“What do you mean?” Bondurant asked.
“When I was a child,” Parenti said, as he fed the last remaining french fry to Aldo, “only six years old at the time—”
“Father, you’re kidding me,” Bondurant interrupted. “Can we pick up your story where it starts at church this afternoon?”
Bondurant watched Parenti scowl. It meant his request would be duly ignored, and he would be in for a longer night than he’d planned. He leaned against the headrest and closed his eyes, resigned.
“All right, then, you were saying you were six years old.”
Parenti continued. “Thank you. I was told when I was a young boy, very young, that there would be moments like this. But these admonitions were many years ago. I’d nearly forgotten them. And now, well, this is the first of such revelations I’ve ever seen.”
A lightning bolt in the distance filled the night sky with light, and Bondurant could see in the brief flash that Parenti’s face was filled with genuine concern.
“I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but I was born the seventh son of a seventh son,” Parenti said. “You know what that means?”
“You’re Catholic. No birth control.”
“Seventh sons of seventh sons are extremely rare. Particularly those with no sisters in between. It is said such sons are often blessed—or cursed—with powers to see things, to know things, that others may not. Events from the past or the future are sometimes revealed to them for reasons beyond their understanding or control.”
“And you’re saying you’re blessed with such a gift?” Bondurant asked. The skepticism in his voice was clear.
“I’ve also been skeptical my entire life that this gift of revelation existed. It had never appeared before. But today . . .” Bondurant watched as the priest struggled to find the words to recount what had happened. “Today I was privy to a true revelation. I saw something in my mind’s eye as I sat in God’s presence in that humble church. It revealed something very important.”
Bondurant watched as Parenti began to fidget nervously with the buttons on his cassock. “Father,” Bondurant said, “exactly what was it you saw?”
In the next several minutes, as the rain from the storm grew heavier and the wind began to howl around them, Bondurant listened as Parenti recounted his revelation.
Bondurant was speechless. In Parenti’s mind, the riddle of the clone-child had been answered. The priest was certain he knew whose DNA could be found in the second, unknown source of blood taken from the Shroud of the savior, and that this was terrifying beyond belief. The priest started to tremble and looked around as though it might be too dangerous to go on.
“You’re absolutely certain this dream, this vision that came to you, was seen only by you? Not Domenika or anyone else?” Bondurant checked behind him to see if Domenika was still asleep.
“There is ‘general revelation,’ made available by God to us all. God, whom you see manifested in nature, in this storm itself and all that we are. Even you, ever the skeptic, can see it.”
Another massive lightning bolt from the storm split the sky of Georgetown directly across the river from them. It was accompanied by a clap of deafening thunder. Aldo dove deep into Parenti’s pocket and yelped. Domenika stirred but didn’t wake.
“And there is ‘particular revelation,’ ” Parenti continued. He nearly shouted to be heard over the din of the rain on the roof and the howl of the wind. “It is where God has chosen to reveal himself to some for a special purpose. Some are chosen and receive it through dreams and visions, or even physical manifestations.”
“Like Abraham and Moses,” Bondurant said.
“That’s high company, Doctor,” Parenti said. “We’re in Virginia in a Marriott parking lot. I don’t know that I would go that far.”
Bondurant felt the priest take his forearm.
Parenti continued. “But I believe this revelation concerning the Shroud provides a clue that no man, no scientist—not even you—could ever hope to learn without God’s help. And I believe I have been made to see this revelation so that I might pass this news to you for a reason.”
Bondurant turned away from Parenti and cast his eyes toward the sheets of rain coming down in front of the hotel. He was now certain his own suspicions might be true. Then he felt Parenti’s grip on his arm again as he squeezed hard to get his attention.
“The second source of blood on the most holy Shroud,” Parenti said, “the blood other than Christ’s, is that of . . .”
Bondurant watched the priest stop himself one last time. Parenti looked at Domenika, still sound asleep, and then looked about them again. It was as if revealing the truth out loud would bring another deadly lightning bolt, this one aimed directly at them.
“A supernatural being? An angel of some kind? Believe it or not, Father, that’s been my hunch. It’s why I need to get to Yale. There’s an expert there who I know will have some answers.”
