Again, not a good mix. Unless you were cooking up some nitro.
“Where’s the army?” she asked. “Don’t they know what’s going on here? Shouldn’t they be sending people here to protect the monastery? And the cave—it’s gonna get trashed if things get out of control.”
“Not the army,” the monk said somberly, “the internal security forces. They’re twice as big as the army, which tells you where the government perceives the real threat. But they don’t usually send them out until after a problem catches fire. And when they do show up, things generally get worse. They don’t have a problem with using force to bring things back to normal. A lot of force.”
A swell of unease rolled through her. She turned to Finch. “Can you get hold of someone at the embassy? Maybe they can rustle something up.”
“I can try, but—I think Brother Ameen is right. Might be better to get out of here before it gets out of hand. And that goes for Father Jerome too.”
Dalton indicated the crowd below with a nudge of his head. “It’s not going to be easy.”
Gracie’s expression darkened further. “We have a car and a driver. And it’s still calm out there. We should leave at first light. While it’s doable.” She faced Finch again. “We can take Father Jerome to the embassy. We need to let them know we’re coming. We’ll figure the rest out from there.”
“What if he doesn’t want to leave?” Finch asked.
Gracie turned to Brother Ameen. He gave her an uncertain shrug. “I’ll talk to him, but I don’t know what he’ll say.”
“I’ll go with you. We’ve got to convince him,” she insisted as she got off the floor. Brother Ameen nodded and crossed over to the open hatch. Gracie turned to Finch. “First light, okay?” She gave him a determined look before gripping the sides of the hatch and disappearing into the heart of the keep.
Chapter 38
Houston, Texas
The Reverend Nelson Darby’s cell phone rang just as the tall, elegant man was stepping out of his chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car. He was in great spirits, having just witnessed a dress rehearsal of the five-hundred-person choir’s Christmas show. The caller ID on his screen prompted him to wave his assistant on, and he stayed back to take the call on the wide stairs that led to the handsome manor that housed the administrative core of his sprawling “Christian values” empire, an empire whose flagship was the resplendent 17,000-seat glass-and-steel megachurch Darby had built, one of a growing number of full-service Christian cocoons the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the thirteenth-century cathedral towns of Europe.
“Reverend,” the caller said. “How are things?”
“Roy,” Darby answered heartily, as always pleased to hear Roy Buscema’s measured voice. A fit man in his early forties, Darby had an angular face, deep-set eyes, and thin lips. With his backswept, perfectly coiffed jet-black mane and Brioni suits, he looked more like a pre-credit crunch investment banker on the make than a preacher. Which wasn’t inappropriate, given that both involved managing multimillion-dollar enterprises in a highly competitive marketplace. “Good to hear from you. How are things with you?”
Buscema, a gregarious journalist for the Washington Post, had met the pastor a little over a year earlier, when he’d been commissioned to write a feature profiling him for the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. The finely observed and highly complimentary article that he’d written had laid the groundwork for the friendship that followed, a friendship that grew into an unofficial consigliere-godfather relationship with all the hours they spent discussing and strategizing the pastor’s endorsements in the marathon presidential primary of the last year. Buscema’s take on the events had been impressively astute and always correct, and he’d let the pastor in on more than one scoop that had borne itself out. The pastor was converted. He saw in Buscema a savvy analyst who had the pulse of the people and knew where to go to get his prognoses corroborated, and as such—and given that Darby was one of the Christian Right’s political bigwigs—he was an invaluable man to have at hand.
Especially now, with all this going on.
“Crazier than ever,” Buscema replied. “But hey, I can’t complain really. It’s what we’re here for. Say, you been watching that thing over the ice caps?”
“Who isn’t?”
“What do you think?”
“To be honest with you, I’m a bit befuddled by the whole thing, Roy,” the pastor confided with his usual disarming candor. “What in God’s name is going on out there?”
Buscema’s tone took on a slightly more serious edge. “I think we ought to talk about it. I’m gonna be in town tomorrow,” he told the pastor. “If you have some time, why don’t we get together?”
“Sounds good,” Darby replied. “Come out to the house. I’m curious to hear your take on it.”
I bet you are, Buscema thought as they agreed on a time. He said good-bye and hung up. He then scrolled down his contacts list and made a second, almost identical, call.
A third, similar call followed soon after that.
As did six other carefully coordinated calls, made by two other men of a similar profile to his, to other influential evangelical leaders across the country.
Chapter 39
Woburn, Massachusetts
The bullet hadn’t done as much damage as Matt had first feared. It had clipped him just below his bottom left rib, punching a small hole through him less than an inch in from his side. Not exactly a graze, but not a major organ-buster either. Still, he had a couple of half-inch holes gouged out of him. Holes that needed to be sealed. Which meant stitches. And given that going to a hospital or to a doctor was out of the question, whatever sewing talents Jabba had would need to be summoned.
Jabba was holding up surprisingly well. He’d managed not to throw up when Matt first staggered back into their room, his clothes soaked with blood. He’d made it to the closest drugstore and picked up the items on a shopping list Matt had hastily dictated to him: iodine to clean the wound; any anesthetic cream he could find, to numb the skin; sewing needles, along with a lighter to sterilize them; some nylon thread; painkillers; bandages.
Most impressively, he’d so far managed to complete three sutures on the entry wound without puking, which he’d come close to doing while attempting the first stitch. Three more would do the trick on that front. Then he had the exit hole to take care of.
They were huddled in the far-from-antiseptic bathroom of the motel room. Matt was in his shorts, on the floor with his back against the tiled wall by the bathtub, grinding down his teeth as Jabba pushed the needle through the caldera of skin that rimmed his raw, open wound. The sensation was far worse than the immediate after-effect of getting shot, when the wound was still warm and the pain receptors hadn’t started their furious onslaught up his spine. He felt weak and nauseous and was fighting hard not to pass out. He swam through it by telling himself, over and over, that it would pass. Which it would. He just had to get through this part. He’d had a couple of bad wounds before, and although he’d never been shot, he tried to convince himself that this wasn’t any worse than a nasty cut from a blade. Which was something he’d had. Only then, he’d been sewn shut by a real doctor who’d used a proper anesthetic, not an over-the-counter cream more suited to hemorrhoids and leg waxing.
He blinked away tears of pain as the needle came out the other side.