“Have you seen the papers today, Billy?” Barnett asked, slapping the open newspaper with an immaculately manicured hand.
Ray shook his head. He didn’t bother reading the news. He was more used to making it.
“It seems as if a new ace has joined our constellation of heroes.”
“Is that so?” Ray asked with a modicum of interest.
“Indeed it is,” Barnett said, and looked down at the paper spread out in front of him and began to read. “...‘Ralph Holstedt, partner and star performer in the famous Siegfried and Ralph magic act featuring white tigers and other dangerous beasts was severely mauled during yesterday’s matinee performance when a half-grown male tiger playfully grabbed him by the throat and dragged him from the stage. Fortunately for the performer, John Fortune, son of the beauteous ace Peregrine and the mysterious Fortunato, who has spent the last sixteen years in seclusion in Japan, was in attendance and for the first time publicly revealed his own ace. Fortune, who to all accounts was glowing a mysterious but pleasing shade of orange-yellow, took the performer in his arms and almost instantly healed the wound threatening the magician’s life. The newly-revealed ace, a good-looking boy in his mid-teens, politely refused all requests for interviews and was seen leaving in the company of a man who witnesses said bore an uncanny resemblance to 1940’s actor Alan Ladd.’” Barnett looked up at Ray. “What do you think of that?”
Ray shrugged. “I think that Ralph was one lucky tiger-lover.”
Barnett sat back in his chair, nodding. “Yes. But doesn’t it strike you that someone else in that scenario was fairly blessed in the luck department?”
“John Fortune,” Ray said. He knew what the odds of drawing an ace were as well as anybody. “Of course.”
“Exactly,” Barnett said, as if Ray just answered the million-dollar question.
Ray shrugged again. He didn’t see the point.
“These are troubling days, Billy,” Barnett said. “Some say,” his voice dropped dramatically, “the End Days.”
Oh shit, Ray thought. It didn’t take Barnett long to drag religion into even the most mundane conversation. Ray himself wasn’t much of a believer in anything. But Barnett could make almost anything sound reasonable when he was orating. After all, he’d been elected President of the United States. Twice.
“But it’s 2003,” Ray said. “If you’re talking about the, uh, millennium, surely that passed—”
Barnett shook his head.
”Actually it’s just around the corner, my boy,” Barnett said. “Time-keeping was not an exact science when the Bible was written two thousand years ago. Records were not precise. The calendar as we know it is a relatively modern invention. Anyway, you’d expect an error of a year or two to crop up over a couple of millennia, wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose,” Ray said, noncommittally. He still had no clue as to what in the Hell this had to do with a kid saving some Vegas magician from his over-grown kitty cat.
Barnett nodded. “Of course. Hell, nobody took notes on the year when they wrote down the Bible. Nobody even cared. Besides—the signs are the important things, and all signs say that Apocalypse is approaching.”
“What signs? Tiger attacks in Vegas?”
Barnett frowned, the twinkle suddenly gone from his baby blue eyes.
“The prophecies, my boy. The continued existence of Israel, the nation whose existence you helped preserve, and don’t think I’ve forgotten that, is but one of them. But let’s not get bogged down in detail now.” Barnett opened the middle draw in his desk. He took out an impressively thick manuscript. “Here. I wrote a book about it. Not intended for everyone of course. Wouldn’t want a panic among the general populace. But give it a study, my boy. You’ll see. It’s all very convincing.” Barnett handed the volume to Ray. It was heavy. “This is strictly for people within my organization, I guess you’d call it.”
Ray looked up from the thick manuscript to Leo Barnett. “Organization?” he asked warily.
“A think-tank I founded after I had the honor of serving as President of this great nation. The Millenarians. We believe that the time of the Apocalypse is at hand.”
“That’s a bad thing, isn’t it?” Ray asked doubtfully.
“Not at all, Billy, not at all.” Barnett explained. “Though many people believe that. Apocalypse means simply ‘unveiling’ or ‘revelation.’ It is the time when the truth will be revealed for all to see. When the Lord Jesus will return to this earth to usher in a thousand years of peace and prosperity for those who believe in his name.”
Ray’s expression was unchanged.
“Well, read my manuscript,” Barnett said. “It explains everything.”
“All right,” Ray said as sincerely as he could.
Barnett frowned.
Apparently, Ray thought, I don’t sound quite as sincere as I think I do.
