Forbidden Sanctuary

by Richard Bowker

  So Stokes was trudging from hotel to hotel with a passenger list in hand, having absolutely no luck at that either, and every time he called in, McMurtry was getting nastier. Talk about your glamorous jobs.

  At his fifth stop he got lucky. It was a second-rate place downtown, with a nosy desk clerk and faded carpeting. Sure enough, there was Mr. Arthur Hanson of Scarsdale, row 14, seat 9. With an asterisk next to his name on the list. Bernardi had been assigned seats 7 and 8. Well, all right.

  Stokes zipped up to the seventh floor and knocked on Mr. Hanson's door. And again, loudly. Finally there was a shuffling of feet and a suspicious eye at the peephole. "Who's't?"

  Stokes held up his ID. "I'd just like to ask a few questions, if you don't mind, sir. It won't take long."

  "I haven't done nothin'."

  "Yes, sir. This investigation has nothing to do with you personally."

  "Well, okay."

  The bolt slid and the door opened to reveal a rumpled-looking man in a terry-cloth robe. Stokes noticed an empty bottle of Canadian Club sticking out of a wastebasket.

  "Had a little party here last night," Mr. Hanson explained.

  "Yes, sir. I'd like to talk to you about your plane ride from New York."

  "Oh, uh, okay. Good flight. I forget the movie."

  "That's all right. I'd like to know if you can remember anything about the people who sat next to you."

  Hanson ran his fingers through his thinning hair and scrunched his face up to show how hard he was trying. "Next to me... um... okay. Nice couple. Italian, I think. First time they'd taken a plane. That was kinda odd."

  Stokes shook his head. "Perhaps on the other side of you."

  "Other side?" Hanson asked, thinking even harder. "I don't... I mean, I had a window seat. There wasn't another side."

  Stokes digested this. "Perhaps you had better describe this Italian couple."

  "Well, the guy was, you know, middle-aged, regular height, kind of Italian-looking. The woman was, I don't know, shorter. Italian-looking too. I think."

  Stokes produced a picture. "Is this the man?"

  Hanson studied the photo. "Well, the guy wasn't a priest, you know."

  "The face, though."

  "Oh well, I don't know. I don't think so. Could be."

  Stokes sighed. "This couple sat next to you for the whole trip? No changing of seats?"

  "No, I don't think so. I mean, it was a couple of days ago, you know?"

  Stokes nodded. "Thank you, Mr. Hanson. Will you be staying at this hotel for the next few days?"

  "Yup. I'm on vacation. I'd be stayin' in a better place, you know, but—"

  "Yes, sir." Stokes departed quickly, not eager to hear anything about the guy's life.

  Back in his car, Stokes immediately called in and got hold of McMurtry. He reported what Hanson had told him.

  "That's really odd," McMurtry said. "We got a positive ID from a travel agent in New York. Bernardi bought the tickets."

  "Well, Bernardi had no way of knowing when we'd be onto him," Stokes pointed out. "Maybe he figured he'd better get himself and the alien into disguises as soon as possible."

  "All right, but where does that leave us? We've already checked the hotels for Bernardi."

  "What about we check all the couples with Italian names?" Stokes suggested. "Maybe he's using a friend's credit card."

  "Worth a shot, I guess," McMurtry responded. He didn't sound enthusiastic. "We'll get the names from the hotels. Probably won't be more than ten thousand or so."

  A while later Stokes found himself with a huge list of names to check out. McMurty was right; this was probably a waste of time.

  Still, he gave it a shot, along with all the rest of the agents in the area.

  Hours later, exhausted and bored, he found himself at a Holiday Inn, knocking on the door of a room registered to Peter and Cynthia Cerullo of New York City.

  A man answered. Fat and bald, obviously not Bernardi. Cross one more off the list. "What do you want?" the man demanded.

  Stokes routinely held out his identification out to the man and said in a reassuring tone: "My name is Henry Stokes, special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Just doing a routine check. There's nothing to be—"

  "Is that the police, Pete?" a woman's voice demanded from inside the room.

  The man looked worried. Why should be look worried?

