Relic of Time

by Ralph McInerny

  But that was yet to come.

  The following day, in Washington, an explosive device did some damage to what is called the National Cathedral. Only a senator or two expressed dismay. Whoever had thought that bulky imitation of an English cathedral symbolized the religious commitments of the American people was risibly mistaken. Not even the ACLU took seriously the suggestion that the cathedral was analogous to, say, Notre Dame in Paris, where even the most profligate of presidents prayed on state occasions, kneeling on a prie-dieu for all his mistresses to see.

  When the Lincoln Memorial was defaced, there was a stronger reaction.

  Homeland Security raised the level of danger to the maximum.

  In Mexico City the demand that the gringo who had attempted this hoax be brought immediately to justice became a mantra.

  Death to the gringo!

  String him up!

  And, an indication of time spent up north: Get whitey!

  II

  Only a good plan could have gone so wrong.

  The gringo was on the run.

  After the bishop cried out in anguished disappointment when the foam case was opened, Traeger was elbowed aside as the crowd surged forward. This had the effect of moving him backward, stumbling, nearly falling. Another man would have begun rehearsing what he might say to the bishop when he recovered. Traeger was not that man. He knew a blown operation when he saw one.

  In a minute he was outside, cursing the ruse of sending Smiley winging toward Miami, presumably leaving Traeger to savor the triumph of the restoration of the image. Traeger himself was heading north. His mind was full of the scene at Don Ibanez’s little basilica. How had the shift of foam cases been made?

  But that could wait. First he had to get the hell out of this country. He had been made a fool of, but he had felt foolish before, not quite like this, but close enough. He shed his suit jacket as he went, handing it to a beggar. He opened his shirt. He grabbed a floppy hat from a stand as he went by it. From another vendor’s stand he snatched a serape and a pair of sandals. In a side street, he took off his street shoes and got into the sandals, a change he would regret in the hours ahead. The woman to whom he handed his shoes was surprised, but she quickly covered them with her shawl and clutched them to her bosom. Aswim in the sea of the people, Traeger pressed on.

  A mile from the basilica, he saw armed men clambering into a truck. He hopped aboard, sat, pulling his knees to his chest, covering his face with the brim of his hat. He left the truck when it had cleared the city, heading north still, taking a rifle with him, along with a bandolier an eager warrior had removed in order to get more comfortable in the lurching truck.

  The distance from Mexico City to Sonora just below the Arizona border seemed to melt away as the determined, now silent, bands moved to the north. Clad as he was, and armed, Traeger was anonymous among so many. When addressed, he grunted or spat, sometimes both. He did not dare attempt to speak. His Spanish was rusty and in any case was a different language than that being spoken around him.

  Several times, he clung to trucks filled with grim-faced men. Once he rode a burro so small he helped it along with his dangling feet. He decided the luxury was too costly. He could stroll and make better time.

  It was deep night when the mass of which he had become a part eventually reached the border, a flood of thousands, many of whom broke through the hurriedly called-up units of the National Guard. Some would go on and claim to have occupied Phoenix.

  In a Red Roof Inn, Traeger managed to commandeer a room and lock himself in. The one thing he had been determined to keep was his cell phone. He turned it on, scrolled through the address book, punched a button, and listened to the phone ring far off in New Hampshire.

  He cut off the call before it was answered. Reporting to his employer? Traeger no longer considered himself the agent of Ignatius Hannan. From now on, he would be acting for himself. It was he who had been made an ass of, not Hannan. The thought of calling Dortmund came and went. First he had to think, to reconstruct how he had been duped.

  He reviewed every stage in the execution of what had seemed a good plan. It was a good plan. Only a good plan could have gone so wrong. The face that kept looming before him was that of Miguel Arroyo. When he had come upon Miguel standing beside Jason Phelps in the shadow of the covered patio behind the retired professor’s house, he should have aborted the plan. His earlier guess as to how Arroyo had learned of the planned transfer was only that, a guess. Worth told Lowry and Lowry told Arroyo. If the first part of that seemed remotely plausible, the second made no sense. Why would Lowry, if he had been informed by Worth, pass it on to Arroyo?

  How then?

  Arroyo had been the means of getting the original of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe from Mexico City to the basilica on Don Ibanez’s estate. Was it possible that the old man, in a magnanimous gesture, out of a sense of noblesse oblige, had decided to let Arroyo in on the plan? But why not inform Traeger if he had?

  All that could wait. Traeger lay back on the bed, reviewing step by step what had happened. The rental of the U-Haul might have caused speculation. And ordering the foam case. Of course he had imagined that those who had been in the Chinook that came banging down at Theophilus Grady’s hideaway would still be at work. It was they, or their fellows, who had assassinated Morgan, only to find that what he had attempted to sell was not the original image. Had they tried to take Hannan’s million as well, ending up with a suitcase of Ray Whipple’s clothes? The descent on Grady would have been a second frustration to them. Eventually, they had to believe the Rough Rider. He had never had the missing portrait. So their search would have gone on.

  Most sobering of all, everything that Traeger had done up there in Napa Valley had doubtless been under surveillance.

