Not since the time of the Crusades had anyone examined these sculptures as closely as I had. The Barrié Foundation thought they had been damaged by humidity, mold or bacteria. But I wasn’t so sure. That’s why I came back here after hours when there were no tourists to wonder why I was obscuring the masterworks with my maze of scaffolding. And, of course, when there were no other experts to challenge my ideas.
Because I had another explanation.
One so controversial it had brought me nothing but trouble.
I was the only one of our crew who had grown up nearby, in a town along the Costa da Morte. And I knew—or rather, I felt in my bones—that there was more to the rapid crumbling of these ancient works than merely some strange lichen or acid. Unlike my colleagues, I didn’t let my scientific background blind me to other explanations that were more . . . let’s say unconventional. Any time I mentioned concepts like tellurism, the power of Earth’s magnetism, or magnetic fields or earthly radiation, they rolled with laughter. “There isn’t any credible research on that,” they’d scoff. Luckily, I wasn’t alone in my supposedly wild ideas. The dean of the cathedral agreed with me. He was a crotchety old clergyman whom I’d grown to love. They all called him Father Fornés. But I called him by his first name, Benigno—Spanish for “benign.” I guess I just loved how it contrasted with his personality. He was the one who always stood up to the Foundation for me and encouraged me to follow my instincts.
“Sooner or later,” he’d say, “you’ll prove them wrong.”
Someday, I thought.
At about one forty in the morning, after I’d spent who-knows-how-long using the endoscope to probe each of the nine cracks our team had mapped, my PDA chirped three times, signaling it was finally transmitting data to the computer we had set up opposite the Pórtico. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. If everything went as planned, tomorrow the University of Santiago de Compostela would process the data from the stone in the department of mineralogy at its School of Geological Sciences. Then, thirty-six hours later, we could discuss the results.
Tired but hopeful, I lowered myself and untied my harness to make sure the information was transmitting. We couldn’t afford any mistakes. I was relieved to hear the five-terabyte hard drive purring like a satisfied kitten, filling the cavernous room with a rewarding hum that put me in a good mood as it finished registering all the information—the topography of each crevice, the spectrographic analysis and the video files recorded by the endoscope. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. So with satisfaction at a job well done, I finally relaxed after untangling myself from my ropes, and started picking up my equipment. I fantasized about taking a hot shower, eating a hot meal and massaging lotion onto my tired muscles before curling up with a book to distract me.
I deserved it.
But destiny has a way of toying with our best-laid plans, and that night, it had something unexpected in store for me.
Just as I disconnected the powerful headlamp and removed my helmet, a darting movement at the back of the church made me start. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as if the cavern had been charged with static electricity. The entire room—all of its ninety-six meters in length and its one hundred eighteen towering mullioned balconies—seemed to come alive with a “presence.” My mind tried to make sense of what I was seeing. In the depths of the cathedral, I imagined I saw a flash. A fleeting spark. Soundless. A glow that emerged from the ground and traveled a lighted path toward the center of the intersecting aisles about a hundred feet away.
I’m not alone. My pulse quickened.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
A vast echo swallowed my words.
“Can anyone hear me? Is someone there? Hello . . . Hello . . . !”
Silence.
I tried to stay calm. I knew this place like the back of my hand. And I knew where to go in case I had to make a run for it. Besides, I had a cell phone and a key to the gate that led outside to the Plaza del Obradoiro. I had nothing to fear . . . I tried to convince myself that maybe I’d seen a flicker of light reflected from my metal lab tables into the moonlit cathedral. Sometimes, lights can play tricks on you. But I couldn’t convince myself. And I couldn’t manage to shake this feeling. That had not been a reflection in the strict sense of the word. Nor a lightning bug. Nor a falling ember from a church candle.
“Hello . . . ? Hello . . . !”
More silence answered.
As I peered into the cathedral’s shadowy darkness, it felt as if I were staring deep into the jaws of some massive whale. The emergency lights at the exits were scarcely enough to give shape to the leviathan. Without proper lighting, it was hard to even imagine where the altar was. Or, for that matter, the crypt. The gilded altar and the ornate wooden bust of St. James remained veiled in darkness.
Should I dial the emergency number? I wondered as I rifled inside my pocket for my cell phone. What if this is all in my head?
What if it’s some tortured, wandering soul . . .
I shook that idea out of my head. I tried to keep the window of fear in my mind from opening even a sliver. Still, I couldn’t control the runaway pounding in my chest.
There was only one way to face down the shaking inside me. I grabbed my coat and backpack, flipped on the LED headlamp and headed for the darkened area where I thought I’d seen the light. We only exorcise our demons when we face them head-on, I told myself. Still shaking, I headed up the aisle toward the transept of the cross-shaped church, praying all the way I’d find no one there. Saying my Hail Marys, I finally reached the door to the Plaza de Platerías, one of the cathedral’s main entrances, which, of course, was locked at this time of night.
That’s when I saw it.
Rather, I almost ran into it.
And yet, even seeing it up close, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Oh, God!”
