by Dan Brown
Ávila could scarcely believe the strange sequence of events that had brought him to this moment. From the depths of my deepest despair, I have risen to the moment of my most glorious service.
For a dark instant, Ávila was back in that bottomless pit, crawling across the smoke-filled altar at the Cathedral of Seville, searching the bloodstained rubble for his wife and child, only to realize they were gone forever.
For weeks after the attack, Ávila did not leave his home. He lay trembling on his couch, consumed by an endless waking nightmare of fiery demons that dragged him into a dark abyss, shrouding him in blackness, rage, and suffocating guilt.
“The abyss is purgatory,” a nun whispered beside him, one of the hundreds of grief counselors trained by the Church to assist survivors. “Your soul is trapped in a dark limbo. Absolution is the only escape. You must find a way to forgive the people who did this, or your rage will consume you whole.” She made the sign of the cross. “Forgiveness is your only salvation.”
Forgiveness? Ávila tried to speak, but demons clenched his throat. At the moment, revenge felt like the only salvation. But revenge against whom? Responsibility for the bombing had never been claimed.
“I realize acts of religious terrorism seem unforgivable,” the nun continued. “And yet, it may be helpful to remember that our own faith waged a centuries-long Inquisition in the name of our God. We killed innocent women and children in the name of our beliefs. For this, we have had to ask forgiveness from the world, and from ourselves. And through time, we have healed.”
Then she read to him from the Bible: “‘Do not resist an evil person. Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.’”
That night, alone and in pain, Ávila stared into the mirror. The man looking back at him was a stranger. The nun’s words had done nothing to ease his pain.
Forgiveness? Turn my other cheek!
I have witnessed evil for which there is no absolution!
In a growing rage, Ávila drove his fist into the mirror, shattering the glass, and collapsing in sobs of anguish on his bathroom floor.
As a career naval officer, Ávila had always been a man in control—a champion of discipline, honor, and the chain of command—but that man was gone. Within weeks, Ávila had fallen into a haze, anesthetizing himself with a potent blend of alcohol and prescription drugs. Soon his yearning for the numbing effects of chemicals occupied every waking hour, diminishing him to a hostile recluse.
Within months, the Spanish navy had quietly forced him to retire. A once powerful battleship now stuck in dry dock, Ávila knew he would never sail again. The navy to which he had given his life had left him with only a modest stipend on which he could barely live.
I’m fifty-eight years old, he realized. And I have nothing.
He spent his days sitting alone in his living room, watching TV, drinking vodka, and waiting for any ray of light to appear. La hora más oscura es justo antes del amanecer, he would tell himself over and over. But the old navy aphorism proved false over and over. The darkest hour is not just before the dawn, he sensed. The dawn is never coming.
On his fifty-ninth birthday, a rainy Thursday morning, staring at an empty bottle of vodka and an eviction warning, Ávila mustered the courage to go to his closet, take down his navy service pistol, load it, and put the barrel to his temple.
“Perdóname,” he whispered, and closed his eyes. Then he squeezed the trigger. The explosion was far quieter than he imagined. More of a click than a gunshot.
Cruelly, the gun had failed to fire. Years in a dusty closet without being cleaned had apparently taken a toll on the admiral’s cheap ceremonial pistol. It seemed even this simple act of cowardice was beyond Ávila’s abilities.
Enraged, he hurled the gun at the wall. This time, an explosion rocked the room. Ávila felt a searing heat rip through his calf, and his drunken fog lifted in a flash of blinding pain. He fell to the floor screaming and clutching his bleeding leg.
Panicked neighbors pounded on his door, sirens wailed, and Ávila soon found himself at Seville’s Hospital Provincial de San Lázaro attempting to explain how he had tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the leg.
The next morning, as he lay in the recovery room, broken and humiliated, Admiral Luis Ávila received a visitor.
“You’re a lousy shot,” the young man said in Spanish. “No wonder they forced you to retire.”
