The Secret Cardinal

by Tom Grace

  As the children roared with laughter, a woman poked her head through the open doorway and, with a flurry of rapid-fire Mongolian, cleared the children from the yurt. Kilkenny was sorry to see the youngsters go.

  Alone, he toggled the BAT’s electronics and, through the helmet, tapped into the aircraft’s powerful burst transmitter.

  “Message encrypt, three words: Gandalf Isengard Eagle.”

  CONFIRM: GANDALF ISENGARD EAGLE

  “Message confirmed.”

  SEND TO?

  “Bombadil.”

  The uplink compressed Kilkenny’s message into a focused pulse of energy just a few picoseconds in length. A pair of satellites in a constellation circling the earth in a low orbit, and tuned to the frequency of the uplink, captured the pulse and redirected the three-word message toward Rome.

  Kilkenny rejoined the others as the evening meal was being served. Several families had gathered inside the largest of the yurts, the men on one side, the women on the other, and Yin seated in the center at a place of honor. Kilkenny started to sit down with his team when the patriarch of the family beckoned him forward.

  “Please, sit,” the man said in halting English, indicating a place beside Yin.

  Kilkenny hesitated, then caught Tao motioning sharply for him to do as the man asked. He bowed to their host and sat on the floor at Yin’s left side. Yin smiled warmly at him, intoxicated with joy during his first hours of freedom. In his youth, Kilkenny had enjoyed his moments of athletic glory and the fleeting glow that followed a hard-fought victory. But here he felt like an interloper in a moment that belonged to Yin and his people.

  “The food smells so wonderful,” Yin said, his voice almost choked with tears. “I had forgotten.”

  “Try to go easy,” Kilkenny advised. “Your stomach might not be up to real food just yet.”

  Despite their modest means, their nomadic hosts put on a feast worthy of a visiting Khan. Traditional courses of shaomai dumplings, buckwheat noodles, cheese, and roast lamb, all served with milk tea, sated everyone with delirious warmth.

  When the inevitable bottles of baijiu came out, Kilkenny leaned close to Tao. “Please inform our host that we mean no disrespect, but my men and I won’t be drinking tonight. We’ll be leaving when it’s fully dark and will need our wits about us.”

  Tao relayed Kilkenny’s message, and though disappointed, the host seemed to understand Yin’s safety mattered most. After a brief exchange of questions and answers, he walked up, placed a glass in Kilkenny’s hand, and filled it to the brim.

  “Roxanne?” Kilkenny asked, unsure of the etiquette of the situation.

  “It’s a compromise,” Tao explained. “I told him we would be flying tonight, and he countered that not all of us could be pilots. He point-blank asked if you were a pilot. Nolan, you are responsible for Yin’s liberation, and these people know it. You must drink.”

  “Here, here!” Gates shouted. “You have the honor of the team to uphold. Drink up!”

  Kilkenny glanced up at Yin, who smiled, holding his own glass of liquor. The alcohol in the baijiu was so strong, Kilkenny was thankful the fumes didn’t ignite in the confines of the yurt.

  “To freedom!” Yin toasted.

  “Amen to that,” Kilkenny seconded.

  Both men drank heartily, much to the roaring approval of the assembled families. Kilkenny nursed the rest of his drink slowly, but the host made sure his glass was never less than half full. After several rounds, the host called for quiet and approached Yin. As he spoke, Tao quietly translated for Kilkenny.

  “Bishop Yin, you have honored my family and me with your presence among us.”

  The man bowed deeply as he spoke, showing both humility and deeply felt respect.

  “And we are truly thankful that God has bestowed such a gift upon us. For many years, we have prayed for the day you would be free.”

  “God answers all prayers in time, even those of a stubborn priest.”

  “I hope you will forgive my rudeness, but I have a request that I hope you will consider,” the man trembled as he spoke. “The priest who used to visit us was arrested last year; we do not know his fate. We continue to pray for him, but without him we have had no mass, no sacraments. Will you celebrate mass for us?”

