The Holy Bullet

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  “Hi, Papa. Is everything all right?”

  “Are you all right, Sarah?” One question followed another, as he completely ignored his daughter’s first concern.

  “I’m fine.” Something’s wrong. Her father’s voice didn’t reflect his customary calm. The last time she’d heard this tone there was a man at the door of her old house in Belgrave Road preparing to kill her. And the only reason he didn’t was—

  “Sarah, you need to pay attention to me,” her father ordered in a serious voice.

  “What’s going on, Papa?” An anxiety returned that she hadn’t felt for a long time, a disagreeable sensation she hoped never to feel again.

  “Listen, Sarah,” her father repeated. “Listen carefully. You have to leave London immediately—”

  “Why?” she interrupted, her heart suddenly thumping with alarm. “Don’t treat me like a child. This time I want to know everything.”

  Silence on the line, not total, punctuated by clicks and static electricity. Confusion and alarm spread through Sarah. The past was at the door like on that night. What the hell was going on?

  “Papa?” She said his name to bring him back to earth.

  “Sarah.” She heard a different voice that flooded her with panic and nervousness. Oh no. It can’t be him. Is it?

  “JC?” she asked fearfully, hoping she was confused and had heard wrong. Please, no. Don’t let it be him.

  “I’m honored you haven’t forgotten me.”

  It was him. Her legs gave out; if it weren’t for the fact she was seated, she would have fallen on the floor.

  “How are you since our last conversation in the Palatino?” he asked just to make small talk, something that was not part of his personality and awakened distrust in Sarah. She thought back on the conversation she’d had with JC in the Grand Hotel Palatino in Rome and the promise they would talk again. Almost a year later, this call kept that promise.

  “What do you want? What are you doing in my parents’ house?” Sarah cut the formalities as she regained her reason. She couldn’t show her fear, no matter how much she felt it. This was the way to fight with people like this, without mincing words. JC was in Portugal, at her parents’ house, if the caller ID on the phone didn’t lie.

  “Where are your manners, dear?” JC protested without hiding his sarcasm. “I’m having a pleasant conversation with your father, accompanied by a magnificent wine. We are at the most crucial point of our reunion, the reason he’s called you.”

  “What do you want from us?” Her voice came out hard, as she wished, in spite of the inner turmoil that tormented her.

  “I’m going to simplify things to make myself understood completely with no room for misunderstanding.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  A second of silence to get Sarah’s complete concentration. The old man knew how to get his listener’s attention. A gun to the head wasn’t always necessary.

  “Leave London now. Bring what I left you in the Palatino and do not talk to anyone, warn anyone, or wait for anyone.”

  “And if I don’t do what you ask me?” Sarah confronted him.

  “In that case your father can prepare to ship your corpse back here because you’ll be eliminated today.”

  11

  Here we find the mortal remains of the patron of truck drivers, tunnel workers, hatmakers, pharmacists, haircutters, gentlemen and pilgrims, pilgrimages and roads, from Chile, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Galicia, and Spain, and, to cut the long list short, the Spanish army. He is known by many names, Iacobus, Jacob, Jaco, James, Jacques, Jacome, Jaume, Jaime, but that which inspires most believers is Santiago. Santiago the Greater, apostle of Christ, killed by Herod’s sword, brother of the other apostle, Saint John the Evangelist, both sons of Salome and Zebediah.

  The exact date is lost, thanks to the uncertainties of centuries when parchments were lost or consumed by the fire of despots or by the simple, implacable passage of time. In the year 813 or 814, Pelagius, a Christian hermit, told Teodomirus, the bishop of Iria Flavia, here in Galicia, about a star shining on a hill. There are also those who in this part of the legend, or truth, depending on how you see it, substitute strange lights or a sign from Heaven for the star. Whatever it was, it fell upon a specific place, an uninhabited hill, as if someone wanted to reveal something hidden. In this way Teodomirus found a tomb, and inside, a headless corpse with a head tucked under his arm, presumably his own. All the clues pointed to the corpse belonging to the apostle Santiago the Greater, forever immortalized as Santiago de Compostela, not to be confused with Santiago the Lesser, one of the other twelve followers of Christ. Legend or not, millions of people have visited this sacred place. For twelve centuries.