  And then he remembered his surprise when Don Ibanez told him that the copy of the image that had hung in his little basilica had been given shelter by Jason Phelps. Was it with that he had driven to the airport and Smiley had flown to Mexico City?

  Where was the original now?

  Was it hanging again behind the altar in Don Ibanez’s basilica? Surely the old man would know the original as easily as the bishop had recognized a mere copy. Traeger remembered the calm with which the old man had reacted after the theft of the image from its shrine. Of course. He had known what was going on. So, too, in the long-term parking lot at the San Francisco airport, Don Ibanez had taken part in what he would have known was a game. Buy back a copy of the image that was hanging in his little basilica? Whoever else had bamboozled Traeger, Don Ibanez certainly had. But always it was of Miguel Arroyo that he thought.

  If Traeger had ever doubted, he knew now where he was going.

  III

  The preordained results of a sound free trade policy.

  Reality is what appears on the television screen, and from the beginning events in the Southwest had been reduced to the dimensions of that screen, scenes of undeniable battling soothingly reduced to isolated incidents. But surely now the nature of the problem would be recognized, patriots would arise in the House and Senate and demand action rather than more words. This did not happen, save for Gunther and a few other marginalized lawmakers. This became understandable when a thoughtful essay written for Foreign Affairs by the presumptive secretary of state in the presumptive new administration was released to the blogosphere, the glacial wait for print publication unacceptable in present circumstances.

  What was happening, the author explained, was more or less what both parties had envisaged when NAFTA was passed, creating the hope of a single great free trade zone reaching from Alaska and the arctic regions of Canada down through the States and on into Mexico to the canal. A single economic unit, but the demands of free enterprise would lead on to political union as well. This had not been clear perhaps in the original Republican proposal, heatedly opposed at the time by Democrats, but it had been a Democratic administration that had gotten the bill through and a subsequent Republican admini
stration that had enlarged it, mapping out the highway that would enable goods to pass freely north and south, and proposing an immigration bill that would have been a giant step toward political consolidation. Unfortunately, that immigration plan had to be put on a back burner when the radio demagogues went after it. But that had been a delay, not a defeat. Whatever the differences between the parties, and the author acknowledged that they were many and deep, as deep as the chasm between the rich and the poor, on the matter in question the parties stood united. The so-called invasion of Arizona and the encirclement of San Diego were nothing less than the preordained results of a sound free trade policy.

  His counterpart, the presumptive secretary of state in the unlikely event that the other party should win the election, signed on to the piece as to something self-evident.

  The governors of Arizona and New Mexico, who had flown to Washington—some said fled to Washington—expressed their dismay and disapproval. Of course the invaders had declared that the two governors had been replaced. More than half of the Arizona state patrol, with all their cars and equipment, had defected to the invaders. “Republic of Arizona” had replaced “State of Arizona” on their vehicles. Their representative was currently looking for someone with whom to discuss their jeopardized pensions and medical plans.

  Whatever truce had been struck on the matter between the two major political parties, talk radio insured that what its ir-repressibly loquacious star called the majority voice was heard. Impeachment proceedings had been launched in hundreds of constituencies. Third parties appeared like mushrooms, plus a toadstool or two. Independent militias were forming from the Dakotas to the Carolinas.

  The White House announced that the surge had been a success. Iraq at last was a free and democratic country.

  As for the homeland of the patron of this pleasant state of affairs, the picture grew increasingly gloomy. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops was discussing amalgamating with its brother bishops across what had once been the southern border of the United States. When they went into session, the matter was unctuously committed to the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Many diocesan papers, a majority in the Southwest, now used Spanish as their principal language, devoting a few columns to English readers as they once had to Latinos.

  Thus began, however unwittingly—the farsighted prelates had often gazed on the obscure woods of the future and got lost in the trees around them—the politicization of the outrage that had been committed when the sacred image of Our Lady of Guadalupe had been spirited away by a band of gunmen. That sacred image, wherever it was, was of the patroness of all the Americas. God forbid that she should become a cause of division among her devotees.

  A resolution was introduced in the Senate that stated the sense of that body that Our Lady of Guadalupe was not a symbol for Latinos alone but for gringos as well. (The resolution used these designations.) It was, of course, defeated.

  The Rough Riders of Theophilus Grady rode again, their number swollen with ardent new recruits. Paul Pulaski spoke from Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, an informative presentation of the role that the original Minutemen had played in the establishment of the United States. They had been menaced by British loyalists, but in the end freedom had prevailed and a new country was born. There are counterparts of such British loyalists among us now, he warned, and they are in high places. They had hijacked the republic. The time for decisive action had arrived.

  In Richmond, an assembly hurriedly gathered to declare that the original secession of the southern states was once more effective, given the manifest ineptitude and lack of patriotism on the part of the federal government. An addendum to the declaration was hastily added, stressing that this did not mean the reinstitution of slavery. Gray uniforms began to appear on the island in Charleston Harbor that held Fort Sumter.

  In all this Sturm und Drang, the actual location of the original sacred image of Our Lady of Guadalupe seemed no longer of primary concern.

  Miguel Arroyo had moved his headquarters to the Justicia y Paz buildings in San Diego, on the alert for developments.

