After a few deft strokes, his personal monitor awaited his logon code and passwords. Then the screen blinked and de-rezzed into the image of an old man with wispy white hair and a long thin face. The man wore the traditional Roman collar and black habit of a parish priest; he could not conceal his surprise as he recognized the red vestments of Lareggia’s high-ranking office.
“Ah, excuse me, Cardinal,” he said slowly, obviously embarrassed. “I was told to contact ‘Paolo’ by means of the Archdiocese scrambler if anything…I mean, if I ever found out…”
Lareggia waved him off. “I know why you are calling. You are Father Stanislaus Sobieski. You have been instructed to keep a watchful eye upon Peter Carenza.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said the priest, relief easing into his old face.
Lareggia fought to keep his voice under control. Was this the moment? The sign they’d been waiting for? His heart began to jump again beneath the folds of clothing and the flab of his chest. “You have information for me…?”
“Yes, Cardinal.”
“Absolutely no one must know you are contacting me.” Sobieski appeared immediately concerned. “What about the staff here at the Archdiocese?”
Lareggia smiled. “Our scramblers are used frequently. Your visit is nothing out of the ordinary—only your message, I expect.”
“Oh yes, I think it is.”
Paolo drew a breath, steadied himself and exhaled. “So, tell me, Father, do we have a sign?”
Sobieski nodded. In several succinct and obviously rehearsed sentences, the American priest told the story of the mugger and his death by fire.
“From his hands?” asked Lareggia in a hushed voice. “My God, I had not expected anything like this…”
The Cardinal paused to consider the details of the story. So graphic, so full of demonstrative power! His breathing became more labored, making him more aware of his enormous weight. He did not want the American to detect his growing anxiety, but perhaps there was no hiding it. A cleansing fire. From his hands…!
“Tell me,” said Lareggia. “How did Carenza react when he told you what had happened to him?”
Sobieski swallowed once before beginning. “Understandably he was stunned. He is still shaken by the experience. He doesn’t know how or why it could have happened. Neither do I, but apparently you do.”
Paolo sighed as he ignored Sobieski’s coy attempt to extract information. “Who would not be stunned by such an experience? How is his health?”
“He appears to be fine, physically. Mentally, I think he’s having problems dealing with the fact that he’s killed someone, especially in such a spectacular way.”
Paolo nodded, steepled his hands in front of his face. There was much to do now. He had to contain himself and remain calm. Everything must be done properly, according to the grand plan.
“What about the local authorities?” asked Paolo. “Did they discover what happened?”
“The police investigated it like any other death, yes, but…” The priest almost smiled as he shook his head. “Cardinal Lareggia, this is New York City. People die here all the time, in all kinds of weird and terrible ways. The police did not give this death any special attention, believe me.”
Paolo nodded, choosing not to ponder the implications of a city which could ignore something so wondrous. “That is good,” he said after another pause.
“What now, Cardinal? Do you have more instructions for me?” asked Sobieski.
“Send him to me. Immediately.”
“To you? To the Vatican?” Sobieski could not conceal his surprise.
“Exactly. His place is with us.”
“Well, what do I tell him? How do I get him to agree to such a trip?”
Paolo waved his hand in dismissal. “Tell him the Vatican has a special committee which investigates miraculous phenomena. Tell him any damnable thing you wish, Father. Just get him here as soon as possible!”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“I will arrange for funds for the journey to be transferred to Saint Sebastian’s accounts—and perhaps something extra to help your community programs. You have done well, Father.”
“Thank you, Cardinal. Thank you.”
“Good. Transmit the particulars of his arrival via this com-net. Retain your logon and passwords. They will remain valid until I hear from you again.”
Father Sobieski stared into his own monitor for a moment. “That is all, then?”
“Yes. Arrivederci, Father.”
Paolo punched a key and the image wavered for an instant before disappearing. Sobieski was a fine priest who had done well. There was no price tag on such loyalty in this day and age.
No, thought Paolo Lareggia, who had grown up on the docks of Naples as an orphaned street-child, who had learned the savage ways of the world before entering the priesthood. No, loyalty and trust were rare commodities.
Getting up from the console chair with more than a little effort, Paolo steadied himself and cursed his ever-increasing bulk. He lumbered across the office to his window, which overlooked the Via Della Fondamenta and the rear view of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
It was a warm day and the humid breath of late summer penetrated the screened-in opening. The daily patterns of life swarmed and circulated through the Vatican as the Cardinal looked down upon the utterly familiar cityscape. Tourists straggled about in small groups and in more organized guided tours; traffic water-bugged in and out of the narrow streets and wide boulevards, skittered across the bridges; pigeons fluttered and brawled to get the best positions on ledges and gargoyles and window-sills.
It was a beautiful city. Paolo Cardinal Lareggia had a difficult time not thinking of it as his city. He had long ago given up the city of his birthplace, never mentioning it to anyone, even refusing to allow himself to think about his humble, embarrassing beginnings.
