“Hold on,” he said to Chula, “stop the car.”
Hun looked back at it too now.
Chula slowed the Land Rover to a gradual halt.
“Back up,” Lucien said.
When they were a few yards away from the rear bumper of the ambulance, Chula stopped the car, and Lucien and Hun got out. They approached it from opposite sides; the windows were up, and the doors were locked, but there was no one inside. On one side, in letters almost too faint to decipher anymore, Lucien read the words “Ignatius” and “Oak Park, Illinois.” The rest of whatever it had once said was scraped away altogether.
Lucien looked out over the fields on the far side of the road, but he saw no one. On this side, there was a narrow, hard trail leading down into the trees. Had the driver gone down there?
And who was he? Lucien had a hunch that this was the ambulance belonging to the clinic. But why it had been left here—and why there was no sign of Father Brendan, or anyone else—he couldn't tell.
“Let's get some things,” he said to Hun.
Together, they returned to the Land Rover, and under the frightened eyes of Chula, they opened one of the suitcases and carefully removed two handguns—9-millimeter Smith and Wessons—loaded them, and tucked them into their belts.
“You stay right here,” Lucien said to Chula. “Understand?” If there was trouble, he didn't want Chula taking off and leaving them stranded.
Chula nodded, with wide eyes and a sick, nervous grin.
“I'm going in first” Lucien said to Hun. “You stay about twenty feet behind me.” He didn't want any surprises from the rear.
Hun nodded.
Lucien headed down the trail, lifting the low-hanging palm fronds out of his way. The moment he passed under the canopy of leaves overhead, the light was virtually cut in half, and the heat nearly doubled. No breeze from the river could penetrate this dense jungle growth; on all sides, branches and vines brushed at his elbows, and plucked at his pants. Moisture dripped from the trees overhead; insects buzzed, and occasionally bit. The trail itself, though narrow and meandering, was easy enough to follow; perhaps the villagers used it as their regular passage to the river. Ahead, there was a slight rise in the trail, and Lucien had to hunch down, his hands close to the ground, to keep his balance. He had just made it over the top when he heard a loud voice command him, in Thai, to stop.
The voice had come from somewhere off to his left.
Now it ordered him to raise his hands slowly. “If you don't, you're a dead man.”
Lucien did as he was told, without turning around. He heard the wet squish of footsteps coming up out of the undergrowth. He cursed himself for not having been more alert. But Hun must have heard the shout too. He felt a hand reach under his belt and yank the Smith and Wesson loose. Then he heard the man step back a few paces.
“Who are you?” the man asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I'm looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“A priest. A man named Father Brendan.”
There was a pause. “What do you want with him?”
Lucien wanted to stop their going around in circles. “Are you Father Brendan? I saw the ambulance parked by the road.”
The man hesitated again, then said, “Yes.”
“I am Lucien Calais.”
“Well, I'll be,” the man said.
Lucien was just lowering his arms, and turning around, when he heard a blood-curdling scream and saw Hun leap from the underbrush—he must have been circling around behind them—and crush Brendan to the ground. The gun flew out of his hand, and the two collapsed in a writhing heap on the jungle floor.
“Let him go!” Lucien shouted. “Hun—let him go!” He snatched up the fallen gun. “It's Father Brendan! Stop it!”
Hun had wrapped his arms around Brendan's shoulders while pressing him down; Lucien had to shout again before he was able to make himself heard and understood. Even then, the two men remained as they were for a second, panting and gasping, and making sense of the situation.
“This is Father Brendan,” Lucien repeated, “the head of the clinic. The man we've come here to see.”
Hun grunted.
“And the man on top of you,” Lucien said to Brendan, “is my friend and protector—Hun.”
“Now that we've been introduced,” Brendan said, his voice muffled in the dirt, “do you think he could get off of me?”
“Hun—it's all right now.”
