“No, sir. I guess it doesn’t, at that.”
Later that same afternoon, Ethan was riding his bike to the pool when he met Sam Wiggan’s son, Peter, riding his bike in the opposite direction with two of his friends, Tony Chang and Rob Campbell. Peter was two years older than Ethan; he was heavyset and strong, qualities which, combined with being a bit slow in school, had molded him into a thug and a bully. Tony and Rob were Peter’s age; smaller and even slower, they followed him around like awestruck little brothers. The trio had never picked on Ethan before, so he just nodded and made to ride past them.
“You’re not going anywhere, traitor,” growled Peter, who turned his bike to block the path, forcing Ethan to screech to a halt.
“What do you want?” Ethan asked, gazing at Peter’s scowling face over his handlebars. He couldn’t help being afraid. He knew that Peter and the others could beat him to a pulp if they chose. And this section of the bike path ran through thick woods along a golf course; even though he could hear people playing golf on the other side of the trees, he knew they couldn’t see him. Perhaps they would hear if he yelled for help, but he also knew that yelling for help wasn’t an option. That might save him a beating today, but in the long run he would pay a higher price for it, being labeled a crybaby and a coward.
“What do you think we want?” sneered Peter. He climbed down from his bike, and let it fall to the path behind him. His hands made fists at his sides. His eyes were like two shards of ice. “Get off that bike, Al.”
“Al?”
“Sure. Your name’s Al Qaeda, isn’t it?” He laughed, as did Tony and Rob, who still remained on their bikes, cutting off any chance of escape. “At least, that’s what it sounded like in church the other day. My dad says people like you ought to just leave this country if you hate it so much.”
“I don’t hate it.”
“Yeah? You got a funny way of showing it.” He stepped closer. “Do you really believe all that crap you said? About God’s house and everything?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Here’s where you get to practice turning the other cheek.” For all his slowness, Peter could be quick when he wanted to be. Now his right hand shot out in a blur, the open palm striking Ethan’s cheek with a loud smack.
Ethan, belatedly trying to dodge, only succeeded in falling, pulling the bike down on top of him to the laughter of Tony and Rob.
Peter stood over him, smirking. “Gonna cry now, Al?”
“No,” Ethan managed, blinking back tears. He could feel anger pulsing through his veins, knotting up his muscles. But he wouldn’t give in to it. Fighting Peter wouldn’t solve anything. Violence was not the answer. He forced himself to stay down.
“You will,” Peter promised and drew back his foot.
Ethan shut his eyes, waiting for the blow. Pain exploded in his left calf as Peter’s foot struck home. He was determined not to cry, no matter what. But he was equally determined not to fight.
“Like that?” asked Peter. “Here’s another.”
“Pete, someone’s coming,” said Tony in a low and urgent hiss.
Peter stopped and slowly turned.
Ethan took the opportunity to clamber out from under the bike. His knees were bleeding where the frame had struck him, the back of his head ached, and his calf throbbed painfully, but those seemed to be the extent of his injuries . . . so far.
Approaching them on a red bike was a girl in a halter-top and shorts who looked to be Ethan’s age or slightly older. He couldn’t remember having seen her before. She came to a stop, straddling her bike in a beam of sunlight that pierced the trees, her long, blond hair and tan skin almost seeming to glow from within.
“You’re bleeding,” she observed.
Ethan nodded, rendered speechless. The girl’s eyes were too big for her narrow face, a narrowness only accentuated by her long hair. Her chin was too sharp, her nose not sharp enough, and her teeth were in need of braces. Yet something about her made Ethan feel tingly inside, as if he were in the presence of a beautiful angel.
Peter, obviously, didn’t like angels. “Get lost, Maggie.”
“Or what? Are you going to beat me up too?”
“Serve you right if I did.”
“Ooh, I’m real scared.” She rolled her cornflower blue eyes, then looked at Ethan. “I’m Maggie. What’s your name?”
“Ethan.”
Her eyes grew even wider. “I heard about you. You’re that kid from Peter’s old church.”
“That’s right,” said Peter. “This is Ethan Brown, the traitor. Otherwise known as Al Qaeda.” He laughed again, echoed dutifully by Tony and Rob.
Maggie ignored them. “I think it was brave of you to make that speech,” she said, her eyes shining. “I wish I’d been there to see it!”
“Looks like we got another traitor, boys,” said Peter without taking his eyes from Maggie’s face. “Usually I don’t hit girls, but I’ll make an exception in your case if you don’t get lost.”
She smiled back sweetly. “What a coincidence. I usually don’t hit boys.”
“Grab her,” Peter said.
“Huh?” asked Tony.
“Grab her!”
“But—but she’s . . .”
“For God’s sake, grab her before she gets away!”
Rob lurched awkwardly away from his bike and grabbed Maggie by one arm, even though she’d made no move to flee. Ten, before she could shrug him off, Tony had grasped her other arm. She didn’t attempt to struggle, just looked at Peter in disbelief. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Not so tough now, are you?” smirked Peter, hands on his hips.
“Let her go,” said Ethan.
Peter laughed. “Or what? You gonna bleed on me, Al?”