  Here in the Praza do Obradoiro, Marius Ferris was moved by the silence of the place. He looked at the ornate facade of the cathedral, back to back with the Pazo Raxoi, occupied by today’s Xunta de Galicia, a neoclassical-style building, built by the Archbishop Raxoi, in the same century in which the building of the cathedral of Santiago was finished, the eighteenth, which one ought to represent with Roman numerals naturally. The other buildings were ancient, as well. Marius Ferris ignored them as he continued looking closely at the facade of the cathedral. The history did not matter to Marius Ferris, not even the paving stones trod by commoners and nobles. One who knew him, and there were not many who could presume so, would know he was remembering the more than twenty years since he last saw the cathedral, separated from this place that was his home. His thick white hair crowned an entire life, years of absence, spent in other places much more cosmopolitan. He had exchanged a small Galician city of eighty thousand people for another of eight million on the other side of the Atlantic. This was the cost of being a priest and following orders. A priest wasn’t asked to move to New York for twenty years. He was ordered. The life of a priest was determined by the bishop, the cardinal, and, of course, the pope. Never God. He was involved in the first calling; the organizational machinery of the religious authorities took care of the rest. And of course, since His Holiness was the emissary of God on earth, everything was connected.

  That was what happened with Marius Ferris, exiled to Manhattan, a dream for many, but not for him. While he looked at the facade, he smiled. His exile was over. Not that he hadn’t liked the Big Apple. In some ways he’d loved it: the cultural, ethnic diversity, the museums, the theater, everything for every taste, as is often said. Yes, he was in a pleasing city and served the pope, the great John Paul II, with zeal and ability. Even now there was nothing negative his superiors could use against him. The opposite was not so true. After a year serving Benedict XVI, he’d decided to ask for a dispensation, for reasons that are not important here, but which led his life to an unstable, dangerous situation, in his own modest estimation. The truth was that he was almost killed by someone and that shook him.

  This was the first day of his new life. Returning home, he came to pay a visit to the Apostle Santiago. How appropriate that this was the first thing he did, since twenty years ago, it was the last thing he’d done, before leaving for the New World.

  Marius Ferris, retired priest, went up the steps of the immense cathedral. It was time to pray, to render account, to come to an understanding with his God, unaware of the man who, a few yards behind, followed him into the cathedral.

  12

  I never thought I’d know a member of the Holy Alliance.”

  “The Holy Alliance doesn’t exist,” Rafael answered abruptly.

  “It doesn’t exist?”

  “No, it’s a myth.”

  “Then, what organization do you belong to?” Father James Phelps asked, settling into his seat aboard the Airbus A320.

  Rafael turned to look out the small window. From 32,000 feet one could make out the blue of the sky, but everything else was unconnected, blurry, like the doubts of the priest with him. Other times, even with a colleague, especially one in particular, Rafael would have responded with a categorical I am wh
at I am, changing the subject. In this case, with someone on a mission whose outcome was still unknown, he shouldn’t create resentment.

  “I’m something else,” he concluded evasively.

  The cabin was carrying 139 souls, business class included. They had taken off a little more than an hour ago, which meant they still had ninety more minutes of flight. Food was being served for those who wanted it.

  Rafael wasn’t wearing anything that identified him as a member of the Church, while James Phelps was dressed in a sober gray suit with a telltale clerical collar. There’s no shame in wearing clothes that express your belief, whether a cassock or collar, a turban, a chador, a burka, a niqab, a long beard or hat, a star or tattoo, but there are a small number of situations that call for forgoing those elements that might attract undesirable attention. This was one of them.

