Damnation…
The desk intercom’s low-register buzz interrupted his thoughts. He turned from the window, waddled to the desk and touched a button.
“Yes?”
“Father Francesco to see you, Your Grace…”
Before he could say “send him in,” the double doors to Paolo’s sanctum sanctorum swung inward. For an instant Giovanni Francesco stood at the threshold, dramatically posed, his outstretched arms bracing the doors. The Jesuit looked thinner than usual, and Paolo wondered if the stress of recent developments was getting the best of him.
“Can you believe this!?” Francesco cried out, then turned to close the doors behind him.
“Sit down, ’Vanni…”
“I cannot sit! Have you seen the sat-casts?!”
Paolo settled his bulk into his large desk chair, steepled his pudgy hands over the blotter. “Yes, of course. You know I have.”
“What is He trying to prove?!”
“Maybe He is trying to prove He’s who we said He is?”
“In public!?”
Paolo smiled. “Can you think of a better place?”
“How do we know Krieger didn’t let Peter escape?”
“We don’t. But I think the old man truly wanted to examine Him. Test Him.” Paolo shrugged. “Krieger is a scientist, don’t forget. An opportunity to do a follow-up study on a thirty-year-old experiment is rare indeed.”
Giovanni Francesco nodded. “That is true. Is he coming to the meeting?”
“I saw no need of it. But I am keeping him in Rome for the time being.”
Francesco frowned as if a singularly depressing thought had just struck him. “I cannot believe we cannot get Him back. This is where He belongs.”
“I thought your ‘super-agent’ was supposed to bring him back to us.”
“He’s gotten bigger than Targeno can handle,” said Francesco.
“Is that what Targeno thinks?”
“Hah! Even if it was, he would never admit it.” Francesco began to slowly pace. “Where’s Victorianna? Is she late?”
“No,” said Paolo. “It is you who are early. I expect her at any moment.”
The Jesuit continued to pace slowly from one end of the large room to the other. He looked like a scraggly wolf. “I have been thinking about what we should do ever since I saw that ridiculous sat-cast.”
“Not so ridiculous,” said Paolo, “rather impressive, actually.”
“What next, the loaves and fishes?” Francesco almost shouted as he continued to pace.
Paolo Lareggia chuckled. “They say history has a habit of repeating itself…” The intercom buzzed. Paolo said, “Yes?”
“Abbess Victorianna is here, Your Grace.”
“Very good,” he said. “Send her in.”
Only one of the double doors opened as Paolo’s receptionist ushered the stately nun into the room. Her long, dark blue habit almost touched the Spanish-tiled floor, obscuring her feet and making her appear to glide across the room.
Paolo had always admired Victorianna—no lust, just an appreciation of her beauty and her natural elegance. His sexual urges had been in steady decline for a long time, suppressed by age and obesity.
Old Giovanni, however, was most likely a different story. Lareggia watched the Jesuit’s gaze track the Abbess. Naked lust capered behind his eyes. Lean and gaunt, Francesco probably fancied himself quite the sexual engine.
“You’re looking well, ’Anna,” said Paolo, guiding her to a small library table and chair to the left of his desk. “Have a seat. Will you join us, ’Vanni?”
Francesco pulled up a chair, sat down roughly. For a moment, the trio looked at one another, hoping to find a solution to their problem in the eyes of their partners. Lareggia’s receptionist entered the office, pushing an ornately carved cherrywood tea wagon that carried steaming carafes of both coffee and tea. Without a word, the young priest served everyone their long-familiar preferences. He even provided Giovanni Francesco with a small vial of Montecusano brandy for his Earl Grey.
After the receptionist departed, the silence grew awkward. Paolo cleared his throat; Victorianna sipped her tea. Francesco added the brandy to his cup.
“All right,” said the Jesuit at last. “Our plans have gone completely awry. What do we do now?”
“I have been thinking that we do nothing at all,” said Paolo. He gulped at his coffee, craving a sweet bun of some sort.
