Sanctuary Creek

by John Patrick Kavanagh

  Upon his election to the papacy, one of Peter’s first acts was to promote Castro to Cardinal, then offer him any position he wanted from the top job in Mexico to Chief-of-Staff to Secretary of State to head of the Party. The newest Prince of the Church demurred with a counter-offer, suggesting a new Secretariat—Technology—be created and that he head it. Peter begged off, satisfied with maintaining those Nicholas had established. Then after further thought posed a compromise: if Castro officially accepted the Finance portfolio, he could unofficially have the tech portfolio, too.

  Samson unexpectedly felt elated as it sunk in that he was the one Peter had chosen to replace Castro. His head got a little deeper into the water as the Vat burst into the office.

  “I take it we got a problem, huh Pancic?”

  “Yes, sir. Helicopter crash. Near the northeast corner of Residential.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “But the pad is over in Compound.”

  “Apparently not one of ours,” he responded, adjusting his earpiece. “Sounds pretty gruesome over there.”

  Pancic advised Samson to leave the building and inform him where he was going. He glanced at the computer screen, pressed the Exit button and replied, “Over to the studios.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Vatican Guard in the reception area of the RCC Broadcast Network facilities glanced at a list, then shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Samson. Closed session. By invitation only.”

  “I’m here in Cardinal Castro’s place.”

  She checked the list again, shrugged then motioned to the double rear doors. “Studio 2-A, sir.”

  He walked down the long hallway past 4-A and 3-A, then seeing the red RECORDING warning light blinking, knocked softly on the control room door.

  “C’mon in.”

  Entering the television studio’s nerve center, he was greeted by RCCNN’s lead producer and engineer.

  “How ya doin’, Samps?” Ira smiled. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “Sitting in for Cardinal Castro.”

  The producer stubbed out his cigarette and chuckled. “Really? Then maybe you can explain exactly why the deceased wanted to be here.”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Hi, Terry,” a woman’s voice called over the intercom. Looking through the glass, he saw Gibson wave. She was dressed in her Tour outfit, standing in front of a blue wall, a single, remote-controlled camera facing her.

  “Hello, Tiff,” he replied. “Mind if I sit in?”

  “Fine. Especially if you can convince Ira that we’re just doing a few inserts for the promo tape instead of Gone with the Wind.”

  “Sure.”

  “Then we can have our chat.”

  Our chat?

  “Okay. I’ll do my best. But Ira’s middle name is Perfection.”

  “Tell me about it!” she replied with a grin and a shake of her head.

  “All righty, Sister Gibson,” the man said as Samson took a seat at the panel. “I believe we were about to try Take Six on the SPPT.”

  “Could we get 2233 in the can first?”

  “That we could do.” He adjusted the camera to a head and shoulders shot then examined a clipboard. “Tape is rolling. Sister Tiffany Gibson. 2233 segment. Take Nine.”

  The nun cleared her throat, looked away a beat, and then smiled into the lens.

  “During the second year of the reign of Nicholas, then-U.S. Speaker of the House, Illinois Republican Ronald D. Donovan, personally masterminded the scheme ultimately leading to the enactment of the unique legislation that allowed the establishment of Sanctuary Creek, as the Constitution wouldn’t permit a colony of another sovereign state to be located within the borders of E Pluribus Unum.

  A deed was prepared, granting the entire parcel of land to the United States government with an immediate 99-year ground lease back to the Roman Catholic Church. Legislation, House Bill 2233, granted an exception to Article 1 and Article 4 prohibitions, providing that the Vatican would be allowed to treat the Creek as the equivalent of an embassy with a huge thyroid condition.”

  She kept smiling a few more seconds then stuck her tongue out. “Now how much better am I gonna get it than that?”

  “Care to comment, Samps?”

  “I wouldn’t change a syllable.”

  Ira nodded, then told her, “I think we’ll call that the keeper. Just one more to go, babe.

