“Are you asking whether or not Tatham knew it would be a dead end before we began?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Worth a look to see if he's any record when we get back, if we ever find our way out of here.”
“A computer search should reveal if he's had any prior arrests or any problems in the past.”
Inspector Richard Sharpe, having now litde doubt that something strange was afoot, and that it centered around Luc Sante and St. Albans, felt extreme fear and frustration at having been unable to locate Jessica for the past several hours. He hoped and prayed that this search would not again become just another termination, another dead end. They trudged onward along the unfamiliar, bleak avenue that Tatham had called a useless waste of time.
It was but a thread to go on.
They concentrated their search here. Sharpe raced ahead of the others, Copperwaite having radioed for assistance. Sharpe found himself now in a winding corridor out of a nightmare, and from it radiated any number of mine shafts. The array of choices proved both frustrating and cruel. He must slow down, weigh each detail, and give orders to the men, give each his own detail. He did so, finishing by ordering them to “Report back to Copperwaite and me, should you locate anything the least suspicious. Do not attempt anything alone.”
“Stuart, you stay with me. You other men are to remain in pairs, taking each tunnel,” Richard ordered the others. Sharpe then watched the others disappear. He and Copperwaite now stood alone, their flashlights the only light here. “We'll take this avenue, Stuart.”
“Lead on,” came Copperwaite's ready reply. Once again alone with one another, the two Scotland Yard investigators felt the darkness claw at them, gaining in power like ink over ink with each step forward in this pit, when Sharpe suddenly stopped. Holding up a hand, he cocked his head to one side.
Copperwaite, too, suddenly made out the sounds of people ahead. Next they saw light, faint at first but growing as they inched forward. They doused their own lights.
Sharpe's ears detected clear, animate sounds and words now, voices chanting Mihi beata mater over and over, welling up like the sound of uneasy ghosts. Placing a forefinger to his lips, Sharpe called for silence and caution. “Careful. They're just ahead. We've hit some sort of pay dirt,” Richard assured Copperwaite. “Go find the others. Bring reinforcements.”
Copperwaite spoke under his breath, trying to keep their presence a secret, saying, “But Richard, I—”
“Do it! Do it, now,” whispered Sharpe. Stuart Copperwaite sighed and nodded before racing off after the other men. Sharpe condnued, guided by the sound of the voices. Soon, he located a stone stairwell that must be the way taken by the Crucifier and any victims he or they might have forced down into these awful catacombs—like the bowels of an ancient Stonehenge, an underground cathedral.
Sharpe thought of Jessica at the lab, about the CID building, at St. Albans, at her hotel, at his apartment, and his anxiety rose like a knife in his throat. He sensed Jessica near; sensed her, this very moment, in grave danger.
Now, Sharpe heard Jessica's voice, shouting and in pain, saying something about rituals. Now he knew most certainly that Jessica stood in harm's way, and he knew she was just beyond the next catacomb, just beyond the light, filtering from ahead, beyond his sight and reach, but the tunnel split again, two separate directions here, and he could not be sure which led to Jessica.
Richard heard raised voices now, angry voices. They chanted, “Brand her, brand her, brand her. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater.”
“Hold her wrists! Hold her dght! Control her!”
“Hold her hand still, so that I can stake it!” shouted another frustrated voice, one with a distinctly familiar ring, not Luc Sante's.
Frustrated and angry at the turn of events, Richard Sharpe again raced ahead of the others, taking the left tunnel in a headlong effort to save Jessica. He feared her in pain, a pain that might turn to a death at any time. He felt an intense hatred now for Luc Sante, wishing to mete out some pain to the Jesuit madman of twisted holiness. Obviously, Luc Sante had an agenda only Father Luc Sante fully comprehended.
Sharpe raced until he came to the end of a tunnel closed off by a grate, and staring through the grate, he could see the ritual in progress before his eyes. He saw Luc Sante conducting, and he saw Jessica with her hands staked, her feet tied, and that she hung naked from a cross. His heart filled with the horror before his eyes.
