Godsent

by Richard Burton

  Again, Gabriel’s words came back to her. God will provide. Well, He was going to get His chance, because she didn’t have any cash, wasn’t carrying a credit card, and didn’t have a plane ticket.

  Even if you score me a first-class seat to New York, she thought, it won’t mean I’m not angry at you anymore . . .

  But did she have the right to be angry? Everything she thought she knew had turned out to be wrong, a lie . . . and not a lie that God had told her, but lies told to her by men she’d trusted, men she’d loved. How could she blame God for the lies of men? Wasn’t it really her own lack of faith that was to blame? She’d been so sure that God had forsaken her that she’d turned it into a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. She’d blamed Him for Ethan’s death, which hadn’t even happened, and then nurtured all the bitterness of that belief like a poison that was also a drug, until she was addicted to it. Then it had been easy to blame God for her mother’s death, and for her father’s, as if He were in the revenge business. It had been comforting; so much easier to hate than to mourn, so satisfying to feel like the innocent victim of a divine vendetta, or even a not-so-innocent victim. But wasn’t she the one who had forsaken Him? Wasn’t that where all her troubles had begun, and hadn’t they only worsened when she’d persisted in her sin?

  Because that’s what it had been. A sin. The sin of pride. And maybe a few others, too. She realized that now. She saw it as clearly as she saw how Papa Jim had lied to her and manipulated her.

  She felt more deeply ashamed than she had ever felt in her life. There was no hiding from it, because there was no hiding from Him.

  At that moment, in the backseat of the rental car, as the Italian countryside slid by and pop music she didn’t recognize wafted from the satellite radio, Kate understood that she’d been given a second chance, and she swore to herself, and to God, that she would make the most of it. This time she would trust in God. She would have faith, or at least do her best to act that way.

  When they arrived at the Galileo airport in Pisa, Kate said good-bye to Sean and Dawn, leaving the young couple to return the rented car. Clutching her bag close, she entered the bustling terminal, uncertain of her next step. Should she call Papa Jim and ask him for the money for a ticket home? No, she didn’t trust him. Besides, she wanted to confront him face to face, to demand answers in a setting where he couldn’t brush her off.

  After the quiet and solitude of the convent, the airport, with its noise and color and crowds, was overwhelming. Kate felt lost and frightened. But she couldn’t just stand around helplessly. That would only draw the attention of the police, who patrolled the terminal with machine guns and bomb-sniffing dogs. She had to do something, but what?

  God will provide.

  He’d gotten her this far, hadn’t He? Was she going to abandon faith again, at the first moment of difficulty?

  There was a flight leaving for New York. Taking a deep breath, Kate got in the line for boarding. It moved quickly, or at least it seemed that way to Kate, who had no idea what she was going to do when she reached the checkpoint and had to produce a ticket. By the time she reached the front of the line, she was trembling and nearly sick with apprehension. She could still back out. It wasn’t too late.

  But then it was.

  “Il biglietto,” said the woman behind the counter.

  Kate gave her a weak smile.

  The woman smiled back. “ Grazie.” And handed her a seat assignment.

  Kate was too stunned to do anything but take the paper and nod. She passed through the scanner without incident, and soon found herself aboard the plane—in economy class. Maybe God has a sense of humor after all, she thought as the plane taxied down the runway.

  Father O’Malley couldn’t believe his luck. After he’d brought news of the miracle to Cardinal Ehrlich, the old man had entered the private residence of Pope Peter II without dismissing him. He hadn’t dared to leave on his own authority, and so had waited on tenterhooks for the return of the head of his order, the man who was the oldest and closest friend of His Holiness and, thanks to that, the most powerful man in all of Christendom after the pope himself. As the minutes stretched, he couldn’t stop himself from strolling about the richly appointed antechamber, which was a virtual museum of art and artifacts, some of which, he knew, were priceless, utterly unknown to scholarship or presumed lost or destroyed over the centuries. It was a veritable treasure trove: oil paintings by Titian, da Vinci, and Picasso; a small bronze equestrian statue by Rodin, a mother and child by Michelangelo; leather-bound volumes by Machiavelli, Tielhard de Chardin, and John Paul II. It was an eclectic collection, to be sure . . . but that only made it seem all the more wondrous to him. He felt like Aladdin in the cave of the forty thieves. Only, unlike Aladdin, he knew better than to try and steal anything. He didn’t even dare slide one of the books out and open it. Such was the discipline of his order. And his fear of Cardinal Ehrlich.