Bondurant turned toward Parenti, who looked dumbfounded. He watched as Parenti reached for the button to make sure his car door was locked. The moment he did, the wail of the wind and the rain from the storm that had pelted the car came to a sudden halt. There was only dead quiet and absolute stillness around them.
“You know much, my son. And you’ve come far,” the priest whispered. “But it was no angel that Domenika nurtured to life. I believe it was a Watcher. And that, God help us, is a very different thing.”
Chapter 9
Geneva
Meyer sat in his office in Geneva and stared across his massive black marble desk at Vitaly Galerkin in absolute fear for his life. Galerkin had worked for him on contract for years and had been paid handsomely for his services, but Meyer knew that would not be enough to save him if their conversation took even the smallest turn for the worse. While the distance that separated them was almost five feet, he was certain that if he didn’t find a way to keep Galerkin calm while he got to the truth, it was possible the Russian monster would do something rash. Galerkin might reach for the letter opener Meyer had left so carelessly on top of the desk and in an instant plunge it deep into the middle of his brain. He’d seen Galerkin do it before with a pair of scissors when the Russian had lost his temper with someone else.
“You’re sure Bondurant is dead.”
The sound of the synthesized, monotone voice generated by the little machine was enough to grate on even the most patient listener. Meyer had also dispensed with his usual turtleneck that day. The stoma where his larynx had once been was fully exposed, a permanent, mouthlike slit in the center of Meyer’s throat where doctors had attached his windpipe in order for him to breathe—and smoke. Even after the loss of his larynx to cancer from cigarettes, Meyer had continued his smoking habit against his doctor’s orders. Only now he used the hole in the center of his throat. He wedged a filterless Camel cigarette into the slit in his windpipe and, while he contorted and contracted the muscles in his neck, inhaled smoke through the grotesque hole.
“Bondurant’s dead,” Galerkin responded. There wasn’t a trace of emotion in his voice.
“Absolutely sure?” Meyer asked. He eyed the letter opener on the desk once more and slowly leaned farther back in his leather chair to put several more inches between himself and the blade.
“Dead is dead,” Galerkin said. He placed one of his giant, weathered hands on the desk. Meyer eyed it warily.
“Then how is it possible, Vitaly, my friend—and we are friends,” Meyer said guardedly, “that I have word from an associate that Bondurant was seen in the lobby of a hotel outside Washington, D.C.? It was just a few hours ago. He was with the girl.” Meyer turned up the volume on his voice machine slightly to ensure that Galerkin could hear him.
“Not possible,” Galerkin said. The Russian leaned over and reached toward the tiny knobs of the voice machine. He lowered the volume a notch and grunted. Meyer took it as a sign that he wasn’t pleased. Galerkin’s huge head, absent a neck to support it, was affixed like a
stump to massive shoulders as wide as a freezer locker. Six feet eight inches tall and just over three hundred pounds, he was a thick man in every sense of the word.
“You said Bondurant drowned. Floating facedown in the water and all that?” Meyer asked.
“I take the shots from one hundred feet above the river. I unload two, maybe three thousand rounds on top of him,” Galerkin said. “Then we sit. We sit in the helicopter in a hover above him for maybe half hour, maybe more. Until we have to go. You must understand this. No man stays underwater for half an hour. He’s dead. Bottom of the river.”
“I see,” Meyer said, concerned that the Russian might be wrong but unsure what to do about it. It had taken Meyer a year to track them down. “And the girl?”
“Not at mobile home when I finish the game of hide-and-seek with boyfriend. But I’ll find her,” he said. He looked Meyer directly in the eyes. “Then you will pay me.”
While Meyer’s orders to kill them hadn’t yet been realized, he knew that they eventually would be. It was nearly impossible to live off the grid nowadays. Public records Galerkin had found online revealed that the couple had obtained a license to be married months earlier in a rural Maryland church. There was time. And there was Galerkin. He was the best. He might have screwed up this time, but it wouldn’t happen again. In Meyer’s mind, now that they were hot on their trail, the odds were that both Bondurant and Domenika would be dead within days, or weeks at the most. And not just normal dead. Not regular dead. But “bad dead,” as Galerkin liked to put it: “The way it’s to be done.”
