Crucified

by Michael Slade

  Masochist, he thought.

  "I glance up," Jack continued, "and take in her troubled face. As I sign the book to Greta—that, she said, was her name—I hear a muttered comment.

  '"What was that?' I ask.

  "'Nothing,' she replies.

  ' " I ' m sure I heard you say, "Thanks for giving me back my life." What does that mean?'

  '"Forget it.'

  '"You can't leave me in suspense,' I argue. 'You must tell me, Greta.'

  '"I hurt myself,' she mumbles.

  '"So I see.'

  '"I don't cut deep. But yesterday was different.'

  "'Why?'

  ' " M y mom was sick a long time and died at home. There were lots of pills near her bed. I was going to take them to end my pain. I was sitting on the sofa with the pills in my hand, about to wash them down with a quart of milk, and that's when I saw the ad by my feet. It said you'd be signing your new book here. You left your hero to die at the end of the last one. I didn't want to die myself without knowing if he did too, so I put off taking the pills until I read this novel. The truth is I feel much better today, so thanks for giving me back my life.'

  "And with that, she clutched the book to her chest and shuffled out the door."

  "Damn!" said Wyatt. "I don't get fans like that."

  "You write history, buddy. We know how your books end.

  I'm in the adrenaline-rush biz."

  "You just let her go?" asked Val.

  Jack shook his curly thatch. "If I had, she might be topping herself even as we eat. I called her back to the table. 'Know what a blood pact is?' I asked. She shook her head. 'It's a promise you can't break, Greta, because it's sealed in blood.

  Well, I have a blood pact for you.' I encircled her scarred wrist with my thumb and index finger. 'That's the blood,' I said. 'The pact is this: If you promise me you won't try to kill yourself again, I swear I'll never stop writing books for you. Deal?'

  "Greta thought about it. Finally, she said, 'Deal.'"

  Jack turned to his wife and shrugged. "Sorry, Val. It seems I dealt our retirement away."

  Overlapping her hands on her heart, Val batted her eyes.

  "My hero," she said with a falsetto voice. "You deserve something special for that."

  They were still in bed when Wyatt left the following morning. He flew from JFK to Heathrow to promote the British edition of his latest book, and hopefully to clinch a deal for his TV show. That's why he was signing in the Unknown Soldier, a bookstore just off Charing Cross Road.

  "Hello, Mr. Rook. My name's Liz Hannah."

  Wyatt gazed up from the table to greet the next person in line, but instead of an armchair general smelling of pipe tobacco, he found himself face to face with an eyeful of cleavage. A knockout in her mid-twenties—about five years younger than he was—Liz was attractive enough to give Val a run for her money, and she'd spent the cash to purchase all three of his books.

  White Sands.

  Black Rain.

  And his latest, Dresden.

  "These look read."

  "They are. Purchased weeks ago. After I saw the DVD of your TV show."

  "You work in broadcasting?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "Liz with a zee? Or just my signature?"

  Some people got his books signed with an eye to selling them to collectors. Others were after a dedication as proof they'd met the author.

  "Mr. Rook," Liz said, "I have a proposition. Will you join me for tea once you finish here?"

  + + +

  The teashop was just a hole in the wall, selected because it was three doors down from the Unknown Soldier and Wyatt had more publicity appearances to make.

  "A Brit usually asks a Yank to coffee," he said, perusing the menu.

  "You drink coffee in the morning and tea from noon on,"

  Liz replied.

  "Where did you learn that?"

  "Here and there. The Internet. New York papers."

  "Am I being stalked?"

  "Yes, and now you're in my clutches. I know a lot about you, Mr. Rook."

  "Like what?"

  "You have both a law degree and a Ph.D. in history. Your doctoral thesis was on conspiracies. You parlayed that into two bestselling books. White Sands shows how the Pentagon whitewashed Wernher von Braun so he could arm America with nuclear missiles and later put a man on the moon. Black Rain reveals how President Truman set the Japanese up for atomic destruction so he could bend Stalin to his will in postwar Europe. Having put your boots to homegrown conspiracies, you're now going after Bomber Command for the firebombing of Dresden in the final months of the Second World War."