Before Ávila could reply, the man threw open the window shades and let the sunlight pour in. Ávila shielded his eyes, now able to see that the kid was muscle-bound and had a buzz cut. He wore a T-shirt with the face of Jesus on it.
“My name’s Marco,” he said, his accent Andaluz. “I’m your trainer for rehab. I asked to be assigned to you because you and I have something in common.”
“Military?” Ávila said, noting his brash demeanor.
“Nope.” The kid locked eyes with Ávila. “I was there that Sunday morning. In the cathedral. The terrorist attack.”
Ávila stared in disbelief. “You were there?”
The kid reached down and pulled up one leg of his sweats, revealing a prosthetic limb. “I realize you’ve been through hell, but I was playing semipro fútbol, so don’t expect too much sympathy from me. I’m more of a God-helps-those-who-help-themselves kind of guy.”
Before Ávila knew what had happened, Marco heaved him into a wheelchair, rolled him down the hall to a small gym, and propped him up between a pair of parallel bars.
“This will hurt,” the kid said, “but try to get to the other end. Just do it once. Then you can have breakfast.”
The pain was excruciating, but Ávila was not about to complain to someone with only one leg, so using his arms to bear most of his weight, he shuffled all the way to the end of the bars.
“Nice,” Marco said. “Now do it again.”
“But you said—”
“Yeah, I lied. Do it again.”
Ávila eyed the kid, stunned. The admiral had not taken an order in years, and strangely, he found something refreshing about it. It made him feel young—the way he had felt as a raw recruit years ago. Ávila turned around and began shuffling back the other way.
“So tell me,” Marco said. “Do you still go to mass at the Seville cathedral?”
“Never.”
“Fear?”
Ávila shook his head. “Rage.”
Marco laughed. “Yeah, let me guess. The nuns told you to forgive the attackers?”
Ávila stopped short on the bars. “Exactly!”
“Me too. I tried. Impossible. The nuns gave us terrible advice.” He laughed.
Ávila eyed the young man’s Jesus shirt. “But it looks like you’re still …”
“Oh yeah, I’m definitely still a Christian. More devout than ever. I was fortunate to find my mission—helping victims of God’s enemies.”
“A noble cause,” Ávila said enviously, feeling his own life was purposeless without his family or the navy.
“A great man helped bring me back to God,” Marco continued. “That man, by the way, was the pope. I’ve met him personally many times.”
“I’m sorry … the pope?”
“Yes.”
“As in … the leader of the Catholic Church?”
“Yes. If you like, I could probably arrange an audience for you.”
Ávila stared at the kid as if he’d lost his mind. “You can get me an audience with the pope?”
Marco looked hurt. “I realize you’re a big naval officer and can’t imagine that a crippled physical trainer from Seville has access to the vicar of Christ, but I’m telling you the truth. I can arrange a meeting with him if you like. He could probably help you find your way back, just the way he helped me.”
Ávila leaned on the parallel bars, uncertain how to reply. He idolized the then pope—a staunch conservative leader who preached strict traditionalism a
nd orthodoxy. Unfortunately, the man was under fire from all sides of the modernizing globe, and there were rumblings that he would soon choose to retire in the face of growing liberal pressure. “I’d be honored to meet him, of course, but—”
“Good,” Marco interjected. “I’ll try to set it up for tomorrow.”
Ávila never imagined that the following day he would find himself sitting deep within a secure sanctuary, face-to-face with a powerful leader who would teach him the most empowering religious lesson of his life.
The roads to salvation are many.
Forgiveness is not the only path.
CHAPTER 37
LOCATED ON THE ground floor of the Madrid palace, the royal library is a spectacularly ornate suite of chambers containing thousands of priceless tomes, including Queen Isabella’s illuminated Book of Hours, the personal Bibles of several kings, and an iron-bound codex from the era of Alfonso XI.
