Virgin

  A hand touched his shoulder. He fought for control and looked up. The man called Kesev had returned.

  “Come, Father Fitzpatrick. I’ll take you home. There are things we must discuss.”

  Dan nodded absently. Home … where was that? The rectory? That wasn’t home. Where was home now that Carrie was dead? He didn’t care where he went now, he just knew he didn’t want to stay in this hospital.

  He bunched up the neck of the plastic bag and followed Kesev toward the exit.

  Manhattan

  Dr. Darryl Chin, Second Assistant Medical Examiner for New York City yawned as he pulled on a pair of examination gloves. This is what you get, he supposed, when you’re downline in the pecking order and you live in the East Village: They need somebody quick, they call you.

  “Could be a lot worse,” he muttered.

  He looked down at the naked female cadaver supine before him on the stainless steel autopsy table, dead-pale skin, breasts caked with blood, dark hair tangled in disarray, jaw slack, dull blue eyes staring lifelessly at the overhead fluorescents. The murdered nun he’d heard about on the news tonight. Young, pretty, and fresh. The fresh part was important. Only a few hours cold. He might get some useful information out of her. Better than some stinking, macerated, crab-nibbled corpse they’d dragged out of the Hudson. And this was a neat chest wound, not some messy gut shot. He’d be through with this one in no time.

  If he ever got started.

  Where the hell was Lou Ann? She was supposed to assist him tonight. She lived in Queens and had a longer ride, but she should have been here by now. Probably had to put on her face before she came in. Darryl had never seen her without two tons of eye liner and mascara.

  Vanity, woman be thy name.

  No use in wasting time. He could get started without her. Open and drain the thorax at least. These chest wounds always left the cavity filled with blood.

  He probed the entry wound with his little finger. Looked like the work of a 9mm slug. Good shot. Right into the heart. Poor girl probably never knew what hit her.

  He reached up and adjusted the voice-activated mike that hung over the table. He gave the date and read off the name of the subject and presumed cause of death from the ID card, then reached for his scalpel.

  Time to open her up. Get the major incisions out of the way, drain and measure the volume of blood in the thoracic cavity, and by then Lou Ann would be here and they could start in on the individual organs.

  He poked his index finger into the suprasternal notch atop the breast bone, laid the point of the blade against the skin just below the notch, and leaned over the table to make the first long incision down the center of the sternum.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  A woman’s voice. He looked around. Who—?

  Then he looked down. The cadaver’s blue eyes were no longer dull and unfocused. They were bright and moving, looking at him. They blinked.

  The scalpel clattered on the metal table as he jumped back.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Please don’t take His name in vain,” the nun said, staring at him as she levered up to a sitting position on the table.

  Darryl felt his heart hammering in his chest, heard a roaring in his ears as he backed away.

  She’s dead! She’s dead but she’s talking, moving!

  She swung her legs over the side of the table and slipped to the floor. Still backing away, Darryl dumbly watched her naked form cross the room like a sleepwalker and pull a white lab coat from a hook on the wall.

  Darryl’s heel caught against something on the floor and he fell backward, his arms pinwheeling for balance. He grabbed the edge of a table but his fingers slipped off the shiny surface and he landed on his buttocks. His head snapped back and struck the painted concrete block of the wall.

  Darryl tried to call out but found he had no voice. He tried to hold onto consciousness but found it a losing battle.

  The last thing he saw before darkness closed in was the dead woman slipping into the lab coat and walking out the door, leaving it open behind her.

  Mecca, Saudi Arabia

  The sun rises over the Arabian Sea and strikes the minarets and domes of Masjid al Haram. The mosque and every open spot around it as well as its central courtyard, home to the Kaaba, are packed with the faithful who have rushed here from all directions. More are on the way, careening from all over the world to protect the holiest place in all of Islam. They have brought their prayer rugs and are on their knees, their foreheads pressed to the ground as they face the Kaaba and pray to Allah to save the Masjid al Haram.

  But the minarets and domes and walls dissolve, and the Kaaba too fades away, leaving only the participants in the last Hadj.

  IN THE PACIFIC

  24o N, 120o W

  Reconnaissance flight 705 out of San Diego is buffeted by tornadic winds and blinding torrents as it fights its way toward the center of the huge, mysterious Pacific storm that shows up on satellite photos but not radar. An unclassifiable, logic-defying storm with the combined properties of an Atlantic hurricane, a Pacific typhoon, and a Midwestern supercell. All that can be said of it from orbit photos and fly-by observation is that a towering colossus of violent weather topping out at fifty-thousand feet is crossing the Pacific in the general direction of northern Mexico.

  Reconnaissance 705’s mission is to classify it, but right now, hemmed in by roiling clouds and radar that shows clear, calm, open sea ahead of them, they are truly flying blind. The pilot, Captain Harry Densmore, has never experienced anything like this. The barometric readings are in the mid-twenties as he approaches what should be the center of the storm. He wants to turn back but needs to know what’s at the heart of this monstrosity. There’s no eye visible from orbit, but all indications point to an organized center. One look, one reading, and he’ll turn tail and run. This monster hasn’t killed anybody yet but he’s afraid he and his crew might change all that. He’ll count himself lucky if he sees San Diego again.