Slowly, and still with some uncertainty, Hun rolled off to one side, and Brendan took a deep and audible breath. He got up on all fours, then finally stood, holding his hands to his back. He looked over at Hun, and said, “Who'd you play for—Notre Dame?”
Hun, not understanding, made no reply.
But seeing the size of Brendan, Lucien was impressed at Hun's tackle. Brendan was a good six feet tall, with a strong frame; he had a dark stubble on his chin. He wasn't dressed as a priest—and as he'd been holding a gun on Lucien, Hun had been right to assume the worst. But now that it had all been sorted out, without any serious damage to anyone, with all three of them standing in the glade in an uneasy truce, it struck Lucien as kind of funny. He smiled and put out his hand to Father Brendan.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
“The pleasure's all mine.”
“Hun,” Lucien said, “Father Brendan.”
Hun sheepishly extended his hand and gave Brendan a stiff shake.
“We came in here looking for you,” Lucien said. “What were you looking for?”
Brendan hesitated, then said, “I ran into some trouble on the way to the convent.”
“So I'd heard—is this where it happened?”
“Yes.”
Lucien waited for him to explain.
“It was in here that I lost Kevin Molloy and a young boy named Pridi.”
“You lost them?”
“Pridi, I think, went for a swim. Molloy was carried off. The boy was killed down by the river. He was dismembered. I've never been able to find his head. I wanted to take one more look.”
Lucien could hardly believe what he'd just heard. Hun had instantly begun looking around them, and had taken his own gun from his belt.
“Who carried off Molloy?”
“If I tell you, you'll think I'm crazy.”
“Tell me.”
Hun was doing a slow, limping reconnaissance of the glade.
“The crew from a junk on the river. They came and got him while I was asleep . . . Molloy had said they would.”
“And you saw them?”
“I killed one of them.”
Hun had stopped a few yards away, and crouched down. Now he was holding back the brush and pointing to something.
A moldering skull, resting upside down against a rock.
“Is that . . .” Lucien started to ask.
“No. It's not Pridi's. That's the one I killed.”
Hun, unafraid, knocked the skull against the rock to shake loose the insects that were crawling all over it. He brought it over, to show it to Lucien. There were only a couple of scraps of dried yellow flesh still attached to the bone.
“How did you kill him?” Lucien asked, gingerly taking the skull into his own hands and staring into its dark, empty eye sockets.
“I'm not one-hundred-percent sure that I did,” Brendan said. “Something tells me the guy was already dead—before I managed to kick his head off his shoulders.”
And something told Lucien that, impossible as it seemed, Brendan was right; that the thing in his hands had been dead for years, not days. And even now, as he gazed into the black hollow sockets, he felt an uncanny sensation—he felt that the thing was looking back at him.
“You think it's looking at you, don't you?” Brendan said.
“Yes, I do.”
“It is.”
Brendan reached out and took it from Lucien's hands; the jaw suddenly dropped open as if, for all the world, it was about to bite. Brendan hurriedly
dropped it on a raised section of the trail, and borrowed the gun Hun was holding in astonishment. With a skill Lucien didn't expect from a priest, he flicked off the safety, aimed, and shot a burst right at it.
The skull exploded, teeth and pieces flying in all directions. Birds and monkeys screeched in the surrounding trees. A few shards of bone were wedged in the dirt of the trail. Brendan, as casually as if he were plucking flowers, extracted them, and tossed them away into the dense underbrush.
“I've got a lot to tell you,” he said to Lucien, while calmly handing the pistol back to Hun. “But I don't think this is the place to do it.”
“No.”
“There's only one place that is,” he said, “and that's up north, at the convent.”
CHAPTER
22
When they arrived, at dusk, the scene in the courtyard reminded Father Brendan of his very first trip there. All around the central well, there were villagers, some of them agitated, milling around, chattering to each other, smoking, sharing up slices of fruit. In the midst of them all, trying to listen to three or four of them at once, was Mother Agnes. She looked both surprised, and relieved, at the sight of their little caravan—the ambulance, followed by the Land Rover—bumping up the road and then pulling over just short of the main yard. When Father Brendan got out of the ambulance, she came over, some of the villagers still trailing her, and said, “I didn't expect to see you back here today. But I'm very glad that you are.”
