Cathedral

by Nelson DeMille

  Martin waved his hand impatiently. “I don’t understand about Baxter and Malone. They’re dead, aren’t they?”

  The police stepped over the bodies in the aisle and moved up carefully into the pews, rifles and pistols raised.

  Leary automatically put his hands on his head as he spoke to Martin. “Flynn told me not to kill her—and I couldn’t shoot into the pews at Baxter without taking the chance of hitting her—”

  “Flynn? You’re working for me, Jack.”

  Leary pushed past Martin and hobbled into the aisle. “You give orders, he gives orders…. I do only what I’m told—and what I’m paid for—”

  “But Flynn’s money came from me, Jack.”

  Leary stared at Martin. “Flynn never bullshitted me. He told me this loft would be hell, and I knew it. You said it would be—how’d that go?—relatively without risk?”

  Martin’s voice was peevish. “Well, as far as I’m concerned you didn’t fulfill your contract, I’ll have to reconsider the nature of the final payment.”

  “Look, you little fuck—” Two ESD men covered the remaining distance up the aisle and grabbed Leary’s upraised arms, pulling them roughly behind his back, then cuffing him. They pushed him to the floor, and he yelled out in pain, then turned his head back toward Martin as the police searched him. “If they got Hickey from below, they got the bombs anyway. If they didn’t get him, you’ll still get your explosion.”

  Martin noticed Burke moving toward him, supported by two ESD men. Martin cleared his throat. “All right, Jack—that’s enough.”

  But Leary was obviously offended. “I lived up to my end. I mean, Christ, Martin, it’s after six—and look around you—enough is enough—”

  “Shut up.”

  Two ESD men pulled Leary to his feet. Leary said, “This leg … it feels funny … burns …”

  Martin said nothing.

  Leary stared at him. “What did you … ? Oh … no …”

  Martin winked at him, turned, and walked away.

  An ESD man raised a bullhorn and called out into the Cathedral. “Police in the choir loft! All clear! Mr. Baxter—Miss Malone—run! Run this way!”

  Baxter picked up his head and looked at Maureen. “Was that Leary?”

  She forced a smile. “You’re learning.” She listened to the bullhorn call their names again. “I don’t know …” She pressed her face against Baxter’s, and they held each other tightly.

  Wendy Peterson looked around the altar and stared up into the choir loft. It was completely lit, and she saw the police moving through the pews. Without looking at her watch she knew there were probably not more than three minutes left—less, if the bomb were set earlier, and she didn’t remember one that was set for later than the threatened time.

  She ran to the bronze plate, pulling the pin on the concussion grenade as she moved and calling back to the pews. “Run! Run!” She bent over and pulled up the heavy bronze plate with one hand.

  Maureen stood, looking first at Wendy Peterson and then toward the illuminated expanse at the upper end of the Cathedral as Baxter came up beside her.

  A bullhorn was blaring. “Run! Run this way!”

  They began to run, but Maureen suddenly veered and dashed up the pulpit stairs, grabbing Flynn’s arm and dragging him back down the steps. Baxter ran up behind her and pulled at her arm. She turned to him. “He’s alive. Please …” He hesitated, then put Flynn over his shoulders, and they ran toward the communion rail.

  Wendy Peterson watched silently until they reached a point in the center aisle where she thought they would be safe if the grenade detonated the bomb. She released the safety handle and flung the grenade into the hole with a motion that suggested What the hell. … She dropped the plate back and stood off several feet, holding her hands over her ears.

  The grenade exploded, ripping the bronze plate from its hinges and sending it high into the air. A shock wave rolled through the Cathedral, and the sanctuary trembled beneath her feet. Everything seemed to hang in suspension as she waited for a secondary explosion, but there was nothing except the ringing in her ears. She dropped through the smoke down the ladder.

  Burke moved slowly toward Martin as the echoes of the shock wave passed through the loft.