  “Let’s do it. Babe.”

  Takes Six through Ten of the SPPT segment didn’t please the producer and though he thought 11 was good enough, Gibson asked to try it once more.

  “All righty. Tape is rolling. Sister Tiffany Gibson. SPPT segment. Take 12.”

  “Here we go, folks,” she said, then scratched her nose before addressing the camera.

  “The RCC is now the wealthiest organization on the planet due to one catastrophic event and one extremely generous benefactor. Following the decimation of the Internet by the virus known as The Three Sisters, the only thing left standing, and to this day still standing, was Analog Machinery Incorporated’s AMI Supernet. Nine years later, after being diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, AMI’s founder, David John Islington, transferred his close to $800,000,000 stake in AMI to the Sanctuarian Party Papal Trust with but a few conditions. All dividends would be paid to Peter’s Pence, the Trust could not transfer the stock unless a Sanctuarian Pope was in office, and then only at his direction. Finally, if the stock was sold it had to be in a single block. Pope Peter the Second is the first person to have control of this 28.15% of AMI stock, and along with another ten percent owned by the two highest ranking civilian members of the Sanctuarian Party, Archie and Annie Knight, this trio possesses working control of the highest capitalized corporation to have ever existed in the world.”

  She stared into the control room. Raised an eyebrow.

  “I believe we are done!” Ira clapped. “Excellent job, Tiff. Care to have a look?”

  The three of them viewed the pair of inserts twice. Satisfied, Ira again congratulated Sister Gibson, then left, saying he had a meeting to attend. Samson leaned against the panel, uncertain how to proceed. She looked to him, her face full of question marks. Then she turned away, examining the empty studio, letting go of a long, almost melodramatic sigh.

  “Is… something wrong?”

  She seemed to weigh the query, then reached into her jacket and removed a hanky.

  “How did you know, Terry?”

  “Know what?”

  She glanced to him, her expression one of wonder mixed with reserved agony. “That Juan told me you’d be here to talk to me.”

  “I didn’t. I found a note on his desk.”

  “Lord. How did he know he was going to die?” she continued.

  He didn’t respond.

  “We were talking, oh, maybe a week ago.” She sighed again, then dabbed at her eyes. “He told me something bad was in the works, something he couldn’t control. Said if he couldn’t sort it out that you would.”

  “A week ago?”

  She searched her memory. “Maybe last Wednesday. Maybe last Thursday. Said you were on holiday but would be back… he said you’d be back yesterday. Sunday.”

  “Could you tell me more?”

  She studied her reflection in the control room window, then let go an embarrassed chuckle.

  “Not looking like this. Could you meet me outside after I straighten myself up a bit?”

  “Sure. Take your time.”

  Five minutes later she stepped through the building’s front door. For all he knew, she might just as well have been exiting a beauty parlor.

  “Do you have to be anywhere soon?” she asked.

  “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  “How about… could you walk with me over to the Cathedral?”

  “Fine.”

  They didn’t exchange another word until they’d made their way down Bethlehem Boulevard to the first path
entering the park surrounding Our Lady of the Creek. She stopped, turned to him. Thought a moment.

  “I… let me… will you promise me that what I tell you will be held in confidence?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  She gazed ahead, toward the spires of the Cathedral.

  “This year began a little crazy for me.”

  In January, she’d been approached by an agent from “one of those big Hollywood operations” with an offer so incredible that at first she couldn’t believe he was serious. If she had a mind to do so, the man would guarantee her $30,000,000 in exchange for her being featured in a well-known men’s magazine followed by a few personal appearances and her endorsement of a new line of women’s wear. She’d thanked him for his interest but replied that such a venture was out of the question.

  A few weeks later, when she was in Houston presenting the road show, the agent surfaced again, this time offering $40,000,000 for the same package. She’d refused once more, but accepted his offer to take her out for dinner. “You know? Make sure he understood I couldn’t be persuaded.” Only trouble was that she found him very attractive, and after being wined and dined like she’d never been before, the unbelievable seductiveness of the situation took the upper hand.