  "Mind if I come in, Mr. Cerullo?" Stokes asked.

  The man shook his head and stepped back. Stokes looked around. An open suitcase, open bottle of wine, clothes on a chair, a short, sharp-looking woman with big blond hair. She was looking at her husband, a disgusted, aggrieved expression on her face. Why?

  "You and your friends," she muttered under her breath.

  Okay. "Were you folks by any chance on United Flight 407 out of New York City the day before yesterday?" Stokes asked.

  There were beads of sweat on Cerullo's forehead. "What if we were?" he asked with halfhearted belligerence.

  Could he make it any easier? "Would you be acquainted with a priest by the name of Albert Bernardi?"

  "Oh, for God's sake, let's stop all this nonsense," the woman said. "We didn't do anything wrong. There's nothing you can arrest us for."

  "Perhaps you'd better tell me exactly what you've done, Mrs. Cerullo."

  "It's him," she replied, gesturing contemptuously at her husband. "He gets a call from this old friend. 'Hey Pete, you've never been anywhere. Why don't you take a few days off, you and the wife go anywhere you want and I'll buy the plane tickets?' So what if the guy's a priest? There's gotta be a catch, right? Don't do it, I tell him, you'll just get mixed up in something. But no. Pete here has to drop everything and go to Las Vegas so he could lose money at blackjack."

  "I didn't see you stayin' at home," Mr. Cerullo remarked.

  "And before you know it," she went on, ignoring him, "this priest is on the front page of every paper in the country, and the FBI's after Petey here because Bernardi's name is on the tickets. Some friend."

  "Don't you knock Bernardi," Cerullo said hotly, advancing toward his wife. "I've known him a hell of a lot longer than I've known you, and he's done a hell of a lot more for me. And just to set the record straight, he told me exactly why he wanted me to take this trip, and I was happy to help him out. I didn't bother telling you because then you wouldn't have come, you'd have blabbed to the police like you blabbed just now."

  "Well this is all very interesting," Stokes said, cutting off what he was sure would have been a savage retort from Mrs. Cerullo. "However, my job is to find Bernardi. Would either of you happen to know where he is?"

  The husband and wife glared at each other. "I'd tell you if I knew," the wife said.

  "Even if I knew I wouldn't tell you," the husband said.

  Stokes nodded. "Maybe you'd both better come with me." He'd bring them down to the office and make it all formal, but he doubted that there was more to be gleaned from these two.

  He wondered how McMurtry would react. They'd cracked their part of the case, but it hadn't exactly given the big shots what they wanted. He didn't really envy those big shots; this guy Bernardi was not going to just turn up on their doorstep.

  That was their problem, though.

  Chapter 19

  They all stood when Clement entered, even the ones crippled with age and arthritis, even the ones who despised him. Such was the respect for his office, if not for the man who held it. He motioned for everyone to sit and moved to the head of the table. "I understand that you are all informed of the events up through yesterday," he said in his rudimentary Italian. No one voiced any disagreement. "Good. Perhaps Cardinal Fontanelli will bring you up to date on the latest developments. Carlo?"

  Fontanelli stubbed out his cigarette and shifted a few papers. When he began to speak, it was in a raspy monotone; his eyes remained focused on the papers. "The Numoi are threatening to blow up major cities of the world unless Tenon is returned to them. More precisely, they are threat
ening to threaten this in—well, now it would be two days. The Secretary-General of the United Nations informed his Holiness of this last night. His Holiness refused to order Father Bernardi to release Tenon. Mr. Ashanti then informed some heads of state. It's not certain how many.

  "At nine o'clock last night, Washington time, Cardinal O'Dwyer, our Papal Legate to the United States, was summoned to the White House. He was handed a note, which he promptly transmitted to us. The gist of it is that, if Tenon is not produced by noon today, Washington time, President Gibson will hold a news conference in which he will make public the alien threat and will specifically place the blame for all consequences of this on the shoulders of his Holiness. Cardinal O'Dwyer's comments accompanied the note. He said that if his Holiness had been present last night President Gibson would gladly have strangled him. He also mentions that if the news conference is held he expects a lot of broken stained-glass windows by nightfall. Cardinal O'Dwyer is, of course, known for his bluntness."

