Crucified

by Michael Slade

  "Where are we, Balls?"

  "ETA on target is five minutes, Skipper."

  Jerks and rumbles shook the plane as the bomb doors opened with grim determination. Until now, they'd flown a gently weaving course to counter defenses. From here on, Wrath would trim the Ace straight and level.

  "Pilot to bomb-aimer."

  "They're in my sights, Skipper."

  "It's all yours, Nelson."

  "Left. Steady. Right a bit. Hold it there," the bomb-aimer said, correcting their flight path.

  Down in the nose compartment, Russ Trafalgar—Nelson to his chums—hunched over his bombsight, zeroing in on the country estate that Bomber Command wished blown to hell and gone.

  "Bombs going!" he announced, pressing the release button with his gloved thumb.

  Relieved of its heavy cargo, the Halifax bomber seemed to rear up in the sky. As the rain of ruin fell on the ground below from fourteen thousand feet, the bomb-aimer snapped the photographic proof of their successful mission. Without it, the operation wouldn't count toward the thirty-ops total that would see them "screened" out of active duty. Every op completed was a flight out of danger.

  Beneath the thundering noise of the four-engine bomber, the target area burst into flames. The scene of savage destruction took on a garish beauty; the rural estate was a patchwork of black smoke and livid red bonfires. As the bomb doors rumbled shut so the Ace could bank for home, streaks suddenly slashed through the darkness and the fuselage shuddered under a withering hail of close-range cannon fire. Staccato shock waves shook the back of Wrath's seat like the strokes of a jackhammer.

  "Fighter! Fighter! Corkscrew starboard, Skipper!"

  Nothing got hearts racing faster in the bomber than the sound of uncontrolled panic in someone's voice. Ack-Ack's warning was accompanied by a stuttering torrent of noise as German shells tore into the tail section. Out of nowhere, the Junkers Ju 88 appeared, closing in fast with its nose guns blazing. They weren't flashing " Willkommen" in Morse code.

  Instinctively, Wrath thrust the control column forward, twisting the ailerons to put the plane into a violent dive. In the second it took to stand the Ace on its wing, the night fighter raked the bomber again at point-blank range. The plane shivered and rattled as it absorbed the punishment from that six-gun barrage, and the heavy vibration of a long burst fired from its own mid-upper turret shook the instrument panel in front of Wrath to a blur.

  So steep was the dive to starboard that parachute packs, navigation instruments, and other loose gear flew about as if weightless. Wrath's legs felt light and the harness straps pressed hard into his shoulders. The Nazi night fighter overshot the cockpit, and Wrath saw the black crosses under its wings.

  The howls of the Junkers' engines jarred his teeth.

  The freefall ended abruptly as Wrath wrenched the bomber up into a sharp climb. The standard tactic used to shake off a prowl-ing fighter was called a corkscrew. Diving, climbing, turning, weaving, and using plenty of throttle, the pilot would constantly change the bomber's direction, speed, and altitude to hamper the gunsights of the Ju 88. Now, as the Ace cleaved the sky with its berserk twisting, the exertion left Wrath drenched in sweat.

  "The bugger's at ten o'clock high, Skipper. Here he comes again!" warned Nelson.

  From the corner of his eye, Wrath glimpsed the thin silhouette of the two-engine fighter against the moon. The blackness of the outline masked the swastika on its tail. Jutting from its nosecone was an array of chessboard-shaped antennae that fed airborne radars designed for hunting and killing the warriors of the night sent by Bomber Command.

  Warriors like these seven.

  Hosing streams of tracers before it like incandescent fastballs, the Ju 88 came at them full throttle. His heart in overdrive, Wrath felt as if the cannons were spitting in his face, with each shot aimed between his eyes. But in fact, the fighter again poured all it had into their arse end.

  "Get him, gunners!" urged Ox.

  But their weapons were of limited value against a night fighter at the best of times. And now, for some reason, neither turret opened up with a spray. Were both gunners dead? The rear gunner was certainly in the fighter's line of fire. Had the interrupter gear failed the mid-upper at the worst moment?