And yet, this day, suddenly wondering if he and the others were doing the proper thing, he found himself drawn back to the long-ago days of his youth…
He hadn’t been obese back then. At fourteen he was tall and large-boned, almost a head taller than the other boys his age. After escaping from the orphanage three years before, he had carved out an existence on the docks of the city.
It was a filthy place. Disease stalked the wharves and flophouses like a bold wolf. The many rats could often be seen in the shadows, squirming and folding all over each other. Their hardened droppings formed a thick carpet over the planks and gangways. Paolo and another boy lived in an abandoned storage shed. His days were occupied with the hunting and gathering necessary for survival—fruit and dried meats stolen from an unwary vendor’s stall, discarded, half-rotted vegetables from ships’ crates, and the occasional purse rousted from any stroller foolhardy enough to come too close to the jungle’s edge defined by the boundaries of the dock and the residential streets.
There were endless nights of fights and drinking bouts, and women who had whiskey on their breaths and a stench between their legs.
Paolo lived hard, fought hard, and by the time he was sixteen, he had the size and the wisdom of a full-grown man. He thought he was the bravest, the toughest, the most feared, but a deckhand from a Turkish ship who didn’t like the swagger of his walk challenged him to a fight to the death. The fight rolled out of the grimy tavern into the streets, which were sluiced with the garbage and the slime of human waste. The battle raged all through the night and into the pink dawn, as Paolo and the Turk clawed and punched and slashed at one another. A great crowd gathered and followed their progress across the dock. Its cheering and goading became a monotonous drone fueled by rum and opium. It was not until he realized that he must indeed kill or be killed that any true fear entered his heart.
Paolo had hurt scores of people, even maimed his share of men who crossed him, but he had never killed a man. And when the moment arrived, when he had snatched the Turk’s hidden knife from the man’s grip and pressed its curving blade against the side of his enemy’s slipper
y throat, Paolo knew that he could not kill so easily.
When he tried to make his hand move that extra inch, to puncture the stretch of shining flesh and rip across the veins and arteries of the neck, it was as though he had become a piece of stone. In that moment he knew that there was a place where his mind and body would draw the line. A line he could not cross.
The Turk lay unconscious beneath his weight, and as the crowd screamed like ancient Romans for his blood, Paolo cast the knife into the water, stood, and walked away.
The incident had been witnessed by a priest who ran after him, befriended him, and found him a room at the Franciscan Monastery, where he exchanged his labor for warm meals and a roof over his straw bed. The monastic life agreed with him. He returned to his schooling and excelled as a student. In the ensuing years, he was not surprised to receive a calling from the Lord. His power and cunning and endurance served him well in the priesthood and he quietly but steadfastly rose through its ranks from apprentice to pastor and monsignor, to bishop, and finally, one of its youngest cardinals. Always tough-minded, but fair, he acquired a reputation for independent thinking that was both an asset and a hindrance, in the ascending hierarchy of the Roman faith.
Paolo Lareggia shook his head as the memory faded. His hands were slippery with perspiration, trembling slightly from the crystalline recollection of the fight with the Turk. It had seemed so damnably real…
Why should I have such thoughts now? he wondered, trying to be analytical.
Because the time was almost at hand.
Because he had waited so long and now the time of the reckoning was so very close. The thought settled into him like a rock falling into the placid waters of a still pond. The memories were a humbling experience. They were a part of his life Paolo had tried to forget, to banish from his present persona of power and wisdom. But he needed to be humbled.
He knew that God had sent him those memories, so strong and full of the stench and sweat of his youth, so that he would not forget that he was only a man. Though he sometimes entertained thoughts of being the grandest theological architect since Saint Peter himself, Paolo was, after all, only a simple man, with simple beginnings.
It was the plan that was grand. It was the plan that would supersede all other things in the world. That Paolo Lareggia had been the originator of what was to come was of little consequence.
He needed to be reminded that he was but an instrument in the hand of God. Willing. Able. Proud, maybe. But in the end, only an instrument.
Looking up to the blue depths of the afternoon sky, like Constantine, seventeen hundred years before him, Cardinal Lareggia looked for a sign from the Lord. That he saw nothing out of the ordinary did not dissuade him from the sense of righteousness and truth he carried in his heart.
SEVEN
Manhattan, New York—Windsor
* * *
August 17, 1998
Marion Windsor didn’t know if she had her hands on a Career-Making Story or not, but she was going to check it out just to make sure.
Sitting in WPIX’s video editing studio, she kept reviewing her raw footage from the “lightning” story. Although she was no electronic wizard, she’d learned to use some of the digital equipment that made videotape such a facile medium. She could slow down the action, she could zoom in on a particular face, analyze a voice, and she could play/rewind/playback anything she wanted as many times as she wanted.
Marion pushed a strand of reddish-brown hair out of her eyes as she leaned over the Sony console. Her camcorder had captured a truly grim image. By stopping the tape and zooming up, Marion was able to get a surprisingly clean blow-up of what had once been a human being. It was really just a blackened torso with a smaller charred lump on the top. The arms had been burned off and the head was recognizable as such only because the lips and cheeks had been burned away to reveal yellow-white teeth in a horrific smile.
She pushed up the gain on the audio track.
