Relic of Time

by Ralph McInerny

  “We’re all after the same thing.”

  Wilberforce said, “Why don’t Craig and I go out back to the path you mentioned?”

  Traeger thought. “Good. Take the path and go over to Don Ibanez’s. Now that it’s dark, the house will be lit, and you can see what if anything is going on there.”

  Craig liked that even less.

  “Okay. You two go around to the back. There is a study with french doors that open onto the lawn. I’ll go in the front. Let’s hope that Crosby remembers you two from Santa Ana.”

  Craig said, “We’ll go in the front; you go around back.”

  Traeger would have given anything to be on his own, but if it hadn’t been for Craig and Wilberforce he’d be in the pokey in Santa Ana.

  “Good enough.”

  They got out of the car and eased its doors shut as quietly as they could. Traeger had his backpack, which held his weapon. He watched the two others go under the overhang to the front door and then moved swiftly around the house, getting out his pistol as he went.

  In the back, he went out from the house, staying clear of the light from the study which illumined the lawn. Someone was sitting at the desk in Jason Phelps’s study. A little old lady. A familiar lady. Good God, it was Gladys Stone, the flirty sexagenarian from the Rough Riders headquarters. What was she doing here?

  Craig and Wilberforce came into the study with another woman, not Catherine Dolan. And then Craig and Wilberforce were shaking hands with Gladys, whom they clearly knew. Traeger backed further away from the house, trying to figure out the meaning of that group in Phelps’s study. His earlier hunch that Gladys had had something to do with Morgan’s bloody end came back to him. During the long ride from Santa Ana, he and Craig and Wilberforce had grown too chummy.

  Wilberforce opened the french doors and called into the night, “Traeger?”

  He hesitated. But curiosity about Gladys got the better of him and he walked into the lighted area of the lawn. That was when Gladys pushed past Wilberforce, gripping a weapon with both hands. Before it went off, Traeger had turned and dashed for the connecting path. Gladys got off three rounds before he got to the path.

  VIII

  Crosby fired a warning shot.

  Clare’s anxiety about her father had diminished considerably since his release from the hospital, but the idea had been that he would recover more quickly in the familiar setting of the hacienda. That afternoon, when she had relieved Frater Leone and sat by her father’s bed, holding his hand, he had tried to talk but, as before, the sounds that emerged were not language. She patted his hand.

  “I understand, I understand.”

  His eyes glittered as he shook his head. He must be worried about the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. How insignificant that seemed compared to her father’s illness. To distract him, she began to talk.

  “Daddy, who attacked you?”

  The question seemed to relax him. He turned his hand over and squeezed hers. The jumble of sounds coming from his mouth might have been an answer to her question. From the doorway, Frater Leone beckoned to her and Clare rose and went to him. He took her into the hallway.

  “There are people downstairs.”

  “People?”

  “Catherine Dolan and the man Crosby.”

  Good Lord. She considered letting George, who had actually delayed his return to Palo Alto, entertain them, but Frater Leone was clearly eager to take up his vigil by the bedside again. Clare nodded and headed for the staircase, passing the room that was Frater Leone’s as she went.

  Catherine seemed to be enjoying having two men to dazzle when Clare came into the living room.

  “Laura called,” George told her. “She and her husband are on their way here from the airport.”

  “What on earth for?”

  Crosby said, “Traeger escaped. I thought he was being arrested by the state police but he was spirited away. I think he’s coming here.”

  “Here! My father is supposed to have absolute rest and quiet.”

  It was a silly remark; Clare saw that as soon as she had made it. George came and took her arm in his. “How is he?”

  “Oh, George.” She pressed against him and his arm went around her. Why oh why couldn’t they be just another couple?

  “Laura, the image that wasn’t taken to Mexico City has to be here. Naturally, Traeger won’t rest until he has it. He’s bound to come here.”

  Crosby stopped. There was the distant sound of gunfire. He drew a pistol from under his arm and dashed for the door.