  "Hang on!" Wrath yelled as the incoming Junkers gave the Ace a working-over, its machine guns chewing chunks out of tail fins, rudders, and elevators. Once more, he tried to corkscrew into a steep dive, but the control stick went sloppy in his hands, wagging loosely without response from the ailerons. When he pushed the rudders, the plane refused to yaw. Unable to bank or turn, the skipper wondered if the cables had snapped.

  Strangely, the night fighter didn't close in for the kill. With adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. Wrath watched it stop firing and break off its attack, the roar of the engines fading as it dashed out into the darkness. There, it circled while the crippled bomber fought a losing battle to fend off the clutch of gravity.

  Down . . .

  Down . . .

  Down . . .

  The bomber was losing altitude it couldn't afford to spare—

  five to seven hundred feet per minute, by Wrath's reckoning.

  Though he tugged on the wheel with all his strength, the plane wouldn't level up. When the altimeter read eight thousand feet, he was forced to decide. He had to leave enough time for the crew to pop the hatches and push themselves out into the slipstream.

  He couldn't let them fall too low for their parachutes to open.

  "Pilot to crew. Bail out."

  Whatever they had bombed, Wrath hoped it was worth it.

  The Ace of Clubs was going to crash in Nazi Germany.

  DESCENT FROM THE CROSS

  NEW YORK, NOW

  With his left hand overlapping the ring on his right, the Secret Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church stood in the painting gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and admired The Lamentation, a ten-by-fourteen-inch masterpiece by Petrus Christus of Bruges. Dressed in a single-breasted black clerical suit, with a black Roman collar throated by the usual white square and a simple pectoral cross hanging from a silver chain, he looked like any parish priest serving Manhattan's faithful. His black hair and dark features complemented his clothes. In fact, the Spaniard had never worn the skullcap, three-ridged biretta, and blood-red choir dress—the color a symbol of his willingness to die for his faith—of his Vatican office. His faith—like that of most Catholics—embraced the Trinity of God, the divinity of Jesus, and salvation through living a good and unsinful life.

  Unlike the cardinal bishops, cardinal priests, and cardinal deacons who elect the pope, and whose names are published for the faithful to see, this man was a cardinal in pectore—Latin for "in the breast"—whose secret crusade was so fraught with peril that his identity was known only by the pope and God.

  Hidden in The Lamentation was the reason why.

  "Can you see the oval?" asked a voice with a hint of a German accent.

  "No," replied the emissary from the Vatican. He turned to face the sickly man who'd joined him by the painting.

  The Secret Cardinal exposed his ring.

  "Eminence," the second man whispered. Bowing toward the proffered hand, he performed the baciamano, kissing the ring that bound the cardinal to the pope. The magnificent band stretched from the knuckle of the cardinal's third finger to its first joint. It depicted the crucifixion of Jesus, with the Virgin Mary and St. John at his side.

  The cardinal covered his ring once more. "Interpret the oval," he said, returning his attention to the Christus painting.

  That, too, was code.

  Akin to a secret handshake.

  Gaunt and pale, his body ravaged by leukemia, the Art Historian to the Secret Archives of the Vatican had selected The Lamentation as their meeting place because it effectively illustrated the threat to the Catholic Church. What he was about to explain would make the need for this secret meeting clear.

  "The painting dates from about 1450," said t
he dying man.

  "None of the four gospels in the New Testament describes the removal of Jesus from the cross, or the grieving over his body once it was stretched out on the ground. For that, we have to go to medieval texts like Meditations on the Life of Christ. There, we learn that Joseph of Arimathea had trouble extracting the right-hand nail because it was long and so firmly attached to the wood. He passed it down to St. John as Nicodemus pulled out the left-hand nail. Finally, pincers withdrew the nail from Christ's feet."