Lucien and Hun had climbed out of the Land Rover, and were coming over to join them.
“Why is everyone here?” Father Brendan asked her.
“That's just what I've been trying to make out. They're frightened by some things they've seen.”
Lucien, now drawing off some of the villagers’ curiosity, smiled and bowed to them in the traditional manner. Holding their hands in front of their faces, they returned the greeting. Father Brendan introduced Lucien and Hun to Mother Agnes. Chula was staying back by his Land Rover, possibly to keep anyone from leaving fingerprints on the windows.
Mother Agnes said, “I've heard a lot about you from Father Brendan. You've been very generous. But I never thought I'd see you here.”
“It isn't always this busy,” Brendan put in, anxious to find out why. “Mother Agnes tells me something has alarmed the locals.”
“Yes. Just before dawn, some fishermen, fixing their nets by the riverside, said they saw a black boat, with a black sail, coming up the river.”
Both Lucien and Brendan became very still.
“They say it's heading toward the Temple of Kaliya, that it's carrying Kaliya's soldiers. Everyone's afraid for the welfare of Sister Celeste.”
“How close could they come to the temple,” Lucien asked, “by boat?”
Brendan answered. “I haven't seen it myself, but Ranji, the little boy that Celeste saved, reported there was a lake—a big black lake—right behind the temple grounds. No one knows exactly what feeds into it; no one goes near there. But it's possible,” he said, with some misgivings, “that it's connected, by some backwater, to the river.”
“So they could sail that boat right into the temple?” Lucien said.
“Possibly,” Brendan replied.
“Then I don't think we have any time to lose.”
Brendan was torn. He agreed with Lucien that time was of the essence, but he also knew that entering the temple by night was going to pose even greater and more formidable obstacles than going in by day. Lucien hadn't seen it yet; he hadn't heard all the legends that surrounded it. He didn't know how true some of those legends now seemed to be. Nor did he realize how hard it would be, in that vast complex of crumbling walls and broken stones, and in the dead of night, to find the secret sanctuary of one lone woman. He started to explain.
“It's not just one building, Lucien, it's a whole city unto itself. I'm just not sure that we'll be able to find our way around, much less locate Sister Celeste, without waiting till dawn.”
“And if by dawn the boat and its crew have already arrived? And done their work?”
Mother Agnes appeared surprised at their ready acceptance of the mysterious black boat.
“You've seen them,” Lucien said to Brendan. “And years ago, so did I. So did Hun. Whether they're dead or alive, I know what they can do. And that's my own sister in there—”
“Your what?” Agnes interjected.
“My sister. Her name is Lisette. You saved her once, for which I am eternally grateful. But this time, I have to do it.”
Brendan too looked at him in astonishment. He'd assumed Lucien had come all this way to see what had become of Kevin Molloy. Even, possibly, to investigate this purported saint. But not to find a long-lost sister, holed up now in an ancient ruin.
“But how do you know . . .” he began to say.
“I know,” Lucien said, flatly. “And I know that I'll be able to find her.”
And Brendan believed him. Looking at him now, he could even see the resemblance. Ever since he'd encountered him in the glade, hours before, he'd felt there was something strangely familiar about Calais. And now he knew. It was his likeness to Celeste.
Or, as Calais had just called her, Lisette.
From that moment on, their mission took on a distinctly martial cast. Brendan felt as if he were preparing for a night patrol in Nam. Lucien and Hun carried their bags into the convent, where Mother Agnes showed them into Sister Celeste's empty cell. There, they quickly changed into military fatigues and black combat boots. Lucien, while outfitting himself, kept looking around at the bare room, and its sparse furnishings, as if amazed to find himself surrounded by the things so familiar to his sister. After lacing up the boots, he stood up, and stomped his feet on the stone floor. Then, unable to resist, he ran his fingers lightly over the crucifix on the wall, the breviary on the nightstand, the scratched surface of the table itself.
