The Dead Saint

by Marilyn Brown Oden

  "Natalia." Seeing their surprise, the priest added, "Vik told me."

  "I left it with . . ."

  "President Dimitrovski," Father Nish finished. "An aide who was traveling with him to Mostar telephoned me before the flight left and suggested that I arrange to pick it up there. But the crash . . ." A visible wave of grief washed over him.

  "We are very sorry," said Lynn.

  "I understand that it contained thousands of euros." English, though heavily accented, came easily for Father Nish.

  A man in uniform hurried into the hotel. His strong build and intimidating stance commanded authority, his decorated uniform an adornment to his power, not its source.

  Viktor stepped toward him and called, "General Thornburg." He saluted, and it was returned. "I was beginning to be concerned about you."

  "The package," finished Father Nish, "is a loss, but inconsequential when we consider the toll that plane crash took. President Dimitrovski is irreplaceable in this region."

  Grief filled the general's tired eyes. "It is a devastating loss."

  "General Thornburg is here to attend a commemoration service to honor President Dimitrovski," explained Viktor. "It's for military and government officials in this area." He looked at the general. "You know that I'm driving you?"

  The general nodded brusquely. "We need to discuss some things." His tone turned a casual acknowledgement into an order, his second-in-command days long forgotten.

  "General, I would like for you to meet Bishop Lynn Peterson."

  The general's eyes registered surprise, then dismissal, then blanked.

  "And Dr. Galen Peterson, a historian. And Bubba Broussard, who plays for the New Orleans Saints. They were friends of my brother-in-law."

  Were, thought Lynn. Past tense. Elie will always be my friend. Present tense.

  The general extended his hand to Bubba, then Galen. When Lynn offered hers, he accepted it with veiled distaste, as though she'd forgotten her gender.

  Perhaps you should have curtsied, Lynn.

  "General Thornburg is in charge of NATO for the Balkans."

  Marsh's general! It was Lynn's turn to be surprised.

  The general gestured toward the medals on Viktor's uniform. "You are wise to place yourselves in the hands of this man of valor. I personally have decorated him twice for his work with NATO."

  Oops. Sorry, Lynn. Maybe I was wrong on this one.

  But maybe not, thought Lynn, still skeptical.

  "Father Nish, I think you and the general have met previously," said Viktor. Both men nodded.

  "You mentioned a package in the plane crash," said the general abruptly.

  Father Nish sighed. "Unfortunately."

  "Fortunately, I found it." A subtle shift in General Thornburg's posture put him in charge. "Please come to my room so I can get it for you." He took the priest's arm and said softly, "On the way you can tell me what you know about St. Sava."

  Lynn saw Father Nish glance toward Viktor and watched their silent, unreadable exchange.

  "Father—" Viktor stepped beside him. "I have a favor to ask of you as Mother Darwish's priest. This is a very difficult time for her, today especially. The shooting was by her apartment. I wonder if you might call on her. It would lift her spirits."

  "Certainly."

  "This evening?"

  Father Nish frowned, and Lynn recognized the resignation to duty that she sometimes felt. "Certainly," he repeated.

  She glimpsed a magician's sleight-of-hand as Viktor transferred something small from his own pocket to the priest's. A thought floated by and hovered like a butterfly: the amount of money in Natalia's troublesome package, Viktor's deference toward the priest, the illusive transfer of what she assumed to be a copy of Elie's decoded data. The butterfly landed: perhaps I just met the head of St. Sava.

  Viktor saw her gaze and seemed to read her thoughts. His penetrating eyes and a subtle wag of his head said, Don't go there, Baby Sister.

  122

  Agitated, Zeller lay on the patched yellowed spread in his rooming house and stared at the ceiling grayed from soot. His cigarette smoke rose toward the ceiling, his free hand resting on the navy duffle bag hiding Freund inside. He knew that Frau Peterson would recognize his face if she saw him, but he had not expected her to recognize his voice. He had forgotten about speaking to her on the streetcar. Excuse me. Two common words invited uncommon danger. She linked the call and his voice to his face and the medal. At least she doesn't know my name. Or does she?