  There was no need to comment on the instruments of the Passion: the crown of thorns; the three nails, hammer, and pincers in the foreground; and the cross behind. Like the skull at the foot of the cross, all were common Catholic icons. The skull symbolized where Christ was crucified: Golgotha meant "place of the skull" in Aramaic, and Calvary was Latin for "skull." It also represented Adam—the first man to suffer death—and therefore reflected the belief that Jesus died on the spot where Adam was buried. Thus Christ's sacrifice completed the arc of human history that began when Adam fell from grace by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

  "John's is the only account of the Passion in which Nicodemus plays a part. He brought the herbs for embalming the body," said the Secret Cardinal.

  The Art Historian nodded. "That's Nicodemus holding up the shroud at Christ's feet. St. John is catching the fainting Virgin Mary, with Mary Magdalene reaching out to help. And the bearded man supporting Christ's head is Joseph of Arimathea. The inspiration for this painting appears to be the Gospel of John, chapter 19, verses 33 to 41."

  Though Joseph of Arimathea wasn't a disciple, he was authorized to take Jesus's body down from the cross, and he brought the shroud in which to wrap it. He had rights to an unused tomb near Golgotha, and that's where he laid the body of Christ to rest. The tomb was a cave hollowed out of rock, and Joseph had it sealed by rolling a boulder across the mouth. The morning after the Sabbath, the cave was found to be empty. Christ's burial shroud was left behind, and the faithful believe that shroud is the Shroud of Turin.

  "The interlocking figures form the oval," explained the Art Historian, gesturing at the painting. "It begins with Nicodemus holding the foot of the shroud, dips with the limp Savior on the sheet, then rises as Joseph of Arimathea supports his head.

  Mary Magdalene frames the arch with her arms, and St. John tops it above. Note how the Virgin Mary's fainting emulates the pose of her lifeless son."

  "Compassio and co-redemptio," the cardinal said.

  "By giving them equal prominence in The Lamentation, Christus equates the Virgin's emotional torment with Christ's physical suffering. The Virgin Mary is the mother Church, so Mary's in the oval, at the center of the painting. Here, Christ's body rests not in her lap—as it normally does in the Pieta—but on the white shroud. That connects it to the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is performed at every church altar for Mass."

  The Eucharist ritual dates back to the Last Supper. All four gospels describe Jesus taking some bread, blessing it, and breaking it into pieces. "Take, eat, this is my body," he says, distributing the morsels to his disciples. Then he blesses a cup of wine. "Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenanting, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin. Do this in remembrance of me."

  The following day, he was crucified.

  "Of all the dogmas of our Church, none is more difficult to grasp than Transubstantiation," said the Art Historian. "How does the Holy Spirit descend over the altar and change the wafer and wine of the Eucharist into the actual body and blood of Christ?

  The Lamentation probably once served as an altarpiece, to help church-goers connect the Host with the body of Christ. Just as the Host sits on the altar cloth, so Christ rests on the shroud in the Christus painting. Just as the priest raises the Host during Mass, so Joseph and Nicodemus prepare to lift Christ's body in the painting. And just as Transubstantiation turns the wafer into the body of Christ to redeem the faithful, so the raising of Christ's body in The Lamentation leads to his Resurrection."

  Despite the Art Historian's illness, his eyes gleamed with hope.

  The Secret Cardinal frowned. The longer he stared at the painting, the deeper he feared for his Church. It had suffered a blow to its primacy from the Great Schism of 1054, when Orthodox Christians broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. It had suffered a greater blow from the Protestant Reformation, that mass exodus of rebellious Christians away from control by the pope and the Vatican. It had suffered an even greater blow from Darwin's heresy, the theory that man was created by evolution, and not—as depicted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—by the hand of God. This, however, might be the greatest blow of all, the fatal nail in the Vatican's coffin. Every element of the possible threat from the Judas conspiracy was depicted in The Lamentation.

  "What makes you suspect this British bomber is connected to Judas?" asked the Secret Cardinal.