  Just a little farther …

  Suddenly the plane is buffeted by a gust that knocks it 45 degrees off line. Metal shrieks in Densmore’s ears and he’s sure she’s going to come apart when suddenly they’re in still air.

  “It’s got an eye!” he shouts. “We’re through the eye wall!”

  But an eye should be clear. And in an eye this size, blue sky should be visible above. Not here. It’s dark in this eye. Very dark. And raining.

  Maybe it’ll clear up ahead.

  The copilot calls out the barometric reading: Twenty-three.

  “Twenty-three? Check that again. That’s got to be wrong!”

  Then lightning flashes and Densmore sees something through the rain ahead. Something huge. Something dark. The far side of the eye wall? Maybe this eye isn’t as big as he thought. Maybe—

  “Oh, Christ!”

  He turns the wheel and kicks the rudder hard, all but standing the plane on its wing-tip as he banks sharply to the left. The shouts of alarm and surprise from his copilot and navigator choke off as they see it too.

  He finishes the turn and levels off on a circular course around the center of the eye, catching lightning-strobed glimpses of the cyclopean thing in the heart of the storm. His copilot’s and navigator’s hushed, awed voices fill the cabin.

  “What in God’s name is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They are at 20,000 feet and whatever it is reaches from the ocean below and disappears into the clouds miles above them.

  Densmore realizes that what he sees before him is impossible. He knows his physics, and something that big breaks all natural laws. Just like the storm itself.

  Which means something else is driving this storm that breaks all the rules and defies the world’s most sophisticated radar tracking system.

  And God help whoever is in its
way when it makes landfall.

  Suddenly he wants to be as far away as possible from this unnatural phenomenon.

  “Take some pictures so people won’t think we’re all crazy, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Moments later, reconnaissance flight 705 re-enters the eye wall but instead of flying through, it is tossed back by the hellish fury of the tornadic winds. Densmore tries again and again to pierce the wall but each time his craft is rejected like an unwanted toy.

  The storm won’t let them leave. They’re trapped … in the eye … with that thing …

  Densmore resumes a circular path along the wall, staying as far as possible from its center. They’re safe here in the relative calm of the eye—safe at least from the winds—as long as their fuel holds out.

  But they’ve got only a few hours’ worth left.

  TWENTY-TWO

  HURRICANE WATCH

  THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A HURRICANE WATCH FOR SANTA BARBARA, VENTURA, LOS ANGELES, ORANGE AND SAN DIEGO COUNTIES. BRING IN LOOSE OUTDOOR OBJECTS, FILL UP YOUR CAR WITH GAS AND STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS.

  (The Weather Channel)

  Manhattan

  They sat in the front room of the rectory. Neither Father Brenner nor Mr. Kesev of the Shin Bet wanted a drink, but Dan didn’t let that stop him. Monsignor Riccio had come by to offer his condolences. He seemed to know Kesev—apparently they’d met on the street a while back.

  The Monsignor didn’t say, “This is what you get for recklessly going public with the Virgin,” but Dan guessed he was thinking it. He was gracious, however, and wished sincerely for the speedy capture of the killers, then he left. Father Brenner had sat up with him awhile, then he went back to his room to watch TV.

  TV…all the world was watching TV. The streets, even the ones outside the church—relocked until the blood could be cleaned from the floor—were empty. Everyone was inside watching the wave of destruction as it wiped out of places worship across the globe. If there was panic, it wasn’t in the street, it was quiet and private. Dan figured more prayers were being said across the globe right now than at any other time in history. And no doubt fewer atheists and agnostics now than at any other time in history a well.

  Yet he felt strangely aloof from it all.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked Kesev. “The destruction of all these churches and temples, I mean.”

  “He is coming.”

  “Who? The Antichrist?”

  Kesev looked at him. “There is no such person. It is a fiction concocted by crazy men. The Master is coming.”

  “You mean Jesus?”

  Kesev nodded.

  “But why now?”

  Kesev shrugged. “Because He has decided it is time.”

  No straight answers from this one. If Kesev was right, it was the End of Days. Dan found he didn’t care. He did care that his glass was empty. He rose to pour himself a third Dewar’s.

  “Sure you won’t have one?”

  “No, and I do wish you would not drink too much.”

  Dan stopped in mid-pour. Kesev was right. This wouldn’t do him any good. Wouldn’t ease the pain, even a little. The wound was too wide, too deep, too fresh.

  “This is my last. But what’s it to you? What do you care about me or how much I drink?”

  “I’m sorry for you and for that poor dead woman. But I’m concerned for my own sake as well. You see … for many years I have been the Mother’s guardian.”

  “‘The Mother,’” Dan said softly. “The Virgin. How Carrie loved her.” Then the rest of Kesev’s words sank in. “Guardian? We had a fake scroll supposedly written by the Virgin’s guardian back in the first century.”

  The memory of Carrie’s girlish excitement over that scroll punched a new ache through his chest.

  Carrie, Carrie … why couldn’t you have just let them take her?

  “Yours was a forgery, a copy of another, but the words were true, as you discovered.”

