‡
Manhattan
She is gone!
Kesev violently elbowed his way through the crowd near St. Joseph’s, leaving a trail of sore and angry Mary-hunters in his wake. Let them shout at him, wave their fists at him, he didn’t care. He had to reach the church, had to know if his suspicion was true.
During the past hour he had felt a dwindling of the Mother’s presence, and then suddenly it was gone.
He’d sensed something else, felt a change coming over the world. A wheel had been set in motion. What would its turning bring?
Finally he reached the front of the crowd, but as he squeezed under the barricade, two blue-uniformed policemen, one white, one black, confronted him.
“Back on the other side, buddy,” the white one said.
“You don’t understand,” Kesev told him. “She’s gone. They’ve stolen her.”
He heard the crowd behind him begin to mutter and murmur with concern.
“Now don’t go starting trouble, Mister,” the black one said. “The lady’s fine. We’ve been out here all night and nobody’s been in or out of that church.”
“She is gone, I tell you!” Kesev turned to the crowd and shouted, “They have stolen the Mother right out from under your noses!”
“Shut up!” the white policeman hissed in his ear.
But Kesev wrenched free and began running toward the front of the church.
“Come!” he shouted to the crowd. “Come see if I am not telling you the truth!”
That was all they needed. With a roar they knocked over the police line horses and surged onto the street, engulfing any cop who tried to stop them.
The lone policeman stationed in front of the church backed up to the front doors but decided to get out of the way as Kesev charged up the steps with the mob close behind him. A few good heaves from dozens of shoulders and the doors gave way and they flowed through the vestibule and into the nave.
And stopped with cries of shock that rapidly dwindled, finally fading into horrified silence.
The altar was bare. And near the end of the center aisle two figures huddled on the floor. Kesev recognized them immediately—the nun and the priest from the El Al plane back in July.
The priest was kneeling in a pool of red, weeping, his deep, wracking sobs reverberating through the church as blood from a scalp wound trickled down his forehead to mingle with his tears. In his arms lay the limp, blood-soaked form of the nun.
Kesev, too, wept. But for another reason.
‡
Mumbai, India
The rosy fingers of dawn grasp the decorative tower of the Mahalakshmi Temple and squeeze it and the rest of the structure from existence.
‡
Manhattan
“Do you remember me?”
Dan forced his eyes open. He was cold, he was sick, he was emotionally drained and numb; his head was pounding like a cathedral gong, and his scalp throbbed and pulled where it had been stitched up. But the greatest pain was deep inside where no doctor could see or touch, in the black void left by Carrie’s death and the brutal, awful, finality of her dying.
The four hours he’d spent here seemed like minutes, seemed like ages. He’d sat in a daze, occasionally staring at the TV screen suspended from the ceiling. Something was happening in the Far East. Temples, mosques, churches were disappearing, vanishing as if they’d never been, leaving not a trace even of their foundations. Only empty holes remained where they’d stood. But all other buildings around them remained intact. It was happening with the rising of the sun. Dawn was sweeping across the world like a scythe, leaving not a single place of worship standing. Words and phrases like Antichrist and End Times filled the airwaves.
So what.
Dan looked up from his seat in the Emergency Room of Beekman Downtown Hospital. For a rage-blinded instant he thought the black-bearded man with the accented voice standing over him was the bastard who’d shot Carrie. He tensed to launch himself at him, then realized this was someone else. Just as intense, but much too short. He’d seen this man before but his grief-fogged brain couldn’t recall where or when.
“No,” he said.
“At Tel Aviv airport last summer...I was questioning your nun friend and you—”
Now Dan recognized him. “The man from the Shin...” He fumbled for the word.
“Shin Bet. The name is Kesev. But I’m here unofficially now.”
“I wish we’d never gone to Israel,” he said, feeling a sob growing in his chest.
Carrie...dead. Dan still couldn’t believe it. This had to be a dream, the worst nightmare imaginable. A dream. That was the only logical explanation for all these fantastic, unexplainable events, the most unbelievable of which was Carrie’s death. Life without Carrie...a Carrie-less world...unthinkable.
But it had seemed so real when he’d held her limp, cold, blood-drenched body in his arms back there in St. Joe’s.
So real!
“I wish you’d arrested us and jailed us. At least then Carrie would still be alive.”
“So do I,” Kesev said. “For more than her sake alone. There are other matters to consider.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Dan heard the belligerence creeping into his tone, into his mood. What right did this Israeli bastard have to come up to him here in the depths of his grief and start bothering him about Carrie? What did anything matter now that Carrie was dead?
“We must find the Mother.”
“You find her! She’s brought me nothing but grief.”
He started rise but Kesev restrained him with a surprisingly strong hand on his shoulder.
“If we find the Mother, we find the killers.”
Dan leaned back into the chair. Find the killers...wouldn’t that be nice? To wrap his fingers around that big bearded bastard’s throat and squeeze and squeeze, and keep on squeezing until—
“Father Fitzpatrick?”
Dan looked up. One of the homicide detectives who’d questioned him before was approaching—Sergeant Gardner. He carried a black plastic bag in his hand. What did he want now? He’d told him everything, given descriptions of the killers, the sound of their voices, anything he could think of. He was tapped out.
He noticed Kesev slipping away as the detective neared.
“They’re shipping her remains uptown,” Gardner said.
Dan lurched to his feet. “Why? Where?”
“S-O-P. To the morgue. They’re going to autopsy her right away.”
“So soon?” Hadn’t Carrie been through enough? “I’d’ve thought—”
“The pressure’s on, Father. We’ve got a big, mean, unruly crowd outside your church, and from what I hear, the commish has already heard from the cardinal, the mayor, Albany, even the Israeli embassy. Everybody but everybody wants these guys caught and that relic returned. The commish wants a full forensic report on his desk by six a.m., so they’re going to do her right away.”
“Can I see her before—?”
Gardner shook his head. “Sorry. She’s gone. Saw her off myself.” He held out the black plastic bag. “But here’s her personal effects. You want to return them to the convent? If not...”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll take them.”
Detective Gardner handed the bag over and stood before him, awkward, silent. Finally he said, “We’ll get them, Father.”
Dan could only nod.
As the detective hurried away, Dan sat and opened the bag. Not much there: a wallet, a rosary, and Carrie’s Zip-loc bags of the Virgin’s clippings and nail filings.
For an insane moment Dan thought of cabbing up to the morgue—it was up in the Bellevue complex, wasn’t it?...First Avenue and 30th...he could be there in a couple of minutes. He’d sneak into the autopsy room. He’d sprinkle the entire contents of both bags over Carrie’s body and...