Vitaly Anatoly Galerkin was born in Oymyakon, Russia, considered to be the coldest, most remote place on earth, located along the Indigirka River in the northeastern Sakha Republic between two permanently frozen mountain ranges. The town’s population of five hundred unfortunate souls routinely weathered temperatures colder than ninety degrees below zero. In Galerkin’s place of birth, there were only three things to do: drink, ice-fish, and live miserably. His family was highly accomplished at all three.
Raised as an only child, Galerkin had lost his mother when he was twelve to a shovel cracked across her forehead by his father in a drunken rage. The father confessed to the neighbors that he could take the misery of Oymyakon but had heard quite enough from her. Before the politsiya could travel the thirty kilometers from the nearby town of Tomtor to arrest his father, Galerkin used a hand auger to corkscrew cleanly through his father’s chest as he slept in a drunken stupor. Once the boy had dragged him outside in the cold, the remaining two feet of steel bit had pinned his father to the frozen ground like a fish on a spit. The bit had entered the chest cavity, broken through the ice, and created a nice hole, where the boy sat and calmly fished while he waited for the police to arrive.
Galerkin had grown up in prisons in eastern Russia. He grew to love the confines of an isolation cell. The psychiatrists who paid him visits once a year until he was released at the age of thirty termed him a misanthrope.
In Galerkin’s mind, there were simply too many people populating the earth. There was not one soul alive that Galerkin felt did anything more than occupy his precious space. Excess people stood endlessly in lines in front of him to purchase things, wasting his valuable time. They ate the bread from the shelves, taking more than their share. They filled the seats on trains and buses, requiring him to stand. They created interminable lines of traffic to prevent him from being on time. They chattered about the smallest, most insignificant things until his head would ache. He had no use for them.
When he was released from prison, he was ordered to relocate for parole to Vladivostok. Each day after breakfast, he walked to the street corner from his decrepit apartment to retrieve the daily newspaper. He only glanced at the headlines but always read the obituaries, delighted by the notion that people he might have seen on the streets only yesterday were to be buried underground tomorrow. There he could see them no more. Another item he looked for in the paper was word of a major tragedy of any kind to be found in the world. He relished such news. The more loss of life to a war or a disaster, man-made or natural, the better. He saw these incidents of earthquakes, floods, and famine as God-sent, sweeping people efficiently away from an overcrowded planet.
He did his own part for the cause of population reduction in spectacular fashion. To Galerkin, killing was an art form, and the manner of death chosen for every victim was critical. Each was an important moment to be savored. The more unique the kill, the better. He locked an entire family in a warehouse meat locker and watched them freeze to death for hours. He spent three days without sleep hunting a man like a deer using only a bow and arrow to kill him. He forced a woman to eat herself to death with an overabundance of food, crammed two brothers inside a refrigerator and buried them alive, and drowned someone in a bucket of beer.
So Meyer gave the benefit of the doubt to Galerkin’s boast that Bondurant was dead. Galerkin had spotted Bondurant on his swimming dock the day before he launched his attack. An easy kill with a shot to the back of his head from ten feet would have sufficed. But once the idea for target practice with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a swift-moving helicopter had crept into Galerkin’s head, there was no other way. Meyer was in no position to object.
Now Galerkin said to Meyer, “The other girl, the fat one in Kolkata. The woman, Kaput. You said ten thousand dollars for her.”
“Kaput?” Meyer said. “Who is Kaput? Oh, you mean Kapoor. Ms. Ria Kapoor. My egg donor.”
“Kaput, Kapoor,” Galerkin said dryly. “She is kaput by this week.”
Galerkin stood and stared out the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of Meyer’s modern office building. It overlooked the emerald-green Rue du Rhone, which wound its way through the tree-lined parks of picturesque Geneva below. Off in the distance, he spied St. Peter’s Cathedral. An architectural treasure, it towered over the heart of Geneva’s Old Town. All who came to the fabled city admired it, but to Meyer, it was nothing but an eyesore.