  Two men brandishing weapons came running toward him from the pathway that linked the estate with Jason Phelps’s place. Crosby fired a warning shot and immediately the two disappeared, falling to the ground. Belatedly, Crosby recognized them as the men who had put Traeger into the car in Santa Ana. By that time, he, too, was on the lawn, trying to make out what the other two were doing. He had the great disadvantage of the lighted house behind him.

  “Crosby?”

  “Who are you?” He rolled away as he answered, not wanting to tell them where he was.

  “Craig. Wilberforce and I are agents. We rescued Traeger.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Why don’t you stand up?” said a voice behind him. Crosby looked up at a young man whose weapon hung at his side.

  “Wilberforce,” he said, giving Crosby a hand and pulling him to his feet. Craig materialized out of the night. That was when Crosby saw another figure move swiftly behind the basilica.

  “Are you two alone?”

  “Until we find Traeger. Gladys took a shot at him.”

  “Gladys?”

  “She must have been active when you were.”

  When Traeger burst onto Don Ibanez’s lawn, he slowed and moved away from the hacienda. And the pathway. In a minute, Craig and Wilberforce came crashing along the path.

  After their big reunion with Gladys and the shots that had been taken at him—three shots—he no longer felt part of the team. As soon as the two agents appeared, Will Crosby came out of the hacienda. The idiot sent up a warning shot and Craig and Wilberforce went to ground. Crosby was lucky they hadn’t taken him out, but then Crosby, too, disappeared. Their voices came to Traeger; Crosby was definitely rusty. Did he think this was No Man’s Land in World War I, with enemies chatting with one another from opposing trenches? A figure flitted past the lighted windows of the hacienda. Wilberforce. When he helped Crosby to his feet, Traeger took cover behind the basilica. When he looked out again, the trio had gone into the hacienda.

  At sounds behind him, Traeger, too, fell to the lawn. There was a small house back there, several windows alight. The man coming toward him was Carlos.

  The little man seemed to be groaning as he approached. Santa Madre, Santa Madre. Traeger lay as still as still, but Carlos’s mind was clearly occupied. He walked within ten feet of Traeger lying on the grass and disappeared around the basilica. After a minute, Traeger followed and saw him enter the basilica. He eased the doors open after they had closed behind the gardener and went inside.

  Carlos was on his knees in the aisle, groaning as he moved toward the altar. He stopped short of it and held out his arms. Santa Madre, Santa Madre. Traeger left the gardener to his devotions. Outside, he could see and hear Crosby talking with Craig and Wilberforce. All three had their weapons on display. They came onto the lawn and stopped. A great whirring sound was approaching, and then the lawn lit up like noonday as the chopper trained its lights on the ground below. Craig stepped forward, waving his arms. There was the sound of an automatic weapon from the chopper and Craig went down.

  Traeger went around the basilica, keeping out of the glare of the overhead lights. The area illuminated diminished as the chopper settled down. That was when Wilberforce opened fire on the men emerging from the chopper.

  Traeger had reached the far end of the hacienda and he went around it to a patio and let himself into the house. There was the sound of terrified talking in the living
room. Traeger took the staircase and went up it two at a time. He came into a hallway with an open lighted door at the end. Traeger opened a door and let himself into a darkened room, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Standing in the dark, breathing heavily, listening to the thumping beat of his heart, he tried to figure out what was happening. The helicopter had not been of the kind that had descended on Grady’s hideout near Pocatello. Were the Rough Riders riding again? Like everybody else, they would be certain that the missing image of Our Lady of Guadalupe had to be here, where the pointless trip to return it had begun. Grady’s men had taken care of Morgan, but why would they open fire on Craig? Traeger decided to get into the action. Why was he cowering in a dark room when things might be coming to a head?