  Her question echoed: How did John Adams get Elias Darwish's medal? The link also puzzled him. Obtaining the medal after the shooting had been part of the Patriot's contract with him. Perhaps the master of disguise had used it to buy a favor from Adams. He would pursue the connection between the two men. Thank you for the clue, Frau Peterson.

  He reflected on Peterson's response to his accusations and pondered whether their encounters could actually be coincidence. The man's confusion was most convincing, and Zeller was skilled at reading people, an essential ingredient of his success. Only the Patriot deluded him.

  His phone rang. The Patriot's voice startled him. An eerie coincidence. Another one? He made a small place in his mind for the possibility of their existence. Quickly eliminated it. No. Not coincidences, but connections. Events coming together of their own volition, like magnets.

  Zeller listened to the absurd proposition. President Benedict! Shocked, he declined. "Nein." He patted Freund on the bed beside him. "Auf Wiedersehen."

  "Wait!"

  He returned the phone to his ear, puzzled. A day of puzzles. The Patriot had moved from despotic to desperate. Only a week ago he had sat at a café in Vienna, invincible. Today his voice held an unfamiliar ring of vulnerability, and his request was outrageous. Something serious had gone awry.

  As the Patriot tried to persuade him, Zeller thought about the challenge. Nothing equaled it—the strategy, the skill required, the escape. He interrupted, something he would not have dared to do before the Patriot exposed his vulnerability. "Double the fee. This assignment will cost me my career."

  An angry refusal followed.

  "Then find another shooter," said Zeller, confident that no one else of his caliber existed. "Auf Wiedersehen."

  "No! Wait! You have to be reasonable."

  "Reasonable?" He responded with a Zeller version of Peterson's words: "It is unreasonable to be reasonable about something unreasonable."

  "Remember to whom you are speaking!" A tremor deflated the Patriot's cold malice.

  Zeller hesitated, then lunged. "My terms are nonnegotiable. One, I want to be paid directly by you, the full fee in advance. Afterward I will not be able to resurface. They will hunt me forever."

  The Patriot made no attempt to disagree, and Zeller continued. "Two, I want people to see you with me that morning. It will give you a vested interest in not revealing my identity."

  "That's impossible!"

  "So is the assignment. Three, I will be in the lobby of the Hotel Aleksandar in Skopje at nine o'clock Tuesday morning." In the meantime, he thought, I'll arm myself with information about the link between the Patriot and Adams.

  "You are stepping over the line!"

  "Those are the terms. If you want the job done, be at the Aleksandar with the fee in euros." He hung up, knowing the Patriot would tell himself he would not take orders or put up with insubordination. "But he will not risk this assignment to anyone but us, Freund," he said, caressing the duffle bag. "In the end, he will be there." So easy.

  123

  The sarajevo pastor and his wife arrived five minutes early and whisked the trio to the reception that began Lynn's Bosnian itinerary. First the welcoming; then the work. Lynn shook strangers' hands and offered practiced foreign greetings. Operating on remote control, she thought about the web spun on this long Friday. The flight from Skopje, President Benedict's call, Bubba's arrival, Mrs. Darwish, Viktor/Vikolaj/ Vik, John Adams, Father Nish, General Thornburg, Zechariah Zeller, an
d the late Frank Fillmore—instead of the late Lynn Peterson. Or the late Galen Peterson.

  She cut the last five words from her mind. She wasn't afraid to die. But she was afraid to lose Galen. The Zeller problem was beyond her. She did not know how to begin to resolve it.

  One step at a time, Lynn. Like always.

  An idea seized her. She rejected it as pointless, hopeless, daunting.

  Being a bit of a coward, are we, Lynn?

  The idea nagged her toward compliance. But it required the temerity to contact General Thornburg. Timidity held her back. And timing. Right now he was attending the military and government officials' commemoration service honoring President Dimitrovski. With relief she welcomed procrastination.

  The reception concluded with a brief time of worship together. Candles glowed, lighting the way out of her dark abyss. They glimmered boldly, casting out the shadows of clandestine ill will. Their light brightened the world with hope and love and charity, human qualities that sometimes flickered and even blew out. But not permanently.

