by Rob Swigart
One of the SWAT team, hearing the muffled shot, turned toward it and fired reflexively. His weapon was not equipped with a silencer and made a horrific bang that reverberated around the room. The bullet ricocheted off the paving and sent sparks flying toward her skirts. Teresa began batting at them with her gloved hand.
Steve shook off the last of his restraints and raced to Lisa and began undoing the chain holding her to the post.
Defago pressed his thumbs deep into the fat on either side of the Prior General’s windpipe. Strange gargling sounds came from the Rumanian’s throat. His eyes bulged. The monk lifted Lacatuchi’s head and pounded on the stone, over and over. Blood began seeping out in a spreading crimson stain.
The nun turned toward Defago but Lisa, now free, had taken a step toward her.
Steve hissed, “Don’t.” Before he could pull her back the SWAT team had a moment of arbitrary decision-making and seized him by the arms. “You better come with us,” one said. They dragged him away toward the circular stair.
Sister Teresa’s prosthetic foot caught in a crack between paving stones and twisted. In fury she turned toward Lisa, but her veil caught on a spike in the question chair and pulled away. Her hand flew up, too late. Her yellow-tinted shooting glasses flew to the floor and her gray-blond hair spread in half a dirty halo behind her head. She cupped her free hand over the gaping hole in the ghastly, puckered scar. Her eyes reflected an implacable hatred. She snarled something inarticulate. Her other hand held the pistol.
With the next faltering step her prosthetic foot disconnected, and clattered away. The blunt stump of her leg fell heavily onto the stone floor and she fell with a scream of pain. Almost immediately she began clawing at the slick floor with her free hand, raising the pistol with the other.
What Lisa saw was an obscene distortion of a human being, half grub, half mammal, pulling itself painfully toward her over the uneven stone floor alternately lit by the swinging lamp and plunged into phantasmagoric shadow.
This image abruptly faded and she saw a swollen sun of a dark and angry red squatting over a sheet of flat black water. With great difficulty she lifted her own foot and put it down. The next step was as difficult. Where was she going? Why was she making this terrific effort?
Who was she?
People around her, lines of people, men, women, small children, shuffled toward her, reaching with arms that were too long. Their faces were blank and unhappy, mouths open in silent screams or pressed tightly shut. A staccato rhythm of blood dinned in her ears, too fast, too fast, red like the sun. She turned but could not run. The people were breathing behind her now, long, rasping breaths. It was very hot. Sweat stung her eyes.
She closed them. The red sun remained but the breathing of the crowd faded away. Somewhere a man groaned, a deep-pitched wordless sound, infinitely weary, infinitely despairing.
The heat increased.
The groan rose in her throat. She was the suffering man. Her name was William Emmer and he was looking at an infant girl curled in a crib, pink fingers, pink toes, eyes closed. She made nursing sounds like little clicks.
He/she was her father, who lived in a tower of light in a city of light. From the top of the tower he looked down on streets clogged with evening traffic. Heat wavered, smearing the lines. Across the broad twinkling grid points of light grew intolerably bright and winked out, leaving columns of dark smoke. A tide of sound rose, a great collective lamentation of grief and rage. The lights were explosions, swift endings. Their sounds dwindled under the tide of despair. She was empty, dead, a husk, but he could not turn away from the dying city.
A cloud moved overhead, impossibly fast, twisting and devouring itself. Hailstones fell with a loud, continuous rattle.
A woman walked toward him, her arms outstretched. Wind caught her flimsy garment and it fell away. Seeing her was a shock of the erotic. She walked past him, unseeing. A jagged fork of light struck the tower with a deafening crash. The floor tilted and he fell, turning over and over in air rushing upward, heated by the speed of his fall, by flames below, by fear and pain.
He neared the ground and there, looking upward, mouth open, was the woman. She was Sister Teresa, known as Tisiphone, the Fury, avenger, punisher of murderers, herself a murderer. She stood over the body of Raimond Foix and pointed at him, at William Emmer, father of Elizabeth Sybilla, falling toward her. What she was pointing was a gun. She fired and Lisa knew she had to turn and step a little sideways.