  He opened the door to find Frater Leone about to open it. The priest was astounded to find Traeger in what, it emerged, was Frater Leone’s room. Traeger turned on the light. His eyes seemed to be directed by Frater Leone’s to the huge image of Our Lady of Guadalupe propped against the wall. Suppressing a delighted whoop, Traeger reached out to touch it. The search was ended!

  Only it wasn’t. “It is a copy,” Frater Leone said. “As you can see.”

  The image was on canvas. Traeger could have cried out in disappointment. He pushed past the priest to go downstairs.

  By the time he came into the living room, the chopper had gathered up its wounded and was lifting off, no lights on now. Wilberforce emptied his weapon at the chopper but without effect. In a minute it was gone, and silence descended. Craig was being carried inside when a car came up the driveway. It stopped and Laura and Ray Whipple got out, all smiles. Clare was on the phone, summoning medical aid for Craig.

  “Where have you been?” Wilberforce asked Traeger.

  “Reconnoitering.”

  That exchange made Traeger’s presence known. In every eye that looked at him he could see distrust and accusation. He put his pistol away. There was the sound of another car arriving and Arroyo joined the group.

  “Okay, Traeger, where is it?” he asked as he entered the room.

  Traeger was about to make a profane remark when there was a voice behind him.

  Frater Leone had come down the stairs, his hands beneath the scapular of his Benedictine habit.

  “I will tell you,” he said.

  Neal Admirari felt that he was living the last chapter of his book. What had begun in Mexico City was finally to be explained. The ascetic-looking priest looked sadly around at his audience.

  “The image is hanging behind the altar in the basilica.” He pointed. “It never left here and I am responsible for that. What a blessing it was to have her here in our midst. You can imagine the emotions stirred up by her departure. And so her departure was prevented.”

  “But how?” Arroyo demanded.

  “She had been put into a foam case, which was put behind the altar until the departure began. The image was removed, and a copy substituted. Come, you can see for yourself.”

  And so the group left the hacienda and walked to the basilica. Inside, Frater Leone turned on the lights. A kneeling figure with outspread arms did not move. Frater Leone led the group around him. He stared up at the illumined image. It was Clare Ibanez who spoke. “It is,” she cried. “That is the original.”

  Frater Leone turned away from the image with reluctance. “Now I am ready to pay the price for what has been done.”

  “No!”

  The anguished cry came from Carlos, who staggered to his feet and came to Frater Leone, where again he fell to his knees.

  “Father, you must not say that. I was the one. You had no idea what I had done.”

  Frater Leone was trying to help Carlos to his feet, but the old gardener shook him away. “I confessed my crime to you. You know that I am the guilty one.”

  Traeger had gone forward and stood looking up at the illumined image. Where would you hide a book?

  Beside him, Wilberforce said, “I wish my mother could see that.”

  Lulu took Neal’s hand and led him away. “We’re all going inside to celebrate.”

  Inside, Frater Leone went upstairs to be with Don Ibanez. Carlotta was with her desolate father, so Lulu volunteered to make the drinks. Clare went to help her. When Traeger came in, thinking a guard should be posted at the basilica, Laura brought him his drink.

  “Mission accomplished,” she said.

  But Traeger’s eye was on two newcomers, A short-haired, sour-faced woman he didn’t know, and Gladys Stone. Gladys was shaking her head at what the other woman was saying to her. And then those old eyes saw Traeger. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pistol and was trying to get a bead on Traeger despite the crowded room. Traeger had not yet got out his own gun when the woman beside Gladys picked up a pottery vase and brought it down on the old woman’s head. Gladys slid to the floor. Traeger crossed the room and picked up Gladys’s fallen weapon.

  “Thanks,” he said to Sourpuss.

  No one else seemed to have seen what had happened.

  EPILOGUE

  I

  “Te Deum laudamus.”