  At last, after twenty minutes or so, the cardinal returned, looking harried, his gray eyes sunken. He seemed annoyed to see O’Malley. “What, you still here?”

  O’Malley bowed low. “Pardon, Your Eminence. I wasn’t sure if you had dismissed me.”

  Ehrlich waved a skeletal hand. “No matter. You’re here now. Watch and learn. But hold your tongue unless His Holiness addresses you. Is that understood?”

  He bowed again. As he looked up, the pope entered the room, drying his hands on the front of his robes. Pope Peter II was the first American to be raised to the Throne of St. Peter, and also the first in the history of the Church to take the name of the first pope, which he had done, he said, in order to demonstrate that Rome under his papacy would be hostage no longer to either superstition or senseless tradition, and that, after two thousand years, it was past time to pay proper homage to the great apostle whom Christ himself had placed at the head of the Church. The sixty-three-year-old pontiff cut an imposing figure, much beloved of cartoonists: No more than five-six, he was hugely, almost grotesquely fat, and as a consequence he moved with the slow deliberation of a tortoise. Yet the mind within that monumental flesh was supple and quick, as his opponents and enemies, both inside and outside the church, had discovered to their regret.

  “Your Holiness,” said Cardinal Ehrlich brusquely as the pope cast a questioning glance toward O’Malley, “one of my young priests, Father O’Malley, a devoted servant of the Congregation and of Christ. He brought the news from Grand Inquisitor.”

  Peter II nodded to O’Malley and languidly stretched out his hand, which bore an unfortunate resemblance to a bloated and beringed white toad. Fighting down his revulsion, the priest pressed his lips to the Ring of the Fisherman, unable to avoid touching the pasty skin. He smelled a faint perfume, which for some reason caused him to blush furiously as he raised his head.

  “Father O’Malley,” said the pope, seeming to take as little note of him as humanly possible through his heavy-lidded eyes. “You have brought news of great, I would even say historic, import.”

  “I pray that I may continue to be of service, Your Holiness,” he said.

  The pope blinked in response, then glanced toward Cardinal Ehrlich, who motioned sharply for O’Malley to find some less conspicuous space to occupy. He did so, retreating to a curtained alcove.

  “Not there, O’Malley,” hissed the cardinal, gesturing with something in his hand.

  “Excuse me, Your Eminence,” he said, moving away with alacrity as the curtain unexpectedly parted to reveal the largest flat-screen television O’Malley had ever seen; the thing was nearly the size of a movie screen. On it, the faces of a woman and a young man loomed almost frighteningly large.

  “Sound,” said the pope.

  Cardinal Ehrlich raised the device again, and O’Malley suddenly realized it had to be a remote, a circumstance he found more astonishing than if it had turned out to be a fragment of the true cross. Sound blasted from concealed speakers, and Ehrlich quickly lowered the volume.

  “You claim to be responsib
le for the Miracle of Olathe Medical,” the woman was saying.

  “That’s right,” said the man.

  “And you say that you raised your own mother from the dead.”

  “You can ask her about that yourself when she wakes up.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” said the pope, and Ehrlich obediently turned off the sound, though the images continued to flicker across the screen.

  To O’Malley’s great surprise and discomfort, Peter II turned to him. “Well, O’Malley? What do you make of it?”

  He forced himself to speak, conscious of the cardinal’s glare. “The young man is obviously deluded, Your Holiness.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because only God could be responsible for the healing of all those people.”

  “Or the devil, O’Malley,” said the pope. “Don’t forget that the Antichrist will perform wondrous signs and acts when he appears. He will be a wolf in shepherd’s clothing. Sound.”