Garza entered in a rush, not wanting to leave the prince alone upstairs in the clutches of Valdespino for too long. He was still trying to make sense of the news that Valdespino had met with Kirsch only days ago and had decided to keep the meeting a secret. Even in light of Kirsch’s presentation and murder tonight?
Garza moved across the vast darkness of the library toward PR coordinator Mónica Martín, who was waiting in the shadows holding her glowing tablet.
“I realize you’re busy, sir,” Martín said, “but we have a highly time-sensitive situation. I came upstairs to find you because our security center received a disturbing e-mail from ConspiracyNet.com.”
“From whom?”
“ConspiracyNet is a popular conspiracy-theory site. The journalism is shoddy, and it’s written at a child’s level, but they have millions of followers. If you ask me, they hawk fake news, but the site is quite well respected among conspiracy theorists.”
In Garza’s mind, the terms “well respected” and “conspiracy theory” seemed mutually exclusive.
“They’ve been scooping the Kirsch situation all night,” Martín continued. “I don’t know where they’re getting their information, but the site has become a hub for news bloggers and conspiracy theorists. Even the networks are turning to them for breaking news.”
“Come to the point,” Garza pressed.
“ConspiracyNet has new information that relates to the palace,” Martín said, pushing her glasses up on her face. “They’re going public with it in ten minutes and wanted to give us a chance to comment beforehand.”
Garza stared at the young woman in disbelief. “The Royal Palace doesn’t comment on sensationalist gossip!”
“At least look at it, sir.” Martín held out her tablet.
Garza snatched the screen and found himself looking at a second photo of navy admiral Luis Ávila. The photo was uncentered, as if taken by accident, and showed Ávila in full dress whites striding in front of a painting. It looked as if it had been taken by a museumgoer who was attempting to photograph a piece of artwork and had inadvertently captured Ávila as he blindly stepped into the shot.
“I know what Ávila looks like,” Garza snapped, eager to get back to the prince and Valdespino. “Why are you showing this to me?”
“Swipe to the next photo.”
Garza swiped. The next screen showed an enlargement of the photo—this one focused on the admiral’s right hand as it swung out in front of him. Garza immediately saw a marking on Ávila’s palm. It appeared to be a tattoo.
Garza stared at the image for a long moment. The symbol was one he knew well, as did many Spaniards, especially the older generations.
The symbol of Franco.
Emblazoned in many places in Spain during the middle of the twentieth century, the symbol was synonymous with the ultraconservative dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, whose brutal regime advocated nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, antiliberalism, and National Catholicism.
This ancient symbol, Garza knew, consisted of six letters, which, when put together, spelled a single word in Latin—a word that perfectly defined Franco’s self-image.
Victor.
Ruthless, violent, and uncompromising, Francisco Franco had risen to power with the military support of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. He killed thousands of his opponents before seizing total control of the country in 1939 and proclaiming himself El Caudillo—the Spanish equivalent of the Führer. During the Civil War and well into the first years of dictatorship, those who dared oppose him disappeared into concentration camps, where an estimated three hundred thousand were executed.
Depicting himself as the defender of “Catholic Spain” and the enemy of godless communism, Franco had embraced a starkly male-centric mentality, officially excluding women from many positions of power in society, giving them barely any rights to professorships, judgeships, bank accounts, or even the right to flee an abusive husband. He annulled all marriages that had not been performed according to Catholic doctrine, and, among other restrictions, he outlawed divorce, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.
Fortunately, everything had now changed.
Even so, Garza was stunned by how quickly the nation had forgotten one of the darkest periods in its history.
Spain’s pacto de olvido—a nationwide political agreement to “forget” everything that had happened under Franco’s vicious rule—meant that schoolchildren in Spain had been taught very little about the dictator. A poll in Spain had revealed that teenagers were far more likely to recognize the actor James Franco than they were dictator Francisco Franco.
