by Alex Archer
Her words trailed away as she noticed Annja and Trish both looking fixedly at her. "What?" she asked plaintively.
"Who's being racist now, Yvonne?" Annja asked softly.
Yvonne drew in a deep breath as if preparing to blast the gringa from back East, then she deflated in a hurry. She wasn't stupid, Annja knew. Far from it. ButAnnja had noticed she did have a tendency to be reactive and defensive. While polite enough, the young Latina had acted wary of Annja since her arrival. She hadn't opened up, but Annja guessed she had some unresolved cultural conflicts going on that made her touchy.
"But," Yvonne began. She let that drop, too. She realized, now the moment's heat had cooled, that she had wandered out of bounds.
"Lighten up, sweetie," Trish said. She caught Yvonne and dragged her into a hug. "It's been a long season. And the clock says it's time to go. We're all a little frazzled. A little weird."
Annja saw Yvonne blinking tears from her eyes. She understood. She hadn't had time to really become part of this crew, yet she, too, felt the camaraderie that arose from long, hard hours spent working to a common purpose. What these women were feeling, she knew from experience, was much more poignant.
Will I ever really know that feeling again? she wondered. She was starting to feel half-misty herself. Or have I lost that part of my life forever? Between her semiregular gig with the hit cable-channel show Chasing History's Monsters and her...destiny...she wasn't really in position to commit herself to a full season in the field.
She saw Yvonne's eyes suddenly go wide. "Oh, my God," the young woman whispered.
Trish's shoulders tensed. Annja felt her own chestnut hair rise at the nape of her neck below her sleek ponytail. Slowly she turned.
There was a figure standing among the trees. It looked like a tall man in a dark cloak. Annja had the sense he was staring at her. She felt intent so malign it made her knees weak.
She shook her head. I am overwrought, she thought. It was the mellow sunset light, she reckoned.
Trish disengaged herself from the smaller woman and turned to face the intruder. Her bulldog jaw squared. "Can we help you?" she asked in a tone that didn't sound all that solicitous to Annja.
The figure said nothing.
"Listen, buster," Trish said.
Annja waved a hand from her hip in a calming gesture. Soft-spoken and generally easygoing though she was, Trish didn't have the longest fuse.
"I don't know what game you think you're playing – "
Two red glows appeared from the stranger's shadowed black head. "¡Jesu Cristo!" exclaimed Yvonne. She crossed herself.
"Yvonne?" Max Leland called from his truck, where he sat on the tailgate swinging his boots and talking to Alyson. "Trish? Are you guys all right?"
"Holy shit," Trish said. Her hand dived inside her dirt-caked coveralls. It came out holding a flat black pistol.
Darkness unfolded from the mystery figure's sides. At first Annja thought it was a cape. Halloween's almost a month away, and this jackass is about to play Dracula to the point of getting shot, she thought disgustedly.
But it wasn't a cape. Black, tapering wings spread wider than the man was tall. Annja felt her right hand start to curl as if to grab something. No, she told herself. It isn't time.
Yvonne had dropped her knapsack off her back and was rummaging furiously inside. Leland emitted a startled yelp and, leaping off the tailgate, ran to the front of the truck and yanked open the door so hard it banged against the stops.
A strange sound keened with the stiff steppe wind. It was like a baby crying. Yvonne pulled a Glock 19 out to the full length of her arms in a two-handed grip. She was trembling so violently the gun's blunt muzzle waved wildly.
The figure rose straight into the air. The black wings never stirred. At twenty feet it leveled out and glided over their heads with silent purpose.
Leland had popped out of the truck cab working the lever action of a .44 Magnum Marlin Model 94 carbine. The huge black creature swooped toward him. It passed ten feet over the top of his and Alyson's heads. Leland's face went so pale it was green behind the red beard and rusty freckles. He had not been able to bring himself to raise the gun.
Again Annja heard the noise like a baby crying. The black figure soared upward to clear a juniper-dotted ridge a hundred yards away and vanished into the lavender dusk.
Large snowflakes began to fall. Alyson threw herself on the ground and covered her head with her hands. "Oh, my God!" she screamed. "They had guns!"
