“Are you saying that the Virgin—”
“Absolutely. In order to prove this we would have to pull together an extraordinary series of proofs. On the other hand, to be frank, I believe that the woman who is not visible in the photograph can only be an ‘infiltrator,’ an angel, someone capable of controlling her disappearance from the scene as if she were a photon, and who took advantage of the flash on the tourist’s camera, disguising her escape, and vanishing in the middle of a burst of light.”
“But those are speculations.”
“No doubt. But we already know that so much of the Christian tradition as well as other, older, more ancient ones, speak to us of angels as beings of flesh and blood, who frequently take on human shapes and forms, and who watch us from inside our society, as if they were a fifth column. . . . You don’t follow? Just like photons, which are both particle and wave, angels are corporeal and immaterial at the same time.”
“You surprise me, Brother.”
“Furthermore,” Tejada added, waving the photo, “for some reason that we do not understand, photographic cameras, more sensitive than the human eye to different frequencies of light, do not capture the physical aspects our eyes see but a different one altogether.”
By this point in the conversation Baldi was convinced he had come to the right person. He had paid attention to the signs, and they were guiding him well. Trusting in the designs of a Divine Providence, the Benedictine adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and, without taking his eyes off Tejada, said, “I have yet to tell you the second part of this adventure, Brother. As you will understand, if I have taken the trouble to come here from Rome, it was not simply to show you a photograph, even if you are a respected specialist in the field.”
“Flattered to hear it, Father Baldi. I’m all ears.”
“Before I ever saw this photograph, the ‘terrorist,’ or angel, or whatever you want to call her, whispered something when she was standing next to me. She said something to the effect that I should be attentive to the signs, and that I should ask the ‘second.’ I came to the conclusion that I had to speak to you, the ‘Second Evangelist.’ You could call it an inspiration.”
The professor loomed over Friar Baldi.
“It is well-established that angels take on physical form in order to reveal signs to us. But what does all this have to do with me?”
“While that camera was taking pictures, I was busy trying to come up with an answer to the disappearance of Saint Matthew’s files. That was my mission and, believe me, I had no idea what to do. So, Saint John, Zsidiv, told me that I should let the signs show me the way, And a sign arrived with this image. Do you understand now? You have something to tell me.”
“Then let’s find out what it is!” Tejada exclaimed good-humoredly.
“I am convinced that information you have will help me find the whereabouts of the information stolen from Saint Matthew. That was why they sent me the sign, and why I have come here. Isn’t it obvious?”
“In which case, Father, credo quia absurdum.”
The Latin phrase, “I believe it because it is impossible to believe,” perfectly summed up Tejada’s situation. The good-natured giant endeavored to help out without quite understanding how to do so. Such is Providence.
“Tell me, Father Baldi, what sort of information disappeared after Matthew’s suicide?”
“It is difficult to say precisely.”
“Give it a try.”
“All right then. Before he died, Luigi Corso became obsessed by a very curious subject: he studied the remarkable ability of a Spanish nun who was able to travel back and forth between the Old World and the New during the seventeenth century. It seems that her visits to America earned her the name ‘The Lady in Blue’ among the Indians of the southwestern United States.”
Tejada stood stock still.
“The Lady in Blue! Are you certain?”
“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”
“That’s your Providence right there, Father!” Tejada said as he broke out laughing. “Marvelous, isn’t it?”
“I’m happy to hear you are familiar with the subject.”
“And how could I not be?” the giant said in booming voice, with a theatrical flourish. “How could I not be, if I am the man responsible for the process of her beatification?”
What Amadeo Tejada told Father Baldi next left him perplexed. Despite the enormous prodigies attributed to her during her lifetime, Mother Ágreda was never declared a saint by the Church in Rome. Something had happened. None of the Popes who opened the case for sainthood lived long enough to see her arrive at the altar. Both Clement XIV and Leo XIII closed their inquiries with “decrees of silence.” No other woman in the church had ever received such harsh treatment. In 1987, Tejada was able to have both decrees lifted, and he successfully reopened the investigation of the Lady in Blue. Amadeo Tejada was doubtlessly the most well-versed man in the world when it came to the nun who bilocated to America. And by a caprice of destiny, Baldi had him right in front of him.
“Listen to me well, Father,” said the Passionist, who was as astonished as Baldi himself. “Just a few days ago, the police paid me a visit in order to ask me about a manuscript from the seventeenth century belonging to Philip the Fourth. In it, the complete history of the Lady in Blue is recorded for the first time.”
Baldi was incredulous.
“It seems,” Tejada continued, “the text detailed the method used to bilocate.”
Zsidiv had spoken to him about that text. Baldi knew perfectly well that someone had taken it from Madrid, but he didn’t let on.
“Why are the police interested in this manuscript?” he asked Tejada.
“Very simple: it must have been stolen from the National Library . . .”
“Incredible. And do you know what else this manuscript contained?”