  Fontanelli lit another cigarette. No one spoke. He continued. "We received a cable this morning from Premier Chang of the People's Republic of China, informing us that as of tomorrow all church personnel will be expelled from that country. Unless Tenon is returned.

  "Prime Minister Delon of Canada informs us that he will be introducing a bill in Parliament to remove the Church's tax-exempt status. President Gruschenko of Russia intends to declare Roman Catholics enemies of the state, with appropriate penalties attached. There are several other such messages. I will not bore you with them."

  Again there was silence, broken this time by Clement. "Thank you, Carlo. My beloved friends and advisers, I seek your guidance."

  The dozen or so men around the table shifted, stared at their hands, sipped their water. "Is it not true that the UN says Tenon will not be harmed if he is returned?" Cardinal LaCroix asked from the far end of the table.

  Clement inclined his head. "That is true, they have said that. You perhaps have not seen the videotape of Angela Summers, Jean? The Chitlanians present a basic threat to the Numoi's civilization, similar to that which Christianity posed to ancient Rome. The Numoi cannot afford to show Chitlanians mercy. Tenon's fear appeared to Angela Summers to be real and deep and well-founded. The UN is lying. What other choice do they have?"

  "It seems we should look to our own choices," Cardinal Capelli intoned, shifting his massive bulk slightly so as to face Clement. It was the general opinion that, if Capelli had not had the taint of the Curia upon him, he would have been elected Pope instead of Clement. "I for one cannot understand at all why we have not already handed that creature back to whoever owns it."

  "Is there not a question of morality involved?" Clement asked mildly.

  "Bah. If one looks hard enough there is a question of morality under every rock. The Vatican owns stock in many companies. Must we spend our days and nights studying the morality of every transaction these companies undertake? If we did, we would have precious little time left for running the Church."

  "Yes, but this question rather appears to have been dropped in our laps," Cardinal Nobuta observed, smiling ingratiatingly in case anyone took offense at his comment.

  "It is only a problem because we have turned it into one," Capelli replied dismissively. "Why could we not just have rendered unto Caesar and stayed out of a mess that could do no one any good?"

  "Except, perhaps, this alien," Cardinal LaCroix remarked.

  "And who is this alien?" Capelli asked, his voice rising so that it dominated the room. "Have our theologians determined that the aliens have souls, so that we should worry about what happens to them? If this creature does have a soul—and I am willing to grant it—why is his safety worth more than the well-being of the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ? One is not morally required to endanger one's own life to save another's. I think that principle could be applied here."

  "But in our case we are talking about stained-glass windows, not lives, are we not?" inquired Nobuta, still smiling.

  "Speak to me after the riots start, your Eminence," Capelli countered.

  "Now let us be calm, Giovanni," Cardinal Erhard said. "We are here to advise, not vent our anger."

  "Then here is my advice, Klaus: to save face, publicly ask Ashanti for further clarification about the alien's safety. Ashanti will clarify. Restate the Church's views on relations with the aliens, declare that we are satisfied that Tenon will be fairly treated, and hand him over to the UN."

  "Sounds like somebody's solution for the American involvement in the Vietnam War," Cardinal Bolger commented. "Declare that we've won and pull out."

  "What is our alternative?"

  Bolger shrugged. "Perhaps," he offered, "it would not be so bad for the Church, to go through an experience like this. Strength through adversity, you know."

  "You may be right," Erhard replied. "Perhaps we will be admired for the purity of our purpose. But that all depends on how our action is perceived: as an example of heroic moral courage, or as an instance of pitifully misplaced priorities. To my way of thinking it would be a great deal of both. If such an ambivalent reaction is widespread, I doubt that the Church will thrive as a result."

  "Oh, I'm not speaking of growth. I'm speaking of purification."

  "Purification," Capelli snorted. "The eternal hope: that a good dose of persecution will solve all our problems. If only Diocletian were emperor again, we would all be saints."