  “As soon as we land it’d be better for you to take off the clerical collar,” Rafael advised. It went without saying the tone of recommendation was no more than that, a tone. James Phelps was intelligent enough to pick that up.

  “And later?”

  “Later is simple. Follow my instructions.”

  “Naturally,” the older man agreed. “I’m not at the age to step into quicksand.”

  “You’re already in it, Father. Now it’s necessary not to sink to the bottom.”

  “I trust you.” He smiled.

  “Better to trust in your God. More certain.”

  The Englishman looked distrustfully at him. “Our God, dear friend. And don’t make me more anxious than I already am.”

  Phelps remembered the encounter with Rafael in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican. He’d come in alone and left twenty minutes later without even stopping long enough to wait for the emissary of the Church of Saint Gregory of Divine Mercy to get up from his red velvet chair. He was still in the process of doing so when he heard a Let’s go coming from the hall Rafael had gone down. Where to? he murmured to himself.

  Rafael hadn’t said a word about what went on in those twenty minutes in which he’d disappeared through the enormous door that separates the papal apartments from the rest of the palace. Nor whom he had spoken with. Could it have been the pope himself? Secretary Bertone? Or some other person less mentioned and revered? Rafael was not the kind of person you could ask about something like that, just as Phelps was not the man to ask, for all that he felt tempted and even had the right to, once he had to go along with him. Everyone has his business and his weaknesses, and, if the stories he had heard about Rafael’s past were true, as he believed, he knew what Rafael was capable of doing. Phelps was sure that if Rafael considered it important for him to know the tenor of the conversation or the instructions, he would tell him. Until then he would live in ignorance, following the journey to the unknown through the air at four hundred miles an hour.

  “Would you like something to eat?” the flight attendant asked, offering something edible wrapped in plastic, probably a sandwich with some kind of processed meat.

  “Yes, thanks,” Rafael answered, letting down the tray on the back of the seat in front of him, one of the ergonomic marvels of aviation, finding space where there was none.

  “And you?” the attendant automatically asked James Phelps.

  “No thanks. I’m not hungry.” The pleasant man passed his fingers under his clerical collar, with a sensation of discomfort, a sudden pressure, lack of air, his face turning livid. What have I gotten myself into? he thought. “But I’d like a glass of water, please.”

  “Of course.” The attendant picked up the bottle and poured it into a glass. “Here you are, sir.”

  The priest took the glass and awkwardly set it on the tray, grabbing at his left leg. A pain like a knife stab pierced through his thigh. He controlled himself as much as possible to avoid crying out, suffering, breathing deeply and swallowing his groans, turning them into painful pants of breath.

  “Are you all right?” the attendant asked, her hands full of aluminum covers and a glass of orange juice.

  “Yes. It’s nothing. It’ll go away, thanks,” he answered, leaning his head back on the seat and shutting his eyes for a few minutes. Small drops of perspiration covered his face.

  Rafael, unaffected by his companion’s discomfort, attacked his sandwich, ham with something unidentifiable that didn’t much go with it, not that that was important to him. He bent over his orange juice to drink. Perhaps he was one of those rare human beings who liked airline food.

  The menu ended with coffee for Rafael. Phelps, recovered from the sharp pain, asked for another glass of water, which he drank in one gulp.

  “You’re making a mistake not eating,” Rafael warned.

  “I’m really not hungry,” the Englishman excused himself. “And airline food isn’t very good for you. You really like that?” He pointed at the crumpled-up plastic that a few minutes ago wrapped the sandwich.

  “When you have gone days without eating and without knowing when you will eat another decent meal, this will seem like the best food in your life.”

  Phelps swallowed saliva. Not so much for the hellish scene suggested, but the coldness of the voice.

  “What are we doing?” he asked curiously, nervously. The anguished feeling returned to his lungs. What have I gotten myself into? he thought once again, while he took out the white fastener from the collar of his shirt and opened the first button.