  The milk white Alitalia plane approached the field from the east, gliding with dreamy slowness to its assigned runway at the Mexico City airport. When it landed, a cry went up from the some fifty thousand who had managed to get an invitation to this first event of the papal visit. The plane taxied toward the waiting crowd, which only with difficulty was held back by the police. A great stairway moved toward the now opened door of the aircraft. All was in readiness, but a long minute passed, and then, there he was, the now familiar figure in his white cassock, white zucchetto, and ruddy Bavarian countenance. His arms lifted in response to the hysterical welcome and then he came slowly down to the reception committee gathered at the foot of the stairway.

  This was not an ordinary visit, he told them. His scheduled visit to Mexico would take place later in the year as planned. He had come on this occasion as a pilgrim like each of them, to witness the reinstallation in her shrine of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

  “Your Mother has come home!” cried the Holy Father. “Our Mother has come home!”

  Saint Peter, like the other apostles, had been granted the gift of tongues in order to announce the good news in every human language. Popes have always been polyglot, some more than others, and if Benedict XVI spoke Spanish as a learned language, his words were celestial music to the delirious crowd. The dignitaries were shepherded away.

  Awaiting them were the cars of the motorcade that would take the pope, along with dozens of cardinals, archbishops, and bishops from all over Latin America, through the streets of Mexico City, thronged with men, women, and children, many of them holding high above their heads copies of the famous image. But these were slowly lowered when the lead vehicle, specially built for the occasion, approached. In it, through bul-letproof glass for all to see, was the centuries-old image of Our Lady that had appeared on the tilma of Juan Diego and whose adventures in recent weeks had been the news of the day throughout the world. The crowd was on its knees as the pope, the whiteness of whose clothing seemed whiter in contrast to the black limousine from whose windowed roof his upper body emerged, scattered blessings over the ecstatic devotees of the Mother of God.

  The crowds grew thicker as the procession approached the shrine; the motorcade slowed to a mere crawl as the passage through the clogged streets became ever narrower. Behind the motorcade, most of those who had watched it pass fell in to follow it to the shrine. There an enormous gathering awaited in the plaza before the great circular basilica. Many men wore the costume Juan Diego had worn all those years ago when the Lady appeared to him. Women of every class had donned the clothing of simple peons. The modern dress of the other girls and women, however stylish, was of unusual modesty, the beauty of the senoras and senoritas concealed for the occasion, their heads veiled in black lace mantillas. When the vehicle bearing the sacred image entered the plaza the vast crowd seemed to exhibit the s
ystole and diastole of the human heart, pulsing forward and then back again to let the motorcade through. The shouts, the cheers, the weeping suddenly ceased and a vast silence fell.

  The silence deepened as the image was taken from its special vehicle. The monks of the abbey in their Benedictine habits were given pride of place. Several cardinals, trying to remain at the pope’s elbow, were kept at bay by sharp Benedictine elbows. Six men of massive height and strength now took possession of the image. The doors of the basilica were open, but inside there was as yet no one. The pope followed the sacred image inside and up the main aisle to the prie-dieu that had been prepared for him before the altar. All those who could fit inside the basilica, and more, followed. The image disappeared behind the altar. An unbearable minute went by and then she rose slowly into view and was returned to her place. A collective sigh filled the basilica. Weeping was the order of the day. The pope, sunk in prayer, from time to time lifted his eyes to the image of the Mother of God and his Bavarian eyes were moist with tears.

  Your mother has come home.

  His private prayers finished, the pope rose to his feet, bringing the vast throng to theirs, and intoned the Te Deum.

  Throughout the country, throughout Latin America, in churches and cathedrals all over the world, that great hymn of thanksgiving went up to heaven. “Te Deum laudamus, te Domi-num confitemur . . .”

  II

  Other probes were made.

  On land he had purchased a few miles out of Guadalajara, a retired American who styled himself Geraldo Bradley grumbled through the delay as the well-digging crew watched the events in the capital on a television set placed on the tailgate of one of their trucks. Amanda, his wife, who had not been an enthusiastic supporter of her Geraldo’s plan for their twilight years, wore an I-told-you-so expression.

  “You’re lucky they didn’t decide to put it off until mañana.”