“What?” Giovanni stared at him wide-eyed. “He’s making a public spectacle of Himself—in America of all places! He will become a buffoon! A television star!”
“Perhaps America is where he should be,” offered Victorianna. “The prophecy of Nostradamus says the Messiah will come from the New World.”
“Interesting,” Lareggia said thoughtfully.
“Who cares about Nostradamus!” Francesco shouted.
The Abbess looked at him slyly. “You know, Father, I think what upsets you the most is that you lost control of this grand plan…”
“What?” Francesco looked at her warily.
“Did you ever really believe you would be able to control the Lord Jesus?”
“‘Control’ is hardly the right word,” said Francesco.
Lareggia chuckled. “Oh? Then what would you call sending a couple of Sicilian thugs to kidnap him?”
“I am still shocked that you did such a thing!” said Victorianna. “How could you, ’Vanni? Sometimes I think you’ve never had faith in what we were doing.”
Francesco shrugged indifferently.
Lareggia looked at his cohort and frowned, then sighed. “There is no bringing Him back. The prophecies say he will eventually return. Perhaps we should just wait for that day?”
“Do we have a choice?” Francesco glowered at him.
Paolo reached out, touched Victorianna’s hand. “Any thoughts?”
She smiled graciously, albeit a bit primly. “Now I know how Victor Frankenstein must have felt.”
Paolo shook his head. “No. I think He is just learning to accept His identity.”
“He should be here for that! We all agreed He would need special counseling, training,” said the Jesuit.
“Yes,” said Victorianna. “But perhaps we were guilty of hubris? How presumptuous, to think we could teach Him how to become the Messiah.” Lareggia nodded.
Giovanni lighted a strongly-scented cigarette, inhaled deeply. “I don’t like it. He should be in Rome.”
“That may be true,” said Paolo. “But you must admit we are quite powerless.”
Francesco exhaled, shook his head in a gesture of disgust. “How could we have misjudged things so?”
Lareggia sighed. “Then are we in agreement? We will not interfere with His desire to stay in America?”
Francesco and the Abbess nodded.
“I think we should try to keep someone close to him,” said Paolo. “I do not like the idea of the American media being our primary information source. Perhaps your man Targeno can still be of some use.”
Francesco agreed, saying, “The media slant everything according to their own politics. Did you see the way they besieged old Sobieski at Saint Sebastian’s?”
“Yes, but he handled them well. He said practically nothing,” Victorianna said.
Francesco snorted. “Only because he knows nothing.”
Lareggia raised his hand for both of their attention. “Where is Targeno?”
“Still following Peter’s little caravan. They picked up a few followers in Indiana and are again traveling the Interstate highway system.”
“Can Targeno maintain surveillance discreetly?”
“Certainly!” Francesco stubbed out his cigarette, immediately lit another.
“Very well. Let’s keep him on the job.” Paolo sat back in his chair. Across the table Sister Victorianna had fallen silent and was looking down at her hands. “What is it, ’Anna?”
The nun’s soft gaze rose to meet Lareggia’s concern. “It is Etienne…”
>
Paolo tapped the table with his pudgy fingers. He’d almost forgotten Peter’s mother. “Ah yes,” he said. “You said she was improving.”
Despite his show of concern, Paolo didn’t give a damn about Sister Etienne. She’d done her job thirty years ago; now she was of no use to the triumvirate. Her “vision” was worthless because she had refused to share it with them. Francesco’s doctors had begun a drug-therapy regimen which seemed to be working, the nun was sitting up, eating, talking a little. But she continued to insist that she would speak of her religious experience only to the Pope.
“After dinner last night, I decided to try an experiment,” said Victorianna.
“What did you do?” Paolo poured another cup of coffee’, looked at the Abbess patiently. She had a very deliberate way of speaking, prodding her would not help.
“I thought it might be interesting to let her see her son. I showed her a disk of the Evansville sat-cast.”
Francesco leaned all the way back in his chair, his thick eyebrows arched. “And…?”