  Martin said, “Well, Lieutenant Burke, this is a surprise. I thought you’d be … well, somewhere else. You look terrible. You’re walking strangely. Where are your shoes?” Martin checked his watch. “Two minutes … less, I think. Good view from here. Do you have cameras recording this? You won’t see this again.” He peered over Burke’s shoulder at the sanctuary. “Look at all that metalwork, that marble. Magnificent. It’s going to look exactly like Coventry in about three minutes.” He patted the lapel of his topcoat as he turned back to Burke. “See? I’ve kept my carnation. Where’s yours?” He looked anxiously into the sanctuary again. “What is that crazy woman up to? Turn around, Burke. Don’t miss this.”

  Martin brushed past Burke and drew closer to the rail. He watched Baxter and Maureen approaching, accompanied by Major Cole and four Guardsmen. Brian Flynn’s limp body was being carried on a stretcher by two of the Guardsmen. Martin said to Burke, “Governor Doyle will be pleased with his boys—Mayor Kline will be furious with you, Burke.” Martin called down. “Harry, old man? Up here!” He waved. “Nicely done, you two.”

  Martin turned and looked back as Leary, almost unconscious, was being carried into the choir practice room. He said to Burke, “Ballistics will show that the rifle I took from him never fired a shot that killed anyone. He did kill that young woman sniper, though, the very moment he had—what do you call it?—the drop on her. Well, at least that’s the way he’s made it appear, He’ll go free if he is tried.” Martin looked back over his shoulder. “Good-bye, Jack. I’ll see you later in the hospital.” He called to an ESD squad leader. “Easy with that man—he works for me.” Martin turned back to Burke as Leary disappeared into the choir room. “Your people are in an ugly mood. Well … the mysteries are unfolding now … Burke? Are you listening to me? Burke—” Martin looked at his watch, then at the sanctuary, and continued in a new vein. “The problem with you people is no fire discipline. Shoot first and ask questions later—great tradition. That’s why Father Murphy is hanging dead from a ladder in the bell tower here—oh, you didn’t know that, Burke?”

  Martin walked to the edge of the loft and rested his hands on the parapet, looking straight down. Baxter and Malone were standing with their backs to him now. Flynn was lying near them on the floor, a National Guard medic crouched over him. Baxter, Martin noticed, had his arm around Maureen Malone’s shoulder, and she was slumped against him. Martin said to Burke, “Come closer—look at this, Burke. They’ve made friends.” He called down, “Harry, you old devil. Miss Malone. Get down, you two—there’ll be a bit of falling debris.” He turned to Burke behind him. “I feel rather bad about being the one who pushed for Baxter being on the steps…. If I had had any idea it would be so risky …”

  Burke moved beside Martin and leaned on the rail. The feeling began to return to his legs and arms, and the numbness was replaced by a tingling sensation. He looked out into the Cathedral, focusing on the sanctuary. A dead ESD man lay in the clergy pews, and black smoke drifted out of the hole. Green carnations were strewn across the black-and-white marble floor, and hundreds of fragments of stained glass glittered where they’d fallen from above. Even from this distance he could see the blood splattered across the raised altar, the bullet marks everywhere. The police in the choir pews behind him fell silent and began to edge closer to the rail. The towers and attic had emptied, most of the police leaving the Cathedral through the only unmined exit—the damaged ceremonial doors. Some congregated in the two long west triforia, away from the expected area of destruction. They stared at the sanctuary, a block away, with a mesmerized fascination. Burke looked at his watch: 6:02, give or take thirty seconds.

  Wendy Peterson shone her light into Hickey’s face and poked his throat with her
stiletto, but he was dead—yet there was no blood running from his nose, mouth, or ears, no protruding tongue or ruptured capillaries to indicate he had been killed by concussion. In fact, she thought, his face was serene, almost smiling, and he had probably died peacefully in his sleep and with no help from her or anyone else.

  She set the light down pointing at the base of the column and switched on the lamp of her miner’s helmet. “Photosensitive, my ass,” she said aloud. “Bullshitting old bastard.” She began speaking to herself, as she always did when she was alone with a bomb.