  “So he takes me back to the hotel, we have a couple of cocktails, and… things got a bit too… you know.”

  “I know how things like that can happen.”

  “It’s not like we did any… there was just some inappropriate chat after he walked me to my room. That was it. But as soon as I got back, I headed straight to church to make my confession. That’s when my relationship with Juan began.”

  Castro had recognized her voice as soon as she’d said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” She’d explained the entire situation and the priest had given her absolution. A few days later, the two crossed paths again, this time while both were strolling through the park. He’d asked if she’d like to share a bench and continue their exchange. She’d agreed. The Cardinal suggested that he, too, would appreciate having someone he could share his thoughts and experiences with.

  “I couldn’t… you wouldn’t believe the stress he was experiencing. It was like he had the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. I could just see it in his eyes. His posture, his… everything about him. So I took him under my wing, as he’d me under his.”

  They continued meeting on a regular basis. Sometimes publicly at a restaurant or business affair, sometimes privately at either her apartment or at his mini. Nobody gave it a second look as Castro’s portfolio included anything that might bring royalties into RCC accounts.

  “So things seemed to have leveled out,” Gibson continued as they neared the Cathedral. “Juan seems to have things sorted out. Then he drops the bomb.”

  “Bomb?”

  “He told me that he thought we were about to be hit with a something so incredibly devastating that we’d never recover.”

  “You mean you and him?”

  “No. The Church. He said it was unimaginable. He said it was too weighty for him to handle. He said he couldn’t deal with it.” She paused. “That’s when he told me about you.”

  He waited for her continue.

  “He said he’d told Peter that if anything happened to him, you were the best one he knew to complete whatever it was that concerned him so much. Does that make any sense?”

  Samson thought a moment. No, it didn’t.

  “Did he say why?”

  “Just that he knew when the moment arrived, you’d do what was necessary.”

  They continued to the doors of the Cathedral. She patted his arm, said she’d remember him in her prayers, and then went inside.

  Seeing a SG Jeep depositing a couple of the Guard, he stepped across and asked for a lift back home from the driver, Corporal Swain, who he’d met on her first day on the Compound detail. As soon as they cleared the edge of the Village, Samson instructed her to head directly for the crash. But when they reached the bridge, his gawking plans were terminated by order of the Vatican Guards already in place, their instructions clear: anyone entering Residential was to go directly to their home and “not even consider” going to the site of the “intrusion.”

  As he opened the door of the townhouse, closing, then locking it, he wished he was back in Castro’s office working out Silver Piece. But if the Vats ordered a lock down, there was no arguing.

  He tossed his blazer onto a chair in the rarely-used living room and ambled into the kitchen, removing a small bottle of cranberry juice, then making his way up to the bedroom. About halfway there, he stopped, his attention riveted to the ceiling. The piano. He’d heard Kim’s piano. He replayed his thoughts of her he’d had that morning, of finally getting up the nerve to actually walk into the room he’d avoided for so long. It was a turning point of sorts, that one gesture he needed to finally tuck Kim’s memory safely in his pocket. Next thing, he decided, Castro’s apparition would appear before him to explain the secret of Silver Piece.

  Then he heard the piano again. It was muted. Of course it would play that way, so it must be an illusion.

  More notes. He advanced without a sound, certain not to scare whoever or whatever was scaring him, five seconds a step up the remaining stairs. He waited a moment. Nothing. Had to be his imagination or a ghost. He opted for ghost and turned toward the master bedroom suite, quietly enough to disturb only a keen-eared poltergeist. Then he heard humming. And it was pretty good humming. But if there was one thing he’d learned in ten years working for the Pope, it was that sometimes you just have to face things head-on and hope for the best.