“There’s no longer a need, Vitaly,” Meyer said. “She has contracted the same plague that’s killing everyone else in Kolkata. It’s why I had to move the child from there so quickly.”
Meyer figured his assassin was not pleased by the prospect of losing out on a contract to the strange, unknown virus that had made its way through India. He watched as Galerkin’s face suddenly broke into a broad, unexpected smile.
“I love this plague,” Galerkin said. He rubbed his beefy hands together. “Whole villages wiped out. The papers this morning are reporting ten thousand dead. I think they are lying. I think it is more.”
“Why do you think that?”
Galerkin couldn’t help himself. “These people, they bring in Lady Khan. You know Lady Khan?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Vitaly.”
“Lady Khan only comes when it’s very, very, very big,” Galerkin said. “Maybe this could be the big one.”
“Vitaly, the elimination of Bondurant and Jozef. It means a great deal to me,” he said. “They’re in the way of a bigger plan. The beginning of the end.”
“End of what?” Galerkin asked.
“Of Christianity.”
“I don’t know about the beginnings and the endings. I just know—”
“Never mind, Vitaly,” Meyer said. He’d nearly reached the limit of his patience. “Just know that their very existence threatens exposure, something I can’t afford. Bondurant may be dead, as you say. But I’ll not rest while Domenika Jozef remains alive. Sehgal and Laurent tricked her quite well. She—”
“Sehgal, the famous scientist who shoots himself. This one?” Galerkin said. “How he shoot himself? In mouth? In temple?”
“What matters is that he tricked her into birthing my Christ child. But then she got away. She’s undoubtedly angry. Who wouldn’t be? But I don’t need her or anyone else summoning the courage to come after the child or, God help me, getting the authorities involved. That’s something my nascent little church can’t afford.”
“Well, I want you to know I mean it,” Meyer said. He got up from his desk as a signal for Galerkin to leave. “I want her head on a platter.”
Meyer could see Galerkin smile broadly again as he considered the image in his mind. He wondered whether he had given the assassin a fabulous idea.
“I get my million dollars,” Galerkin said as he ambled toward the door. He turned around a final time before he departed and grunted. “And you, Salome? You get head on plate.”
Chapter 10
Washington, D.C.
Domenika arrived for lunch at the secluded Hotel Suisse in Washington, D.C., twenty minutes early. She took a moment to relax while she waited for her sister, Joanna, to arrive in the small formal dining room facing the green lawn of Lafayette Square. It was a glorious spring day that brought beams of bright morning sun through the Palladian windows that lined the hotel along the black and gray cobblestones of H Street. Small sprays of violets that matched a massive floral display in the restaurant’s foyer sat on the white linen-topped tables that dotted the room.
Domenika was excited to see her sister. They hadn’t been together in many months. Between Joanna’s chaotic schedule as a fashion model and Domenika’s unpredictable life as a seeming fugitive, the two had spoken only a handful of times on the phone. Their lunch was on the spur of the moment as they were both unexpectedly in town.
Domenika knew it was important to leave a good impression with her only sister. Every word of their conversation would likely find its way home to Krakow. There, her parents, often mystified from afar by Domenika’s topsy-turvy life, would eagerly await any news of their eldest daughter. She was too often out of touch. The sisters, just two years apart in age, looked nearly like identical twins. But beyond the fortune of their Vogue-cover looks and affection for each other, that was as far as their similarities went.
Try as she might, Domenika had not been able to shake the mood she’d found herself in that morning, which stemmed from what she’d overheard between Bondurant and Parenti as she lay half-awake during the thunderstorm the night before. Domenika had lived a life of mourning and confusion since the day she’d awoken disoriented in a hospital room in Rome a year before. She’d been told the child she’d nurtured in pregnancy and in near solitary confinement at a convent in India was not that of Jon Bondurant, the only man she’d ever loved. She was heartbroken and shaken beyond belief at the news. She’d merely been a vessel for Meyer and Dr. Laurent’s plans. But to have this “fatherless” child taken from her after birth the way a thief steals a purse had proved too much. A child for whom she once harbored such high hopes had been lost.
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