  “Okay, Wendy, you silly bitch, one step at a time….” She drew a deep breath, and the oily smell of the plastic rose in her flaring nostrils. “All the time in the world…” She passed her hands gently over the dusty surface of the plastic, feeling for a place where the mechanism might be embedded. “Looks like stone…. Clever … all smoothed over … okay …” She slipped her wristwatch off and stuck it into the plastic. “Ninety seconds, Wendy, give or take…. Too late to clear out … stupid …” She was cutting with the stiletto, making a random incision into the plastic. “You get only two or three cuts now….” She thrust her right hand into the opening but felt nothing. The wound on her arm had badly stiffened her fingers. “Sixty seconds… time flies when you’re …” She put her ear to the plastic and listened, but heard nothing except the blood pounding in her head. “… when you’re having a good time…. Okay … cut here…. Okay, God? Careful … nothing here…. Where’d you put it, old man? Where’s that ticking heart? Cut here, Wendy…. When you wish upon a star, makes no difference … There … there, that’s it.” She pushed back the plastic, enlarging the incision and revealing the face of a loudly ticking alarm clock. “Okay, clock time, 6:02. My time, 6:02—alarm time, 6:03…. You play fair, old man…. All right….” She wanted to yank the clock out, rip away the wires, or squash the crystal and advance the alarm dial, but that, more often than not, set the damned thing off. “Easy, baby … you’ve come so far now….” She thrust her hand into the plastic and worked her long, stiff fingers carefully through the thick, damp substance, feeling for anti-intrusion detonators as she dug toward the rear of the clock. “Go gently into this crap, Peterson…. Hand behind the clock … there … simple mechanism…. Where’s the off switch? Come on … dawn it … 6:03—shit—shit— no alarm yet … few more seconds … steady, Wendy. Dear God, steady, steady …” The alarm rang loudly, and Wendy Peterson listened to it carefully, knowing it was the last sound she would ever hear.

  A deep silence came over the Cathedral. Martin rested his folded arms on the rail as he stared into the sanctuary. He tapped his fingers on the watch crystal. “What time do you have, Burke? Isn’t it late? What seems to be the problem?”

  * * *

  In the rectory and in the Cardinal’s residence people have moved back from the taped windows. On all the rooftops around the Cathedral police and newspeople stood motionless. In front of televisions in homes and in the bars that had never closed, people watched the countdown numbers superimposed on the silent screen showing an aerial view of the Cathedral brightening slowly in the dawn light. In churches and synagogues that had maintained allnight vigils, people looked at their watches. 6:04.

  Wendy Peterson rose slowly from the hole and walked to the middle of the sanctuary, blinking in the brighter lighting. She held something in both hands and stared at it, then looked slowly up at the triforia and loft. Her face was very pale, and her voice was slightly hesitant, but her words rolled through the silent Cathedral. “The detonating device …” She held up a clock connected by four wires to a large battery pack, from which ran four more wires. She raised it higher, as though it were a chalice, and in her other hand she held four long cylindrical detonators that she had clipped from the wires. White plastic still clung to the mechanism, and in the stillness of the Cathedral the ticking clock sounded very loud. She ran her tongue over her dry lips and said, “All clear.”

  No one applauded, no one cheered, but in the silence there was an audible collective sigh, then the sound of someone weeping.

  The quiet was suddenly broken by the shrill noise of a long scream as a man fell headfirst from the choir loft. The body hit the floor in front of the armored carrier with a loud crack.

  Maureen and Baxter turned and looked down at the awkwardly sprawled body, a splatter of blood radiating over the floor around the head. Baxter spoke in a whisper. “Martin.”

  * * *

  Burke walked haltingly across the floor beneath the choir loft. The tingling in his back had become a dull pain. A stretcher was carried past him, and he caught a glimpse of Brian Flynn’s face but couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive. Burke kept walking until he came to Martin’s body. Martin’s neck was broken, his eyes were wide open, and his protruding tongue was half bitten off. Burke lit a cigarette and dropped the match on Martin’s face.

  He turned and looked absently at the huge, charred carrier and the blackened bodies on it, then watched the people around him moving, speaking quickly, going about their duties; but it all seemed remote, as though he were watching through an unfocused telescope. He looked around for Baxter and Malone but saw they were gone. He realized he had nothing to do at the moment and felt good about it.