  "At least we wouldn't be worried about the growth rate of our investment portfolio," Nobuta remarked, his smile widening into a grin.

  Capelli was about to reply, but Clement's raised hand forestalled him. "Thank you, Eminences. There appear to be two courses of action suggested: the present one, and that of our esteemed colleague Cardinal Capelli. It would be useful for us to see how many favor each. If no one has any objections, would those of you who support the present policy please raise your hands?"

  Three tentative hands. Clement looked around the table. "You may vote too, if you wish, Anthony," he said to Collingwood, who was busy taking notes in the far corner.

  Collingwood looked up at Clement. "Yes, your Holiness," he responded. He did not move.

  Clement waited until it was clear there was no misunderstanding. "And those who favor Cardinal Capelli's position?" he whispered finally.

  Ten hands. Including Collingwood's.

  Clement appraised the faces of those arrayed against him, and abruptly stood up. "Thank you all," he said quickly. "We shall pray on this matter now." He rose and strode hurriedly out of the room.

  After a brief moment of silence the meeting broke up, the cardinals departing in twos and threes to gossip and speculate. Collingwood remained seated, staring at his notes. Fontanelli came up to him on the way out. "That certainly was a surprising moment," he remarked.

  "Circumstances change, your Eminence," Collingwood said, not looking up. "The wise man changes with them."

  "Indeed. You are well on your way to wisdom, then. Of course he won't go along with us. He's committed himself. It would be a pity if you were finally to achieve wisdom, and find yourself out of a job in which to exercise it."

  "Perhaps part of wisdom is knowing when that doesn't matter."

  "Indeed. Good luck, Monsignor."

  "Thank you, your Eminence."

  Chapter 20

  A lesser woman would have become discouraged by now, and when Madeleine West stopped to think about it (which was not often), she did have to admit to an occasional moment of uncertainty. The Las Vegas fiasco hadn't helped, of course, nor had the rather snappish conversation with Fitzgerald that morning. All the leads were petering out, the legwork was uncovering nothing, the phoned-in tips were all from crackpots... and now the Numoi were threatening to blow the world up, so the President said. That didn't do anything to lessen the pressure on her.

  The best approach, of course, was not to think about such matters. Just do your job, and save the worrying for later. And perhaps eventually the phone will ring....<
br />
  "Mrs. Bernardi for you."

  "Thank you, Sheila." She took a deep breath, and picked up the receiver. "Madeleine West here."

  "Have you found Albert yet?" the woman asked. She sounded afraid.

  "No, ma'am."

  "No, I guess he's too smart for you. You'd never find him, unless..."

  "Yes, Mrs. Bernardi?"

  "Come see me, would you? Alone."

  "I'll be right over."

  Luckily West was still in New York. She was at Mrs. Bernardi's apartment in twenty minutes. The woman was wearing a blue print dress that was too young for her. Her makeup could not conceal her red-rimmed eyes. "Do you understand this blowing up cities?" she asked as soon as West had sat down.

  "I understand that this is very serious business."

  "But will they actually do it? The President seemed to think maybe it was a bluff."

  "You really know as much about it as I do, Mrs. Bernardi. The point President Gibson was making, I guess, is that we can't just assume it's a bluff, even if it is."

  "Yes, I suppose. It's so frightening. Why did it have to come to this?"

  West just shook her head in sympathy.

  "And the Pope," Mrs. Bernardi went on. "You'd think he—oh, I don't know. There are lives at stake. Human lives."

  "Your son's life," West noted.

  "Yes. And not the Pope's." There was bitterness in her voice. She stared off into the distance—at some favorite photograph of her son, West imagined. Her knuckles showed white on the arms of her wing chair.

  Now, West thought. "We are prepared to offer clemency to your son if you help us find him," West said. "He will not be charged with any offense he may have committed in this episode."

  Mrs. Bernardi brightened, then looked dubious. "How do I know you have that authority?"

  West removed her phone from her pocket. She dialed a number and turned up the speaker.

  "Good afternoon, FBI."

  "Good afternoon. Mr. Fitzgerald's office, please."