Tony sniggered. “Good one, Pete.”
“Yeah,” Rob agreed. “Good one.”
“Al here is gonna be the main course,” Peter said to Maggie. “I’m saving you for dessert.” He licked his lips.
Maggie spat into his face.
Peter licked the spittle away.
Ethan watched with a sinking heart. It was one thing to let himself be beaten by Peter and his goons without fighting back. That was his decision to make. But it was quite another to stand back and witness Maggie suffer a beating or worse for his sake. He found that he couldn’t let it happen. Something in him, that small voice that had spoken in the church, awoke again and recoiled.
No.
For an instant, Ethan’s vision sharpened beyond all possibility, and it was as if he were seeing into Peter. Into his mind. His heart. His very soul. In that glimpse, he saw a simple error. A flaw in how events had shaped him. Or perhaps it was more in the nature of a scar. But whatever it was, without thinking, instinctively, Ethan reached out and fixed it.
Peter gasped as if he’d been struck in the belly. All the color drained from his face, and his eyes lost their focus. He swayed as if he might fall.
Tony and Rob looked on in shock as, with a groan, Peter dropped to his knees.
“Pete?” said Tony. “Are you okay, man?”
Peter looked up. His eyes were no longer flecks of ice, flat and hard, reflecting everything like mirrors. Now it was as if the ice had melted, leaving pools of deep, pristine blue. The world seemed to pour into those eyes. “Let her go,” he said softly.
“Huh?” said Tony. “But—”
“I said let her go,” Peter said again, getting to his feet. He gazed at Ethan, and there was fear in his newborn eyes, along with something else, something very much like awe. Then he shook his head and looked away, as if staring at a bright light. He bent to retrieve his bike. “Come on, you guys,” he said as he mounted it. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Wow,” said Maggie as she watched the three of them ride off, Tony and Rob casting curious looks back, while Peter rode without turning his head even once. “That was weird.”
He was in Santa Fe when he received word through the usual channels. He had been there for som
e weeks, narrowing his leads in pursuit of a pregnant woman identified by Grand Inquisitor as the likely mother of a high potential.
But now it seemed there was another job for him.
A job of the utmost urgency.
Reports from Kansas indicated that a high potential there was coming into his powers.
The Antichrist was waking.
He was on a plane within hours.
CHAPTER 11
Sister Elena hesitated outside the door, smelling the pungent aroma of cigar smoke. The last time she’d been inside this room had been seven months ago . . . and the memories of everything that had passed between her and her father were still fresh and painful in her mind.
You’re crazy!
Kate, please listen. I—
You should see a shrink. Or a priest.
As soon as I’m back from Iraq, I’m going to get to the bottom of this . . .
She’d walked out. Turned her back on him and his sick delusions. Never dreaming that she would never see him again.
Now he was dead. Dead and buried thousands of miles away, back in South Carolina, in the private cemetery that held the bones of her ancestors and the ashes of her mother. He’d been laid to rest with an honor guard, the governor of South Carolina and the vice president of the United States in attendance. He was, they said, a hero.
Hero.
The word was like ashes on her tongue. The army had sent her a letter containing the citation accompanying his second, posthumous Silver Star. She’d thrown it away unread.
She hadn’t gone to the funeral.
She was an orphan now. Alone in the world.
Alone? No, God was with her.
He wasn’t through with her yet.
Sister Elena knew that God had taken Bill, just as He’d taken Glory. It was the punishment she’d called down on herself and her loved ones when she’d lost faith and courage and selfishly begged God to make someone else bear the burden of being the mother of His son. And God had answered her prayer.
But she hadn’t known what the consequences of that prayer were going to be. If she’d known, if she’d had even a glimmering of a suspicion what was going to happen, she never would have asked to be spared the fate for which God had chosen her. Now, because of her, Glory and Bill were dead.
And Ethan. Ethan had been the first to die.
Her beautiful son.
Sister Elena had only glimpsed him once, only held him briefly in her arms, before his damaged heart had stopped. And then she’d held him again, clutched his cold, dead body to her breast and wept until she’d thought that blood and not tears must be flowing from her eyes. But all her tears, all her prayers, hadn’t been enough to bring him back.
Years passed. Life at Santa Marta settled into a pattern that soothed her soul, even if it could not heal it, and there were days, entire weeks even, when Sister Elena forgot about the girl she had been, the girl who had been called Kate.
Then God had taken Glory.
At first, Sister Elena felt betrayed, as if God had broken the terms of some agreement between them. She’d raged and cursed, half mad with grief and anger. But of course there had been no agreement. Did God make deals with human beings? Even to imagine such a thing was a prideful sin. Thus had Sister Elena compounded her offense against God, and she’d trembled in anticipation of the punishment that was sure to follow. But as time went by, and the circumstances of her life continued unaltered, she’d once again become complacent. Forgotten that God does not forget.
And then her father had shown up out of the blue and told her that he thought Ethan was still alive. His words had been like a red-hot poker thrust into her wounded soul. They were unbearable.
Impossible.
Insane.
