Cathedral

by Nelson DeMille

  Burke nodded.

  Martin added, “You’ll have Stillway and the blueprints in ample time, and to show you what a good sport I am, I’ll give all this to you personally. As I said yesterday morning, you can look good with your superiors. God knows, Lieutenant, you need the boost.”

  Martin moved away from Burke and looked down at Ferguson’s frozen body. He lit another cigarette and dropped the match carelessly on Ferguson’s face. He looked at Burke. “You’re thinking, of course, that like our late friend here, you know too much. But it’s all right. I’m willing—obligated—to make an exception in your case. You’re one of us—a professional, not an amateur busybody like Mr. Ferguson or a dangerous insurgent like Mr. Flynn. So act like a professional, Lieutenant, and you’ll be treated like one.”

  Burke said, “Thank you for setting me straight. I’ll do my best.”

  Martin laughed. “You can do your worst, if you like. I’m not counting only on you to see that things go my way. Lieutenant, there are more surprises inside and outside that Cathedral than even you suspect. And at first light, it will all unfold.” He nodded his head. “Good evening.” He turned and walked away at a leisurely pace.

  Burke looked down at Ferguson. He bent over and picked the match from his face. “Sorry, Jack.”

  CHAPTER 50

  The clock in the rear of the choir loft struck 3:00A.M. Brian Flynn tolled the hour, then stood and looked at Leary sitting on the parapet, his legs swinging out into space three stories above the main floor. Flynn said, “If you nod off, you’ll fall.”

  Leary answered without turning. “That’s right.”

  Flynn looked around for Megan but didn’t see her. He moved around the organ, picked up a rifle, and walked toward Leary.

  Leary suddenly spun around and swung his legs into the choir loft. He said, “That’s an old trick.”

  Flynn felt his body tense.

  Leary continued. “Learned it in the army. You perch in a position that will get you hurt or killed if you fall asleep. Keeps you awake … usually.”

  “Interesting.” He moved past Leary and entered the bell tower, then took the elevator down to the vestibule. He walked up the center aisle, his footsteps echoing in the quiet Cathedral. Sullivan, Boland, and Farrell were leaning out over the triforia. Hickey was asleep at the chancel organ. Flynn passed through the open gate of the communion rail and mounted the steps. The four hostages slept in pairs on opposite sides of the sanctuary. He glanced over at Baxter beside Maureen and watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, then looked up at where the Cardinal and Father Murphy lay cuffed to the throne, sleeping. Flynn knelt beside Maureen and stared down at her bruised face. He sensed that eyes were watching him from the high places, that Megan was watching from the dark, and that Leary’s scope was centered on his lips. Flynn leaned over, his back to Leary, and positioned himself to block Leary’s view of Maureen. He stroked her cheek.

  She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “What time is it?”

  “Late.”

  She said, “You’ve let it become late.”

  He said quietly, “I’m sorry … I couldn’t help you …”

  She turned her face away. Neither one spoke, then Maureen said, “This standoff with the police is like one of those games of nerve with autos racing toward each other, each driver hypnotized by the other’s approach—and at one minute to dawn… is anyone going to veer off?”

  “Bloody nonsense. This is war. Bloody stupid women, you think men play games of ego—”

  “War?” She grabbed his shirt and her voice rose. “Let me tell you about war. It’s not fought in churches with handcuffed hostages. And as long as you’re talking about war, I’m still enough of a soldier to know they may not wait for dawn—they may be burrowing in here right now, and within the time it takes to draw your next breath this place could be filled with gunfire and you could be filled with bullets.” She released his shirt. “War, indeed. You know no more about war than you do about love.”

  Flynn stood and looked at Baxter. “Do you like this man?”

  She nodded. “He’s a good man.”

  Flynn stared off at some point in the distance. “A good man,” he repeated. “Someone meeting me for the first time might say that—as long as my history wasn’t known.” He stared down at her. “You don’t like me much right now, but it’s all right. I hope you survive, I even hope Baxter survives, and I hope you get on well together.”

