The Six Messiahs

  Someone inside.

  Doyle slowly drew the pistol from his belt.

  Light from the lantern penetrated the room: A knife pierced the floor near the bed, pinning down a note written in large red block letters.

  "NEXT TIME WE'LL KILL YOU."

  "Close the door," said a voice.

  Father Devine stood motionless in the corner of the room, arms folded, obscured in the crease of a shadow. The ship rolled to starboard and seams in the walls groaned with the strain. Doyle closed the door, cocked the hammer of the pistol, covered Devine, and lifted the lantern higher.

  A body lay twisted grotesquely at the foot of the bunk; a figure in black, still wearing a mask. One of the assassins. Strangled with his own garrote. Three men killed; only one of them left alive.

  "What do you want?" asked Doyle.

  Father Devine took one step forward, did not shield his eyes from the light, and Doyle saw him clearly, head on, for the first time since they'd boarded the ship; saw the jagged ivory scar along his jawline, saw the light in the man's eyes he hadn't taken in before, and it pummeled the breath from his lungs.

  The priest smiled thinly, looking down at the body on the floor.

  "This one was waiting for you," he said, all the Irish in him gone. "He died before I could learn anything useful."

  It wasn't possible.

  Good Christ. Good Christ, yes it was. It was him.

  Jack Sparks.

  BOOK TWO

  New York

  chapter 5

  SEPTEMBER 23, 1894

  Discretion is required in describing the events of the last few hours. A request has been made to me for assistance. Having served the interests of the Crown on more than one previous occasion, I have remained ever willing to lend my services to that royal office again in whichever way circumstances describe. Suffice it to say that should the Queen herself have appeared in my cabin to make this appeal, it would have carried no greater influence upon my sympathies.

  The facts are these: A book has been stolen. A book of enormous significance to the Church of England and consequently the throne. The Latin Vulgate Bible, the oldest biblical manuscript in the Anglican Church. Vanished from the Bodleian Library at Oxford six weeks ago. Public announcement has been withheld; the Vulgate was kept in a vault, not on display—the only persons likely to miss it to this point are scholars. It is hoped the manuscript can be recovered before such an announcement becomes necessary; however, as yet no requests for the ransom of its return have been received. As more time passes, it seems increasingly unlikely that a ransom is the thieves' objective. A secret investigation by a friend of mine on behalf of the Crown has been under way since the crime occurred and it has led him to this same ship making its crossing to America.

  That this incident is central to the difficulties we have experienced since boarding the Elbe is unmistakable. I have set down elsewhere the events of the past few days surrounding

  Lionel Stern, the attempted robbery of the Book of Zohar, and the murder of Mr. Rupert Selig. Three of the men responsible for those crimes are now themselves dead; a fourth man has either flung himself overboard, as did another of his accomplices, or is still in hiding somewhere on board; an exhaustive search is even now under way. The sabotage these men brought against the ship's engines has been discovered—an explosive charge detonated in the electrical generators—and thanks to the due diligence of the engineering crew its damage already repaired. We will arrive in New York tomorrow only hours later than originally scheduled and that due as much to the rough weather we have passed through as to the sinister efforts of these villains.

  The man I mistakenly took for their ringleader was, as I suspected, posing as a Catholic priest—this concluded from observing an accumulation of small, troubling details: odd boots, rosary beads hanging off the wrong pocket, a ring bearing a Masonic design—but neither is he a criminal. He is, in fact, a man previously well known to me, whose credentials as an agent of the Crown are, or at least once were, beyond reproach.

  We have spoken only briefly, and that has been taken up with the urgencies of our situation: His unexpected appearance foiled a potentially deadly attack against me by turning the assassin's own weapon against him. No opportunity for us to discuss the events of the ten years passed since we last saw one another has presented itself; he seemed reluctant to part with any details during the short time spent together; we have agreed to find time for that discussion once the ship has made port. In the interim, I have confided in no one, not even Innes, about his true identity.