The bullet whined past her and struck the arch above the opening to the spiral stair, showering chips onto Steve and his captors.
The nun still crawled toward Lisa. Foam had gathered at the corner of her mouth and her breath rasped like metal on stone. She stopped and arched her back and looked into Lisa’s eyes with her own pitiless black orbs, depthless and opaque.
* * *
Philippe Dupond, still under the spell of broken tower, the falling men, death behind his own eyes, blinked. Two men had seized Viginaire and were dragging him past. In the center of the room Defago was killing the Prior General, and the nun was raising her pistol toward the Emmer girl.
In that moment he had to decide. Could he let the girl die and with her all his hopes? Lisa Emmer held the secret to everything, to what these people wanted, to what Hugo said he didn’t want but did, to what those two grim men in black were told to do, dragging Steve Viginaire toward the spiral stair. They would wind him up and away.
She was the secret and he had to protect her, so he started forward, drawing his gun. At the last moment the nun looked at him and swiveled her Glock toward this new threat. “Stop,” she tried to say, but the word was a croak, clogged and strangled in her throat.
Dupond kept coming.
She fired and Dupond’s head snapped back, his feet stepped out from under him, and he fell heavily onto his back and lay still.
Somewhere in the silence that followed a man did groan, a real man in pain, in despair, in grief.
Brother Armand Defago let go of the Prior General’s neck, leaving dark purple bruises. The crimson stain still spread from under Lacatuchi’s battered head. The monk dipped his finger in it and drew a cross on the fat Rumanian’s forehead, a kind of blessing, a last rite. Then he sat back on his heels and let out his breath, rubbing his eyes wearily, leaving a set of red streaks across his face.
The nun aimed her weapon at Lisa. Her finger tightened repeatedly on the trigger and she strained to pull it. Sweat started on her forehead and ran in rivulets through the furrows and channels of scar tissue. She lifted the gun, lying half on her side. The barrel wavered, dipped and wobbled. She reached with her other hand and with both hands on the grip aimed carefully. Again she strained to shoot. Her body shook with fury.
Lisa was gazing at the grotesque creature with an expression of almost transcendent compassion.
* * *
Ted and Marianne had been listening to the sounds of struggle, threats, and now gunshots. Wordlessly they decided in an exchange of looks that it was time, so Ted called the local gendarmerie and reported gunfire at the Abbey of St. Théophile.
His call was forwarded to Captain Hugo, already headed in their direction west of Mantes-La-Jolie. Hugo urged Mathieu to go faster.
The junior SWAT touched the communications bud in his ear. “Orders,” he said to the other. “We leave. Now.”
“A total fuckup,” his superior muttered. He dropped Steve’s arm with a hurried apology and started up the circular stair. The first hesitated for a quick glance back at the room before following.
Sister Teresa dragged herself, pulling with one hand, pushing with her good foot. The shattered stump of her amputation had left a zigzag red line like a trail of slime. She stopped before Lisa, standing quietly beside the toppled Judas Chair.
The nun rolled onto her side and once more tried to fire, this time at point blank range.
Brother Defago sat on the floor a few paces away, his legs splayed before him. He rolled his eyes toward the darkne
ss clinging to the ceiling and worked his mouth a few times. When he began to speak Sister Teresa froze.
He said, “You summoned me, oh Lord, and I did Your bidding. You tried me and I endured. I did not fail You.”
He twisted around to look at his nun. “I could not have done it without her, without my dark angel. Have You not seen her, Lord, how tireless she is, how unswerving? Yet You try her more, and yet more again. She did not fail us. She cannot fail You!”
His hands, lying awkwardly by his sides, palms up, twitched. His empty eyes fell on the cooling corpse of the Prior General of the Order of Theodosius. Its broad stomach showed through gaps in his shirt where a button had come off. Through the Prior General’s slightly parted lips the tip of a dark tongue protruded, as if he were preparing to speak, but the staring eyes and the pool of drying blood under the wide head showed he had nothing left to say.