  Yin’s eyes teared up at the request, his voice too choked with emotion to speak. As he regained his composure, Yin turned to Kilkenny.

  “Do we have time?” Yin asked.

  “Just enough for a mass, I think. Are you up to it, though? It’s been thirty years.”

  “I celebrated mass on each day of those thirty years,” Yin said, “except for today.”

  “The day’s not over yet,” Kilkenny replied.

  35

  VATICAN CITY

  In the dimly lit workroom in the catacombs, Grin dozed at his workstation, exhausted from ten days with far too little sleep. He was bathed in the glow of multiple screens, a dizzying flow of electrons containing fragments of information gleaned from computers half a world away. Some of the screens contained moving images; others were filled with scrolled panes of arcane symbols—the poetry of the machines.

  A window displaying a countdown timer reached zero, and Bing Crosby launched into his rendition of the twenties’ chestnut “The Red Red Robin.” Grin’s eyes fluttered as the late crooner and orange juice pitchman roused him from a dreamless sleep with his dulcet baritone and impeccable phrasing.

  Wake up, wake up you sleepy head.

  Get up, get up, get out of bed.

  “All right, all right. I’m awake,” he said with a yawn.

  With one hand, he keyed in the command that cut Crosby off in the middle of the second verse. Blinking away the sleep, Grin made contact with a stealthy piece of code he left embedded deep inside the main server at Chifeng Prison. Even after the system administrators at the prison had taken the drastic step of wiping the server’s hard drives clean and reloading every bit of software, his program survived.

  When he tapped into the security camera feeds, he saw armed guards patrolling empty corridors and the idled brickyard—the facility completely locked down and in a state of heightened alert. Hastily erected barricades protected the two main gates. Nearby lay the scorched and twisted wreckage of the original entries along with the gutted remains of the vehicles destroyed during the breakout.

  Now to see what the cops are up to, he thought.

  The screens windowing the central computer that served the Ministry of Public Security in Chifeng showed a marked increase in activity. Grin culled several pages from the steady stream of data and fed them into a Chinese-to-English translation program.

  “They’re setting up roadblocks, covering the airport and train stations,” he mused, skimming through the rough translations. “Rousting the usual suspects in the community of Catholic subversives.”

  “And what might that be, Mister Grinelli?” Donoher asked as he entered the workroom.

  “Reports from Chifeng’s finest,” Grin replied, his eyes remaining fixed on the screen.

  “Have you learned anything?”

  “That I should never again complain about the jackbooted meter readers in Ann Arbor. The words To Serve and Protect may be stenciled on cop cars in Chifeng, but the question I have to ask is, Who are they serving and protecting? See for yourself.”

  Grin quickly keyed in several commands, activating windows linked to surveillance cameras throughout Chifeng. Long queues of vehicles blocked the main roads as uniformed police searched each one and interrogated the occupants.

  “The Chinese are casting a wide net,” Donoher said.

  “Uh-huh, and check this out.” Grin pointed at a pair of windows listing arrival and departure information. “They’ve diverted all incoming flights and grounded everything that’s already there. The trains are shut down as well. I hope our guys got out of town before the clampdown, because they have pictures of Nolan and Roxanne for the wanted posters.”

  “At least this tells us the
y haven’t been caught yet.”

  “You one of those silver-lining types?” Grin asked.

  “An occupational requirement.”

  A window popped to the surface of the monitor in the center of the workstation, a white square containing a vibrant-hued version of Andy Warhol’s famous Rolling Stones logo.

  “Dare I ask?” Donoher inquired.

  “Operation Rolling Stone,” Grin answered as he keyed in a new command. The dot in the center of the window spiraled open like an iris diaphragm, revealing a three-word message.

  “Gandalf Isengard Eagle?” Donoher read aloud, puzzled.

  “A message from Nolan,” Grin said warmly. “A good one.”

  “What does it mean, beyond the literary reference to Tolkien’s literary opus?”