  "That bothers you?"

  "Not in the least. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.

  That's what I need."

  "Tea?" asked the waitress, notepad in hand.

  "Please." Liz ordered, shifting her attention. "And bring an Eccles cake for the gentleman."

  "Is that on the Internet too?" Wyatt asked.

  "It's in the Post photo. There's an Eccles cake on the table in front of you."

  "You're observant."

  "I like to know what I'm buying."

  As she left the table, the waitress threw Wyatt a scowl reserved for gigolos.

  "From what I gather, you're a bit of a ladies' man," Liz continued. "In every social photo, you have a different date. I suspect you go for intelligent females who won't tie you down."

  "Is that your proposition?"

  "Hardly, Mr. Rook."

  "Then why undo two buttons on your blouse?"

  "Fashion."

  "Hardly, Ms. Hannah. For that, one would do. Two's because you want something from this 'ladies' man.'"

  "Your attention."

  "Well, you've got that."

  "Mission accomplished," she said, buttoning up. "There, is that better?"

  "No," he said.

  "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

  "You didn't need the honey trap."

  "But setting it up was fun."

  "Let's get down to business. Why was I lured here? What exactly is your proposition?"

  "Have you read about the Ace of Clubs, the bomber resurrected in Germany? The pilot, Fletch Hannah, was my granddad.

  On my grandmother's behalf—to give her peace of mind before she dies—I want to retain you to find out why he disappeared."

  + + +

  "Why me?" Wyatt asked, sipping tea and munching the Eccles cake.

  "How old were you when your father vanished?"

  "Nine."

  "You don't practice law?"

  "No."

  "So why the law degree?"

  "I use it to access government files that officials want kept secret. It's a research tool."

  "It's a powerful tool, judging from your work. When we screened your documentaries at the network, I was amazed by how many long-kept secrets you brought to light, and how little knee-jerk reverence you have for the sacred cows of your country."

  "Four hundred thousand Americans died in the Second World War for something. It wasn't so a rocket man who climbed the ladder of Himmler's SS and was tied to the deaths of twenty thousand prisoners of war could be turned into an American icon. Two hundred thousand Japanese were fried in the bombing of Hiroshima, and it wasn't to save half a million Americans from dying while invading Japan. It galls me that my government still peddles those empty lies, so I explode them."

  "Don Quixote."

  "Tilting at dirty windmills."

  "I think that's just the buildup. You're after much more.

  Once you have a reputation for getting to the truth, you'll go after the White House to find out what happened to your dad and why it's been covered up. Presidents consulted him on foreign crises. Then one day he vanished, and no one will tell you why. You want to crack that puzzle."

  "Don't forget my mom. The lie is that she killed herself the following day, distraught over the loss of my dad. But no way would she abandon me to face life alone. Som
eone assassinated her, and someday— believe me—her killer will pay."

  "I believe you." Liz took a sip of her tea. "So why write Dresden?"

  "So critics can't accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist with an ax to grind with Washington. Dresden was Britain's Hiroshima. Here you have a city of minor industrial importance—after almost six years of war, it was one of the few unbombed cities in Germany—and it gets singled out for razing by RAF firebombs in February 1945, at a time when Dresden was crammed with refugees. No one knows how many were incinerated, but it was anywhere from 35,000 to 135,000 people. These are the kinds of things that vex me."

  "There you have all the reasons why I'm stalking you," said Liz. "First, you know how to smoke out the secrets of Bomber Command. Second, as an outsider, you won't pull your punches. And third, you grasp why I—like you—need to know the truth about my family."

  "You've lost me."

  "What does 'Judas' mean to you?"

  "I assume you don't mean the disciple who betrayed Jesus?"

  "No."