“Naturally. In 1630, when the Franciscans suspected that perhaps the woman who had been seen in New Mexico could be a nun of their order and not an apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe, they sent the former father custodian in Santa Fe to Ágreda. They asked him to interrogate her and, if the case merited, to unmask the ‘suspect.’ His questions extended over a full two weeks, after which, the custodian . . .”
“Benavides?”
“Exactly. The custodian wrote a report where he stated his conclusions.”
“Do you know what they were?”
“Only in part. It seems that Benavides came to the conclusion that each instance of the nun successfully being in two places at once (or bilocating, if you prefer) came after listening to hymns that drew her into a profound trance. In fact, I spoke about this subject several times in the past with Matthew’s assistant.”
“Doctor Albert. I am familiar with him,” said Baldi.
“The very person.”
“And what did he tell you?” Baldi asked as he tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. If Tejada had spoken with il dottore about the Lady in Blue, why did Ferrell never mention Luigi Corso’s special interest in the matter? And why had none of them, not even “Saint John,” mentioned the existence of the nun?
Tejada, who had no idea what Baldi was thinking, went on.
“Albert Ferrell took great interest in this ‘clue.’ And to some degree, that was logical, since your studies on pre-polyphony had already circulated among the Evangelists. The studies in which you concluded that certain frequencies in sacred music could aid in provoking altered states of consciousness that were favorable to bilocation.”
“So they took my work seriously. . . .” Baldi smiled.
“Of course! I remember one of the reports you sent to Father Corso, in which you spoke of Aristotle. You said the philosopher made detailed studies of the effect of music upon the will.”
“And not only him!” Baldi interjected. “For their part, the Pythagoreans discovered that the Phrygian mode roused their warriors’ fury, while the Lydian mode achieved the opposite effect, relaxing the mind of the person li
stening to it; the Mixolydian mode provoked bouts of melancholy. . . . And they used this on the battlefield, to lift their army’s spirits or depress those of their enemy.”
“So listen, Father: Luigi Corso’s assistant assured me that they had discovered that every thing or situation existing in nature possessed an exclusive vibration, and that if one’s mind managed to position itself inside that vibration, it would have access not only to its essence but to its time and place as well.”
“This Ferrell said that to you?”
Father Tejada was so excited his eyes had stopped blinking.
“Of course! Don’t you understand? The little I knew of Benavides’s interrogations of Mother María Jesús was that she explained to him by gestures and in minute detail at what moments she generally entered into a trance and took flight to America. She bilocated listening to the Alleluias during the Mass. And their vibrations catapulted her a distance of more than six thousand miles.”
“During the Alleluias? Are you certain of that?” Baldi straightened his glasses.
“And what is so strange about that, Father? Saint Augustine made it very clear in his writings: Alleluias facilitate the mystical union with God.”
“Are you aware, Brother, whether Corso managed to reproduce one of those trances with anyone?”
Baldi was playing with marked cards for the second time during the conversation. He knew that the answer to that questions was yes. But did Tejada know anything else? Something that Albert Ferrell was not aware of, despite working so closely with Corso?
“Now that you mention it, yes,” the Passionist replied, choosing his words. “I remember Corso telling me that in the musical compositions for the medieval masses he found acoustic elements that functioned in that way. And he played them for several subjects.”
The Benedictine was beaming with expectation, but preferred to make a small detour before posing the most important question.
“Do you know what sounds in particular they employed?” he asked.
“Let me think . . . From the sixteenth century the Introit from the Mass in the key of do. The Kyrie Eleison, or Lord, Have Mercy, and the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, or the latter part of Glory to God in the Highest, in the key of re. And the key of mi that was employed between the readings of the Bible and the Consecration with the Alleluias.”
“Of course!” the Venetian interjected. “The traditional Mass embraces a full octave, from the beginning to the end! It is clear that the liturgy was designed, among other things, to provoke mystical states that catapult the most sensitive listeners outside of their body. My thesis exactly!”
“And yet, Father Baldi, why is it that this ‘catapulting effect’ was only experienced by Mother Ágreda and not by the other nuns in the monastery?”
“Well . . .” Baldi hesitated. “There must be a neurological explanation for that.”
The Benedictine rose from his seat and began pacing in small circles. The moment had arrived.
“I was told that Corso utilized these frequencies with other people. Only yesterday, in Rome, Ferrell indicated to me that they played those sounds to a woman they named ‘the Great Dreamer.’ However, in the middle of the experiments, she decided to leave and return home.”
“A woman? Italian?”
“No, a North American. Did he say anything about this to you?”
Tejada stood staring at Baldi while an enormous smile spread across his face. It was a look somewhere between mocking and affectionate, a look that was hiding something. A game, perhaps.
“Now I know the information that destiny intends to put in your hands, Father Baldi.”
Tejada’s confidence impressed Baldi.
“Today, a friend of mine, the director of the National Library, told me that the police had identified a woman who has been dreaming of the Lady in Blue for some time. She lives in Los Angeles and worked for a short time in Rome, at Vatican Radio. The police are already on their way to her. She is the person you are searching for, isn’t that right?”
