in an Italian restaurant near his hotel, polishing off a bottle of Chianti along with a mountain of pasta. It was with a bit of a buzz on that he went back to his hotel. When he passed the bar in the lobby, his eye was caught by the large flat-screen television and he stopped. He went in and walked toward the set. He seemed to be the only one in the bar who was interested in the attempted assassination of Miguel Arroyo, the founder of Justicia y Paz. There was a shot of what remained of the convertible and then Arroyo, smiling into the camera, talking his head off.
The next day, turning in to the retirement home, Traeger had a depressing thought about the future that lay ahead. He was in great shape, full of piss and vinegar, but so had Dortmund been within living memory. Traeger’s. Age snuck up on one, that was clear. Traeger would rather go down in a plane crash or be swept away in a tornado than end up in such a pleasant, depressing place as this.
At the house, he went around to find his old mentor on his patio, with a huge book on his lap.
“Is that the phone directory?”
“War and Peace. A new translation. Of course you can read it in the original.”
“I’ve read it in translation, too. Have you seen the Russian film version of it?”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’ll send you a copy.” The movie had been made before the fall, but it was a faithful rendering of the story. Of course, the whole thing had been regarded as a prelude to the revolution.
Dortmund suggested that Traeger push his chair out onto the lawn. Under the high power lines. “I don’t think we’ve had a secure conversation.”
“I’ve been relieved of duty.”
Dortmund nodded. “So you said.” He looked away. “I was told.”
“They don’t have the portrait, do they?”
“I doubt it.”
Traeger waited. Dortmund brought his lower lip between his teeth, looked up at the high power lines, and sighed.
“They like things the way they are.”
The absent portrait continued to fuel the guerrilla war, and senators and congressmen were going crazy, demanding a sky-high fence along the border and that troops be sent to support the Minutemen and the Border Patrol. The demonstrations in Mexico City were no longer Eucharistic processions; the Church Militant was out and demanding blood. Two zealots had been arrested planting charges at the base of the Washington Monument. Graffiti defaced the Lincoln Memorial. All this was officially treated as the acts of terrorists, otherwise undescribed. No relation to what was going on in the Southwest was
recognized.
Dortmund tried to explain the thinking of the men who had just sent Traeger on his way. Were they working for or against the administration?
“Probably both.” Dortmund said.
“Boswell is the kind of man I never wanted to work with,” Traeger said.
“He is much appreciated by congressional committees.”
“I wonder whose side they are on.”
“Have you read Feith’s book on what led up to Iraq?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps they enjoy seeing the president unable to resolve this.”
Traeger let it go. Under Dortmund, he had been trained to act for the sitting administration, whatever it was. Dortmund was suggesting that was no longer the case. The agency had assumed a political stance, and that meant a partisan one.
“How could they convince the White House they had recovered that picture if they haven’t?”
“He didn’t quite say that, did he?”
“He didn’t quite say anything.”
“Quite.” The old man smiled. Once he had worked with a fop from MI-5. But he stopped himself from saying so. Garrulity was the vice of age. “What do you know of Miguel Arroyo?”
“Well, he escaped assassination. If that is what it was.”
Dortmund’s eyebrows lifted.
“Do you remember a man named Lowry?” Traeger asked.
“Ah, the repentant radical. What about him?”
“He is in a kind of homeless shelter in Palo Alto.”
“The poor fellow.”
“No, he works there. He’s the cook.”
“He’s lucky to be alive.” Dortmund paused. “But then we all are. Why did you mention him?”
“He had just advised me to check out Arroyo when I was called in. I don’t like to leave a job undone.”
“Don’t.”
Traeger looked at the old man. That one word spoke volumes. “What do you suggest?”
Again Dortmund munched on his lower lip. He looked at Traeger. “I would get in touch with Ignatius Hannan.”
“He has Crosby.”
“I think Crosby would like to get back to his family. We’ve talked.”
“Have you talked with Hannan?”
“He’ll be expecting you.”
There was something about New England that rubbed Traeger the wrong way. The terrain went against his Midwestern predilections, and he found the different ways of mangling English grating. Before heading for New Hampshire, he had checked out his office and when he set off it was in his own car, a nondescript Oldsmobile. He had tried a Toyota once, but thoughts of Pearl Harbor had made him trade it in for the Olds. The Toyota had been assembled in the States, but even so.
He went around Baltimore, skirted New York, and got into Connecticut. The interstate system was one thing Ike had done right while in the White House, but his reputation would depend on his military, not his political, career. His farewell address must have been written by some wacko on his staff. The military-industrial complex, as if a strong defense produced the menace it was designed to defend against. At Hartford, he turned north and headed for Manchester.
When he pulled into the driveway of Empedocles he was still asking himself why he hadn’t stayed home when he got there. What was Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba? He had been honorably relieved; he still remembered what it was like to trust the judgment of his superiors—his conscience need not bother him if he just settled down to making money for a change. Maybe if he hadn’t talked with Dortmund he could have done that, but the old man, frail and out of it as he seemed, had never retired in his heart. There was still the great battle to be fought, no matter if the longtime enemy had melted away into a hodgepodge of republics. The enemy was still out there, awaiting his chance, no matter what guise he assumed. The price of freedom was eternal vigilance. That might have been on Dortmund’s coat of arms. It helped that they saw eye to eye on the caliber of those who had succeeded them. Dortmund had nodded knowingly when Traeger told him of the package that had been hustled from Grady’s hideout into the Pontiac.