  Burke moved aimlessly up the center aisle and saw Wendy Peterson standing alone in the aisle and looking, like himself, somewhat at loose ends. Weak sunlight came through the broken window above the east end of the ambulatory, and she seemed, he thought, to be deliberately standing in the dust-moted shaft. As he walked past her he said, “Very nice.”

  She looked up at him. “Burke …”

  He turned and saw she held the detonating mechanism. She spoke, but not really, he thought, to him. “The clock is working … see? And the batteries can’t all have failed…. The connections were tight…. There’re four separate detonators … but they never …” She looked almost appalled, he thought, as though all the physical laws of the universe that she had believed in had been revoked.

  He said, “But you—you were—”

  She shook her head. “No. That’s what I’m telling you.” She looked into his eyes. “I was about two seconds late…. It rang … I heard it ring, Burke…. I did. Then there was a strange sort of a feeling … like a presence. I figured, you know, I’m dead and it’s not so bad. They talk about—in this business they talk about having an Angel on your shoulder while you work—you know? God Almighty, I had a regiment of them.”

  Book VI

  Morning, March 18

  And the Green Carnation withered, as

  in forest fires that pass.

  G. K. Chesterton

  Patrick Burke blinked as he walked out through the ceremonial doors, down the center of the crushed steps between the flattened handrails, and into the thin winter sunlight.

  The night’s accumulation of ice was running from rooftops and sidewalks and melting over the steps of St. Patrick’s into the littered streets. Burke saw on the bottom step the hand-lettered sign that the Fenians had stuck to the front doors, half torn, the words blurring over the soggy cardboard. The splatter of green paint from the thrown bottle bled out across the granite, and a long, barely visible trail of blood from the dead horse led into the Avenue. You wouldn’t know what it all was, thought Burke, if you hadn’t been there.

  A soft south wind shook the ice from the bare trees along Fifth Avenue, and church bells tolled in the distance. Ambulances, police vehicles, and limousines splashed through the sunlit pools of water, and platoons of Tactical Police and National Guardsmen marched in the streets, while mounted police, half-asleep on their horses, moved in apparently random directions. Many of the police, Burke noticed, had black ribbons on their badges, most of the city officials wore black armbands, and many of the flags along the Avenue were at half-mast, as though this had all been thought out for some time, anticipated, foreseen.

  Burke heard a sound on the north terrace and saw the procession of clergy and lay people who were com
pleting their circle of the Cathedral walls, led by the Cardinal wearing a white stole. They drew abreast of the main doors and faced them, the Cardinal intoning, “Purify me with hyssop, Lord, and I shall be clean of sin. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

  Burke stood a few yards off, listening as the assembly continued the rite of reconciliation for the profaned church, oblivious to the people swarming around them. He watched the Cardinal sprinkle holy water against the walls as the others prayed, and he wondered how so obscure a ritual could be carried out so soon and with such Roman precision. Then he realized that the Cardinal and the others must have been thinking about it all night, just as the city officials had rehearsed their parts in their minds during the long black hours. He, Burke, had never let his thoughts get much beyond 6:03, which was one reason why he would never be either the Mayor or the Archbishop of New York.

  The procession moved through the portal two by two and past the smashed ceremonial doors into the Cathedral. Burke took off his flak jacket and dropped it at his feet, then walked slowly to the corner of the steps near Fiftieth Street and sat down in a patch of pale sunlight. He folded his arms over his knees and rested his head, falling into a half-sleep.

  The Cardinal moved at the head of the line of priests who made up the Cathedral staff. A cross-bearer held a tall gold cross above the sea of moving heads, and the Litany of the Saints was chanted ss the line went forward through the gate of the communion rail.

  The group assembled in the center of the sanctuary where Monsignor Downes awaited them. The altar was entirely bare of religious objects in preparation for the conclusion of the cleansing rite, and police photographers and crime lab personnel were hurrying through their work. The assembly fell silent, and people began looking around at the blood-splattered sanctuary and altar. Then heads began to turn out toward the ravaged Cathedral, and several people wept openly.