The shadowy figure’s face was obscured by a black hood, like a monk’s. He looked to be rooting around for something he had just deposited at the base of the only modern statue in the entire cathedral, a sculpture by Jesús León Vazquez that marked the Campus Stellae. Thank God, he was skittish, not aggressive, as if he had just snuck into the church and was still trying to get his bearings.
I should have turned and run and called the cops. Instead, maybe on instinct, or maybe because we locked eyes for a second, I built up the courage to open my mouth.
“Hey! What are you doing?” I heard myself say before I knew it. “Didn’t you hear me? Do you have permission to be in here?”
The thief—at least, that’s what he looked like to me—casually stopped whatever he was doing, but not because I had scolded him. I saw him zip closed a black nylon bag as he turned toward me, as if he couldn’t care less who was watching him. Actually, it felt like he had been crouching there . . . waiting for me to find him. Unfortunately, it was too dark to make out his face. That’s when he mumbled something—something that shook my insides—in a language I didn’t recognize as he slowly walked toward me.
“Ul-a Librez?”
“Wha . . . What did you say?”
“Ul-ia Alibrez?”
Seeing my confusion, he formed the words once more, finally making them understandable—and equally disturbing.
“Are you . . . Ju-lia Álvarez?”
2
Outside the cathedral, rain was falling. The orballo is the characteristic precipitation of northern Spain, inconspicuous until it had soaked through everything it touched. The cobblestones in the Plaza del Obradoiro were this rain’s favorite victims, and at the moment, the streets couldn’t absorb another drop. So when the elegant, burgundy sedan crossed the most celebrated esplanade in Galicia, it sent a wave crashing against the side of the Hostal de los Reyes Católicos before stopping at its front door.
Inside, the hotel concierge peeked out the closest window and shut off the television. His last guests for the night had arrived. He stepped outside, toward the car, just as the cathedral’s bel
ls tolled two in the morning. Just then, the driver shut off the engine to the Mercedes, turned off the lights and set the time on his watch to exactly two, as if it were a daily ritual.
“We’ve arrived in Santiago, my love.”
The woman in the passenger seat unbuckled her seat belt and stepped out into the damp evening. She breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the concierge rushing toward her with a wide black umbrella.
“Good evening, sir . . . madam,” he said in perfect English. The scent of freshly soaked earth filled the rental car’s interior. “They told us you would be arriving late.”
“Excellent, thank you.”
“Let me escort you to your suite. We’ll take care of parking the car and making sure your luggage is delivered to your room as soon as possible,” he said, smiling. “We’ve also delivered a basket of fresh fruit to your room since the kitchen is closed at this hour.”
The driver looked out across the plaza noting the harmonious atmosphere conferred on it by the stones. It was amazing how the space seemed to flawlessly bridge the divide between the fifteenth-century cathedral with its Baroque facade and the neoclassical palace in front of him.
“Tell me,” he whispered as he handed the keys and ten euros to the valet, “have they finished restoring the Pórtico de la Gloria yet?”
The concierge glanced over at the cathedral. He hated that all the scaffolding disfigured the grand old church and scared away tourists.
“No, it’s a shame, sir.” He sighed. “The newspapers say that even the experts can’t agree on how long it’ll take. But it’s sure to be a long time.”
“You think so?” the man said, shaking his head. “Even with people working around the clock?”
He motioned toward the two enormous windows over the entrance to the cathedral, beneath the colossal statue of the apostle St. James, where a powerful orange light flickered menacingly inside.
The concierge’s face paled.
Those didn’t look like any work lights he had ever seen. They flashed and flickered with an ominous orange glow. He needed to call the police. And fast.
3
“Julia Ál-varez?”
It took me a moment to realize that the “monk” was pronouncing my name. It was clear he didn’t speak Spanish. And his accent didn’t sound French or English, either. To make matters worse, my first efforts to communicate with him through gestures didn’t seem to be working. Still, call it a gut feeling, but I could tell from his calm, almost timid behavior that this apparently lost stranger meant me no harm. It wouldn’t have been the first time a person on a pilgrimage here had gotten locked inside the cathedral walls. Some of the ones who came from faraway countries couldn’t understand the signs written in Spanish. Every now and then, someone would stay behind lost in prayer in one of the twenty-five smaller chapels, emerging from their meditation to find themselves trapped with no one around . . . until they eventually set off a motion detector.
Still, there was something about this man that just didn’t fit. Being so close to him made me feel odd, dizzy. And it bothered me—not just a little—that he knew my name and repeated it every time I tried to ask him a question.
When I finally dared to shine my light on him, it revealed a lithe young man of a dark complexion with slightly Asian features and a small tattoo of a snake below his right eye. His demeanor had an infinite gravity. He was roughly my height, muscular like a soldier. Even attractive.
“I’m sorry,” I said, a little embarrassed as I studied him. “You . . . can’t stay here. You should go.”
But he didn’t budge.
“Ju-lia Ál-varez?” he repeated.
I attempted to stay calm and motioned toward my work space, trying to show him the way out. I gestured for him to pick up his belongings and follow me, but only managed to make him more nervous.
“Come on. Follow me,” I said, taking his arm.
Big mistake.
