Michael sat still, listening to the waves.
I’ll slip away when they’re not looking, he told himself. I’ll play the innocent but I’ll do what they say. Afterwards I’ll go to the Greek islands. I’ve got fifteen years of life left in me; I’ll fish and sleep in a cave and then when my time’s up I’ll swim out and drown myself.
His reverie faded and he was aware of O’Hara waiting for his response.
“Sure,” said Michael. “It’s easy. I just pull the trigger, that’s all.”
The Cardinal held the gun under Michael’s nose. “Keep pulling it until the target looks like a shredded puppy.”
21
Almost before he knew it, he was in an air-conditioned coach crunching across the gravel, leaving St. Helena behind. He’d been given a full collar shirt and cassock to wear, and they were quite unbearable in the heat. But as he sank into his seat and the cool air streamed over his flaming red face, he felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
The brothers and sisters of St. Helena in their sandals and white cloaks had come to wave them off.
Mama, standing at the head of the assembled group, had put on a colorful embroidered belt to set her apart. Elvira stood beside her, dressed in gray now to indicate she was close to blooming. Three white doves, attached to her by long red silk ribbons, pumped their wings frantically overhead as she strode forward ceremoniously, lifting her hand in a parting salute.
She seemed to be searching the coach’s windows for him, and when she found him, her grave expression changed abruptly. She stuck out her tongue, taunting him, then held up a pair of golden scissors and cut the ribbons. The three doves rose into the sky, trailing their long red jesses.
Mama leaned forward and took Elvira’s tongue into her mouth with tremendous greed.
Michael stared at the two women, deeply troubled by their inhumanity, also relieved that he would never have to see them again. Another thought struck him: maybe this was precisely what they wanted him to feel? Once a person is broken, he can be bent and twisted. A broken man is a mechanical instrument made of flesh. Hadn’t Mama Maggot told him so?
He rested back in his seat, choosing not to talk to anyone, focusing his attention instead on the video screens showing Pope Innocent giving his benedictions, waving his white-robed arm over the assembled masses in St. Peter’s Square.
The sea crossing and disembarkation in Marseilles were uneventful, but just before they reached the Spanish border, O’Hara told Michael he would be dropped off at the train station in Perpignan.
At about noon, the bus pulled into the small, dusty town and waited with its engine idling. Perpignan lay, as it has always lain, a conflicted settlement on an undefined border.
O’Hara walked into the station with Michael, clutching at his arm. Old ladies smiled fondly at these two saintly men so urgently engaged in conversation. Talking of God, no doubt.
They stopped outside the station café just as the Barcelona-bound train pulled in with screeching brakes like a many-armed serpent, North African immigrant workers hanging out of the windows, smoking and laughing, finally on their way home after months of undignified labor among infidel Parisians.
O’Hara gave Michael the address of a bar in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, where a local crook by name of Sergio had a weapon for him to pick up. “A nice little Beretta,” said O’Hara. “Should do you just fine. But do throw it away somewhere safe once you’ve finished with it.”
He gave him a photograph of the abbot, a rotund and rather harmless-looking cleric. On the back of it was written the name of a monastery in Ripoll.
“He doesn’t look too bad to me.” Michael stared at the photo.
“Oh, bad enough, you’ll find,” said O’Hara, with a glare. “And you? Are you a good man, would you say?”
“If I was good I’d be dead.”
“It’s a good answer.”
The Irishman produced an envelope from his pocket with an address scrawled on it. Inside was a set of keys. “Afterwards, lie low for a while. There’s food in the fridge and plenty of stimulants. After about two weeks some men will come to pick you up. In the night.”
“Pick me up? Or shoot me? Boil me? Or will you just stick to water-boarding?”
Michael rose from his seat and grabbed his bag, but O’Hara clawed his fingers into his arm. With a sinking feeling, Michael looked down at his yellow, filthy nails. “Don’t cross me, Michael, I may have a crucifix round my neck but in essence I am a soldier. Don’t forget it!” O’Hara softened his grip. “My friend,” he said consolingly, “it’s natural that you should resent me, but don’t let this cloud your judgment. You will have to be quick and bright to rid us of this troublesome abbot. Be aware of the fact that he and his entourage will try to trick you. They’ll be every bit as tricky as the horrendous maggot folk you just left behind. They’ll know that you have Vatican authority for what you’re doing. And they will play with your mind because that’s what people do. People are liars. People are swine.”
22
A few hours later the train pulled into the reeking hinterlands of Barcelona. The moment Michael put his foot on the dust-swirling platform of Estació de França and walked into the bright and windy sunshine of the cocksure city, he felt as if his retinas and eardrums had been renewed. His senses came alive. With the ardors and strains of St. Helena behind him, he was like an exhausted mud wrestler stepping into a hot shower at the end of the day. And yet he also had a sense of a quickening inside, as if the maggots were aware of the task at hand and had decided to sharpen up their act to ensure his survival. Of course this was not because they cared about Michael, rather because they wished to preserve him. He was their country, after all. And so, technically speaking, he had a body that knew what to do.
After the many hours he’d spent in St. Helena poring over street maps, he was able to navigate without difficulty through a labyrinth of narrow streets into the old Gothic quarter. His body steered itself effortlessly, like driving a fast car. He stopped outside a dingy little bar which lacked even a sign above the door.
A dirty shower curtain over the entrance moved in the draft of the diseased airs from within. It was Sergio’s bar, he assumed.
As he stood there watching, a woman built like a crane, with arms and legs thrashing in all directions came hurtling out of the doorway as if she’d been given a violent push from inside. She tore down the curtain on her way out and ended up on her miniskirted tail.
Instead of getting up she hauled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one with a philosophical frown. But her self-control was short-lived. “Fucker!” she cried, turning round. When no one came out, she stayed where she was on the pavement, calmly puffing on her cigarette.
Michael stepped forward. “I’m looking for Sergio.”
“Oh, leave us alone!” she snapped. “I hate you people. Sergio hates you, too.” Then, thinking about it, she added: “Sergio hates everyone.”
He noted that she seemed to have a perfect East London accent and this filled him with a certain wistfulness. It also occurred to him that he was still wearing his vestments, hence the confusion. He got out his wallet, showed her some money and as a result stirred up even more confusion: “I could do with a bit of heroin; I’m gasping for it to be honest.”
“Heroin?” The girl stared, her opinion of him rising slightly. “You want heroin? Lord fucking preserve us.” She scratched her head. “I can’t go back in there now, padre, he’s gone fucking mad ‘cause I won’t lick up his spit.”