The older generations, however, would never forget. This VICTOR symbol—like the Nazi swastika—could still conjure fear in the hearts of those old enough to remember those brutal years. To this day, wary souls warned that the highest reaches of Spanish government and the Catholic Church still harbored a secret faction of Francoist supporters—a hidden fraternity of traditionalists sworn to return Spain to its far-right convictions of the past century.
Garza had to admit that there were plenty of old-timers who looked at the chaos and spiritual apathy of contemporary Spain and felt that the country could be saved only by a stronger state religion, a more authoritarian government, and the imposition of clearer moral guidelines.
Look at our youth! they would shout. They are all adrift!
In recent months, with the Spanish throne soon to be occupied by the younger Prince Julián, there was a rising fear among traditionalists that the Royal Palace itself would soon become another voice for progressive change in the country. Fueling their concern was the prince’s recent engagement to Ambra Vidal—who was not only Basque but outspokenly agnostic—and who, as Spain’s queen, would no doubt have the prince’s ear on matters of church and state.
Dangerous days, Garza knew. A contentious cusp between past and future.
In addition to a deepening religious rift, Spain faced a political crossroads as well. Would the country retain its monarch? Or would the royal crown be forever abolished as it had been in Austria, Hungary, and so many other European countries? Only time would tell. In the streets, older traditionalists waved Spanish flags, while young progressives proudly wore their antimonarchic colors of purple, yellow, and red—the colors of the old Republican banner.
Julián will be inheriting a powder keg.
“When I first saw the Franco tattoo,” Martín said, drawing Garza’s attention back to the tablet, “I thought it might have been digitally added to the photo as a ploy—you know, to stir the pot. Conspiracy sites all compete for traffic, and a Francoist connection will get a massive response, especially considering the anti-Christian nature of Kirsch’s presentation tonight.”
Garza knew she was right. Conspiracy theorists will go crazy over this.
Martín motioned to the tablet. “Read the commentary they intend to run.”
With a feeling of dread, Garza glanced at the lengthy text that accompanied the photo.
ConspiracyNet.com
EDMOND KIRSCH UPDATE
&n
bsp; Despite initial suspicions that Edmond Kirsch’s murder was the work of religious zealots, the discovery of this ultraconservative Francoist symbol suggests the assassination may have political motivations as well. Suspicions that conservative players in the highest reaches of Spanish government, perhaps even within the Royal Palace itself, are now battling for control in the power vacuum left by the king’s absence and imminent death …
“Disgraceful,” Garza snapped, having read enough. “All this speculation from a tattoo? It means nothing. With the exception of Ambra Vidal’s presence at the shooting, this situation has absolutely nothing to do with the politics of the Royal Palace. No comment.”
“Sir,” Martín pressed. “If you would please read the rest of the commentary, you’ll see that they are trying to link Bishop Valdespino directly to Admiral Ávila. They’re suggesting that the bishop may be a secret Francoist who has been whispering in the king’s ear for years, keeping him from making sweeping changes to the country.” She paused. “This allegation is gaining a lot of traction online.”
Once again, Garza found himself at a total loss for words. He no longer recognized the world in which he lived.
Fake news now carries as much weight as real news.
Garza eyed Martín and did his best to speak calmly. “Mónica, this is all a fiction created by blog-writing fantasists for their own amusement. I can assure you that Valdespino is not a Francoist. He has served the king faithfully for decades, and there is no way he is involved with a Francoist assassin. The palace has no comment on any of it. Am I clear?” Garza turned toward the door, eager to get back to the prince and Valdespino.
“Sir, wait!” Martín reached out and grabbed his arm.
Garza halted, staring down in shock at his young employee’s hand.
Martín immediately pulled back. “I’m sorry, sir, but ConspiracyNet also sent us a recording of a telephone conversation that just took place in Budapest.” She blinked nervously behind her thick glasses. “You’re not going to like this either.”