  Rafael took his time answering. His thoughtful expression showed he was choosing his words and, at the same time, adding to the English priest’s tension second by second.

  “It depends,” he answered at last, opting for subterfuge, but forcing another unequivocal question.

  One could see more and more alarm in Phelps’s eyes. Seventy years, adding one or subtracting a couple, spent almost completely in devotion to Christ in study, with everything carefully planned, from a to c, passing over b, with the most detailed schedule possible, no adventures or hungry days. And now this. A trip, the unknown, dark and dangerous, and what most dismayed him, the calm of his companion in the seat beside him, looking out the window into the empty air, after calmly eating. But it was best not to think of that, since everything had started with a visit to the papal apartments and whatever they are going to do had the endorsement of the Vatican, perhaps of the Supreme Pontiff, the great Joseph Ratzinger. At the moment what most tormented him was the sparse reply to his last simple question.

  “On what?” he insisted. It was logical that something that depends is subject to variables that can be explained.

  “If we arrive on time … or not.”

  13

  The tracts, testimony, medical examinations, bureaucracy, conditions, evaluations, impressions, interrogations, positive or not, that form part of the process of beatification or canonization are countless. Laws and rules exist, rigorous in most cases, that have to be followed scrupulously by the functionaries, emissaries, and prelates of the Holy See responsible for the case. A miracle, just one, is enough to unchain the machinery of verification. It can take years, sometimes decades, to legalize the facts, depending on the candidate in question and the interest of the Church in the matter. Much interest results in a faster process; little interest in delays capable of blackening and pulverizing the stones of the paved road. Preferably the candidate for sainthood should have been dead for more than five years in order to initiate the process of beatification, except in certain cases of sanctity in attitude or way of life. The venerable Mother Teresa of Calcutta is an example; in life she was more holy than many saints after death. Abu Rashid, the Muslim, seated on a narrow chair in a room on the seventh floor of the King David Hotel, might also fit that description.

  Through the window the foreigner watched the ancient city, polemical but peaceful. Today was Friday, not yet noon, but already loudspeakers were heard calling to prayer from the tops of the minarets of the Al-Aqsa mosque. In former times it would have been the muezzin who called the faithful for the hour of prayer to Allah, facing the sacre
d city of Mecca.

  “Tell me everything, Abu Rashid,” the man asked, not taking his eyes off the church cupolas of the Christian and Armenian quarters.

  “What can I say that you don’t already know?” he answered.

  The foreigner remembered the previous day and the fortunate visit to the Muslim’s house, as well as what happened afterward.

  “You brought back the dead and whoever was with you in the Haj, after the monstrous flood that drowned thirty people, around …” the foreigner repeated for the fourth time. “Where are these living dead?” he asked sardonically.

  “Around,” he said. “I don’t walk around counting the life of each one.”

  “That we’ll have to see … we’ll have to see,” the other replied. “Can you imagine the work you’ve made for me?” An almost imperceptible look of irritation crossed his face.

  “You’re more than used to it. Someone has to do it.” The voice remained calm, unaltered. Somewhat patient.

  The foreigner left the window and sat down on the edge of the bed. He watched Abu Rashid with a certain reverence he wished to hide, which left him even more upset. He felt himself blush. The color rose in his cheeks. He hated this happening, especially when he was working on something important.

  “When did you see … the Virgin?” Not without some fear he evoked the name of the Mother of God.

  “Every time she appears.”

  The foreigner reacted as if it were blasphemy. He felt as if Abu Rashid were insulting his own mother, which is true, since the Virgin is the heavenly mother of every Christian.

  “And when is that?” He decided to calm down. There was nothing to gain in losing control.

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what she has to say to me.”

  “She’s the Mother of Christ, a Christian icon. Do you believe in her?” Don’t lose patience, don’t lose patience.

  “I believe because I see her.”

  “It could be no more than a hallucination, man of God … of Allah,” he corrected himself.

  “Allah is God,” the Muslim countered.