The men nearest Jessica had dropped their cowls, and Sharpe recognized Tatham of the RIBA, a Dr. Kahili, Burtie Burton's shrink whom Sharpe had spoken to, and beside Kahili stood Dr. Karl Schuller. Sharpe could hardly believe what his eyes imparted. His mind worked to make sense of it all.
Those nearest Jessica prepared now to bathe her in an oil and blood mixture, the blood taken from a cut made in her right side. Others near her prepared to brand her tongue with a hot poker.
Sharpe screamed and kicked out at the grate separating him from these demons, the clattering noise riveting everyone's attention from Jessica to the intruder.
Luc Sante, using Jessica's Browning, fired and struck Richard a grazing blow to the temple just as Sharpe leaped down from the overhead tunnel. The gunshot knocked Sharpe back, while Luc Sante, over the noise, cursed, “The sancdty of our home is invaded, defiled!”
Sharpe fired back with little aiming. His army training as a sharpshooter took over. His single bullet created a neat, round hole in the old man's chest. Father Luc Sante sank to his knees, dying and pleading rhetorically, “Who will save ... Savior know to ... if I am not.. . here? Where will... I am, be? You fools ... have destroyed any chance of... Second Coming.”
Luc Sante's body went into spasms, his chest constricting, his throat filling with blood that he now gurgled and choked on. He amounted to a lump of robes now on the coal-smeared, ancient floor.
“He's.... Father's dead!” moaned one of the Houghton sisters who'd raced to the old man to tend his wound.
The others followed suit, falling to their knees over their leader. Schuller, finding the gun there, lifted it and found himself staring at the bore hole to Sharpe's weapon. Sharpe stood in the flickering light like some mad devil, bleeding profusely from his temple where Luc Sante's bullet had ripped a course through his skin and hair.
Other police and inspectors, along with Copperwaite, now rushed in to see Dr. Karl Schuller drop the gun, drop to his knees, and crumble under the weight of having lost all hope for the chance to be one of the Chosen to cross over. In the end even Jessica, sdll in her drugged condidon, saw the pitiful rabble of religious zealots for what they were. How all had been willing to step forward for the opportunity to create a moment in which the transmigration of their souls might link with that of Jesus Christ. All this bloodshed in order to bring Him back as promised in their Bibles and their addled, world-weary brains.
“Cuff them!” commanded Copperwaite. “One and all, and take them out of here.”
Sharpe, his forehead and the left side of his face covered in crimson blood, stumbled to his feet, trying to get to Jessica. “Get her down at once! At once, do you hear? Take all due care with her!”
The men of the Yard did as Sharpe ordered, easing Jessica's weight immediately. Her stakes and leather bonds were next pulled from her, making her gulp with a last dose of pain. Richard tore off his coat and covered Jessica with it the moment she left the towering, intimidating old cross.
“Need to staunch the blood flow,” Copperwaite shouted.
Sharpe took her in his arms, stroking her auburn hair, reassuring her as he wrapped each hand in handkerchiefs offered up by his men, while Copperwaite did the same for her feet. Sharpe imagined the scene as it must look to the others, as if it were a painting of the resurrection. Sharpe spoke reassuringly into Jessica's ear. “I've got you now, Jessica. No one can hurt you now. You're all right now, we've found you.”
She cringed and cowered like a child in his arms, giving into her fear and loa
thing altogether now, sobbing uncontrollably. Out of the comer of her eye, she saw Luc Sante's lifeless body, and in the flickering light she thought he winked, and for the first time she fully appreciated her hatred for the old minister of twisted faith.
“Is he ... Is he dead, truly?” she asked Sharpe.
“Utterly gone.”
“We'll soon have these others talking,” Copperwaite interjected. “Imagine it. Schuller among this collection of lost wretches.”
Sharpe added, nodding, “I'm sure he's just like all the others. Did it all in the name of their Lord and Master and no more, so they hear no brunt of responsibility in the deaths of their kith and kin.”
