Lisa Emmer Historical Thrillers Vol. 1-2 (Lisa Emmer Historical Thriller Series)

by Rob Swigart

  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 Mariann
e, 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!”

  Ted and Marianne were listening. Their eyes twinkled when Steve said the word history. Ted put his hands on his knees and leaned forward, as if he didn’t want to miss a word.

  Lisa glanced outside at the Alps. “They look eternal, don’t they?” she said.

  Steve grew impatient. “We want to know what the Document says.”

  “I know,” she reassured him. “But there’s nothing to say.”

  “This can’t be the end of it. With minor interruptions Delphi’s been going continuously since 1100 BC. You can’t tell us it’s over.”

  Her smile was wistful. “But it is.” She reached out and Ted handed her the Founding Document. She held it loosely. “Hypatia,” she began. “She understood how things change. She had watched the sky and knew the stars. Those mountains seem unchanging, but they aren’t. They’re constantly growing, eroding, changing. Today the glaciers disappear, the seas rise, the climate changes. What Hypatia understood was mutation, adaptation. Bruno saw this too. But the gift of seeing was ancient even when Delphi began to prophesy. It all goes back much, much further. Lost in the past…”

  She stared out the window for a few moments. “Hypatia had only to look at the city, at Alexandria, to see how people changed the earth. To see how their numbers increased. She, and the priest, they must have calculated how long it would be before people covered the entire planet. Calculated, or intuited. Or saw.” She smiled. “Hypatia was a mathematician, she understood that circumstances change, and that we change with them. She suspected there were things about the future that for all science, all our technology, we could forecast in a general way. No need for stars falling to earth, seas boiling, monsters on the loose. But the truth is…”

  “Uncomputable?” Steve suggested.

  “Exactly, uncomputable, complex interactions between inside and outside, nonlinear, filled with surprises, filled with uncertainty, random events. Knowing the future is not a science. It can only be known through omens and portents, vague shadows the future casts back at us. Only when the two are made one…”

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes. Only then can we truly see the future’s broad shape. That’s what the Document tells us. Bruno saw it, knew it would come in our time. Raimond certainly knew, and he made as sure as he could that I would know that the time has come. The world is crowded, destructive and dangerous. The enemy isn’t the Church. The enemy is ignorance and shortsightedness and greed. The enemy is our own desperate lack of vision.” Her hair had fallen in her eyes and she brushed it back. “We have a new goal, Steve.”

  “What new goal?”

  “We’re going to engage the world. When it all comes together like this, the future is clear.” She lifted the thin sheet of vellum. It seemed to give off a faint aroma of age, or of something more intangible: wisdom, perhaps. “This states it clearly: a time will come when two will be made into one, inside like outside, outside like inside, above like below. When we will see the whole. Our planet is reacting, Steve, to pollution, to the destruction of species and soil, overfishing, all the things we’ve been hearing about the last two or three decades. And we will all disappear if we don’t act to change the future. We can’t sit by any longer, giving a little prophecy here and there, urging history along. The oracle never before tried to change the future; it only gave a glimpse, omens and portents. Now that’s over. Ahead is a world without human beings at all unless everyone can see.” She shook her head. “They saw it so clearly, the people of Delphi, the priest of Apollo, Hypatia. After two millennia must come the liberation of the world. Partial vision, greed, selfishness, ignorance, the domination of religious institutions over the mind, the taming of the world, the heedless plundering, all would come to a halt…”

  She laughed out loud, this time with genuine merriment. “I’m sorry, I sound like a zealot. I’m trying to say people today, all of us, are distracted from what’s important by petty, local things – violence in central Asia, stock markets in the Middle East, famine in Africa, drought in South America. These things seem so important, but the Delphi Agenda means seeing far more broadly and over a much longer term. It means really knowing how two are one, how the inside and the outside, the upper and the lower, are one. It means feeling the world in its place, feeling its complexity, its uncertainty, its potential. Now we start organizing, through our network, ways of overcoming conflict, of giving everyone the same vision the Pythia has always had. We must become conscious as a species.”

  “Sounds like philosophy,” Steve said.

  “No, it is a practical technology. Call it the Messiah Medicine. The time has come to really direct our own history. No more superstition, no more obscure prophecies, omens or portents. Bruno knew the universe was infinite, and was burned at the stake. We know that we are our own conscience. The Earth is changing. We will bring our choices into the light and consider them deliberately and solemnly, as a species. We will create a new art, or science, if you will, of collective will. This has been the ultimate goal of the Delphi Agenda at least since the Oracle began, or, if I am right, long before that.”

  She smiled brightly at them all. “Now the real work begins.”

  59.

  Captain Hugo dropped the flimsy sheet of paper on his desk with a grunt. “They sent a fax. Can you imagine that, Mathieu? In this day and age, they sent a fax. I wasn’t even sure we still had a fax machine in this building.”

  Mathieu cleared his throat. “The Vatican is quite conservative, Captain.”

  Hugo nodded. “Of course.”

  “What does it say?” the lieutenant asked.

  Hugo snapped the page with a finger. “Official Vatican stationery.”

  He read aloud: “In response to your request for information regarding the so-called Order of Theodosius, we regret that despite extensive searches as far back as the twelfth century the Vatican archivist has found not one single reference to such an Order. We conclude that it does not exist now, nor has it ever existed.

  “Regarding the Inquisitio Haer
eticae Pravitatis Sanctum Officium, in 1908 the Holy Office of the Inquisition changed its name to The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and then in 1965 to The Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith. This office has not been involved in the examination of heretics in many hundreds of years and has no plans to take up this activity again.

  “As for the three individuals about whom you have inquired, Gabriel Lacatuchi, Armand Defago and Teresa Williams, we have queried the Dominican Order on your behalf and can provide the following information. Complete reports are being prepared and will follow by post.

  “Gabriel Lacatuchi was a child when his family immigrated to the United States from Ploesti, Romania. He was called early to the church, took vows as one of the preaching friars, and held several positions, including bishop, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was made Cardinal in 1989. Two years later he abruptly resigned his position, left the Church, and was declared apostate. He left Baltimore for Washington, D. C., and some time in the next few years left that city. We have no further information concerning him.

  “A Dominican brother of French-Spanish origin named Armand Defago left his monastery in Toulouse, France, two years ago. He too was declared apostate. He has not been seen since.

  “As for an inclusa of the Dominican order named Sister Teresa Williams, there was such a person, a former Lieutenant in the United States Marines. She was severely wounded in Afghanistan in 2001 and during her convalescence was called to the contemplative life. She entered the Order of Dominicans and resided for two years at the convent of the Dominican priory of Prouille in Toulouse, France. She, like Armand Defago, left the convent two years ago. We have no further information.

  “If, as you say, these three people are now deceased, we regret, as always, the loss of our own. The Church is ready to welcome them back as lost sheep to the fold. The Holy Father has ordered a mass for their souls.

  “Finally, regarding the Abbaye de St. Théophile, it was deconsecrated in 1587 and abandoned. The Vatican heartily endorses its declaration as part of the patrimony of France, and would approve its renovation and opening to the public.