  For the moment she was in the hands of the Church—gentler hands than Viktor's—with grassroots people who lived in the war, not above it. She sat amidst people whose focus on spiritual growth drew her toward the holy. Holism. Wholeness. The sinister world shrank in the distance, and Lynn regained a peaceful heart, reassured against her fear that the blossom of serenity had been plucked from the vine and left to die on the floor of the Vice President's limo. Worshiping here offered her puissance, for no contemporary word portrayed the power, strength, and force of the renewal it provided for her spirit. The tide washed away the other world, the underworld, if only temporarily.

  Worship with the people brought her Home to a faith community. Where greed is tempered by generosity, real power is viewed as the power of love, and self-giving is recognized as the means to self-fulfillment. Where the magic of faith—if there is magic—is not that the people of faith are successful in living out high ideals, but that their ideals help them live on a higher plain. Where the mystery of faith—and there is mystery—is neither definable nor describable, because it is just that, a Mystery. A Mystery of Faith. Reliable. Undeniable. Viable.

  Worship ended, and the hard part began. She moved into a large hall, where the fact-finding delegation had begun gathering, along with the officials from all sides of the issues. These representatives would bombard the delegation with "facts" selected to support their vested interests and actions, "facts" that some might deliberately misrepresent. The delegation's task was not so much to sift out the truth from both sides but to discern from their words and emotions how to construct a bridge, one that could begin a journey toward reconciliation. A historically hopeless task, but the vision itself must not be lost.

  The meeting began with positioning and posturing. That was expected. It was also disappointing. Galen thumbed notes into his Blackberry, interested in the historical slant. Bubba stayed watchful and alert though he'd flown all night with no time since to rest. Refreshed by the worship service, Lynn buckled down to listen and discern together with the delegation how to keep hope alive for reconciliation. She listened carefully to what was said and left unsaid, and noted innuendos behind the words. Simultaneously at the back of her mind she planned her strategy to win over General Thornburg. At the break she would call him. Her stomach pitched.

  124

  After the commemoration service, Vik took the General back to the hotel. While there he removed his computer from its hiding place after getting himself into Bubba's empty room uninvited. He returned to Mother Darwish's and began to analyze the decoded data combined with St. Sava's accumulated information. It did not make a pretty picture.

  "Is something wrong, Vikolaj?" she asked.

  Not something. Everything. Elie was on the verge of connecting the Patriot to John Adams, but he hadn't discovered that the trail would lead to his half-brother. But now, Vik knew. He looked at her dear, weary face. "Everything is OK, Mother Darwish." He cared deeply for her and felt a red-glow anger rising again toward Adam Ristich/John Adams. She should have named him Cain. How could a mother bear knowing that one son had killed the other? He would see to it that she never knew. The only way to do that was to keep anyone else from knowing, including St. Sava. "You don't need to worry."

  Or did she? Surely Father Nish would return the copy he'd given him. This afternoon after Bubba admitted having the data, he should have delayed the phone call to Father Nish until he'd had time to analyze it. He'd been too protective, too eager to have a copy of the decoded information in case something happened to the original. Now he had to get it back! Tonight. His request for the priest to see Mother Darwish was made only partly for her sake. Mainly it was a way to convince General Thornburg that Father Nish was truly a priest and to allay suspicions about St. Sava. He pondered how to retrieve the copy. Casually, he decided.

  Father Nish arrived as promised. Despite Viktor's heavy heart and burdened mind, he enjoyed Mother Darwish's pleasure in the visit. Speaking Bosanski was far more comfortable for her than struggling with English, but she had met the challenge well this afternoon. He also enjoyed Father Nish's delight, his spirit obviously growing lighter as they talked.

  When Father Nish stood to leave, she ignored his exit mode. "Do you know Bishop Peterson?"

  A drawn-out departure, thought Vik impatiently, one of the common but understandable ploys of the elderly who live alone.

  "I met her this afternoon," replied Father Nish without a hint of impatience.