  She lay on her back looking up at him. “Again, neither you nor I believe a word of that.”

  Flynn stepped away from her. “I have to go….” He looked over the sanctuary rail at Hickey and said suddenly, “Tell me about him. What’s the old man been saying? What about the confessional buzzer?”

  Maureen cleared her throat and spoke in a businesslike voice, relating what she had discovered about John Hickey. She added her conclusions. “Even if you win, he’ll somehow make certain everyone dies.” She added, “All four of us believe that, or we wouldn’t have risked so much to escape.”

  Flynn’s eyes drifted back to Hickey, then he looked around the sanctuary at the hostages, the bouquets of nowwilting green carnations, and the bloodstains on the marble below the high altar. He had the feeling he had seen this all before, experienced something similar in a dream or vision, and he remembered that he had, in Whitehorn Abbey. He shook off the impression and looked at Maureen.

  Flynn knelt suddenly and unlocked the handcuff. “Come with me.” He helped her up and supported her as he walked toward the sacristy stairs.

  He was aware that Hickey was watching from the chancel organ, and that Leary and Megan were watching also, from the shadows of the choir loft. He knew that they were thinking he was going to let Maureen go. And this, he understood, as everyone who was watching understood, was a critical juncture, a test of his position as leader. Would those three in any way try to restrict his movements? A few hours before they wouldn’t have dared.

  He reached the sacristy stairs and paused, not hesitantly but defiantly, and looked up into the loft, then back at the chancel organ. No one made a sound or a movement, and he waited purposely, staring into the Cathedral, then descended the steps. He stopped on the landing beside Gallagher. “Take a break, Frank.”

  Gallagher looked at him and at Maureen, and Flynn could see in Gallagher’s expression a look of understanding and approval. Gallagher’s eyes met Maureen’s; he started to speak but then turned and hurried up the stairs.

  Flynn looked down the remaining steps at the chained gate, then faced Maureen.

  She realized that Brian Flynn had reasserted himself, imposed his will on the others. And she knew also that he was going to go a step further. He was going to free her, but she didn’t know if he was doing it for her or for himself, or to demonstrate that he could do anything he damned well pleased—to show that he was Finn MacCumail, Chief of the Fenians. She walked down the staircase and stopped at the gate. Flynn followed and gestured toward the sacristy. “Two worlds meet here, the worlds of the sacred and the profaned, the living and the dead. Have ever such divergent worlds been separated by so little?”

  She stared into the quiet sacristy and saw a votive candle flickering on the altar of the priests’ chapel, the vestment tables lining the walls, covered with neatly folded white and purple vestments of the Lenten season. Easter, she thought. The spring. The Resurrection and the life. She looked at Flynn.

  He said, “Will you choose life? Will you go without the others?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I’ll go.”

  He hesitated, then drew the keys from his pocket. With a hand that was unsteady he unlocked the gate’s lock and the chain’s padlock, and began unwinding the chain. He rolled back the left gate and scanned the corridor openings but saw no sign of the police. “Hurry.”

  She took his arm. “I’ll go, but not without you.”

  He looked at her, then said, “You’d leave the others to go with me?”

  “Yes.”


  “Could you do that and live with yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at the open gate. “I’d be imprisoned for a long time. Could you wait?”

  “Yes.”

  “You love me?”

  “Yes.”

  He reached out for her, but she moved quickly up the stairs and stopped halfway to the landing. “You’ll not push me out. We leave together.”

  He stood looking up at her silhouetted against the light of the crypt doors. “I can’t go.”

  “Not even for me? I’d go with you—for you. Won’t you do the same?”

  “I can’t … for God’s sake, Maureen … I can’t. Please, if you love me, go. Go!”

  “Together. One way or the other, together.”

  He looked down and shook his head and, after what seemed like a long time, heard her footsteps retreating up the stairs.

  He relocked the gate and followed, and when he walked up to the altar sanctuary, he found her lying beside Baxter again, the cuff locked on her wrist and her eyes closed.