  Ehrlich raised the remote, and the sound resumed.

  “There will always be those who doubt and deny, Rita. I’m here to give people hope, to demonstrate the power of faith.”

  “And how do you mean to do that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I don’t mind at all. But I’m not going to tell you.”

  “I didn’t think you could.”

  “If you really want to know, come back this afternoon. I’ll be holding a press conference here at the house.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Nor shall we,” growled the pope. “Ehrlich, this must be nipped in the bud, is that understood?”

  Cardinal Ehrlich once again killed the sound. “Yes, Your Holiness. But—”

  “No excuses,” Peter II snapped, cutting him off. “This boy, this Ethan Brown, is extraordinarily dangerous. He must be stopped. At any cost.”

  “Yes, Your Holiness.”

  “I’ll be in my chambers, consulting with Grand Inquisitor. Come back for the press conference; we’ll watch it together.”

  “Yes, Your Holiness.”

  With a nod to O’Malley, the pope returned to his apartments.

  When he had gone, O’Malley cleared his throat. “Pardon, Your Eminence. But could it really be true? Could that young man be the Antichrist?”

  “Oh, it could be much worse than that, O’Malley,” said Cardinal Ehrlich.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, he could be exactly what he says he is. The Son of God.”

  “But—but then . . .”

  “Yes?” said the cardinal.

  O’Malley was suddenly certain that his entire career rested on the next words that came out of his mouth. He even had a disagreeable sensation that his very life might depend on them. “Er, nothing, Your Eminence.”

  “Are you quite sure you didn’t have something to say, O’Malley? Some objection to raise, perhaps?”

  “No, Your Eminence.”

  Cardinal Ehrlich studied him for a disconcertingly long time through those cold gray eyes before he seemed satisfied. If the pope’s gaze had been crocodilian, that of the cardinal suggested a different but no less deadly species: the shark. “Very well. You may return to your duties. I need hardly add that everything you have been witness to here is to be held in the strictest confidence, as though it were under the seal of the confessional.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence. I understand.”

  “I believe you do, O’Malley,” said the cardinal with a smile.

  Papa Jim lit a fresh cigar and sat back in the plush leather recliner in his office in the bowels of the White House, another of the perks of his position at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security. He had learned in his time in the government that the higher the level of one’s political influence, the lower one’s access extended below ground, where the only truly safe refuge lay, beyond the reach of nuclear and biological weapons. His access reached as deep as the president’s, and indeed even deeper, for there were vast spaces beneath the White House, where the excavated depths gave way to natural caverns that, for all anyone knew, extended all the way to the center of the Earth, and these sepulchral domains were the provenance of Homeland Security, at least on paper, although Papa Jim had never had the slightest interest in exploring them.

  What concerned him today lay not at the center but on the surface of the planet. At his side was a glass with two fingers of Aberlour, his favorite scotch whisky. The entire wall opposite him was a vast LCD screen that could be broken up into any number of smaller displays, a real advantage on Sundays during football season. However, it was now showing a single broadcast across its entirety: the CNN feed of the mob scene outside the Brown residence in Olathe, Kansas. Papa Jim had just muted the volume; he didn’t need to hear whatever inanities the local media heads were spouting. His own two eyes told him more than they ever could. Plus the voice of Denny, whom he’d shipped out to head the operation in person and who, since his arrival on the scene an hour ago, had been in continual contact via wireless cochlear implant.

  Moving into position, his voice scratched inside Papa Jim’s head now, like a fly that had crawled into his ear and taken up residence there.

  There was no reason to reply to that, so he didn’t. Besides, he always felt foolish conducting conversations via implant; he imagined that he must look like a crazy person, muttering under his breath to no one at all.

  Almost two hundred people were milling around outside the house, a modest single-family dwelling in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood. The street in front of the house had been cordoned off by the local police, and munchies had established security checkpoints on all the roads feeding in to the neighborhood. IDs were being checked. Some arrests, mostly for outstanding immigration-related warrants, had been made. Helicopters hovered overhead.

