Doctors concentrated on Babette. Until they sedated her, she wouldn’t stop screaming that someone was shooting her.
Hours after the windstorm and blackout began, electrical power was being restored to the east coast. Televisions were back on, too, and the president held a press conference to detail his plans for a full investigation into the outage.
With images of the president on the monitors behind them, Rossi, Khoury and MacLeod hunkered down in the command center to listen to Camp’s spin of the events.
Realizing the FBI had cornered him and Xavier, Petit took his own life. The nun held Babette hostage at knifepoint, and Rossi shot the woman to save the child. No explanation would be offered for the bizarre injury Babette had inflicted on her sisters, Camp said. Since their mouths had reappeared, there’d be no evidence and anyone bringing it up would be labeled a lunatic. Agents and paramedics who’d seen the horror were getting private “counseling” about the matter.
“What’s going to happen to the girls?” asked Khoury.
“That isn’t your concern, Father.” With that, Camp went outside to talk to his crew, leaving the three team members in the trailer.
MacLeod started in. “Samantha...”
“I’m sure the girls will be farmed out to another family,” said Rossi. “In a few months, everything will be a distant memory. They’ll go back to playing with dolls and watching cartoons.”
“What about their gift?” asked the Scot.
“It’s obviously gone down the tubes,” said Rossi.
“How? Why?” asked Khoury.
Rossi shrugged. “God must have had second thoughts.”
MacLeod: “Please. That’s no explanation.”
“You come up with one, then,” Rossi snapped.
“That handyman and his family,” said Khoury. “He’s the one I feel sorry for in all this.”
Trey Petit wasn’t the last miracle recipient turned suicide victim. As the bureau was mopping up the monastery scene the next morning, Camp got a call from the Wormwood cops and passed the information on to Rossi and her crew: Jim Schultz had shoved a rifle in his mouth – after he woke that morning and found his right leg gone.
“We gotta find out about that blind girl,” Rossi told Camp.
“We all agreed that the individuals healed were simply tools,” said Camp. “Whether she can see or not is irrelevant. She’s irrelevant.”
“But her father...”
“Is going to be the country’s next ag secretary.”
That afternoon, Rossi, Khoury and MacLeod were put on a plane back to Italy.
The day after they returned to Rome, the team met in the situation room/library/dungeon with Cardinal Nardini’s replacement, Cardinal Francesco DeLuca, a short, thin man with silver hair poking out from his red skullcap and deep-set brown eyes framed by enormous tortoise shell eyeglasses.
While they all sat at the long table, DeLuca told them:
Nardini wasn’t dead, but in hiding. He’d been one of the violent few that he’d warned them about.
In the rubble of the Wormwood convent, emergency workers had turned up no Sister Jane, but they did find her cell phone. The sheriff handed it over to the bureau and Camp had just called the Vatican with the news: Sister Jane had been in constant contact with the cardinal. One of the messages on the young nun’s phone was the ciphered text of the note that had been dropped in the team’s car before the hail assailed them.
In flagella paratus sum.
“So was Nardini the one who slipped the note inside my Rome hotel room? Did he kill that priest?”
“Is he the bloke who stabbed me and dropped the devil mask?”
“He or his fellow conspirators,” said DeLuca.
“But why the bridge? Why did everything focus on the bloody bridge?”
Khoury answered: “That bridge is famous for where it leads – to the Vatican.”
“Nardini played us,” said Rossi.
“And everyone else,” said DeLuca. “Including the other cardinals and the Holy Father.”
“Was he always on the other side?” asked Rossi.
“No, no. We believe he was lured, by the promise of wealth.” DeLuca smiled tightly. “Despite what people think, serving as a cardinal in Rome is not a path to riches.”
“But he also helped us,” said Khoury. “He gave us files and...”
“He destroyed or stole other files,” said DeLuca. “He assisted you to the extent that he had to, as directed by the Holy See. Otherwise, another cardinal would have been assigned, and he did not wish that to happen.”
“Because then he wouldn’t have been able to spy on us,” said Khoury, his shoulders sagging.
Camp had also called about the imposter priest, and the cardinal passed on the information. With the help of fingerprints lifted from the monastery’s visitor cottage, the bureau was able to put a name to the pale face: Tobias Verner, a Danish national and global terrorist with a dozen different aliases. His own country wanted him for a bombing in a Copenhagen church. A former surgeon and the son of missionary parents who’d been hacked to death in Congo, he’d self-published a fiery atheist manifesto that advocated the destruction of all worship spaces. The execution of all religious leaders.
Verner was believed to be one of the up and coming leaders of the violent few.
“We need a proper name for that miserable lot,” said MacLeod.
“They may have one now, my friends.” DeLuca pushed back his chair and stood. “It is likely what they call themselves these days.”
“These days?” asked Rossi.
“If we read between the lines of Verner’s manifesto, he suggests an organization has been around in one form or another for decades. Possibly longer.” The cardinal stepped over to the white board. “Wherever and whenever religious turmoil can be used to advance their cause.”
“What is their cause?” asked Rossi.
“From his writing, Verner would have us think that they are atheist jihadists.” DeLuca picked up a marker. “Meaning that instead of warring against unbelievers, they are fighting believers.”
“You don’t buy it,” said Rossi.
“Their goal is to use religion, to use faith, to engineer events for their own profit and power. Hence, their name.” As he scribbled on the board, he continued. “This man, Verner. Though his book is in Danish, one Italian word is found repeatedly throughout the text.”
The cardinal moved aside so they could read it:
INGEGNERI
“Engineers,” said Khoury.
“They attempted to engineer an Armageddon,” said DeLuca. “They tried to reconstruct the earlier miracles, is if they were science projects. Engineering projects.”
“Who belongs to this wacko club?” asked Rossi.
“We fear some of its members are in the highest levels of business and government.”
Khoury sat forward. “So a list exists, Eminence?”
“The files taken by my predecessor contained some suspects, some names.”
“Nardini,” growled Macleod.
“Vatican staff, the one or two who may have set eyes on the documents, they are attempting to reassemble some of the information.”
“Wasn’t anything computerized?” asked Rossi.
“Hard drives were stolen or erased.” He sighed. “Your forensic people at the FBI, they may be able to find things buried in our system.”
“What about the earlier team?” ask Rossi. “We could get an assist from them.”
“Aye,” said MacLeod. “That Megiddo team or whatever it was called.”
Face darkening, DeLuca addressed Rossi. “Your own people haven’t told you?”
“Told me what?”
“During the course of their investigations, they and the intelligence they had gathered...vanished.”
“Vanished?” Rossi sputtered. “What do you mean?”
“They’re dead,” answered Khoury.
“Or have gone to the other side,” said
DeLuca.
MacLeod: “Nardini told us they simply quit.”
“Nardini was a liar.” Rossi took aim at their new Vatican contact. “Have you cleaned house? Can we trust your people? Hell, can we trust you?”
DeLuca: “You have no choice.”
“Charming,” said MacLeod.
The cardinal adjusted the red sash around his waist and headed for the exit.
“Where are you going?” asked Rossi. “What should we do?”
“We pray you stay, but we know you have all been through a great deal in a short amount of time. I leave you alone to talk. Do you want to stay on the team? Si o no? It is your choice. Do what you have to do.” He raised his palms over them. “Dio vi benedica tutti.”
With that blessing and his black cassock billowing after him, he started for the exit. Before he could open the door, a Vatican guard popped his head inside and whispered to DeLuca. The cardinal turned back to them.
“Make your decision quickly, my friends. Another shadow is materializing on the chapel ceiling.”
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