  “Yin is Gandalf,” Grin explained, “a pretty straightforward substitution. Early in the story, Gandalf is imprisoned in the tower at Isengard by the wizard Saruman.”

  “So Isengard stands for Chifeng Prison.”

  “Exactly. The king of the eagles plucked Gandalf from the tower and flew him to freedom. They got Yin out of prison and, as of—” Grin checked the time stamp on the message, “a few minutes ago when Nolan sent this, they haven’t been caught.”

  Donoher clasped his hands together and bowed his head to offer a brief prayer of thanks.

  “Cardinal?” a young nun called from the doorway.

  “Yes, Sister?” Donoher replied, still smiling from Kilkenny’s message.

  “I was hoping to catch you before you returned to the conclave. We’re setting up a video link with the United States. It’s Jackson Barnett, and he’d like to speak with you both.”

  “Would you please put it through in here?”

  Grin cleared the largest of his displays, and a moment later Jackson Barnett appeared on the screen.

  “Your Eminence,” Barnett said with respect for both the man and his title, “Mister Grinelli. I am pleased to have reached you both. I am certain you have been monitoring the situation in China.”

  “Like a cable news network on a political sex scandal,” Grin replied.

  “We’ve noted a significant increase in activity within the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia,” Barnett said, “specifically around the city of Chifeng and along a rather large stretch of the nearby Sino-Mongolian border. I take this to mean that our mutual friends were successful in extracting Bishop Yin from the laogai.”

  “That is our sense of the situation as well,” Donoher concurred. “Nolan’s subterfuge was apparently discovered by prison officials, but he and his team managed to escape with Bishop Yin despite this set-back.”

  “I see.” Barnett paused, carefully considering his next words. “Cardinal, may I be blunt?”

  “Please.”

  “A source within the Chinese Foreign Ministry reports that around four in the morning of October twenty-ninth, Beijing received a coded message from its embassy in Rome. The message informed Beijing of Yin’s status as an unnamed cardinal and papal candidate, and of a Vatican effort to liberate him. Cardinal, you have a leak.”

  Donoher felt his body tighten, a sickening wave of nausea washing over him. He slumped into a chair like a boxer staggered by a series of body blows, trying to regain his senses.

  “Somebody ratted out Nolan and Roxanne?” Grin asked.

  “Yes,” Barnett replied. “Our source only had access to the sanitized version of the message that provided no clues as to its provenance. As soon as this information came to light, I felt it important to alert you.”

  “Thank you, Jackson,” Donoher said solemnly. “I assure you we will act on this in order to bring all of our people home safely.”

  “A goal we both share. Perhaps we should talk again later today?”

  “The conclave reconvenes this afternoon, and I expect there will be a meeting afterward to discuss matters of state.” Donoher checked his watch. “Will two o’clock, your time, be convenient?”

  “Fine. Good day, gentlemen.”

  Barnett signed off, and the screen went blank.

  “Hellfire and damnation!” Donoher growled. “A Judas Iscariot in our midst. Only those present in the Sistine Chapel heard the pope’s message. So how in bloody blazes did the son of a—How’d he do it? How did the traitor get word to the Chinese?”

  Grin scratched his goatee. “Let’s think about this a second. Of the hundred-odd people who now know our little secret, only you and I have access to the outside world. Everyone else is basically incommunicado, right?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What about Cardinal Gagliardi? He was at the opening session.”

  Donoher shook his head. “The man has just suffered a massive heart attack.”

  “I’ll check his hospital phone records anyway, just to make sure. Whipping out my Occam’s razor,” Grin continued, “I see that the rest of the cardinals have neither the means, motive, nor opportunity to betray us. And if they didn’t do it, and you and I didn’t do it, then either there’s a bug in the chapel, or someone else saw what was on the pope’s DVD.”

  “The chapel has been swept for bugs, and we have devices installed at each of the windows to interfere with any laser microphones that might be trained on the building from outside.”