  “Any idea who wrote it?”

  “I did.”

  Dan stared at him. “You must know your first century, Mr. Kesev. That was a pretty convincing scroll. Where’d you learn all that?”

  Kesev shrugged. “From life.”

  “You mean from the guardians before you, passing it down. Who are these guardians anyway? Members of some sect?”

  “No. Only one guardian.”

  This conversation was getting strange.

  “You mean just one at a time … one guardian from each successive generation, right?”

  Kesev shook his head. “No. Just one guardian. Ever. From the beginning. Me.”

  “But that would make you a couple of thousand …”

  Kesev nodded slowly, but he wasn’t smiling.

  “No … no, that would be—”

  “Impossible?”

  Dan was about to say yes when it occurred to him: Was anything impossible anymore?

  And then he heard the rectory’s side door open. He stood and started across the room. Now who was it?

  Paraiso

  “So this is what all the excitement is about.”

  Arthur Crenshaw stared down at the mummified body where it rested before him on the glass coffee table.

  Paraiso was empty except for him and Charlie and Emilio. Decker and Molinari had returned to their respective homes directly from the airport. Arthur had sent all the help—domestic as well as nursing—home for the night. The fewer who knew about his “borrowing” of the relic, the better. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of the great room lay the unrelieved gloom of the night and the ocean. No starlight broke through the restless mantle of cloud that stretched above the Pacific like a shroud. The only sounds were Charlie’s labored breathing and the swoosh of the wind against the glass.

  He walked around the table, examining the body from all sides. Not very impressive. Hardly lifelike at all. You could tell it was someone old and female, but that was about all. Could this be the actual remains of the Virgin Mary? Didn’t seem possible. All right, possible, yes, but highly improbable. You’d think there’d be some sort of glow or aura about it if it was really Mary. So maybe it was just the nicely preserved remains of an early saint.

  Whatever it was, could it save Charlie?

  Arthur sighed. Apparently it had healed others—many others—back in New York. No reason why it shouldn’t do the same here.

  But whatever it did, it had better do it quickly. Charlie was fading away before his eyes. The latest try at a new experimental therapy had failed. Charlie’s CD-4 count was lower than ever. He didn’t have much time. This relic was his last chance at a cure.

  But how to go about it?

  Charlie was running one of his fevers again, semi-comatose most of the time, and when he was responsive he was delirious—no idea of who he was or where he was or even that he was sick. He couldn’t pray to this object, couldn’t ask it or anyone else for help.

  So that left it up to Arthur to do the praying.

  Maybe Charlie and the object should be closer. And since it was such a major task to move Charlie’s set-up with its IVs and oxygen tank, Arthur figured the easiest way to get the two together was to move the body.

  If Mohammed can’t come to the mountain …

  He turned to Emilio. “Let’s move her over by Charlie, table and all.”

  Emilio held back a moment. He’d seemed to be keeping his distance from the body. Strange … Arthur had always thought of Emilio as the least superstitious man he’d ever met. When he finally approached, they each took an end of the coffee table and, carrying it like a stretcher, moved the table and its burden around the couch and set it down next to Charlie’s hospital bed.

  Arthur then said a prayer, asking the Lord to forgive Charlie for his past and to allow the healing powers in th
is relic—be it the remains of His earthly mother or some other holy person—to drive the infection from his son’s wasted body so that he might continue his life and have an opportunity to make up for the evil ways of his past.

  As he finished the prayer with a heartfelt recital of the “Our Father,” Arthur slipped Charlie’s painfully thin, limp, clammy arm through the guard rail and guided it toward the body on the table. He pressed the back of Charlie’s hand against its dry cheek and held it there.

  Arthur wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but he was hoping for more than what he got, which was nothing.

  He swallowed his disappointment. He had to keep in mind that there’d been no pyrotechnics associated with the Manhattan healings, so the lack of them here didn’t mean that nothing had happened.

  He held Charlie’s hand against the skin for a good fifteen minutes, all the while praying for mercy for his son, then he replaced the arm under the bedsheet.

  He noticed Emilio standing off to the side, staring out at the darkness. He seemed preoccupied.

  “Well,” Arthur said, “all we can do now is watch and wait.”

  Emilio nodded but said nothing.

  Arthur shrugged and turned on the TV. He felt as if he were in a vise. The destruction of the churches in the Far East, moving west, the storm in the Pacific, moving east. The Weather Channel said it was still headed for the southern part of the state. Paraiso would get only the fringe winds.

  Good. In the morning he’d have some blood drawn on Charlie for a stat CD-4 count. If this relic had done its work, the count would be up and Charlie’s fever would break.

  Please, God. Not for me … for Charlie.

  He switched to CNN for the latest on the churches and wound up in the middle of a story about the theft of a religious object from a Manhattan church. Film showed close-ups of enraged faces and crowds tipping over police cars and smashing store windows.

  Arthur’s stomach lurched and he glanced back at the body on the table next to Charlie’s bed. That was the only object they could be talking about. But why such coverage—on CNN of all places? He hadn’t expected this kind of commotion. He’d have to have Emilio drop it off someplace where it could be “discovered” tomorrow.