Christiano felt suddenly worn and deflated. “Yes, Your Eminence.”
He said goodnight and left for his quarters.
Chapter 44
Stratton watched the crowd keeping vigil with their candles and shook his head. Already he felt the world slipping away into a terminal coma. Before long there would be no turning back. But what were people supposed to think? As far as they knew Christiano was the real deal. He could heal all their ailments, and he spoke eloquently with reason and compassion. His speeches may have been written for him, but he certainly knew how to work an audience.
Stratton rubbed his eyes and turned away from the window. He slipped his fingers under the dog collar and tried to loosen it. The disguise was uncomfortable both physically and mentally, but it was necessary to keep him from standing out.
Cronin and Desayer were sitting at opposite sides of the desk deep in thought. The three of them had been discussing their options for the last two days, but as yet had come up with nothing. However they looked at it there didn’t seem to be any feasible way of stemming the tide.
“Any sign of the Messiah?” asked Cronin.
“No,” said Stratton. “I think he’s probably called it a night.”
“Yes,” said Desayer. “I think you are right. Vittori told me earlier today that he was worried about overexposure. I expect he has sent Christiano to bed.”
Stratton sat down next to Cronin and poured himself a glass of water. His head hurt with thinking. His body, though, was still charged with energy. Whatever his opinion about the aims of the Church, there was an awful lot of good feeling circulating the globe. But he was only too aware that this was a honeymoon period.
“Perhaps it’s time that we retired as well,” suggested Cronin. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot happening at the moment.”
“You’re probably right,” agreed Stratton. “I reckon everything’s about done for the evening. There’s no point staying up all night if we don’t have to.”
They said their goodnights to Desayer and left for Cronin’s quarters. The corridor’s were unusually busy for the late hour and Stratton felt uneasy with the amount of traffic. He moved along with his head down, letting Cronin guide the way.
“You’re a bit paranoid aren’t you?” said Cronin. “I don’t think anybody’s going to recognize you here.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t want to take the risk. If I’m seen then that’s your cover blown, and Desayer’s.”
“You’re hardly an international figure.”
“No,” said Stratton, “I’m not. But think about it – if Vittori had people doing research on the box, my name could have come up at any time. And it’s not difficult to find pictures of people in this day and age, is it?”
“Point taken,” said Cronin. “I must be getting a bit lax.”
They rounded a corner. Stratton looked up and then straight back down again. He inched closer to the priest.
“What’s up?” whispered Cronin.
“Just keep moving.”
Cronin nodded politely to the men who walked past them.
“What was all that about?” he asked, opening the door to his room.
Stratton walked in and pulled off his collar. “Don’t you know who that was?”
“Sure, that was Jonathan Ayres, the British Prime Minister. What’s the problem? Is he a friend of yours?”
“No, I’ve never met him in my life. But I’ll bet he’s seen a photo of me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because it will have been in the report on the murder of his best friend, Henry Mulholland. I was heavily involved in the whole case, remember?”
“I’d forgotten about that. But you would just have been a face in a file. I doubt whether he’d have given you more than a second’s thought. He would have been happy that the killer had been found and would have got on with more important things – like running the country.”
Stratton sat down on the spare bed. “What’s he doing here anyway?”
“He’s been in Rome for the last week. Came over for a conference with the Italian Prime Minister. He’s often at the Vatican visiting the Pope. He’s a devout Catholic – I thought you’d know that.”
“Well yeah, I knew, but I didn’t realize he was over here so often. Does he know Cardinal Vittori?”
“He might do, I don’t really know.”
“I thought you’d been keeping an eye on things over here, and investigating all the cardinals and their associates.”
“As far as I could,” said Cronin defensively. “You can’t keep tabs on everybody all of the time. And besides, our prime concern was not to be found out ourselves. It’s difficult watching out for people when you’re under the microscope yourself.”
Realizing he’d caused offence Stratton backtracked. “Sorry Pat, I didn’t mean to question your capabilities. I’m just finding his presence here uncomfortable. I’m not sure why. He gives me the creeps.”
“Do you think he’s in on the whole thing?” asked Cronin.
“I’m not sure,” said Stratton. “But the more I think about it the more suspicious I’m getting. Firstly he was Henry Mulholland’s best friend, which should put him out of the frame of course, but he’s a politician and let’s face it – they don’t have real friends. To me it means that he was close enough to know about Henry’s family history. And secondly there was all this business with Jennings. He seems to think there was some internal plot to kill the Prime Minister, but if there was surely they would have succeeded by now? I’m more inclined to think that it was all a smokescreen for some other plan they had going. Bottom line is – I don’t trust the guy.”
Cronin poured himself a whiskey and sat down at his small writing desk. “You could be right,” he said. “It might all be coincidence of course, but I’m with you in the fact that I don’t trust him. Then again I don’t trust any politicians.”
Stratton laughed. “You and the rest of the world,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Cronin, sipping thoughtfully at his whiskey. His eyes lit up in sudden revelation. “But what if you were a politician with the backing of the Messiah – the Son of God? What then?”