  Papa Jim wanted to project an image of security and control . . . but not too much of either. He wanted people to feel safe . . . but not too safe. When people felt too safe, they started thinking for themselves, started questioning the ones who were out there protecting them. Papa Jim had become an expert at giving people a sense of security at the same time that he kept them afraid. It was a fine line, but nobody walked it better.

  In addition to the munchies in their distinctive dark visors and white armor, he had dispatched Conversatio agents into the throng, and from time to time he spotted a familiar face as the agents blended in with those gathered to cover, watch, or protest the upcoming press conference. No doubt there were other Conversatio agents present whose faces were unknown to him. He knew too that Congregation agents were infiltrating the crowd, and he tried to guess as his eyes flicked over the screen who they might be, though in fact he wasn’t overly concerned about their presence. He believed he understood the way his adversaries thought, the way Grand Inquisitor made its moves in this intricate, high-stakes chess game they were playing, and he was convinced that no attempt would be made on Ethan’s life in such a public arena. The Congregation would be observing for now, taking Ethan’s measure, probing for the presence of Conversatio. They would not act precipitously; too much was at stake. If the Congregation and Grand Inquisitor understood one thing, it was patience, and that went double for Cardinal Ehrlich, the head of the order, a man with ice water in his veins. Papa Jim was no stranger to patience himself, but sometimes it could be a weakness as well as a virtue, and this was one of those times. Papa Jim had a window of opportunity, and he meant to take full advantage of it.

  As news of the Miracle of Olathe Medical had spread via the media, Internet, and old-fashioned word of mouth, a palpable excitement had taken root in Olathe and, indeed, the rest of the country, a sense of edgy anticipation that Rita Rodriguez’s exclusive interview with Ethan had stoked to a fever pitch. The people gathered outside the modest Brown home—which looked exactly like every other home on the street, with a well-tended lawn and a garden that had no doubt been lovely before hundreds of feet had trampled over it—were a mixed gro
up. But all of them seemed to be in the grip of an energy that Papa Jim could feel even through the TV screen. There was a palpable buzz, a thrum of barely repressed emotion that, he knew, needed only a spark to set it off. Of course, any fool with a match could trigger an explosion. The trick was to channel it, guide that destructive energy into a constructive application.

  But for all its incipient energy, the crowd was still peaceful. There were small groups holding up signs and placards with hand-lettered or computer-printed messages like “Antichrist!” and “Blasphemer,” and other groups with signs that proclaimed “The Kingdom of God is at Hand” and “We Luv U Ethan!” The police and munchies had done a good job of keeping the opposing groups apart, though not so far apart that a lot of shouting back and forth wasn’t going on. Some people had brought guitars and other musical instruments and were leading sing-alongs, everything from “My Sweet Lord” to “Kum Bay Yah” to “If I Had a Hammer.” It was the last of these that had compelled Papa Jim to turn off the TV volume just moments ago. He’d always hated that damn song.

  Papa Jim caught sight of the man that he and Denny had chosen for the job. He was one of those guys who was so average looking that you forgot him entirely as soon as you weren’t looking at him, and even when you were, you barely even saw him at all. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five, and, depending on how he carried himself, from five foot seven to six feet tall. Papa Jim had already glimpsed him a couple of times on the TV screen, only to lose sight of him moments later as he slid chameleonlike in and out of the crowd. Guys like that were rare and invaluable in his present line of work. They didn’t come cheap, either. Especially for this job, because once it was over, that nondescript face would be plastered everywhere, and nobody was going to forget it anytime soon, if ever. This guy, who went by the name of Tefflon, like he thought he was a damn superhero or villain or something, wasn’t stupid, and so he’d asked for quite a lot of money up front, more than the job itself was worth, because he’d known that it would mean the end of his usefulness to men like Papa Jim, at least for a very long time. And Papa Jim, being a businessman at heart, had understood and agreed to the price without haggling, depositing it in an offshore bank account as directed. If everything went according to plan, he’d consider it a bargain. And he had every confidence that things would go according to plan. When it came to his plans, they generally did.