Carrie was stunned for a few seconds, unable, unwilling to believe what she’d just heard.
“Want her for what?” she managed to say.
“No time for chatter, Sister. Here’s how we’ll do this. You two will carry her back through the tunnel to the rectory, and we’ll take her from there. No tricks, no games, no heroics, and no one gets hurt.” He gestured with his pistol at Dan. “You take the head and she’ll take the feet. Let’s move.”
“No!” Carrie said.
The bearded man snapped his head back in surprise. Obviously he hadn’t expected that.
Neither had Carrie. The word had erupted from her with little or no forethought, propelled by fear, by anger, by outrage that anyone could even think of stealing the Virgin from the sanctuary of a church.
She faced him defiantly.
“Get out of here.”
He stared at her for a heartbeat or two, then pointed his gun at Dan.
“You cause me any trouble and I’ll shoot your priest friend.”
“No, you won’t. There’s a cop outside that door. All I have to do is scream once and he’ll be in here, and that will be the end of you. Get out now. I’ll give you a chance to run, then I’m going to open the front doors and call the police inside.”
“I’m not kidding, lady,” the big one said through his teeth. “Get up there and do what you’re told.”
“Carrie, please,” she heard Dan say from her left. “It’s okay. They can’t get past the cops with her anyway. So just do as he says.”
Dan might be right, but Carrie wasn’t going to let these creeps get their filthy hands on the Virgin for even a few seconds.
“Get out now or I scream.”
The shorter one looked about nervously, as if he wanted to take her up on the offer, but the bearded one stood firm. His eyes narrowed as he raised his pistol and aimed it at her chest. His voice was low and menacing.
“No me jodas.”
He wouldn’t dare, she thought. He’s got to be bluffing.
“All right,” she said. “I gave you your chance.”
Still they didn’t move, so she filled her lungs and—
She saw the flash at the tip of the silencer, saw the pistol buck, heard a sound like phut!, felt an impact against her chest, tried to start her scream but she was punched backward and didn’t seem to have any air to scream with. And then she was falling. Darkness rimmed her vision as a distant roaring surged closer, filling her ears, bringing with it more darkness, an all-encompassing darkness...
‡
Nara, Japan
As the first rays of the sun crest the horizon and light the flared eaves of the Todaiji temple, the largest wood structure in the world, it begins to dissolve, to melt into the air. And as the sun rises farther, the temple further dissolves. Finally the sun strikes the bronze surface of the Daibutsu. The bronze of the Buddha seems to glow for a moment, then it too dissolves.
In a manner of minutes, nothing of the Todaiji or its Buddha remains.
‡
Manhattan
Emilio stood frozen with his automatic still pointed at where she had been standing as he watched her fall and lay twitching on the marble floor, the red of her life soaking through the front of her habit and pooling around her.
“Christ, Emilio!” Mol gasped beside him.
“Carrie!” the priest cried, dropping to his knees beside her and gripping her limp shoulders. “Oh, God, Carrie!”
I’m sorry, Emilio thought. I’m so sorry!
And that shocked him. Because he’d killed before without the slightest shred of guilt. Anyone who threatened him or stood between him and what he wanted didn’t deserve to live. It had always been that simple. But here, now, in this place, before that old woman’s body on the altar, a new emotion, as unpleasant as it was unfamiliar, was seeping through him.
Guilt.
The priest looked up at him, tear-filled eyes wild, rage and grief distorting his features almost beyond recognition. With a low, animal-like growl he hurtled himself at Emilio.
A bullet in the head would have been the simplest, most efficient response. But Emilio couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Not again, not here, with...her here. Instead he dodged aside and slammed the Llama’s butt and trigger guard hard against the priest’s skull, staggering him. Before the man could shake off the blow, Emilio hit him again, harder this time, knocking him to the floor where he lay still with a trickle of red oozing from his scalp.
Mol had already started back down the center aisle.
“Where are you going?”
He turned and looked at Emilio, fear in his eyes. “I—”
“Shut up and stand still. Listen!”
Emilio strained his ears through the silence. And as he’d hoped, it remained just that: silent. None of the noise in here had penetrated the heavy oak front doors; the cop outside had no idea anything was going on inside.
“All right,” Emilio said, gesturing toward the altar. “Let’s get moving.”
Mol hesitated, glanced once more at the front doors, then shrugged and hurried toward the altar. Emilio directed him toward the head of the body while he took the other end.
But as he reached to take hold of the feet, he hesitated. He hadn’t believed in this church-priest-God-religion bullshit since he’d been a little boy in Camino Verde and watched his older sister screw the neighborhood men in the back corner of their one-room shack. Any guilt he’d felt a moment ago had been a leftover from the times his grandmother would drag him off to church before he was big enough to tell her to go to hell. And yet...a deep part of him was afraid to touch this mummified old woman, afraid a lightning bolt would crash through the ceiling of the church and fry him on the spot.
“Bullshit!” he whispered and gripped the body’s ankles.
Nothing happened.
Angry with himself for feeling relieved, he nodded to Mol who had her by the shoulders, and together they lifted her off the altar.
Surprisingly light. They each got a comfortable grip on her, then hurried down the center aisle, Emilio leading, carrying her feet first. Through the vestibule, down the steps into the locked-up soup kitchen in the cellar, through the tunnel, and back up into the rectory. All still quiet there. Decker would have been inside if anyone had come in. They eased the body out the side door, slipped her into the back atop the grocery bags, and locked the doors.
Emilio climbed into the cab next to Decker and slapped the dashboard. “Let’s go.”
“Any trouble?” Decker said as he nosed the truck into the street.
“Not really,” Emilio said.
Mol snorted. “Like hell!”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Emilio said. “Just drive.”
He wanted Decker cool and calm for the drive back past the police and through the crowd, but he needn’t have worried. The police waved them by, and even made a path for them through the horde of Mary-hunters beyond.
Once they were free of the crowd and rolling toward the FDR Drive, Emilio allowed himself to breathe a little more easily. And he’d breathe even more easily when they ditched this rig and switched the body to the Avis panel truck he’d rented earlier. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax fully until they had it aboard the Senador’s waiting jet and were airborne over LaGuardia.
‡
Angkor, Cambodia
As the rays of the rising sun touch the five towers of the Temple to Vishnu, the stone begins to dissolve. By the time the sun is fully above the horizon, the temple is no more.