I seen lightning victims, and none of ’em ever looked like that.
She pressed a key and listened to the voice of the red-haired paramedic several more times.
Could it be that this wasn’t a struck-by-lightning after all? Could what the kid had said be closer to the truth?
She fast-forwarded to her exchange with Esteban. Slowing down the tape, she studied the kid’s face, looking for that gleam in the eye, that ever-so-slight facial tic which sometimes gave away the deliberate liar, the person who was talking just to get his mug on the evening news. Esteban’s face was an open book. It told a simple story of awe, respect, and fear. Marion saw no lies in the boy.
She replayed the tape several more times, marking the time-code for possible cuts and compilations in case she wanted to assemble a video fill for her narration. The material she had wasn’t a story yet, but her experience and training were working on autopilot. The first time she realized this, she realized she was a true professional.
She paused at her last shot of the two priests, the old, wispy-haired guy and the one who was simply too handsome to be a priest. They leaned over the gurney and the younger one raised the sheet. Marion studied their faces. The old guy’s registered the expected horror and revulsion, but the younger one was totally different. His face was hard and cold, as though he already knew what he was going to see. He looked at the older priest, said something, then looked back at the victim for a moment before making the sign of the cross over the remains and beginning a prayer.
Marion absently bit her lower lip as she rewound in slo-mo, pausing right before the young priest spoke. From the quality of the raw sound of the playback it was obvious the directional mike had been operating at the outer limits of its abilities. There was noise on the tape, but it was dicey as to whether or not there were actual words. Marion had seen the edit-techs use the computer to enhance aural as well as visual images. With the right software and a simple mixing board, if you knew what you were doing, you could make an interview conducted in a factory sound like it happened in a studio.
Marion wasn’t that good, but she’d learned a few things by watching and asking questions. The techs loved to talk about their toys. It was funny how men never outgrew their need for toys; as they grew older they just traded up for more flashy, sophisticated ones.
She smiled as she keyed up the enhancement program and ran the piece of tape with the priest’s words across the analyzer head. Rewind. Playback. The words were louder, clearer, but still not intelligible. She ran the enhanced sounds through again, and again, until finally: “See, Father…I told you. Look at him.”
Marion leaned back in her chair, staring at the frozen image of the young priest turned toward his older colleague. Something weird was going on here. The priest was connected to the incident. Marion’s pulse started jumping as she sensed the possibility of uncovering some kind of mystery. There was a story here, goddammit, and one way or another, she was going to get into the heart of it. It shouldn’t be too hard to identify the priests. Most likely they were from the neighborhood, and a little digging would take care of it. But first, she had something else to do.
After making dupes of everything, she pulled her tapes, powered-down the equipment, and left the studio. Walking to the subway, a single thought passed through her mind: time for a visit to the city of the dead.
She took a cab to County Hospital, and found her way through the corridors to the morgue. She’d met Dr. Fritz Huber, Brooklyn’s Chief Medical Examiner, while doing the story about the Belt Parkway Killer four years earlier. Dr. Huber, an older man, took a kindly interest in her desire to be a good journalist. He’d gone out of his way to teach her the ropes of police procedure and the methods of a city coroner. He coached her on how to get along with some of the more difficult captains and detectives in the borough, and he never asked for anything in return other than her friendship.
Although she didn’t often see Huber, she considered him a friend and more. He was the closest thing she’d had to a father since her
dad had died just before she left Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism.
“Can I help you?” asked the receptionist in the dingy lobby of the old city building. The guy was reading the latest issue of Survival Weapons and Tactics; he was thin, angular, and distinctly avian in his movements and appearance. His thick bank-clerk glasses and long, pianist’s fingers gave him a delicate aspect, but he spoke with an off-handed, almost surly manner.
“I’m here to see Dr. Huber,” said Marion, smiling her best on-camera smile.
“He’s busy, lady.” Bird-man reached for his magazine, dismissing her.
“I called earlier.” This kind of guy pissed her off easily, but she kept her cool. “He’s expecting me.”
The guy looked up from his pages and grimaced as he tapped a key on his phone console and told another secretary to let Dr. Huber know he had a visitor.
“Who should I say is calling?” he asked with obvious disinterest.
“Marion Windsor, thank you.”
A circuit flared momentarily in the dim mass which passed for the man’s brain. “Hey, ain’t you the chick on the tube? I seen you do the news, right?”
Marion nodded. No smile this time.
“Jeez, that’s pretty neat. Nice to meet you.”
A door opened to the lobby and Dr. Huber appeared. Not very tall, he was getting almost stout enough to fill a doorway. Although pushing retirement age, he still had a headful of thick pepper-and-salt hair. His eyes were large and bright behind his Ben Franklin glasses, and his smile accented his carefully trimmed beard. There was an unequivocally European aspect to his bearing and appearance.
“Marion!” he said joyfully, approaching her with open, ready-to-hug arms. “Good to see you again!”
“Hello, Fritz. You’re looking great. As usual.”
“So do you, believe me! Come on. You know the way.” He released her, ushered her through the door and down a long, dingy corridor toward his office.
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