  '"Judas' was the codename Hitler gave to a mystery man who tried to betray him in 1944. El Alamein and Stalingrad were turning points of the war. Those losses spawned a conspiracy within the German army to oust Hitler and negotiate peace with the Allies. Allegedly, Judas made contact with Churchill and offered him top-secret information about Hitler's atomic bomb. He also planned to smuggle out recently found biblical relics. Rumor is that Churchill told Bomber Command to parachute in a German-speaking secret agent, who would then smuggle the Judas package out by submarine. But the package never reached Britain. The plot against Hitler failed. The traitors were executed. And Judas's identity remains an unsolved mystery of the Second World War."

  "Do you believe the rumor?"

  "It's unsubstantiated. But isn't that how secrets escape?

  A confidant lets a secret slip 'off the record,' and whisper becomes rumor. With Judas, the rumor seems to come from several sources."

  "Did you see this?" Liz asked, handing him the tabloid interview with Mick Balsdon, the wartime navigator of the resurrected Ace of Clubs.

  "No," said Wyatt.

  "Read it."

  So he did.

  "Balsdon, my granddad's navigator, believes the secret agent was disguised as one of his fellow crew members.

  The flight plan he was given on the hush-hush never made sense to him. They were told to break away from the main bomber stream and fly a solitary run to an isolated target of no apparent value. That's how their plane got shot down by a lone wolf fighter, and why they had to bail out over Germany."

  "It's not uncommon for vets to embellish their war records,"

  Wyatt countered.

  Liz shook her head. "Mick's put together an archive documenting his belief. It's taken him a lifetime. For years, he's kept in touch with his surviving mates and the relatives of those now gone. The discovery of the Ace of Clubs offers him a chance to prove he's right. Mick's confined to a wheelchair and is in failing health, so he can't make the trip, but he wants those who can to travel to Germany for the opening of the bomber.

  The plane's a time capsule from 1944. It might hold a clue to the Judas puzzle."

  "You're going?"

  "Yes."

  "Where do I fit in?"

  "If Mick's right, imagine the book and TV show you'll get out of this. Mick still lives in Yorkshire, the wartime base of the Ace. Will you at least go to see his archive?"

  "Ms. Hannah—"

  "Liz."

  "I'm a busy man. I don't have time to—"

  "Every man has his price."

  "Yes, and mine's higher than two undone buttons."

  Flick.

  Flick.

  Flick.

  Liz undid three.

  LEGION OF CHRIST

  THE VATICAN, ROME

  Unbeknown to those around him—and even to himself—the Legionary of Christ was in subconscious combat with Satan for possession of his soul.

  Here, in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, the young priest sat reading in a secret locked room, encircled by wooden cabinets inlaid with symbolic designs and by frescoes depicting the trials of heretics during the Inquisition. So ancient were the books and documents burying his desk that their centuries-old dust grayed his plain black cassock. As he studied the blasphemies that were wrenched from heretics by torture, his fingers caressed the crucifix on his chest. The page before him bore an incantation that was said to conjure Satan up from hell, and as his mind absorbed the words the Church's cardinal inquisitor had recorded, the nail-hole scars through his palms began to throb.

  The Crucifixion of St. Peter hung on the opposite wall.

  From it, the eyes of the upside-down apostle met his.

  "Get thee behind me, Satan," quoted the priest.

  The Secret Archives of the Vatican occupy thirty miles of shelving in rooms that border the Belvedere Courtyard, beyond St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. Founded by Pope Paul V in 1610, the archives were originally "secret" in the sense that the records were for the private use of the pope and his advisers. But since 1881, they have gradually been opened for outside research, and have proved to be a treasure-trove for historians.

  Some documents date back to the 700s, though most are from 1198 on. Recent revelations cover the years from 1922 to 1939, the era of Pope Pius XI, who some say was "Hitler's Pope."

  The real secret archives of the Vatican were the dusty records in this room at the Palace of the Holy Office, or Sant'Uffizio, the home of the Inquisition. The building was lucked in the external crook of Bernini's colonnade, where the south arm arced in a semicircle around St. Peter's Square. For centuries—since 1542, when Pope Paul III set up the Universal Inquisition to defend the Church from heresy—confessions extracted under torture were filed here, building up history's largest library of satanism, witchcraft, and sorcery. Each means of torture was recorded in detail by a scribe and went into the heretic's file along with the evidence that had damned him.