The young man shook his arm free as if I’d attacked him, held his black bag tight and yelled a bloodcurdling scream, something like “Amrak!” that put me on edge.
Just then, I had a terrible thought: Is he carrying some stolen artifact in that bag? Something valuable? One of the cathedral’s treasures? And if so, how unpredictable might he be? The idea terrified me.
“Listen, calm down,” I said, pulling my cell phone out of my pocket and showing it to him. “I’m going to call for help. They’ll get us out of here, okay?”
The young man held his breath. He looked like a cornered animal.
“Juli-a Álva-rez?” he repeated.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, okay?” I said, ignoring him. “I’m just going to dial the emergency number. See? You’ll be out of here in no time.”
But seconds passed and still the phone wouldn’t connect.
I tried a second time. Then a third. Without success. All the while, my new scary friend stared at me with a vacant expression, clutching his bag. Finally, on the fourth try, just as the call went through, the stranger bent over and placed his bag on the ground, motioning for me to look at it.
“What is it?” I asked.
He smiled. And for the second time that night, this man managed to confound me with his answer. Another name. A name I knew very well.
“Mar-tin Faber.”
4
Just a few yards away, two police cars, a private security van and a fire truck raced across the Plaza de la Quintana. They had come up Calle Fonseca, following another squad car of officers who were already there monitoring the flickering lights inside the cathedral after receiving a call from the Hostal de los Reyes Católicos about a fire.
“Doesn’t look like a fire to me, Inspector Figueiras,” one officer muttered, standing outside the Puerta de Platerías, the Goldsmith’s Door, getting soaked in the rain, but never for a moment taking his eyes off the cathedral.
The inspector, a rough-hewn type, hardened by the war against drug trafficking in Galicia, looked skeptically at him. There was nothing he hated more than being caught in the rain and having his glasses fog up. Needless to say, he wasn’t in a good mood.
“And how did you come up with that brilliant assessment?”
“Well, I’ve been standing here for a while, sir, and I still haven’t seen any smoke. Plus,” he added, “doesn’t smell like anything’s burning. And you know the church is filled with all kinds of flammable stuff.”
“Has anyone called the diocese?” Antonio Figueiras asked, annoyed. He hated dealing with church officials.
“Yes, sir. They’re on their way. But they’ve told us the conservation crews often work late into the night and the lights might be theirs. Do you want us to go inside?”
Figueiras hesitated. If his men were right and there was no sign of fire other than some light flickering in the windows from time to time, then breaking the door in would only mean problems. He could already read the headlines the next morning in La Voz de Galicia: COMMUNIST COMMISSIONER DEFILES SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL. Fortunately, before he could answer, he was approached by an official in a navy blue fireman’s uniform.
“Okay, so what does the fire department have to say?” Figueiras asked him.
“Your man’s got a point, Inspector. Doesn’t look like a fire,” the assistant fire chief, a man with thick eyebrows and a catlike appearance, said confidently. “The fire alarms haven’t gone off and we checked them less than a month ago.”
“So what do we think it is?”
“Probably an electrical surge. The network in this area has been overloaded for the past half hour.”
That only managed to pique the inspector’s interest.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”
“I thought you would’ve figured that out on your own,” the firefighter said flatly, gesturing around him. “The streetlights have been out for a while now, Inspector. Only the buildings with emergency generators have any power, and the cathedral’s not one of them.”
Antonio Figue
iras took off his glasses to wipe them with a handkerchief, cursing under his breath. So much for his keen sense of observation. He looked up and saw that the plaza was, in fact, barely lit by the headlights of his patrol cars. Not a single neighboring house had a light on. Only the flickering lights inside the cathedral could be seen. They seemed random, like flashes in a lightning storm.
“An area-wide power outage?” he said.
“More than likely.”
Out of the corner of his eye, despite the driving rain and the low light, Figueiras noticed the outline of a large, towering figure rushing toward the Platerías door, as though he was about to force open the lock.
“Who’s that?” he shouted.
His deputy inspector, Jiménez, just smiled.
“Oh, that guy . . . Yeah, I forgot to mention him to you. He showed up late this afternoon from some United States law enforcement agency. With an official letter. Said he’s working on a case and has to find some woman who lives in Santiago.”
“Well, what’s he doing here now?”
“Well . . . ,” Jiménez replied, “turns out the woman he’s looking for works for the Barrié Foundation, and tonight’s her shift at the cathedral. When he heard there was a fire he followed us here.”
“So what’s he doing?”
Jiménez looked over and shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, Inspector . . . It looks like he’s going inside.”
5
“Stop right where you are, and put your hands up!”
The words thundered throughout the cathedral, making me lose my balance for a moment. I fell to my knees on the hard marble floor as a cold rush of wind blew in.
“Don’t move! I’m armed!”
The new voice erupted from somewhere behind the intruder in black. I’m not sure what rattled me more, hearing that outburst in perfect English or hearing the young man with the tattoo whisper the name of my husband Martin Faber. But I had no time to think. Purely on instinct, I dropped my helmet and put my hands on my head. But the young man didn’t follow my lead.
The Lost Angel Page 2