Victorianna’s embarrassment was clear. “She reacted very badly, I’m afraid.”
The men both leaned forward as the Abbess continued. “As soon as she saw Peter’s face in a close-up, she started screaming uncontrollably. She started raving about seeing an earthquake, and demanding to see the Pope. We had to sedate her.”
Francesco grimaced. “The Chinese quake.”
Victorianna nodded, “She obviously saw it happening. She has the Sight.”
Francesco threw up his hands in disgust. “It doesn’t mean a damned thing! She just can’t face the truth that her baby is now thirty years old—that she’s thirty years older.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing you have said yet!” said Victorianna. “I think Etienne dealt with giving birth a long time ago. I think this is something else.”
“Is she afraid of her son?” asked the Cardinal.
“I don’t know if that’s the question we should be asking,” said Victorianna. “Maybe it is we who should be afraid.”
THIRTY
Bessemet, Alabama—Cooper
* * *
November 21, 1998
A digital signal sounded on the control console behind his water bed. It had been programmed to sound like a cageful of canaries singing sweetly. Like Saint Francis of Assisi, Freemason had a thing for birds.
“Gee, that sounds pretty, honey,” said Stephanie June as she looked up from her work under the sheets. “What is it?”
“The intercom,” he said, twisting around, reaching for the correct keypad, finding it, punching it in. “Yeah?”
“Mason…?” Preston J. Pierce’s voice was thin, reedy.
“Who’d you expect—Oral Roberts? Press, I told you never call me in here unless it’s a barn-burner…”
“Did you catch the eleven o’clock news?”
“Now what do you think?” Freemason said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. Which was hard to do with Stephanie June working so hard. She was a splash of red-gold hair across his stomach, half covered by the silk sheets.
“I’m serious, Reverend. There’s something I think you oughta see.”
“This better be worth it, Press,” he said.
Pierce cleared his throat. “Trust me on this one, Mason. Just get down to the studio as soon as you can.”
“I’m coming,” said Freemason.
“Gee, Reverend,” said Stephanie June. “That’s mighty nice of you to tell me like that. You wouldn’t believe how inconsiderate most men are…”
“We pulled this off the eleven o’clock news,” said a bespectacled, white-shirted engineer named Ames.
“Local?” asked Freemason.
“Montgomery,” Pierce said, nodding. “But they were picking up a national feed.”
Freemason Cooper sank into a padded leather chair and focused on a big flat-screen monitor. He and the boys were in the mansion’s east wing, which had been renovated into a state-of-the-art recording and broadcasting facility. The screen flickered, then revealed the auburn-haired woman he’d seen before—and a sweet-looking piece of cake she was, too. She was standing alongside a highway, beneath a dark sky tinged with the soft glow of a distant fire. The name “Marion Windsor” and her station ID flashed for an instant across the bottom of the frame.
The words “New York” caught Freemason’s attention. What the Christ-on-an-aluminum-crutch was a New York reporter doing out in Illinois? Something didn’t add up, he thought as the woman began speaking.
“Interstate 64 just east of Saint Louis, near the Richview, Illinois exit, marks the scene of one of the most horrible highway catastrophes in Illinois history…”
Marion Windsor remained in the left foreground, but the image behind her changed, zooming in to reveal, under the harsh reality of emergency lighting, a panorama of carnage and demolition. Twisted, burned-out husks of all kinds of vehicles littered the six-lane swath of road like toys fallen off a playroom shelf. Fire equipment and rescue vans skittered across the scene in erratic paths. Body-bag crews slicked into the darkness carrying their grim cargoes. State police officers shambled by with slack faces.
“Thirty-eight vehicles became entangled in a chain-reaction collision which has thus far claimed sixty-four lives. Eyewitnesses claim the huge, multi-car mishap ensued when a tractor-trailer carrying jet fuel careened into a log-jam of commuter traffic.”
The image changed again. Against the backdrop of a flaming knot of wreckage, the silhouette of a solitary figure stood out in dark relief. A man ran toward the flames, seemingly to certain death.