“So your job is unfinished,” Hannan said.
“I’ve been relieved.”
“I wanted to hire you in the first place. Crosby is a good man. . . .”
“He is a very good man.”
“It sounds to me as if all he did was follow you around.”
“He would have done better on his own.”
“I want to hire you.”
“In Washington they told me that my mission had been accomplished.”
“Talk to Don Ibanez.”
Traeger looked around the office. Outside, the candles flickering in the grotto were visible. “All I want is expenses.”
“You will have all my resources at your disposal. You can have a plane. I don’t care what it costs.”
II
“He was lying when he said he had it.”
Laura’s brother John was the youngest priest ever to be appointed prefect of the Vatican Library and Museums, an honor he disparaged by pointing out how his predecessors in the job had fared. Cardinal Maguire had been killed on the patio of his penthouse on the roof of the library and his assistant had been murdered right here on the grounds of Empedocles.
“That’s hardly part of the job description, John.”
John had been in the post a year now and had yet to move into the penthouse, saying he preferred his rooms in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a residence within the Vatican walls for the priests and prelates who worked in the diminutive city. Country, actually. John had just given a lecture at Notre Dame and stopped off to see Laura before returning to Rome. Nate and Ray were inside, talking with Traeger. Brother and sister were seated on a bench facing the grotto that Nate Hannan had built, an exact replica of Lourdes. The impossibly rich founder of Empedocles had come back to the religion of his youth when thoughts about his wealth and the hectic life he led had brought large questions to his mind. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his own soul? Always a good question, even if you’re not rich or likely to become so. Sometimes Laura was surprised Nate hadn’t chucked it all and retired to a monastery.
“Retired?” John asked. “How old is he?”
“He and Ray were classmates at Boston College.”
“So how old is Ray?”
“Don’t you know? Let me put it this way. We were all classmates.”
“Making Hannan what? Twenty-nine?”
Laura squeezed his arm.
Nate’s conversion had had its influence on Laura and Ray, too, but there was no need to go into that with John.
“There’s a replica of Lourdes at Notre Dame, too, you know.”
This prompted Laura to tell John of the actual basilica that Don Ibanez had constructed on his property in Napa Valley.
“A basilica?”
“In miniature. A replica of the shrine in Mexico City that’s been so much in the news.”
A pained expression came onto John’s face. “Why would anyone steal a miraculous image?”
“The answer to that seems clear. Look at the chaos it has stirred up.”
John turned toward her. “This isn’t just a social call, Laura. The Vatican remembers the role that Mr. Hannan played in recovering the third secret of Fatima. Would he be willing to do something similar here?”
“John, he is way ahead of you.”
She told him of the hiring of Crosby. “Remember Traeger? Nate wanted to hire him first, but he had already been activated by the CIA. They let him go and now he’s back with us.”
Boris, the chef, was delighted to have mouths to feed that might have some appreciation of his culinary skills. Nate Hannan ate like a bird and would have been happy with hot dogs. Boris, of course, affected the great starched hat of his profession and his girth suggested that the feasts he prepared did not go unappreciated by their creator. His great weakness was that he washed down his food in torrents of wine and, when thus elated, was l
ikely to tell endless stories of the notables he had fed in his career. Taking this job at Empedocles made little professional sense, except, of course, for the king’s ransom Nate had lured him with.
“I sometimes entertain,” Nate had said, and the phrase became a mantra for Boris when he was in his cups. Laura and Ray had their lunch at Empedocles, providing a target of opportunity for Boris. In recompense, they were both on diets, diets impossible to keep to if they continued to lunch at Empedocles. They reconciled themselves to the rise and fall of their weights by saying it was only charitable to provide Boris with a raison d’être.
When they went inside, Nate was still in his office with Ray and Traeger. Laura peeked in and was immediately asked to join the discussion.
“John is here, Nate.”
“John!” Hannan bounded from his chair and headed for Father Burke as if he meant to tackle him. But he came to a halt and reached out to pat him on the arms.
Once it was clear that Father John Burke was here as an informal emissary of the Vatican, seeking Hannan’s help in restoring that sacred image to the basilica in Mexico City, Nate asked Traeger to bring John up to date.
Listening, Laura thought what an impossible task they had set Crosby, and it was no less impossible for Traeger. He spoke in a clipped manner, ticking off the things he had done—“all of them useless”—dwelling on the embarrassment of the events in long-term parking at the San Francisco airport and the fiasco near Pocatello when Grady had been hustled off before they could get to him.
“Then it’s been recovered?”
Ray said, “Grady denies he ever had it.”
“Maybe he’s lying.”
“He was lying when he said he had it.”
The disposition of the Grady matter was mysterious. From coast to coast there were calls for an indictment for the murder of those poor pilgrims in the basilica in Mexico City. But no indictment had been brought.
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