  Today, the Inquisition goes by another name: the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Before his election in 2005 as Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—called "the Enforcer"—ran this office for a quarter century, defending the Church against heresy and silencing those guilty of offending the faith. Outside of this room, around forty people—theologians, scripture scholars, and canon lawyers knowledge-able in the laws of the Church—labored in four sections: doctrine, discipline, matrimony, and punishment of priests.

  They examined writings and opinions for heresy, dissolved non-sacramental marriages, and investigated the sexual abuse of minors by clergy and "grave delicts" like abuse of the Eucharist.

  To mark the third millennium of Christianity, Pope John Paul II decided to open "the archives of repression" to help the Church come to terms with its history. Some secrets, however, must be kept forever. So that's why the Legionary was locked away with these books and papers, charged with deciding what should be moved to the new secret archives.

  Through the windows of this room, the Legionary could see the Christian cross crowning the Egyptian obelisk at the center of St. Peter's Square. In ancient times, this marshy, hilly waste across the Tiber River to the west of Rome was called Vaticanus. Known for its malarial mosquitoes, snakes, and sour wine, Vaticanus is where the mad emperor Caligula decided to build his circus. At the center of the hub—the spina—around which chariots raced, he erected the obelisk plundered from Heliopolis. When Caligula was assassinated before the arena's completion, it fell to his nephew, the psychopath Nero, to finish the job. The Circus of Nero became that tyrant's favorite playground. He would personally take the reins of a chariot and drive it around in a frenzy to soak up the obligatory applause. When Rome burned for nine days in 64 A.D., Nero blamed the obscure sect of Christians for the disaster. Dragged to the circus for execution, those early Christians were torn to pieces by wild beasts, immersed in tar and set ablaze, or crucified. Among those crucified was
the apostle Peter, who had come to Rome in Caligula's reign to spread the word of Christ. Because he felt unworthy to hang upright as Jesus did, Peter asked to be nailed upside down to his cross near the obelisk.

  In The Crucifixion of St. Peter, the apostle is naked, except for a loincloth, and already pinned to the wood. Three Romans, their faces turned away, struggle to lift the cross with the martyr head down. Bearded and bald, with tufts of hair on his wrinkled brow, the old man suffers in pain and fear of death.

  His execution grim and humiliating, Christ's apostle glares at the nail affixed to his left palm.

  "What in hell!" the priest exclaimed.

  As the Legionary stared at the painting hung high on the palace wall, St. Peter vanished from the cross of his martyrdom, and what remained was the inverted cross of the black Mass.

  Stranger yet, the scars on the Legionary's palms ceased to ache.

  Conjuring Satan? the priest thought, recoiling from the blasphemy he had just read in the Inquisition record. He crossed to the windows that looked north to St. Peter's shrine.

  After Peter's crucifixion. Christians secretly buried his body in the cemetery abutting the north wall of the circus.

  The next 250 years saw martyrs die by the thousands, forcing members of the persecuted sect to hide in the catacombs of Rome. There, they continued to practice the rites of their faith, and they passed on the secret that Peter was buried under a simple shrine known as the Trophy of Gaius. In the early fourth century, the Great Persecution reached its height. Christian writings were burned and homes destroyed, and those Christians not tortured or mutilated died as gladiators.

  In 306 A.D., Constantine the Great, in Britain battling the Picts of Scotland, was proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops. By 312, he was in a struggle with Maxentius for the throne. As he led his army south through the Alps to face his rival outside Rome, Constantine saw a vision of a cross superimposed on the sun and heard the words "By this sign, you will conquer." Ordering his soldiers to mark their shields with the sign of Christ, he trounced Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge and became Rome's undisputed emperor.

  Attributing his victory to the God of the Christians, Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan, granting Christians freedom of worship throughout his empire. The Nicene Creed affirmed the divinity of Christ, deeming it heresy to denounce the son of God. Overnight, the Church of Christ was transformed from an underground sect to the official religion of Rome. To advance the banner of Christ, Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher above the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem and St. Peter's Basilica here.