SIXTY-THREE
LOS ANGELES
Good Lord!”
Linda Meyers’s face reflected her indignation. She had spent the last hour in the FBI interrogation room on the third floor of 1100 Wilshire Boulevard. Two FBI agents, and a third person, a foreigner, were hoping she could help them straighten out the situation they had on their hands.
“I’ve already told you: I have no clue who robbed this valuable manuscript from the library in Madrid. And I know even less about some friar, whom I asked the director of the National Library about, and who is cited in the document. Why don’t you believe me?”
Mike Sheridan’s face had disbelief written all over it. He was not about to swallow a single word of her story. Dr. Meyers could see that in his body language. The foreigner, for his part, seemed more willing to listen.
“What could I know about Spanish history?” she said, directing her question at him.
“In fact, it isn’t Spanish history but American,” said the young man, who seemed more like a university student than a special agent. He spoke with a strong Spanish accent. “The missing document is part of the history of New Mexico.”
“Who said I committed the crime? Was it Mister . . . ?”
“Valiente, Enrique Valiente.”
“Did Mister Valiente accuse me of stealing the book?”
“No. We are merely investigating one of the case’s loose ends: you.” He then added, “By the way, my name is Carlos Albert. I came over from Spain to investigate.”
Meyers continued to direct her attention to him.
“Are you here because of my phone call to the library?”
“That’s right.”
“What we want to know, Doctor Meyers,” Sheridan said, reentering the conversation, “is where you got the name of Friar Esteban de Perea.”
The beauty of the doctor’s African features now concealed a simmering rage, something that intimidated Carlos and the second agent in the room, who stood motionlessly by the door. Carlos watched the scene unfolding in front of him as if it were taking place in a Hollywood film. Police stations in Spain were never so spacious as this federal building, and the agents there were never so impeccably dressed as Sheridan.
“Well, then?” he insisted. “Aren’t you going to tell us who spoke to you about this friar?”
“It is a private matter between doctor and patient.”
“How can that be a private matter! I am only asking you for a name. A source we can check out,” he insisted. “If you don’t give it to us, we will have to consider you a suspect in the robbery.”
“You are joking, right? I made a single phone call!”
“Look, Doctor,” Carlos interjected. “I spoke with Enrique Valiente in Madrid yesterday. And as he recalled the conversation he had with you, he said something that struck my attention.”
Dr. Meyers waited for the Spaniard to finish speaking.
“He told me,” Carlos went on, “that the information on Friar Esteban de Perea had been given to you by one of your patients, a woman who had remarkable visions of a certain Lady in Blue. Is that true?”
The doctor did not respond.
“Is that true, Doctor Meyers?” Agent Sheridan prodded her.
Carlos looked back at the federal agent. He found it strange that an officer of the law was chewing gum in order to avoid smoking. In Madrid all the cops smoked.
“Couldn’t you give us the name and phone number of this patient?” The journalist was insistent, but his tone of voice was much softer.
After a second of silence, Linda Meyers answered their questions just as they had feared.
“I’m sorry. It is a matter of doctor-patient privilege. I cannot give you any personal information on this person. And if you are going to continue to question me, I will have the pleasure of calling my lawyer.”
“And if we already had that information?” Carlos looked at her defiantly. “Would you confirm it for us?”
“Yo
u have that information?” Dr. Meyers said incredulously. “I never gave that to the director of the library.”
The visitor from Spain pulled out his cork-covered notebook, and looked for his last entry. Finding the note, he sat down next to the suspect and with an enigmatic smile said, “Does the name Jennifer Narody mean anything to you?”
The doctor froze.
“How . . . How the devil did you get that name?”
“It had nothing to do with the Devil, Doctor Meyers. An angel gave it to me,” he said, laughing.
SIXTY-FOUR
BILBAO, SPAIN
Watchman to Base, do you copy?”
“I copy you five by five, Watchman.”
“The bird has left the nest. Do I let him fly?”
“No. If he gets too far away, clip his wings. The cage will be ready in a few seconds.”
“Signing off.”
When Giuseppe Baldi left Tejada’s office at the university and saw the magnificent spring day all around him, he decided to walk to the center of town. Bilbao had just passed through a week of heavy rains, which left it clean and abounding in the scent of new life.
Everything around him was peaceful. That is, except for a Ford Transit with Barcelona plates and tinted windows, whose engine revved up as soon as the Third Evangelist appeared in the doorway of the university building.
“The bird is ready to fly.”
A man with rippling muscles sat at the wheel of the van, lighting a cigarette as he followed Father Baldi with his eyes.
“When he enters the crosswalk, grab him. Did you read me, Watchman?”
There was a burst of static at the end of their conversation. The man with the cigarette threw the walkie-talkie on the seat, adjusted his sunglasses, and moved the vehicle closer to the Benedictine. Baldi was strolling with an air of confidence.
“Now?”
Watchman’s voice thundered over the walkie-talkie as he demanded instructions.
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