One of the uniformed policemen who'd entered behind Copperwaite shouted, “Over here! This one's alive!” He pointed to Father Martin Strand whose form stirred and partially rose, Copperwaite throwing his coat over the naked man's form, saying, “Hold on, man! Medics! Get medics down here!”
Luc Sante's followers, Schuller and Tatham the loudest, went into a paroxysm of religious frenzy on seeing the resurrected Martin Strand, calling out his name now as Christ! Chanting “Strand is Lord, Strand is Christ, Strand is the Holy One!”
Strand smiled a weak, broken, curled smile in response, but he could hardly move otherwise, his entire body going rigid as he went into cardiac arrest.
“He needs medics!” shouted Copperwaite. “Get some medics in here.”
“Radios won't work down here, this far in!” came the response.Strand died a second time, this time in an uncontrollable seizure as Schuller and the others crowded Copperwaite out, ignoring the orders and guns trained on them. Strand died in Karl Schuller's arms.
“Under and behind the cross,” muttered Jessica to Richard. “A set of steps, goes out of here, to street level.”
Sharpe ordered another investigator to have a look, and with the exit located, Luc Sante's motley crew of followers were marched up and out to street level, there met by police cars. They were ignominiously hauled off as coconspirators in the Crucifixion deaths in London. Strand and Luc Sante's bodies followed.
“Why didn't they just hide away the bodies down here?” Copperwaite wondered aloud.
Sharpe replied, “It was in keeping with the ritual, like the tongue branding, the blood and the oil—to bathe the dead in a clean body of water, water representing God's tears. The water in this place would hardly do. Besides, a part of Luc Sante wanted the world to know.” Copperwaite gritted his teeth, nodding his understanding. “You're probably quite right, Sharpie.”
“Now help me get Jessica out of here.”
“Thank you for coming for me, Richard,” she said through the dull haze of the Brevital.
“Rest. Rest now,” he said, his voice soothing her. “You knew I would find you.”
“Yes, but I didn't know if you'd find me alive or dead facedown in a body of water. I'm still not sure you're real.”
“Rest, dear Jessica ... rest,” he soothed.
Through the drug haze that hung about her brain now like gauze and film, she caught a flashback of Donald Wentworth Tatham's voice, saying coldly, “Mihi beata mater! In Mother Church and her Child lies salvation for us all.” She saw Tatham as if from a great distance, and his eyes grew gargantuan where they remained glued on Luc Sante at the pulpit.
The religious frenzy among Luc Sante's followers had obviously taken on a life of its own, carrying Tatham, Schuller, the Gloucester twins, Miss Eeadna, Strand, and others along, propelling them to follow any order.
Again, she watched as two men with the huge iron hammers and stakes approached: faceless men at first, each encouraging the other with toothy grins, each exciting the mob to do as they chanted, “Brand her, brand her, brand her. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater. Hold her wrists! Hold her tight! Control her!”
“Hold her hand still, so that I can stake it!” shouted another frustrated voice. The stake looked and felt hefty, larger than before. Somehow she felt it in her hand. One of them, teasing her, wanted her to know its weight. The voices of those around her, driving the stakes home now, through flesh and rending bone, suddenly had familiar and then absolutely recognizable voices which brought their features into clear focus. One was Copperwaite, the other Richard Sharpe.
She woke up screaming in the London Memorial Hospital to where she had been moved since the cave with the cross that rose so high there seemed no top to it. Her screams woke Richard who had been sitting the all-night vigil with her. Her hands were those of a mummy, both bandaged and wrapped. She felt no pain. She wiggled her toes, all to the good. She felt no blisters below her tongue. And she realized for the first time that not all her nightmares had come true.
“Jess, Jess, it's me, Richard. You've had a bad scare, I'm afraid, and God knows why. You're in hospital. They say you can walk out of here tomorrow.”