“I can't believe,” he said to Brendan, “that after all this time, I've come this close to her again.”
“God willing,” Brendan said, “we'll be a lot closer before the night is through.”
Lucien didn't answer at first. Then he said, “You know, this is not your fight. You've got work to do here. I can't ask you to risk your life in this.”
“You don't have to,” Brendan replied. “It's all just part of the job.”
“No, it's not.”
“Then I don't know what is,” Brendan shot back. “And I ought to know better than you.”
Lucien seemed taken aback by his vehemence.
“A priest dedicates his whole life,” Brendan said, “to doing good—to helping people, caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, all of that. But sometimes it all seems a little indirect. It's fighting to keep the powers of evil at bay—not fighting them head-on. It's defensive, not offensive. And this is a chance, one of the few I'll ever get, to go on the offense. Like it or not, Calais, you're stuck with me on this one. I'm coming along. Besides,” he added, “I'm the best guide you're likely to get.”
“That's true,” Lucien conceded.
“Damn straight it is,” Brendan said. “So let's get to it.”
Lucien cracked a small smile. “All right,” he said, “and thank you.” Reaching into one of the heavy canvas duffel bags, he pulled out another gun and holster, just like the ones that he and Hun were each wearing. He slapped a clip into the gun, and said, “You seem to know how to use this.”
Brendan took it—this was the second time today he'd held a gun in his hand—and looked it over, feeling its heft. What he'd done in the glade—disarming Lucien, blasting the skull—had been one thing; this was another. This was going into a situation armed and ready for combat; this was harder to reconcile with his priestly vocation. Lucien seemed to know what he was thinking.
“You don't have to use it,” he said.
“I know.” But what truly disturbed him was the urge he felt to do just that; to use this lethal weapon to defend Sister Celeste, to avenge Pridi and Molloy, to
blast those creatures on the boat—whatever they were—straight back to Hell. The gun in his hand felt heavier by the second.
Lucien was wedging a high-power flashlight into a loop on his holster belt.
“A torch might be even more useful,” Brendan said.
“A torch?”
Brendan, without looking at it any longer, slipped the gun into its holster and fastened the whole rig around his waist. What the eye doesn't see . . . “A lighted torch will scare off the snakes more easily. I'm told the place is crawling with them.”
“Can we get a few?”
“I'll take care of it.”
Brendan pulled his shirttails out of his pants to cover the gun belt, then went out again into the courtyard. He told a couple of the villagers what he wanted, and they went about fixing them. By the time Lucien and Hun emerged, Brendan had also found three men who were willing to accompany them as far as the bridge to the temple. The ends of the torches were swathed in canvas and gauze from the infirmary, and dipped in gasoline siphoned out of the Land Rover's tank. As long as that was all he was asked to do, Chula was willing to go along.
Mother Agnes, with two of the other nuns behind her, implored them to wait until morning. “God will watch over her, as He has always done, for one more night. Rest here, and go at dawn. Don't try to fight the powers of darkness,” she said, almost embarrassed, “at night, when they're at their strongest.”
“They're no stronger at night,” Brendan said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “They just like it better.”
The torches were left unlighted as they headed into the jungle; burning, they would have posed too great a danger. And as it happened, the moon was nearly full. With that, and the flashlight Lucien was carrying, they had little trouble following the trail that led toward the temple—though Hun, wearing the boot that had been carefully crafted to bolster his bad foot, still had to struggle to keep pace; now and then, they had to pause to allow him to catch up. The three men from the village, who were leading the way, grew markedly more nervous the closer they got. Through the overhanging palm trees, Brendan could occasionally glimpse the tops of the temple spires; he touched Lucien's sleeve, and silently pointed them out.
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