“What the hell’s going on?” muttered Freemason. He’d gotten a bad feeling as he’d seen that damn Windsor woman opening the segment. His stomach felt like it was being chewed by squirrels on speed.
“Just watch,” said Ames.
Preston J. Pierce cleared his throat, coughed nervously. He obviously knew what was coming; Cooper could hear something oddly like awe in his voice. “Aw, Jesus…” he whispered.
The camera followed the running man, who dodged flames and debris like a Crimson Tide tailback. He approached a vacation camper wrapped in flames, ripped open the back door as tentacles of fire reached out for him. He seemed completely unaffected by the inferno as he climbed into the vehicle.
“You are witnessing one of the most courageous and unbelievable rescue attempts ever recorded. Despite the jet fuel inferno, one man risked his own safety to seek out survivors.”
The man reappeared in the doorway, cradling a small body in his arms. In an instant hungry flames rose up to obscure him. The vehicle buckled and sagged under the ovenlike heat. Fire enveloped everything, igniting the tires, incinerating paint, a raging hell in which nothing could survive. Freemason’s stomach churned as he imagined dying like that—feeling your nerve endings short-circuit, your hair singe down to the bones of your skull, the liquid of your eyeballs boiling like eggs. How many seconds before you couldn’t feel it anymore?
“Look at this!” cried Ames. “Can you believe this shit?”
Watching the screen intently, Freemason could see movement in the choreography of flames. The man emerged, bent over his burden, and walked slowly away from the wreckage.
“No…” Freemason heard himself whispering.
Still carrying the small, slack form in his arms, the man loomed ever larger as he passed through the flames. For an instant Freemason thought he saw the fire bending away from the man, but that was impossible. He’d have to check it out on replay. As the man drew close to the camera, Freemason could see that the body in his arms looked like something from a Cajun restaurant.
“This man, identified as Father Peter Carenza of New York City, personally saved the lives of seven people. The little girl in this footage, nine-year-old Amanda Becker, was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics. But Peter Carenza’s miracle was not finished.”
“This is it,” said Preston. His hoarse voice dripped with reverence.
&nb
sp; Carenza bent over the still, blackened form of the little girl. He was a lean, handsome man of no more than thirty. The light of a man on a mission burned in his eyes. Freemason had seen that look before, in the eyes of other determined young men, and it had always scared him.
This time was no different. Orange light flickered and wavered, giving the whole scene an eerie, otherworldly aspect. Carenza placed his hands on the charred flesh of the girl. He closed his eyes as the camera briefly zoomed in on his face. For a moment nothing happened.
“Well?” asked Cooper, smelling a stunt of some kind. Lord knew he’d seen enough in his day.
“Wait!” cried Ames. “You ain’t gonna believe this!”
The girl’s blackened flesh had hardened like a carapace, but as the man touched the shell it began fracturing, sending out spiderweb cracks. Slowly, the fissures widened; strong blue light burst forth from them like headlights slicing through half-drawn blinds.
Cooper sucked in a deep breath.
Carenza passed his slender fingers over the fragmented pieces of the shell. It ruptured completely, falling away from the body to reveal perfectly formed, unscathed flesh. The image shook for a moment as the camera zoomed in to examine the girl’s face, cherubic and totally at rest, eyes closed, the suggestion of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Carenza touched three fingers to the center of her forehead. The blue light that had seemed to emanate from her body faded away and she blinked open her eyes. A gasp rose up from the surrounding crowd, quickly escalating into a full-fledged cheer. Carenza, looking haggard and drawn, managed a quick, engaging smile before he was surrounded by people and carried off by the exultant masses.
“This is Marion Windsor, on the scene in Richview, Illinois.”
The screen faded to black.
Freemason tried to swallow but his throat was too damned dry. Turning, he found Preston already pouring some bourbon into a tumbler.
“Here, Reverend…” Pierce said, passing it to him.
“All right, how’d he do it?” Freemason asked after slugging down half the glass.
The Blood of the Lamb Page 21