  Flynn came down from the sanctuary and walked to a pew in the center of the Cathedral and sat, staring at the high altar. It struck him that the things most men found trying—leadership, courage, the ability to seize their own destiny—came easily to him, a gift, he thought, of the gods. But love—so basic an emotion that even unexceptional men were blessed with loving women, children, friends—that had always eluded him. And the one time it had not eluded him it had been so difficult as to be painful, and to make the pain stop he made the love stop through the sheer force of his will. Yet it came back, again and again. Amor vincit omnia, as Father Michael used to preach. He shook his head. No, I’ve conquered love.

  He felt very empty inside. But at the same time, to his horror and disgust, he felt very good about being in command of himself and his world again.

  He sat in the pew for a long time.

  Flynn looked down at Pedar Fitzgerald, lying in a curled position at the side of the organ console, a blanket drawn up to his blood-encrusted chin. Flynn moved beside John Hickey, who lay slumped over the organ keyboard, and stared down at Hickey’s pale, almost waxen face. The field phone rang, and Hickey stirred. It rang again, and Flynn grabbed it.

  Mullins’s voice came over the line. “I’m back in the bell room. Is that it for the bells, then?”

  “Yes…. How does it look outside?”

  Mullins said, “Very quiet below. But out farther … there’re still people in the streets.”

  Flynn heard a note of wonder in the young man’s voice. “They celebrate late, don’t they? We’ve given them a Saint Patrick’s Day to remember.”

  Mullins said, “There wasn’t even a curfew.”

  Flynn smiled. America reminded him of the Titanic, a three-hundred-foot gash in her side, listing badly, but they were still serving drinks in the lounge. “It’s not like Belfast, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Can you sense any anxiety down there … movement … ?”

  Mullins considered, then said, “No, they look relaxed yet. Cold and tired for sure, but at ease. No passing of orders, none of that stiffness you see before an attack.”

  “How are you holding up against the cold?”

  “I’m past that.”

  “Well, you and Rory will be the first to see the dawn break.”

  Mullins had given up on the dawn hours ago. “Aye, the dawn from the bell tower of Saint Patrick’s in New York. That needs a poem.”

  “You’ll tell me it later.” He hung up and picked up the extension phone. “Get me Captain Schroeder, please.” He looked at Hickey’s face as the operator routed the call. Awake, the face was expressive, alive, but asleep it looked like a death mask.

  Schroeder’s voice came through sounding slurred. “Yes …”

  “Flynn here. Did I wake you?”

  “No, sir. We’ve been waiting for Mr. Hickey’s hourly call. He said … but I’m glad you called. I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”

  “Thought I was dead, did you?”

  “Well, no…. You were on the bells, right?”

  “How did I sound out there?”

  Schroeder cleared his throat. “You show promise.”

  Flynn laughed. “Well, can it be you’re developing a sense of humor, Captain?” Schroeder laughed self-consciously.

  “Or is it that you’re so relieved to be talking to me instead of Hickey that you’re giddy?”

  Schroeder didn’t answer.

  Flynn said, “How are they faring in the capitals?”

  Schroeder’s tone was reserved. “They’re wondering why you haven’t responded to what Inspector Langley related to you.”

  “I’m afraid we aren’t very clear on that.”

  “I can’t elaborate over the phone.”

  “I see…. Well, why don’t you come to the sacristy gate, then, and we’ll talk.” There was a long pause. “I’m not at liberty to do that…. It’s against regulations.”

  “So is burning down a cathedral, which is what will happen if we don’t speak, Captain.”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Flynn. There are carefully worked out rules … as I think you know…. And the negotiator cannot expose himself to … to …”

  “I won’t kill you.”

  “Well … I know you won’t … but … Listen, you and Lieutenant Burke have … Would you like to speak with him at the gate?”

  “No, I would like to speak with you at the gate.”

  “I …”

  “Aren’t you even curious to see me?”

  “Curiosity plays no part—”

  “Doesn’t it? It seems to me, Captain, that you of all people would recognize the value of eyeball-to-eyeball contact.”