“Exactly,” said Stratton. “I can hear his brain working now: Jonathan Ayres – divinely approved leader of the free world. God’s politician. He’s certainly got in here a lot quicker than the American President.”
“Like a rat up a drainpipe.”
Stratton lay down on the bed and closed his eyes in meditation.
Cronin swirled the remainder of his drink round the tumbler. “What did you want to do with your life before all this?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, before you discovered the symbols, before you discovered Reiki. Maybe when you were a kid. What was your ambition? What was your dream? What did you want to be when you grew up?”
Stratton broke into a smile. “Wow! That’s a question. I’d almost forgotten I was a child.” He paused. “I wanted to be a lot of things I guess. I suppose it depended on what I was into at the time. I remember at one point desperately wanting to be a snooker player, then later on in my teens I really wanted to compete at the Olympics. That all went to pot when I discovered drinking though, that’s when I lost all of my goals. What about you? What did you want to be?”
“When I was a kid I always wanted to be a rugby player,” said Cronin. “I wanted to play for Ireland at the World Cup and in the Six Nations. I used to dream of winning the Grand Slam as captain.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think I fell out of love with the game in my teens. I started getting more into books and poetry. I wanted to become the next James Joyce, although I think that might have been overestimating my ability. I would have been happy to be popular like Roddy Doyle.”
“Give me The Commitments over Ulysses any day,” said Stratton. “What happened to the writing then?”
“Life happened,” said Cronin. “I left hom
e and joined the army and that was that. I didn’t look back. I’ve started putting pen to paper again recently, but nothing solid, just a few bits and pieces.”
“Dreams fallen by the wayside,” Stratton mused. “The world’s just full of them. I guess we all wish we could go back and start afresh, and hold on to them longer.”
“Don’t we just,” agreed Cronin. “I think if I had my chance again I’d take rugby a bit more seriously.”
“What about the writing?”
“There’s too much thought involved. It’s thinking that stops people doing what they want to do. Thinking about consequences, thinking about not fitting in. There was something joyous and carefree about my love of rugby. I looked at it with a child’s wonder. I’d love to go back and look at things again through those eyes. Without the misery, without the knowledge. I think I’ve come to know too much. Don’t you ever want to forget what you know? Don’t you ever long for the day when the world was just the world, as plain and simple as you saw it – a miracle in itself without all these unseen powers? Sometimes I feel that as a race we’ve become so self-aware that it cripples us.”
“I agree with you. But I think that it’s all part of a circle. We become self-aware and then spend the rest of our lives learning why we shouldn’t be. There’s a line from T.S.Eliot’s Little Gidding that sums it up quite nicely – ‘We shall not cease from our exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’”
Cronin pondered the lines for a moment. “Nice words. I haven’t really read a lot of Eliot.”
“Me neither,” said Stratton. “I just heard the quote somewhere and took an instant liking to it. Like all the best poetry it’s simple and profound.”
Cronin looked at his watch. “I think it’s time to get some rest,” he said. He swigged down the rest of his whiskey. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Stratton didn’t reply. His mind was already far away, searching the universe for an answer he might never find.
Chapter 45
The euphoria had died down and the streets were somewhat subdued. The town seemed to be suffering from a religious hangover. At least that’s what Jenna thought as she made her way to work on Monday morning. Heads were drooped and eyes were pointed sharply at the pavement. It may not have been different to any other start of the week, but there was something in the air that made her anxious. An underlying atmosphere of fear that had taken hold of people’s frayed minds. At any moment she expected the sinister silence to boil over into murderous mayhem.
Her weekend had been troubled. After the emotional Saturday evening with Tariq she had gone to her parents’ house for Sunday lunch. They had been to church in the morning and had spent the afternoon eulogizing about the Messiah and how he was going to save the earth from the evil that pervaded it. Father Malone had told the congregation that he was truly the Son of God and that the day of reckoning was nigh, and that any false redeemer would have to kneel before him and subject themselves to his will. Already she could feel the animosity towards Islam building. She had decided it was not the best time to mention her burgeoning relationship with Tariq. The visit had been painful, but she had switched herself off and escaped with her sanity relatively intact.
Tariq too had spent the day with his mother and father. He had phoned her in the evening and they had talked for over two hours. His parents were of similar mind to her own but on the opposite side of the fence. They had rattled on about the false Messiah and how the Catholic Church was trying to fool the world with its wicked lies. They were sure that he would be exposed soon and have to account to the Mahdi and Allah.
Jenna strode into work, pleased to find some sanctuary from the outside world. “Morning Pami,” she chirped to the receptionist. “How was your weekend?”
Her greeting was rebuffed with an icy stare.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
Pami stared for a while longer and then, as if suddenly remembering her manners, she gave a frosty “good morning”. Jenna shrugged and went through to the office. She knew where the animosity was coming from, but was surprised at its force. Pami was a Muslim, but also open-minded, and they had been on good terms for a number of years. She was taken aback by the overnight change in relations.