  "In March 1944, my father warned Judas to keep his discovery secret from the Nazis," said the Art Historian. "The rumor is that Judas conspired with Churchill to smuggle a package to Britain in the hands of a secret agent who'd been parachuted into the Reich. The Ace of Clubs was shot down in March 1944, on the same night that a Junkers 88 was given extraordinary orders to cripple an RAF Halifax on a solitary run in a way that would kill no crewmen except the rear gunner. Plus there's this." From inside his overcoat, the older man withdrew an article taken from the Internet. "This appeared in a British tabloid as you were flying across the Atlantic."

  "Link to 'Judas' Traitor Discovered?" read the headline.

  Below that was a photograph of Mick Balsdon, followed by an interview with the octogenarian survivor of a Second World War Halifax bomber recently uncovered in eastern Germany.

  The cardinal read the interview. "The connection to Judas could be the fantasy of an old man, fueled by rumor," he concluded.

  "Can we risk not investigating?" asked the Art Historian.

  "If the resurrected bomber yields a map to the Judas package, Christendom might be rocked to its two-thousand-year-old foundations."

  Again, the Secret Cardinal eyed the painting. "You have a plan?" he asked.

  "We need someone to investigate who—how shall I put it?—won't be afraid to cut the Gordian knot."

  The cardinal stroked his chin.

  "We need a crusader," the historian pressed.

  The Secret Cardinal of the Inquisition fingered his ring.

  "The man I'll send is a legionary of Christ."

  WYATT ROOK

  LONDON

  The next day

  You never know who you'll meet at a book signing. Even in a bookshop like the Unknown Soldier.

  Wyatt Rook knew the story about the obsessed fan who plunked a copy of a horror writer's latest novel down on the signing table, handed the author a genuine quill pen, then slapped his own arm down on the surface and slashed his wrist with a razor.

  "Hey, man," said the ardent reader. "Sign it in blood."

  Facing a nut with a bloody razor in his grasp, the scribe wisely dipped the nib into the gash, smiled at his number-one fan, and said, "To whom shall I autograph it, sir?"

  But that was horror fiction.

  That was to be expected.

  Wyatt's line of work was much more staid.

  Alas, no groupies.

  At least not until the TV show came out.

  Wyatt was a vagabond. He wandered the world in search of his next subject, and when he found something worthy of his attention, he stayed in that spot for as long as it took him to research. He did, however, own the top floor of a brownstone in New York: the loft in the Manhattan residence of his best friend, Jack, and the unrequited love of Wyatt's life, his best friend's wife.

  Love is the fart

  Of every heart:

  It pains a man when 'tis kept close, And others doth offend, when 'tis let loose.

  How true, poet Suckling, he thought.

  The loft was an open li
brary of floor-to-ceiling shelves, an archive of every book Wyatt'd owned since he was a boy.

  Study the titles and you'd have a road map of his mind.

  A hideaway bed pulled down from the wall for when he was in the Apple.

  Home enough.

  "So I'm sitting at the signing table," Jack had said one night when the three of them were having fondue in the brownstone, "and this meek, downcast woman fumbles her copy of my latest thriller when she's putting it down for me to autograph. As she grabs it, her sleeve pulls back to reveal scars on her wrist.

  She tugs it down quickly, but not quickly enough to hide the slashes from me."

  "Attempted suicide?" asked Val. The way she arched her eyebrow broke her secret admirer's heart.

  "Slashing," Jack replied. "Each cut's a cry for help. Slashers don't slit deep enough to kill themselves."

  "It's a coping mechanism," Wyatt said, lifting his fork from the pot of bubbling oil. "The pain of self-mutilation dulls emotional distress."

  "Thank you, Freud," said Jack. "Are you going to drink from the bottle, or will you share the wine?"

  These two had been ribbing each other since they met at boarding school. Jack had attended because his parents were Ivy League, while Wyatt had scraped through on a trust fund because his parents were dead. Why his dad had vanished remained a national security secret. His mother's death the following day was said to be suicide.

  Wyatt didn't believe it.

  His mom had loved him too much.

  As he refilled Val's glass from the bottle of Beaujolais, her phantom lover drank in her aura with his eyes.