Defago’s hand flapped in a clumsy gesture at the remains. “You saw how he weakened. You saw! I could not allow that, because I knew You would not, would You, Lord? And now I’ve exacted punishment in Your name!”
He mumbled, sending frantic looks around the room. Suddenly he cried, “The Struggle ends like this? Not possible!” His voice dropped to a whine, “Not possible.”
“My priest!” It was a shriek of pain and rage.
He turned burning eyes toward her. His voice turned soft and caressing. “Yes, my angel.”
“I… can’t!”
Lisa kneeled beside the fallen nun. The pistol waved vaguely in her direction, but could not settle.
Defago’s voice gained sudden strength. “Do it, my angel!” he commanded. “End it!”
Teresa struggled to raise the pistol, face pale and drawn, but the barrel kept sinking toward the floor. She bit through her lip and blood fell in big drops onto her white shift. Her arm fell; the barrel clicked on the stone.
Defago climbed painfully to his feet and took a step toward the two women. “What is it?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”
Lisa looked at him. “Not hurt,” she said. “But she suffers.”
“You…” He came toward her.
Steve caught his elbow. “Enough, Brother Defago,” he said quietly. “It’s over.”
The man somewhere in the cellars groaned. Just above the glove Lisa gently touched Sister Teresa on the wrist of the hand still holding the weapon. She stood and walked away without a backward glance.
The monk dropped to his knees beside his nun and cradled her damaged head to his chest. He began to rock back and forth, humming softly.
Lisa called. “It’s Alain. I need help. He’s unconscious but alive.”
Together she and Steve carried the injured man to the elevator.
57.
Defago, sitting beside his fallen nun, stroked her shoulder. “Why, my love?” he crooned. “Why?” He was looking at Philippe Dupond a few meters away. He had known that man. You could not trust him, true. He had too many masters, too many disloyalties. Better he’s dead.
Aside from the bodies and Lacatuchi’s whimpering secretary, still clutching his knee and rocking back and forth, they were alone in the cellar, on the damp floor next to the overturned Judas Chair, surrounded by the tools of their profession, the pincers and probes, the funnels and clamps.
He looked at her tenderly. “Why?” he whispered.
She could only shake her ghastly head. Her eyes were wet.
The Prior General’s secretary fell silent when Sister Teresa summoned her strength to ask, “Is this really the end of our work, Armand? The end of the Inquisitio?” Xavier looked from one to the other with great intensity.
Defago gently stroked the mass of her scar tissue. “I blame him – Gabriel.” He half turned. The blood under the Prior General’s head was already dry. It made an irregular black stain nearly the shape of France, he thought, with that hooked peninsula. And the little dimple where he had dipped his finger looked like Brest, the city at the tip of Brittany, and he thought irrelevantly of that line of Prévert’s, Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest, it was raining on Brest without end, and he stroked the forehead of his beloved Tisiphone with his pale hand, noting suddenly how the veins were blue and ridged on its back, and how it shook a little when he raised it for the next pass. “He was weak, my sister,” he crooned, “and could not carry it through. He failed us. He failed the Order. He failed history.” He looked around suddenly, as if seeking help. “Where are the others?”
“They fled, my priest. After I shot that policeman they ran.” She coughed up a bitter laugh. “They are without honor.”
Defago nodded.
“We’re alone,” she said, and then, indicating the secretary staring at them, his pain for the moment forgotten, “Except for Xavier, of course.”
“Yes,” Defago agreed without looking. “Except for him.”
* * *
Some time later there came over the sound of slow water dripping on stone, another sound, this time of clattering, mechanical and uneven.
It was the elevator descending.
Defago said, “Come,” but she would not move, or could not. He didn’t understand the lethargy, but he now understood deep within himself that they would never leave this place, and something like a smile touched his thin gray lips.
He reached slowly for the gun and took it from her hand.
“We cannot let them take us,” he said. “We must protect the Church, our mother. You understand, don’t you?”