“We need a man of your talents, Billy,” Barnett said earnestly, turning up the wattage of his charm. “To guard me and, um, other figures important to the Parousia—that’s the founding of Jesus’ kingdom on earth, which will usher in the thousand years of peace and prosperity of the millennium.”
“I thought you said that the End Days were approaching. Doesn’t that mean like, the end of the world?”
“It does,” Barnett said seriously. “But only after the thousand year peace of the Millennium. And only, of course, if we triumph in the upcoming conflict. We have foes, Billy. Powerful foes. Some might say satanically powerful foes.”
Here we go, Ray thought. He knew this just wasn’t going to be a simple little story. “I’m already guarding you,” Ray pointed out. “Exactly who are these others who need guarding?”
“Christ,” Barnett said.
Ray waited a beat, but Barnett added nothing to what Ray initially thought was an uncharacteristic expletive.
“Christ,” Ray repeated. “You mean, Jesus Christ?”
“Jesus Christ,” Barnett confirmed. “The Second Coming of the Son of God is upon us.”
“Well,” Ray asked, “where is he?”
Barnett cleared his throat. “Apparently,” he said, “in Las Vegas.”
“You don’t mean John Fortune?”
Barnett nodded earnestly. “I do. You have to trust me on this, Billy. Years of study have led me to this conclusion. His act of healing this, uh, animal tamer, is only the final indication of his real identity.”
“And you’re sure of this?” Ray asked.
Barnett pursed his lips. “Sure? Well—reasonably. And we’re not the only ones who think so.”
“No?”
Barnett nodded. “There are others who have come to a, well, similar conclusion abut the boy’s importance. But they want to harm him. He has to be protected from them.”
“But—”
“No, Billy,” Barnett shook his head. “If you truly want to serve me—and the Lord—you must go to Vegas, get the boy, and bring him back here where we can protect him from these others.”
“Who are they?” Ray asked.
“The Allumbrados,” Barnett said, almost spitting as he pronounced the name. It sounded fairly sinister to Ray.
“So, you want me to go to Vegas, pick up the boy, and bring him here for safekeeping?” he recapitulated.
Barnett nodded. “Yes.”
Ray suppressed a smile. “If you say the boy needs help, then that’s good enough for me,” he said.
Barnett beamed. “The Lord will reward you,” he said.
I’m so out of here, Ray thought.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
New York City: Waldorf-Astoria Parking Garage
The Midnight Angel lurked in a dark alley overlooking the entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria’s underground car park, a troubled expression on her face.
She didn’t care for New York City. It was much too big and loud and fast. It smelled funny and sounded worse. She felt claustrophobic on its busy streets, hemmed in by the towering concrete and steel cliffs. She’d been born
in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and though—contrary to her mother’s advice—she’d willfully deserted the town of her birth to seek her fortune in the wider world, she still wasn’t accustomed to many aspects of that world.
She also didn’t much care for skulking. Skulking in shadows didn’t match her sensibilities. She was much too forthright to skulk. There was no room for deception and lies in her make-up, for such were the tools of Satan. But what could she do? The Hand had sent her on a mission where subtlety was necessary. She’d told him that she was not the person for this job, as she found it difficult to blend into even familiar surroundings. At five eleven and a tautly-muscled one forty-five, she was long-legged, wide-hipped, and big-bosomed. If things had been otherwise, she’d have borne many babies and raised them in the way of the Lord. But that life was closed to her. Her body, as suitable for childbearing as it was, was to her ever-lasting shame also cursed with the mark of the wild card. She carried the stain of the alien beast. Her mother had drummed into her early on that she must find another way to serve the Lord. Of course, the Angel was not following the path that her mother had mapped out for her, but her body, curse that it was, was also her blessing. God had burdened her with it, but it was a burden she bore meekly in his service.
The Hand had made her see that. She’d been with him for a year, and the Angel burned with an almost sinful pride that he trusted her so much that he’d sent her on such an important mission. To know that The Right Hand of God held her in such high regard made her little short of ecstatic. It’d be better if he didn’t look at her with such fire in his eyes and lust in his heart, but she forgave him. Even though he was The Hand he was still only a man and, therefore, a weak sinner. Anyway, it was her fault. She tempted him with her body, though the Lord knew she didn’t mean to.
The Angel tensed as a long black limo pulled up to the entrance of the hotel’s underground parking lot. The car had Vatican diplomatic plates. It had to be the one she’d been expecting. She waited until it entered the building’s dark bowels, and then followed. There was no booth attendant this late at night, only an automatic ticket dispenser. She slipped under the wooden arm that bared entrance to the urban cave stinking of oil, gas fumes, and waste, praying to the Lord for strength and cunning.