Annja let out the breath she had not realized she was holding in a long, shuddering sigh. Trish came up beside her and rested her right elbow on Annja's shoulder. Her pistol dangled from her hand.
"Wow," she said, as if that summed it all up.
"What was that?" Yvonne asked. "What was it?" Thankfully she was pointing her own handgun toward the clouds, now bluish-black. The sun had vanished from sight, leaving a lemon glow around the Jemez peaks.
"A bird?" Annja said. Her voice sounded like a croak to her. "Eagles have surprisingly wide wingspans."
"Do eagles have red freakin' eyes?" Yvonne screamed.
Annja shrugged. "Maybe the sunlight, reflected – "
She gave it up. She didn't believe it. Much as she wanted to.
"What's with all the swamp gas?" Trish asked, taking her arm down and putting her pistol back wherever it came from. "That show you're on, I figured you'd be, you know, on the other side and all."
"I'm kind of the reality anchor. You're a scientist, Trish. What else could it be?" Annja asked.
"I've also been hiking the Southwest most of my life. Be real, Annja. That was an eagle like I'm Mary-Kate Olsen," Trish replied.
"What was it, then?"
Trish shook her head. "I'm afraid to find out." She didn't sound as if she was kidding.
Down the hill, Alyson screamed, "Don't touch me!" and rolled frantically away from Leland when he knelt next to her to see what was wrong. He held the Marlin pointed skyward in one hand.
Yvonne had regained control of herself and zipped her Glock back into her pack. Aside from high color in her cinnamon cheeks and slightly flared nostrils she didn't look as if much out of the ordinary had happened. It made Annja wonder. Outsiders told strange stories of happenings where Yvonne came from, way up in the Blood of Christ Mountains.
"What's wrong with her?" Yvonne asked with a sidewise nod of her head at Alyson.
"Easterner," Trish said.
Chapter 2
Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland
The wind from the glacier gorge whipped mist into the fat man's bearded face like ice-laden fronds. Far beneath him the famed cataract vomited its clouds of spray and roared ceaselessly. The sky above was crowded with clouds, their gray, gravid bellies hanging almost close enough to touch. A storm is coming, the man thought. How very appropriate.
Monsignor Paolo Benigni checked the Rolex watch strapped to his wrist. Next to the black of his overcoat, his skin looked bluish-white.
"Where is the man?" he said in irritation. "It's almost time, and I see no sign of him."
The railed scenic viewpoint overlooking the Reichenbach Falls was deserted except for the fat man and his two younger, much larger companions. October's arrival a few days earlier had brought the annual closing of the funicular that carried tourists from the valley floor to just below the mighty falls themselves. A safe distance back from the sheer cliffs, the hotel in the village was temporarily closed for renovation.
Actually, it had closed at the special request of a man whose influence reached to the core of the Vatican itself. The public was scarcely aware of the name of Monsignor Benigni. But people who counted – the people who really ran the world – knew his name very well indeed.
To his intense annoyance he found himself compelled to meet here with an impudent bastard – a mere priest. A priest without a flock and a damned black Jesuit on top of that. Yet Benigni knew this disciple of the long-dead Basque madman Loyola had an unmistakable influence of
his own that was scarcely less shadowy, or pervasive, than the monsignor's own.
Well, Benigni thought, today we shall settle that account. There were many in the Vatican who would thank him for his resolution of this turbulent priest.
"Monsignor," Volker, the German bodyguard, said, peering over the railing above the precipice. He had a lantern jaw fringed with blue-black beard. His pinstriped suit was tailored so immaculately no seam showed the least sign of strain around his vast powerlifter's bulk. Not even at the left armpit, where a Walther P-99 was nestled in a shoulder holster.
"What is it?" Benigni said.
"Perhaps you should come see, Excellence."
Grimacing and puffing in annoyance, the monsignor waddled to the edge. His face sank deep into his own neatly bearded chins as he leaned over slightly, all he could readily manage.