  The rest of our passengers remain uniformly unaware of the difficulties we have been through on the Elbe, due in part to the storm which confined them to quarters during the critical hours, and not a little to our effective muzzling of the American newshound Pinkus, who remains at this hour under something approaching house arrest. My friend is even now visiting privately with Pinkus to ensure his silence on these matters after we reach New York. A daunting task given Pinkus's propensity for blab, but if any man could persuade Pinkus to, as they say, keep his trap shut, my money is on JS.

  I am saddened to report that my friend is dreadfully altered since I last saw him. In truth, even beyond the effectiveness of his disguise, he is hardly recognizable. Whatever damage he has endured, whatever dark corners of the human spirit he has visited, I am afraid the effect has not been at all to the good.

  In this instance, I fervently hope the keenness of my observations, a habit of mind which he helped so much to instill in me, is entirely wrong.

  A dense, multispired skyline poked through the morning mist and announced to the brothers Doyle their first glimpse of New York; from this vantage point, the city threatened to burst the seams of the slender island on which it rested. The Elbe's passengers clustered around them on the upper deck, marveling at the wonders of this muscular continent.

  What prodigious energy, thought Doyle. What enormous concentration of ambition. And what proud testimony it offered to the potential of man's creative vitality. He wiped a tear from his eye, stirred to his soul by the magnificence of imagination that could result in such a city.

  Completely unaware of the depth of his brother's feeling, and loathe to appear the bumpkin, as they sailed by her Innes feigned indifference to the epic dimensions of the Statue of Liberty, although his heart secretly raced with hormonal agitation at the irrational image she inspired; an entire nation populated by towering, voluptuous women wearing nothing but diaphanous, loosely draped robes.

  When Pinkus finally appeared on deck in the company of Father Devine, Innes thought he looked remarkably subdued, shaken really, his bouncy canine readiness displaced by a pale, apologetic rue.

  "What's the matter with old Pinkus?" he wondered.

  "I don't know," said Doyle. "Perhaps he found confession to be bad for the soul."

  A stately turn up the Hudson brought the Elbe into the company of tugboats flocking to nose her gently into mooring at the West Side docks. Captain Hoffner invited Doyle onto the bridge for the final approach, taking him aside to offer formal thanks and to let him know their search of the ship had failed to uncover a fourth assassin. The five coffins had been confiscated and extra security arranged at the customhouse to ensure that this last man, if he was still on board, did not slip off in the guise of an officer or passenger. Doyle once again politely turned away the Captain's inquiries about Father Devine, saying only that in the heat of the moment his original negative assessment of the man had turned out to be unfounded. With that they shook hands, respected equals, and exchanged their good-byes.

  As Doyle and Innes cleared customs and stepped through the doors into America, a brass marching band stationed in the foyer ripped into "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." Festively decked out in red, white, and blue bunting, the entrance hall sported a field of hand-painted signs welcoming the famous author—many of which seemed to have been crafted with the impression that Doyle was, himself, Sherlock Holmes—dancing above the heads of
an alarmingly large and demonstrative crowd.

  Good Christ; they're chanting my name as if I were a football team. The epidemic of overfamiliarity in individual Americans had never troubled Doyle before, but encountering it at this mob level gave it the appearance of a prelude to human sacrifice.

  Arrayed in front of police department sawhorses that restrained the masses was a constellation of greater and lesser lights from the firmament of Manhattan celebrity—luminaries from the publishing and newspaper worlds, dashing matinee idols, plump haberdashers, slick-haired restaurateurs, and a squadron of obscure city officials, interwoven throughout by a comely brood of decorative chorus girls; apparently Pinkus had not overstated this one critical aspect of his story, realized Innes ecstatically.

  A gigantic, loose-limbed mountain of a man in riding boots, jodhpurs, a canary-yellow cutaway jacket, and a beaver hat perched on a shaggy head half the size of a buffalo's broke out of the pack and clapped a smothering bear hug onto Doyle before he could defend himself.