  “You need to sweep the chapel again, just to make sure,” Grin advised.

  “There won’t be time before this afternoon’s session. If we’re still without a new pope, I’ll have it done tonight. But now that I think of it, there is someone outside the conclave who may have had prior knowledge of the pope’s message. As much as it pains me, I think we should have a chat with him.”

  36

  CHIFENG, CHINA

  Peng Shi arrived at Chifeng Prison shortly after sunset. The driver brought the sedan to a stop at what was left of the main gate and submitted their papers for inspection. Peng’s eyes lingered on the blackened hulk that sat off to the side and wondered about the men who had been trapped inside as the vehicle burned. His thoughts drifted back to August of last year when he was aboard the destroyer Hangzhou. There, he had observed the recovery of a charred space capsule containing the remains of three murdered yuhangyuans—remains that Nolan Kilkenny located for China.

  With the visitors cleared for entry, the guard directed Peng’s driver to the administration building where they would be met. Metal halide lights bathed the prison grounds and buildings with an artificial glow devoid of the warmer visible wavelengths, causing the red sedan to appear a deep maroon. The placement of the lights around the prison all but eliminated shadows, a security measure that reinforced the unnaturalness of the scene.

  The driver guided the sedan into a visitor’s parking space in front of the administration building. A uniformed guard and a middle-aged man in a gray suit stood waiting for them by the entry. As Peng got out of the car and collected his briefcase, the man approached him.

  “Welcome, Mister Peng. I am Tang, manager of the Chifeng Brickyard.”

  “Good evening,” Peng replied. “Where can I find Mister Liu?”

  “Mister Liu was unavoidably detained,” Tang replied. “He is expected back at any time. You may wait for him in the warden’s office.”

  “I prefer to make better use of my time. Tell me, Mister Tang, is the officer who received the foreign prisoner last night available? I have some questions for him.”

  “Lieutenant Kwan is right here,” Tang replied.

  “There was also a report of a guard detailed to observe the executions who survived the attack. Is he also available?”

  “Neither man may leave the prison grounds without the permission of Mister Liu.”

  “Good. I would like Kwan to escort me to the yard where the executions took place. Have the other guard meet us there.”

  “I will see to it.”

  “Thank you, Mister Tang. Lieutenant Kwan, take me along the path used by the escaping truck.”

  “This way, sir,” Kwan replied.

  Thr
ough the glare of the prison’s lights, Peng found it difficult to see the terrain much beyond the perimeter fence. Last night, those who attacked the prison watched from beyond the halo, exploiting the prison’s nocturnal blind spot.

  “Have you located the firing positions yet?” Peng asked.

  “Yes. We found four used PF-89 launch tubes within two hundred meters of both gates.”

  “Serial numbers?”

  “Unreadable. The tubes have been sent on to an army lab for further analysis.”

  “Describe the foreigner who was brought in last night.”

  Kwan collected his thoughts for a moment. “A little taller than me, about two meters in height, eighty kilos. He had red hair and many freckles on his face and hands. There were deep bruises on his face, neck, and hands, but I’ve seen men arrive looking worse. He was dressed in a standard prison uniform.”

  “Did he speak at all?”

  “He made no sound the entire time I was with him.”

  “How long was that?”

  “Less than ten minutes, just the time required to escort him from the transport to a cell.”

  “Was he searched?”

  “No, we were ordered not to.”

  They rounded the corner of a building and entered an open yard with the motor pool at the far end.

  “This is where executions are carried out,” Kwan announced. “Prisoners are brought out of that door and escorted down here. Once dead, they are usually loaded onto a truck and taken to the crematorium in Chifeng.”

  A guard stepped through the door Kwan had pointed to and walked toward them. After closing the distance, he snapped to attention and saluted the lieutenant.

  “At ease,” Kwan said after returning the salute. “Mister Peng, this is Au-Yang, one of the guards.”

  Au-Yang was younger than Kwan, in his late teens or early twenties, with a full, round face and thickset body.