A path wound up the cold granite cliff from the notch where white waters arced down to the River Inn far below. Seemingly out of the falls' very spray came a solitary figure, trotting up the steps with a vigor Benigni would have had trouble matching when he was young and slim, trotting down. The figure wore a long black coat. The head of silver-gray hair was bare.
"That's doing it the hard way," Benigni's other bodyguard said. Semo, the Samoan, was even bigger and broader than Volker, with a mass of crinkly black hair held back from his great tanned face in a braid.
"The fool," Benigni murmured. "Still, if he wishes to exhaust himself in this manner, let him. He will have ample time to rest, soon enough."
As his guards laughed appreciatively, the monsignor pushed away from the white-painted steel rail with a ringed and exquisitely manicured pale hand. The height and sheerness of the drop made him queasy. All this cavorting about in nature was foreign to his constitution. He should be ensconced in a leather chair in some five-star hotel, basking in the warmth of a fire and a snifter of brandy.
As if to emphasize the inconvenience and discomfort to which he subjected himself – for the good of the church, of course – a snowflake struck his cheek and clung. Its cold seemed to bite like some horrid insect. Then he thought about what the immediate future held in store for the vexatious Father Robert Godin, Societas Iesu, who was responsible for dragging him out in this frightful weather. He smiled with lips moist, full and reddish-purple within his goatee.
Godin trotted onto the top of the cliff and slowed to a walk while approaching the waiting trio. He had his hands in the pockets of his black trenchcoat. His breathing seemed normal and his step springy. The monsignor might have suspected the man had a pact with the Devil – but he knew better.
"Monsignor," the new arrival said. He spoke Italian with a hint of a French accent. Benigni felt sure it was an affectation. He knew the Jesuit was as proud of his coarse Antwerp dock-rat beginnings as he was of the unspeakably brutal nature of his early career, before he had entered the bosom of the church.
Benigni smiled. He was not one to lecture another on the sin of pride. To his mind, of all the sins it was, frankly, among the least interesting. Besides, it never did any good to lecture Jesuits.
"Father," he said with false heartiness, extending a hand. Godin shook it. Although he exerted no more than brief, firm pressure it was like shaking hands with a vise.
With the ease of long practice Benigni masked his irritation. As an assistant chamberlain of the Vatican, Benigni was entitled to have his ring kissed. He was also accustomed to it. But the Jesuit has never been born who would bend the knee to less than a red hat, he told himself. And Benigni had purposely avoided becoming a cardinal. Dressing all in scarlet made it harder to operate properly in the shadows, where his most important work was done.
"What exigency drove you to request this urgent conference, Father Godin?" He tried to force an element of lightness. "Or should I say, Father Bob?"
Godin smiled. But briefly. He was sixty-two years of age, the same height as Benigni, but half the weight. He looked like an extremely fit man a decade younger and moved, the monsignor had to admit resentfully to himself, like a fine athlete. His hair was gray, buzzed to white sidewalls and a silvery flattop. His face was oblong and deeply creased, the only sign of age he showed aside from the hue of his hair.
His eyes, behind circular wire-rimmed spectacles, were the palest, most piercing green Benigni could conceive. He made himself not shiver when they looked into his.
"I have come to discuss retirement," the Jesuit said.
"You? The last knight in armor? Or should I say the last inquisitor? Are you ready to hang up the spurs? Or perhaps the scourge." Benigni laughed in vast appreciation of his own wit.
"Yours, Monsignor."
The laughter died. "Mind your manners, priest," Benigni said.
"I don't care about your peculations or your secular crimes, Monsignor. I don't care about your involvement in the murder of Roberto Calvi in 1982, nor your dealings with the outlawed Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge. I don't care what deals you worked with the late Archbishop Marcinkus."
Benigni had gone very pale. His breath hissed forth between rubbery lips. "Old man, you overreach yourself!"
"But when your self-indulgence leads you to invoke demons," Godin continued implacably, "entailing the sacrifice of a human life – then, Monsignor Benigni, you fall within my bailiwick."
"You have no proof!"
The creases of the bloodhound face deepened in a grin. "All the proof I need, I have in here," Godin said, tapping first temple, then heart. "And if I am satisfied, the church is satisfied."