And yet . . . they had kindled hope in her. She didn’t believe them, but she wanted to believe. If only it were true, and Ethan were alive! She didn’t even want him back; it would have been enough, more than enough, to know that he existed somewhere, that he was healthy and loved. Oh, she tried not to think about it, tried not to imagine what kind of boy he must be, what he looked like, the sound of his voice, the color of his eyes, the smell of his hair. But she couldn’t help it. The idea of him alive was like fresh, pure water to her after years of wandering in the desert. She drank deeply of the thought of him.
And thus had she compounded her offense still further, for if Ethan really were alive, that must mean that God was a liar and a cheat—that He had played with her as a boy might play with a bug, torturing it for pure pleasure, just to watch it squirm. And not only that—it would mean that Papa Jim, Father Rinaldi, and everyone else at the convent was involved in a conspiracy against her, that they had stolen away her child, God’s child . . . Why? No answer made sense. Each possibility that came to her mind was crazier than the last.
Yet she couldn’t dismiss the doubts, the fantasies. Even though she knew they were mad. And worse, sinful. Like all temptations, they came from the devil. Sister Elena prayed for the strength to resist them. Prayed also that her father might find peace and acceptance, for she had no doubt it had been his inability to come to terms with Glory’s death that triggered his bizarre ideas about Ethan.
Then God had taken Bill.
Something broke in Sister Elena when she heard the news. It was Papa Jim who told her, in a telephone call from the States. She listened numbly, hardly speaking a coherent word, and then hung up on him. He’d called right back, but she’d refused to talk to him, nor had she talked to him since, though he’d called every single day, and Father Rinaldi and the abbess had both ordered her to do so.
Now he had come in person to see her.
He was on the other side of the door, in the room where she’d last seen her father, waiting for her just as Bill had waited seven short months ago . . .
Now Bill was dead.
Would Papa Jim be next?
She was afraid that God would take him too. That her grandfather was already as good as dead. And she couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t even warn him. She could only try to cut herself off from the loss, the pain. Protect herself, even if she couldn’t protect him.
But it wasn’t as easy as that. Papa Jim was a man used to getting his own way. And sure enough, here he was, and here she was, and there was only a thin door separating them, a door she was going to have to open and walk through sooner rather than later, even if it was just about the last thing she wanted to do.
Best to get it over with, she thought.
Taking a deep breath, Sister Elena opened the door and stepped into the room.
Papa Jim, who had been standing with his back to the door, gazing out the window at the Tuscan hills, turned sharply at the noise of her entrance, a hopeful expression on his face that nearly broke her heart to see, made her realize how selfish she’d been, concerned only with mitigating her own pain, while he was suffering too, his daughter and son-in-law gone, no one left to turn to for comfort but her. As soon as he realized it was her, he plucked the cigar from his lips and grinned hugely. “Hey there, baby girl.”
“Oh, Papa Jim.” And to her own surprise, she burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, honey,” he said, stubbing out his cigar on the window ledge and leaving it there as he advanced toward her, moving ponderously but with confidence. At sixty-three, he was heavier than ever but as vigorous as a man ten years younger. “Papa Jim’s here now.” He put his arms around her, enveloping her in the familiar smell of him: of aftershave, whiskey, and cigar smoke. It felt like coming home.
She clung to him for a time, until her sobs subsided enough for her to find her voice again. “I’m sorry, Papa Jim.”
“For what?”
“All those times you called, and I never . . .” She trailed off, ashamed.
He stepped back and regarded her. “It’s Bill, isn’t it?”
She looked at him quizzically.
“Honey, I don’t want to say anything against your dad. He was a brave man, a good husband and father
. A genuine American hero. But ever since your mother died, God rest her soul, he just wasn’t the same man. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
“He loved her so much . . .”
“We all did,” said Papa Jim. “But the thing is, your dad began to get some pretty strange ideas.”
“Strange?”
Papa Jim nodded. “For a long time, he believed that Glory was still alive. Even after her remains had been recovered and identified. He wouldn’t believe it was really her. Thought that she’d left him, run off with another man or something. Faked her own death.”
“I . . . I didn’t know that. He never told me.”
“I convinced him not to say anything to you until he had proof. And then I helped him look for it. Finally, he accepted that she was gone. That was when he quit Congress and joined the Rangers. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was determined to avenge her. Personally, I’d just as soon leave revenge to God. But even though I didn’t agree with what he was doing, I still prayed that it would work out, that being in the Army would help your dad come to grips with what had happened and see that his real responsibilities lay with the living, not the dead. But it didn’t turn out that way. Before he left for Iraq, he started in on something else.”
“Oh God,” Sister Elena breathed, suddenly understanding. “Dad came here with a crazy story about Ethan. Said he’d seen a letter or something on your desk, Papa Jim, and that Ethan wasn’t dead, that he was still alive . . .”
Papa Jim sighed heavily. “I thought maybe that was why you were refusing to talk to me. Because you believed him . . .”
“No, Papa Jim, no. I didn’t believe it. Oh God, I wanted to! I wished it could be true. But it was crazy. I told him so and walked out on him. It was the last conversation we had before . . . before . . .” She couldn’t go on.
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