She switched on her computer, made some coffee, and then sat down at her desk. Her boss, Bunty Singh, wasn’t due for another hour and she took the opportunity to log on to Facebook and catch up with the latest gossip. Unsurprisingly most of the chat was about the revelatory weekend. Everybody had an opinion about what had happened, and most of it was ill-thought-out nonsense. There were calls from the hard-line white contingent to get rid of the “rag-‘eads”, and there were calls from Islam to “kill the lying infidels”. Her inner circle of friends weren’t much better informed, but at least their ramblings were focused on the positive side. They were in awe of the whole thing with plenty of “OMGs” and “WTFs” thrown into the mix. She flicked through hoping to find a posting about something normal like boys or drinking.
Singh arrived early and was in sombre mood. He attempted a friendly greeting but it was lost in his world-weary eyes and drawn face.
“Not a good weekend then?” said Jenna.
“No,” said Singh. “Not a good weekend at all. Not good for anybody as far as I can see. The world’s gone absolutely crazy.”
“Tell me about it.”
Singh hung up his coat and went to pour a coffee. “I took Alice to the pub for lunch yesterday afternoon, and the amount of abuse I got you just wouldn’t believe. It wasn’t too bad at first, but then this group of idiots came in and saw me and started making comments about Pakis and Islam and how we should all be deported.”
“Didn’t you explain that you were a Sikh?”
“I didn’t get a chance. It’s absolutely ridiculous. The amount of ignorance in this town is unbelievable. The worst thing was that they weren’t exactly thugs – just normal blokes out for a Sunday afternoon drink.”
Jenna laughed. “I suppose it depends on what you define as normal. So – did they threaten you?”
“Not outwardly, but it was implied. I think they were trying to justify their actions on religious grounds. Although I doubt if any of them had been inside a church in their life.”
“That’s the thing isn’t it,” said Jenna. “Every idiot in the town is going to jump on the Catholic bandwagon. They’ve got a figurehead now, and a cause to fight for. Their lives and hatred have suddenly gained purpose.”
Singh shook his head. “I just don’t understand the sudden surge of animosity. It’s not like these leaders have incited any hatred.”
“No, but they’ve said enough to make people think about it. Neither side has condemned the other as yet, but it’s hanging in the air between the lines. And besides, do you really think the pricks in this town need to be told outright? They’ve seen the news – a white guy proclaiming to be the Son of God, and an Asian claiming more or less the same thing – what do you think is going through their heads? With all that’s happened this century - with 9/11 and 7/7 - what do you expect? To them this is just another threat to their liberty. They couldn’t give a shit about the religious side of things, it’s just an excuse to protect their interests.”
Singh sat down opposite Jenna. “It just all seems so crass,” he said. “I thought we were living in a more enlightened age.”
“You might be, Bunty, and so might your friends. But you’re from London and you have a slightly broader view of the world. I’ve grown up in this town remember, and I know exactly what the people here are like. Most of them are alright, and it’s certainly better than it used to be, but there’s still a large element of small-minded wankers. The problem is that the good people of the town are a silent majority.”
Singh nodded. “Yes, I suppose that I have too much faith in humanity.”
“I thought you would have lost that long ago in this business. I m
ean, look at all the people you have to represent in court.”
“If I didn’t have faith then I couldn’t represent them. If you don’t give people a chance then you will never combat fear and ignorance.”
Jenna was just about to speak when a loud smash burst through from the front of the building. It was followed by a scream. Bunty Singh leapt from his chair and tore out into reception. Jenna followed him.
The front window was destroyed, and the dark green carpet was covered in shattered glass. Pami was cowering behind her desk in tears. Jenna went to comfort her. Bunty surveyed the mess open-mouthed. Without thinking about evidence he picked up the large brick from the floor beneath him and unwrapped the message tied to it. It simply said: MUSLIM SCUM.
A stray shard of glass had hit Pami in the head and she was bleeding from her right temple. Jenna mopped the cut with a tissue and went to the cupboard to find the first-aid kit. She returned swiftly and set about cleaning the wound more thoroughly, picking out slivers of window with a pair of tweezers.
“Thank you,” said Pami, when Jenna had finished. “I don’t deserve your sympathy though.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Jenna. “Of course you do.” She turned to her boss who was absentmindedly picking glass off the floor. “What did the note say?” she asked.
He was about to answer when his partner Robert Harris walked through the door. “What the hell’s happened here?”
“Someone chucked a brick through the window,” said Jenna.
“What the hell for?” barked Harris. “Did you see who it was?”
“No, but they’ll be on the CCTV,” she said.
“Have you called the police yet?”
Jenna shook her head. She picked up the phone and dialled the local station. She watched as Singh dropped the pieces of glass and put his head in his hands. He looked broken, and this was just the start.
Chapter 46
Stella hobbled her way to the submarine’s dining room with Jennings obliging as a prop. She was still in pain, but felt that the sooner she got back on her feet the sooner she would make a recovery. She’d worked hard to get herself fit at the palace, and didn’t want the effort going to waste by lying in bed for days on end. Also, she didn’t want the men making plans without her.
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