  Before facing this one head-on, though, he continued into the sitting room, opened the drawer of a small writing desk Kimberly had bought once while he was out of town, removed what the burglar would see as a Chicago telephone book, opened the false cover and removed the Dan Wesson Arms .357 Magnum inherited from his godfather. He disengaged the cylinder; looked at the chambers. Six rooms, six occupants. Satisfied, he nudged it back into place, lowered it to his side then set the hammer.

  He’d only taken the gun out once since Kim died, a cool spring night Carter and Chell had come over for dinner and requested two too many espressos. About three that morning he heard the sound of shattering glass downstairs just as clearly as he heard the humming from Kim’s room. He’d gone down to confront the intruder, a shadow he tracked for five minutes before returning to bed. The next morning, the burglar turned out to be a decorative glass candleholder left burning in the powder room, the final moments of heat apparently enough to do it in.

  But candleholders didn’t hum, as whatever or whoever had begun to do again. He eased to the door. It was ajar. He heard the piano tinkle again. He brought the 6.5 inch barreled cannon around his back and gave the door a push with his other elbow.

  Angelique didn’t break the rhythm of the tune she was playing. “Hello, Terry.”

  He lowered the gun and disengaged the hammer. She looked at the weapon, much as she might have if he’d revealed a football helmet filled with hockey pucks.

  “I thought maybe you were a burglar.”

  “Who played piano?”

  He set the firearm on the floor next to the love seat he flopped into. “They don’t teach you manners out West?”

  “I only learned the ones you need to get by.”

  She turned on the bench halfway, moving her long braid from the left side of her neck to the right, holding its tip with one hand and leisurely stroking the center with the other, affording him the profile of the hottest, soon-to-turn 28 megastar of American popular music.

  Angelique Sandra Caulfield had a face her spirit namesakes would envy: flawless porcelain skin, eyes of frozen chartreuse, hair a pure Nordic blond. She was no taller than 5”6”, though her presence always left one feeling she was more like 6’4”. Instead of the emaciated front many of her contemporaries presented, she was equipped with softer curves, complimenting her most hypnotic asset: The Smile. Alw
ays imitated but never duplicated, she could vary it scores of ways to fit the occasion, delivering volumes of information by simply showing a couple teeth or adding casually batted eyelids. That’s what she’d done the last time he saw her. The night of the black robe.

  The night of sin.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see you. Talk to you.”

  She’d been born in Kansas City, the fatherless child of a cocktail waitress. Her mother and she moved to Castle Rock, Colorado shortly after her birth, never to return to the heart of the Great Plains. Her mother was also a singer of some repute who eventually wound up owning, running and entertaining in a bar called The Flying Rock in the Denver suburb. Success came quickly for TFR so another was opened in the trendier outskirts of Telluride. Upon graduation from high school, she’d joined the family business for real though her own waitress career had begun at age of 15. She took over the operation at 18, two weeks later, when her mother died of a drug overdose. She enrolled at CU, ran the two taverns and eventually opened a third club in Aspen. Though she continued her studies for five years, balancing them with her business and her fledgling singing career, she never received a degree. Before her 24th birthday she fell in with one of the regular customers of Aspen Rock, Tommy Carnes, a 35-year-old partner in the premier entertainment management firm Zieczech-Hare. He promised her a life of glitter, stardom and largesse if she’d marry him and have some babies. The Rocks were sold, the glitter came, the stardom followed but the babies never appeared in the house they built in Newport Beach, California. A year before she’d filed for divorce, RCC This Week reported Carnes couldn’t deliver the healthy sperm necessary and was nervous his estranged wife had become a much bigger star than either of them could have remotely imagined when he took her under his well-connected wing.

  Her first outing, Angelique Caulfield, a sweet blend of contempt gospel and self-composed introspective observations about being a woman caught between the contradictory forces in her life was a surprise hit, garnering her Grammy Awards for Best Single and Best New Performer while selling a stunning 14,000,000 units.