"Absurd. You hurl accusations at random. You are a madman," the monsignor replied.
"Brother Luigi confessed, Monsignor. In Verona. He is now in custody. Your agents will prove unable to locate him and silence him. He will live out his years in silent repentance. His testimony, however, has been duly recorded and notarized. Should it prove necessary, I don't doubt several other of your confederates can be prevailed upon to testify. But with the videotapes in our possession – "
Benigni felt his lower lip quivering. He shut his mouth tightly, then barked, "My attorneys will laugh these accusations out of court!"
"Unlikely, were it to go to trial – especially in some of the nations that have jurisdiction in the case. But there will be no trial, Monsignor. I am authorized to offer you the opportunity to resign your offices and rank and retire to a monastery outside Addis Ababa."
"Ethiopia? But they are Copts!"
"No longer – they call their schismatic church Ethiopian Orthodox now. But as you would know were you properly attentive to your duties, Monsignor Benigni, the Ethiopian Catholic Church remains communicant with our Holy Father. They are holy men. They'll ensure you are cared for. And protect you diligently from the temptations of this world."
Benigni stared at Godin with eyes like boiled eggs. Then he looked down at the gray stone beneath the mirror-polished black toes of his Gucci shoes. It was polished almost smooth by generations of tourist feet, slicked by mist from below and snow from above.
"She was just a whore," he said.
"Even a whore has a right to live her life," Godin said, "and not be tortured out of it. Even a whore has an immortal soul. Or do you speak of what you tried to make of our mother, the church?"
Benigni brought his head up. His eyes blazed. "You dare to speak so to me, who bathed your arms in the gore of innocents in the Congo?"
"Anyone whose blood I may have bathed in, Monsignor, was hardly an innocent. But the sins that stain my soul are not under discussion here."
Benigni laughed heartily.
"I anticipated you might attempt some such quixotry, Father Godin," he said. "So I came prepared."
He gestured to the two huge bodyguards who stood flanking them. "As I said before, Father, you will be retiring this day. Volker and Semo will assist you. In the mist and the snow these steps up the precipice are so treacherous. Alas, you insisted on climbing alone despite the conditions – "
The two bodyguards stepped forward. Godin moved to meet
Semo, who approached from his right. Volker reached for him from behind. Godin stopped, spun back and seized the German's thick wrist with his right hand. He dropped his left elbow over the elbow of the trapped arm and pivoted clockwise.
Volker's right elbow broke with a snap.
Godin stepped behind the huge German, twisting the broken arm. Volker, who had initially been too shocked to respond, bellowed in agony as parted bone ends scraped each other.
"Kill him! Kill him now!" the prelate roared.
Semo's bronze face had gone ashen at the brutal abruptness with which his partner's arm was snapped. From beneath his jacket he produced an MP-5K, a stubby pistol barely longer than a handgun, with a foregrip like a miniature table leg. He yanked back on the trigger and held it down.
The pistol bucked and rose left to right. Not even the Samoan's vast strength could control such a weapon firing full-auto. The muzzle flame, pale yellow and orange and dazzlingly bright in the drifting snow, set the front of Volker's black greatcoat smoldering. The burly German's Kevlar vest kept the 9 mm bullets from penetrating. But it only reduced their substantial impact. Ribs cracked and the breath was forced from Volker's lungs straining to draw in air against the blinding pain of his elbow.
Then a bullet hit the German in the throat. Blood spurted in a single thick stream. It gleamed almost black in the faint light.
HoldingVolker propped against him, with his own legs braced, Father Godin thrust a CZ-75 under the mortally wounded man's arm and shot Semo twice in his broad chest. The Samoan's vest stopped the slugs.
The Jesuit's third shot struck Semo in the center of the forehead. The huge man emptied the MP-5K into the ground as he sank to his knees. Then he fell to the side like a sack of rocks.
Godin stepped back. Volker simply slumped and pitched forward on his face.
Snow began to fall in earnest. Fat white flakes filled the air, thick as flies on a midsummer evening.
"And now, Monsignor – " the Jesuit said, tucking his Czech handgun back inside his coat.
"You devil!" Benigni put his head down and charged.