  "Bless my soul! Bless my soul!" bellowed the man in a deep, creamy Virginia accent.

  I must know this man, thought Doyle, thoroughly panicked. Considering the way he's greeting me, we must be first cousins at the least.

  The giant stepped back and shouted into Doyle's face, "Proud, sir! It does my heart proud to see you here!"

  Doyle searched desperately for some clue to his identity— surely he would have remembered someone this size. Over the giant's shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Innes, who had decided his dress-blue Royal Fusiliers uniform the only appropriate outfit for their arrival, being sucked into a cloud of perfume, feminine ruffles, and gargantuan floral hats.

  "Didn't I promise you a fine how-do-you-do in New York? Did we not do it up right for you?" said the giant, his smile exposing a piano's worth of unnaturally gleaming white teeth.

  "I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, sir," said Doyle, uneasily eyeing the battalion of celebrities bearing sharply down on them.

  "Why it's Pepperman, Mr. Conan Doyle," said the man, doffing his hat gallantly. "Major Rolando Pepperman. Impresario of your literary tour; at your service."

  "Major Pepperman, of course, do forgive me...."

  "No, not at all. It is I who have failed you, sir, by not providing in my cables a more detailed description of my person."

  His startling blue eyes sparkled, the muscles bulging his jacket crackled with excess energy—everything about the man seemed built to an incredibly overscaled set of plans: America's exuberant essence distilled down into one gigantic prototype.

  Pepperman shot an arm around Doyle's shoulder and turned him to face the crowd: "I give you Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the great Sherlock Holmes! Welcome to New York!"

  Pepperman thrust his hat up into the air; the crowd shifted into an even higher gear of frenzy as the band dueled them for control of the audible threshold. A battery of photographers' flash powder exploded in Doyle's wide-open eyes, leaving black spots dancing in place of the faces of the New York elite as they pressed in around him.

  Doyle shook fifty hands and received as many business cards; the cacophony swallowed their bearers' shouted messages but Doyle retained the impression that every one of these somebodies wanted him to either eat at their restaurant, appear in their magazine, attend their latest theatrical triumph, or reside at their deluxe hotel. The disquieting phrase "in exchange for a commercial endorsement" often followed hard on the heels of these flattering offers.

  The only desire in the crowd that remained unclear to Doyle was exactly what the spectacular show girls wanted from him, although Innes, the axis of a cluster of them orbiting nearby, interpreted their giggling avoidances of his overtures as a solid basis for indulging his eager repertoire of wishful thinking.

  Pressed into Doyle's possession by a hierarchy of politicians were a scroll proclaiming an official welcome and a hefty be-ribboned brass object he guessed must represent a key to the city, but which seemed to have greater utility as a weapon. Before any further business could be conducted, or Doyle was prompted to beat back the hordes with his key, Pepperman led his author past the sawhorses to the street through the solid block of humanity and a waiting fleet of carriages.

  In the event he would be called upon to deliver an impromptu response—he had been warned Americans loved nothing so much as giving and receiving speeches—Doyle tried to assemble a string of suitable thoughts to express to these people, but as he climbed up beside Pepperman on the running board of their carriage, the rank and file demonstrated no visible interest in anything other than continuing to scream their lungs out in his general direction. Doyle waved to them, then waved some more, then finally followed Pepperman's earlier example and thrust his hat into the air, apparently a signal peculiar to American audiences to behave as if they had entirely lost their minds.

  Scanning the back of the crowd as the hysteria played out, Doyle spotted a solemn Lionel Stern leaving the customhouse doors. A plain coffin carrying the body of Rupert Selig was being loaded into a nearby hearse. Supervising the effort, still in priest's cassock, stood Jack Sparks.

  Right, then, thought Doyle, as his carriage drove away; no reason to fret over Stern's safety for the moment; if this skirmish turns out to be typical of the treatment I can expect from the average American crowd, it's my own skin I need to worry about.