  "She came here today after Adam left. She prayed for me just before the shooting. I think it is the first time anyone has prayed for me in English."

  "God is omni-lingual."

  "Whatever the language, Father, words don't fool God. God reads our hearts."

  He smiled warmly at her. "God reads a pure heart in you."

  "Oh, no! I have many blemishes." She glanced toward the apartment door where Adam had come and gone.

  "You handle your difficulties admirably well."

  Mrs. Darwish looked at her son-in-law. "Vikolaj, we have been ignoring you! I am sorry. You will stay the night?"

  "If you are troubled by the shooting."

  She responded with a soul-deep sigh. "I remember my peaceful village of Biram when I was a little girl."

  Rabbit-track stories—another elderly ploy, pointless but understandable. Vik rose beside Father Nish, his mind rushing ahead toward getting the copy back.

  "Then the military came," she continued. "As I've grown older, I realize that men talk peace but want war. Peace brings joy to the people but only gives leaders an opportunity to make a speech. War brings fear to the people and gives leaders an opportunity to remain in office." Tears came to her eyes. "So much war! What troubles me most about this afternoon is how little the shooting troubled me. I have become hardened by violence."

  Viktor stood motionless, stunned into silence. If kind people like Mother Darwish became hardened, there was no hope.

  She rose stiffly from her chair. "Thank you for coming, Father." She smiled her appreciation. "You always leave me better than you find me."

  "We don't ever want it to be the other way around!"

  "It is a gift that you have," she said.

  "You return the gift, Rachel." Her first name, rarely used by him, was said with warm regard. "I, too, am always better when I leave than when I come."

  Vik patted her arm lovingly. "I need to visit with Father Nish, but I'll be back."

  The priest looked surprised but asked no questions.

  125

  During the break at the fact-finding session, Lynn headed toward the restroom, then veered off into a dark hallway. She felt her way down it until she was sure no one could hear her. She listened for footsteps. Wished she'd asked Bubba to come with her. Thought of Zeller. Shuddered. She shook off the image of his face, his eyes. Hurriedly she called the hotel. "General Thornburg's room, please." She hoped he had left for the commemoration service so she could
procrastinate.

  "General Thornburg here," he said gruffly on the first ring.

  She felt intimidated before she began. "This is Lynn Peterson."

  "I am very busy right now," he said with cold dismissal.

  "Yes, sir." She continued undaunted, "The story is too long to go into, but I know who initiated the request for Major Manetti to be on our plane from Frankfort to Vienna. It was very high up, sir."

  "I'm listening."

  "President Benedict, sir." She sucked in a breath wondering if he would hang up. He didn't. "Major Manetti was her friend. Confidentially, sir, she has also befriended me, but I think, if asked, she might deny that in order to protect me." She winced at how preposterous she sounded. Poor little lunatic! Give her a pill for paranoia.

  "I'm still listening."

  "I have a request of utmost importance, sir." Fear that he would consider the conversation absurd and dismiss the request brought a tremor to her voice. "Do you have the power . . ."

  "Absolutely."

  "I'm sorry, sir. Could you arrange . . ."

  "Affirmative."

  This was not going well.

  Just spit it out, Lynn.

  "I believe the bullet that killed Major Manetti came from the same gun that killed Frank Fillmore today. The sniper's name is Zechariah Zeller." She paused briefly. "You could check this out with a ballistics report—or whatever it's called."

  Way to go, Lynn. That sounded competent.

  "You base all this on what?"

  Don't say intuition, Lynn.

  "As I said, it's a long story. But if I'm correct, it will connect the killings and facilitate the investigation of the major's murder. I assure you that President Benedict would be as pleased as you to find out who killed him."

  "Continue."

  And say what? That the sniper planned to shoot my husband but shot Fillmore instead to save my life? That he also killed Elie but used a pistol instead of the rifle? And set up another man to look like Elie's killer? And I was stupid enough to let him know I recognize him? She feared the only thing he'd believe was that she had a big imagination. She made a desperate plea: "General Thornburg, even if you think I'm a kook, isn't it worth getting a ballistics report before dismissing this lead?" An interminable silence followed.