“Oh, Richard, it was ... It was horrible.”He grabbed her up in his arms. “I well know. I was there.”She saw that his shoulder was in a sling and his forehead bandaged from his own wounds. “Cut my shoulder badly going through that grate and—”
“Dear God!”
“—and Luc Sante nearly took out my eye with a bullet, but I'm doing splendidly now, seeing and hearing from you. You were in shock when they brought you in, and I was a close second.”
“I walked blindly into his trap.”
“Never you mind that.”
“Never mind? I was so ... He so charmed me!”
“Luc Sante charmed everyone. He could charm a snake.”
“Thanks, I think ...”
“What you did, Jessica Coran, was to singlehandedly put an end to the Crucifier club. Well done, so says the papers and Boulte and the Queen.” He pointed to cards, letters, flowers filling the room.
“Well done? What well done? I acted foolishly and nearly got us both killed.”
“Survival, that's what. You survived. Strand and five others did not, six if you add the copycat killing.”
“That would have made me Luc Sante's seventh vicdm.”
He nodded. “I truly believe the old man thought you the prize ring, Jessica. You must have touched something in him as well. You can be fairly charming yourself, you know.”
“Shut up and kiss me, you Briton.”
He smiled, bent over, and passionately embraced and then kissed her. “God bless you, Jess.”
“And you, too, Richard, and you, too.”
-EPILOGUE -
Perhaps our failure to scientifically examine the phenomena of evil in all its myriad forms is our fear of the end results.
—from the casebooks of jessica coran
October 10, 2000, Heathrow Airport,
Boarding Concorde Flight #414
5:09 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time
Jessica's parting with Richard Sharpe proved miles different from those times she and James Parry had parted. While parting with James had proven Shakespeare's “sweet sorrow” theme, there too had always been the element of guilt that James managed to leave her with, that she should feel guilty at leaving him, at not instantly changing over her life to box it all up to fit into his neat little world there in Hawaii. Richard would have none of that, and he didn't shed any tears, actual or metaphorical at her leaving, but rather said, “I will make it my business to visit America to see you, Jessie.” He'd taken to calling her Jessie James since the incident, and he had since shortened it to simply Jessie. “I won't let a pond as small as the Atlantic stand between us, not for long anyway.”
It made her smile, hearing him say such words in so matter a fact a tone, as if no obstacles existed between them, because Richard wouldn't allow obstacles.
“You have a place to stay—a warm bed—anytime you visit,” she assured him. “You've made my time here more valuable than any dme I've spent on the planet, Richard. I... I can honestly tell you now, I love you. I truly do.”
This caught him unaware, and he audibly gasped. “I had no idea. You hold your
cards so close to your chest, as you Americans put it.”
“Hold on there, Inspector. You haven't said those words to me, either.”
“I hadn't dreamed you could feel so deeply for me. I thought our relations . .. relationship purely a matter of... you see, physical attraction.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“I mean ... I guess, I mean to say, I hadn't considered a woman of your intelligence and beauty to be all that, well... interested in a dull sot like myself, an aging fellow to boot, and—”
“Older men intrigue me. You've lived a life, Richard. And you do have more to offer than anyone I've known, Colonel Sharpe.”
“Including Parry?”
She had told him all about her love affair with Parry, and he had been silent and understanding, and when she'd finished, he had told her all about his wife, Clarisa, and his two daughters, his eyes sparkling as usual when he spoke of the children.
Final boarding on the Concorde for America was called. She'd been given clearance to sit in the jump seat in the cockpit behind the pilot and copilot, and she felt extremely excited about the trip home, and nothing Richard said or did spoiled any of it. He remained focused on her the entire time of their parting, never once making her feel odd about leaving so soon, as she had decided, never once asking her to remain longer, but rather promising to see her sooner than she might like. They kissed a final, long, passionate kiss, embracing as lovers, the world falling away from around them, dissolving into oblivion for they lived, each and the other, in this moment alone. He whispered in her ear, “We're good together, you and I.”
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