  When the two dozen members of the New York Police Department left the Elbe later that day after their exhaustive search of the ship for the last fugitive came up empty-handed, no one took undue notice of a tall, blond, good-looking officer in their midst, badge number 473. No one remembered speaking to him afterward, and most of them didn't even realize badge 473 was missing until three hours after they arrived back at the precinct house.

  Three more days would pass before they found the naked body of the badge's original owner, a patrolman named O'Keefe, shoved into a burlap bag in the meat locker of the Elbe's kitchen.

  DENVER, COLORADO

  Who is that odd-looking old man? wondered Eileen. What a sight: funny round hat, floor-length fur-trimmed black coat, a ribbon around his waist, the strange formal cut of his collar and tie. Thin as a darning needle, hardly strength enough to lift that suitcase. But what a sweet smile he's got, talking to those Negro porters, lifting his hat to thank them. They've pointed him over this way; he must have been asking directions. Can't be easy to travel at his age, poor thing; your heart goes out to him. He looks so vulnerable and out of place, everybody staring at him. Doesn't seem to mind the attention, though. Doesn't even seem to be aware of it actually. He looks like someone ... who is it? Someone really familiar. God, that's it: Abraham Lincoln, although the beard's much longer, and his hair's gone to gray. But he has the eyes, those same sad puppy-dog eyes.

  "Will wonders never cease?" said Bendigo Rymer, giving her a nudge and a big nod in the direction of the approaching man. "A Hebrew in the middle of the Denver train station."

  "He looks nice," said Eileen, as she finished rolling a cigarette and struck a match off the bottom of the hard wooden bench. "He looks like Abraham Lincoln."

  "By my stars," said Rymer. "He does at that. Imagine: Lincoln as Shylock. What a monumental miscasting."

  The man reached the section where the Penultimate Players were stretched out with their luggage, set down his suitcase with a sigh, and pulled out a long white handkerchief to mop the sweat from his forehead. The rest of the Players, those few who weren't doing penance for their excesses of the previous evening, lay on their benches and stared at this exotic creature with the idle curiosity of jaded sophisticates. The man looked around, absorbed their diffident attention, and smiled pleasantly.

  Tired, yes, but in good humor. A generous face, thought Eileen, as she smiled back at him.

  "There is a rumor going around," said the man, gasping to catch his breath, "that this could be the area to catch the train for Phoenix, Arizona."

  "Indeed, sir, you are well informed," said Rymer. "We are
bound there ourselves, a poor company of players, but the best actors in the West, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited."

  "Laying it on a bit thick," said Eileen sideways to him as she smiled.

  "To hear the words of the great Shakespeare spoken in such an unexpected place, and with such obvious skill, is not only a pleasure to the ears but a comfort to the mind," said the man.

  Rymer grinned like an idiot and blushed beet-red; compliments of any sort completely leveled him. You half expected him to roll over so the man could scratch his belly.

  "Why don't you sit down, mister?" said Eileen.

  "Most kind, thank you," said the man, settling onto a bench directly across from her.

  "My name is Bendigo Rymer, sir, and you are most welcome to join our assembly. We are the Penultimate Players, sir; having just completed, if I do say so, a more than modestly successful engagement in this thriving metropolis, you do find us en route to the city of Phoenix, carrying culture to the desert like water to the gardens of Babylon."

  "That's nice," said the man. He smiled at Eileen, a twinkle in his eye just short of a wink.

  There's wisdom in this man's eyes, thought Eileen, and his actions; instant recognition of what an irredeemable jackass Rymer is and kindness enough not to take offense. She hadn't seen a face this full of honest-to-goodness humanity since she left New York.

  "And what clarion call beckons you, sir, to the land of the sagebrush and the redskin?"

  "Nothing nearly so glamorous as. you people, I'm afraid," said the man. "Just a little business."

  "Ah, business," said Rymer, as if it were a secret password. "The wheels of commerce, ever turning."

  "My name's Eileen; what's yours?"

  "Jacob. Jacob Stern."