  “There’s no special value in—”

  “How many wars would have been avoided if the chiefs could have just seen the other man’s face, touched each other, got a whiff of the other fellow’s sweaty fear?”

  Schroeder said, “Hold on.”

  Flynn heard the phone click, then a minute later Schroeder’s voice came through. “Okay.”

  “Five minutes.” Flynn hung up and poked Hickey roughly. “Were you listening?”

  Flynn took Hickey’s arm in a tight grip. “Someday, you old bastard, you’ll tell me about the confessional, and the things you’ve been saying to Schroeder and the things you’ve been saying to my people and to the hostages. And you’ll tell me about the compromise that was offered us.”

  Hickey flinched and straightened up. “Let go! These old bones snap easily.”

  “I may snap the ones in your neck.”

  Hickey looked up at Flynn, no trace of pain in his face. “Careful. Be careful.”

  Flynn released his arm and pushed it away. “You don’t frighten me.”

  Hickey didn’t answer but stared at Flynn with undisguised malice in his eyes. Flynn met his stare, then looked down at Pedar Fitzgerald. “Are you looking after him?”

  Hickey didn’t answer.

  Flynn stared closely at Fitzgerald’s face and saw it was white—waxy, like Hickey’s. “He’s dead.” He turned to Hickey.

  Hickey said without emotion, “Died about an hour ago.”

  “Megan …”

  “When Megan calls, I tell her he’s all right, and she believes that because she wants to. But eventually …”

  Flynn looked up at Megan in the loft. “My God, she’ll …” He turned back to Hickey. “We should have gotten a doctor….”

  Hickey replied, “If you weren’t so wrapped up in your fucking bells, you could have done just that.”

  Flynn looked at him. “You could have—”

  “Me? What the hell do I care if he lives or dies?”

  Flynn stepped back from him, and his mind began to reel.

  Hickey said, “What do you see, Brian? Is it very frightening?” He laughed and lit his pipe.

  Flynn moved farther away from Hickey into the ambulatory and tried to get his thoug
hts under control. He reevaluated each person in the Cathedral until he was certain he knew each one’s motives … potential for treachery … loyalties and weaknesses. His mind focused finally on Leary, and he asked the questions he should have asked months ago: Why was Leary here? Why would a professional killer trap himself in a perch with no way out? Leary had to be holding a card no one even knew existed. Flynn wiped the sweat from his brow and walked up to the sanctuary.

  Hickey called out, “Are you going to tell Schroeder about his darling daughter? Tell him for me—use these exact words—tell him his daughter is a dead bitch!”

  Flynn descended the stairs behind the altar. Gallagher stood on the crypt landing, an M-16 slung across his chest. Flynn said, “There’s coffee in the bookshop.” Gallagher climbed the stairs, and Flynn went down the remaining steps to the gate. Parts of the chain had been pieced together, and a new padlock was clamped to it. He examined the gate’s mangled lock; another bullet or two and it would have sprung. But there were only fifty rounds in the drum of a Thompson. Not fifty-one, but fifty…. And an M-72 rocket could take a Saracen, and the Red Bus to Clady on the Shankill Road went past Whitehorn Abbey … and it was all supposed to be haphazard, random, with no meaning …

  Flynn stared into the sacristy. He heard men speaking in the side corridors, and footsteps approached from the center opening in the left wall. Schroeder stepped into the sacristy, looked around, turned toward Flynn, and walked deliberately up the stairs. He stood on the steps below the gates, his eyes fixed on Flynn’s. A long time passed before Flynn spoke. “Am I as you pictured me?”

  Schroeder replied stiffly, “I’ve seen a photo of you.”

  “And I of you. But am I as you pictured me?”

  Schroeder shook his head. Another long silence developed, then Flynn spoke abruptly. “I’m going to reach into my pocket.” Flynn took the microphone sensor and passed it over Schroeder. “This is a very private conversation.”

  “I will report everything said here.”