She opened her eyes and looked into his. “Since the bomb that took my foot and my face, my priest, you have been my light in a dark world.” She smiled, and her smile matched his, fleeting and faint. “How I have loved you.”
His eyes were wet when he pulled the trigger. The sound was soft, like the echo of a kiss.
He turned the gun on himself and pulled it again.
* * *
Hugo surveyed the room, taking in the instruments of torture, the faint, acrid aroma of gunpowder, the four bodies, one still living. He waved a patrolman to tend to the wounded man. He turned to his lieutenant. “Well, Mathieu, this seems to resolve the situation.”
“Does it, Captain? We don’t have the Emmer woman.”
Hugo pursed his lips. “No, that is true, Mathieu.” He brightened. “But that case is closed. We see over there our nun, and beside her the priest. I would guess that Guardian of the Peace Dupond shot her, and that man there shot Dupond and then himself in guilt and despair.”
“Shouldn’t we ask the witness?”
Hugo smiled. “Oh, I suppose we should, but what for? It would just give us other things to explain to that nameless secretary at the Quai d’Orsay. All in all, I would prefer to report the case is closed. Of course we’ll have to send some queries to the Vatican, I suppose. She is, after all, a nun, a religious. So is he. Suicide is a sin, Mathieu. I suppose this means he won’t get hallowed ground for his eternal rest, but if you ask me, I doubt he’ll notice the difference. People come and go, Mathieu. One must be philosophical. Tomorrow or the next day, no doubt, we will have another murder to solve. I would say this is a job well done.”
58.
“Come on,” Steve said. “Tell us.”
Lisa could see the Alps out the Citation’s window. They were still capped with white despite the blistering heat wave and the retreat of the glaciers. The sky at this altitude was a sharp and cloudless blue onto which these jagged peaks were etched.
She felt the cedar box sitting on the floor with the side of her foot. It had a reassuring solidity.
They were flying southeast at 34,000 feet. The shades were drawn against the sun’s glare on the other side of the plane. The Alps were so remote, so vast and immobile and serene. People had climbed them, hiked around in them, but they were one place in Europe where man had left no visible marks from this altitude; human presence had always been temporary.
“Come on,” he repeated, touching her arm.
She murmured, “They’re so beautiful.”
�
�Yes, they are,” he agreed impatiently. “But I want to know. We all want to know.” Ted and Marianne, sitting opposite, nodded.
Reluctantly she turned away from the mountains. “You want to know what?”
“You haven’t been listening. You haven’t said a word since last night except to order the plane. What happened at the Abbey? Why didn’t Sister Teresa shoot? You just looked at her and walked away. She was going to kill you; she was trying to.”
Lisa nodded. “Yes, but she couldn’t, that’s all. She knew at the end it had nothing to do with me, or with her, with any of us. She understood. I could see it.”
“Did you know before? Had you foreseen?”
She laughed, but it was a tight, controlled burst, and short-lived. “No. You can’t foresee a thing that small. But it fit.”
He shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
“The Order existed because of the Pythos, and vice versa. Eliminate one and the other disappears. She knew if she and Defago and the Prior General disappeared, then the Delphi Agenda would, too. Our missions would be over, you see? There was no need to kill me and she knew it.”
“I still don’t understand you.”
“The Founding Document made it clear: as long ago as the late fourth century the priest of Apollo saw that the church and Delphi had to be locked together, each believing they must destroy the other. You’d call it a dynamic system; each side feeds energy to the other. Now is when the real Delphi Agenda begins.”
“What?”
She ignored his surprise and continued. “Eventually the Secret War would have to end. Yesterday it did.”
“You’ll still answer questions, won’t you? One came yesterday from Washington.”
She shrugged. “I may. I may not. I don’t know yet. I’ll know when it’s time.”
“But you can change the history!”
“Perhaps,” she said. Her laugh was less constrained this time. “But would that be wise? After all, history is what has already happened.”
“You’ve read the Founding Document! You know!”