  IV

  “Can we take it along?”

  “Where is Vincent Traeger?”

  Ignatius Hannan put the question to Laura and Ray Whipple, letting them in on the carefully prepared plan that Don Ibanez had confided to the founder of Empedocles. Smiley had signaled Hannan from Catalina and again from the Mexico City airport, from the latter saying, “Finito,” and that was enough. Then, after a short stay in Miami, he had headed north with Steltz at the controls, napping in the cabin. But it had been Smiley who brought the plane into the Manchester airport and taxied to the Empedocles hangar. Hannan was not there to meet him. News of a disastrous sort was coming in from Mexico City.

  Hannan got in touch with business counterparts there to find out what on earth had happened. He listened in disbelief. Traeger had brought the wrong package! All that careful planning, and flawless execution—he was proud of Smiley and Steltz and he would tell them so once he cooled down—and then, after a triumphal procession to the shrine, alerting everyone what was under way, the bishop had been presented with a copy of the portrait and collapsed on the floor of the basilica. Pandemonium broke out. There had been hours of chaos. They were lucky to get the bishop out of the basilica in one piece. His crosier was in several pieces.

  “What about Traeger?” Hannan asked.

  None of his informants knew, hence Hannan’s question to Laura and Ray, who sat across from his desk. Ray did not look pleased that they had been left out of the loop. But Laura, seeing what was coming, was glad.

  “He double-crossed us,” Nate said, trying the thought.

  “That makes no sense.”

  “None of it makes sense.”

  “Why would he go through with the plan you’ve now just told us of for the first time if he didn’t intend to deliver the original?”

  “You think he was double-crossed?”

  “That makes more sense, Nate.” Ray crossed his legs, which in his body language meant that he was ready to be attacked.

  What made no sense to Laura was that Don Ibanez had been in possession of the original all along. Riots had taken place, blood had been shed, the whole country seemed to be coming apart at the seams, and he could have stopped all that in a minute. She said all this aloud.

  “He must have had his reasons,” Hannan said.

  “I would love to know what they were.”

  Nate picked up the phone, thought better of it, put it down. “I’m going out there.”

  “What in the world for?”

  “Just to be there. When I talk to Don Ibanez I want to look him in the eye.”

  Did Don Ibanez now occupy the role of double-crosser? Who would be next? Thank God she and Ray had just learned of this complicated plan. Once he had delivered the original, Traeger had been scheduled to give a public account of what had happened. The assumption was that the wild joy greeting the return of the original would cover any gaps in the explanation. But after the great hoax, Traeger had simply disappeared.

  “Does Don Ibanez still have the original?”

  Nate Hannan looked vacantly at Ray. “You two coming with me?”

  Laura called Smiley, apparently waking him, and asked if he were up to a return flight to the coast.

  “Flying is my job.”

  “How about Steltz?”

  “I’ll ask her.”

  He seemed to have covered the phone with his hand.

  “We’ll be ready in an hour,” he said a moment later.

  “You can take turns napping on the way.”

  “Good idea.”

  The two pilots seemed to be fooling around as she and Ray had before they married. But Steltz had a husband somewhere, grounded because of incompatibility. They had better be discreet, or Nate would give them the old heave-ho. The founder of Empedocles seemed to be missing a cylinder or two when it came to women. Had he ever even had a girlfriend? He certainly had none
now. A eunuch for the kingdom of Empedocles’ sake? That had covered it until the big conversion, brought on by watching Mother Angelica on EWTN. Now it was for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, at least as Nate understood it.

  Boris was abject when Laura told him they would not be eating the dinner he was preparing.

  “No! Impossible! Does he want me to throw it out?”

  “Ask a few friends in.”

  “Friends? I have no friends. I’m a chef.”

  “You and Lise then.”

  “Bah. She eats like a bird.”

  “I’m sorry, Boris.”

  “Sorry!”

  “Can we take it along?” Nate asked when Laura told him of Boris’s reaction.

  A picnic on the plane? Boris would slash his wrists at the idea that he could just pack up the five-course dinner whose preparation had occupied him for much of the afternoon. “Don’t suggest that, Nate. Please.”

  Commercial airlines offered bonus miles so that passengers could suffer through more hours like those that had earned the bonus points. The last time Laura had flown commercially had been a revelation. The idiotic security precautions, the interval between the seats that made crossing one’s legs impossible—business class and first had been full up when she booked the flight—a little bitty pack of peanuts and a plastic cup of the soft drink of your choice to stave off starvation. There hadn’t been an empty seat on the plane. They had been delayed an hour and a half on the runway before the plane was cleared for takeoff. With pretty smiles, the cabin crew ignored the discomfort of their passengers. To think that once all this had been romantic. Fly the ocean in a silver plane, see the jungle when it’s wet with rain. . . . In an aisle seat, Laura had been lucky to see the clouds. Okay. She was spoiled.

  “We’ll have to get our own plane, Ray. Eventually.” The remark had the suggestion that some far-off day they would retire. Maybe not so far off if she could get pregnant, a condition that so far had eluded their best efforts. Sometimes Laura thought they were being punished for having anticipated the joys of marriage.