God knows she needed it. She was on the track of the Allumbrados and she knew that her quest was dangerous. The Hand had sent others to investigate them who had simply disappeared after relaying the most uncertain, though provocative hints that the Enlightened Ones, as they styled themselves, were preparing for action.
The Hand knew that something big was imminent. He knew the general warning signs as well as the Allumbrados did, though as Papists their knowledge had to be imperfect. The Allumbrado conspiracy, however, had thrust its roots deep into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. They could call on the vast powers and riches of that ancient institution whereas The Hand had only himself and his loyal minions, such as the Angel, to rely upon. Not that the Allumbrados had defiled everyone in the Church, of course. Most Papists were not satanic. They were just misguided.
The Angel, keeping to the darkness that enveloped the parking structure like a choking shroud, suddenly caught her breath. The limo’s dome light winked on as the driver opened the door and scurried around to let out his passengers.
The first to emerge was a patrician-looking man in his late sixties, but still tall, handsome, and distinguished, with a head of thick, white hair. He wore the black, scarlet-trimmed regalia of a Cardinal of the Papist church. It was, the Angel realized, just as The Hand had feared. Cardinal Romulus Contarini had come to America. He was a Dominican, of course. His sect had had an intimate connection with the Holy Office (A very bland name for something as terrible as the Inquisition, she thought) for a very long time. Contarini led the section of the vast and shadowy Vatican bureaucracy which dealt with theological purity. He was the highest-ranking member of the Allumbrados that The Hand’s agents could uncover. Before he’d suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, The Hand’s man in the Vatican had said that the Cardinal was possibly headed for the United States. This was obvious confirmation of the news he’d probably given his life to deliver.
Contarini was not alone. Three men got out of the limo with him. One was short, chubby, and bearded. He looked soft and jolly, like everyone’s favorite uncle. The other two had such similar facial features that they were probably brothers. But one was tall and strong looking while the other was thin, round-shouldered, and slumping. The tall, strong-looking one was possibly the most attractive man the Angel had ever seen. Her heart caught at the angelic handsome-ness of his face, which was white as unflawed marble. His eyes were as blue as Heaven, his hair a golden torrent with wave and thickness to rival her own. His lips...
She could almost taste them in her sudden desire. They were full, sensuously curved, and red as a woman’s. But his features were masculine, with a broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw. His short-sleeved shirt exposed arms muscled like a blacksmith’s.
The Angel felt herself breathing heavier and then suddenly the silent parking garage echoed with the trilling opening notes to the “Ode to Joy.” She had forgotten to turn off her cell phone, and it rang at the worst possible time. Her hand fell to her side pocket, grabbed the instrument and silenced it.
Perhaps, she thought, they hadn’t heard.
The men stopped on their way to the elevator. The Cardinal looked impatient, but the jolly little man gazed into the darkness where the Angel lurked, holding her breath. His cheery blue eyes suddenly focused with a startling intensity.
“Someone’s out there,” she heard him say in a British accented voice.
“Witness—” the Cardinal said.
The two men, different, yet alike enough in features to be brothers, looked at each other. The tall, handsome one said, “Check it out,” and the other, grumbling to himself under his breath, moved off toward the darkness where the Angel hid.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Turin, Italy: Cattedrale di San Giovanni
The cathedral’s two-story exterior was white marble, a little worse for age and blackened by five centuries of urban pollution. The detached bell tower on the cathedral’s left was constructed of darker, less noble material—simple brick—and was also some two hundred years younger. The intricate dome of the Capella della Sindone, a few decades older than the tower, loomed behind the cathedral. Their target was in the chapel.
Nighthawk waited in the shadows until the others had crossed the almost empty piazza. Traffic was sporadic, but there were still a few pedestrians wandering about, and Nighthawk had not reached his advanced age by being reckless. He waited until Usher and Grubbs had entered the cathedral through the middle of the three doors in its front façade—Usher pausing only the briefest of moments to force the cheap padlock that tried to deny him entry—and then he crossed the dark piazza in an unhurried stride as Magda surreptitiously joined her teammates inside San Giovanni.
It was dark inside the cathedral. The interior was lit only by some still-burning votive candles and a dim nightlight or two scattered like far-away stars among the massive columns of the gothic-style nave.
“We need the stairs at the end of the presbytery,” Nighthawk said in a quiet voice which a trick of acoustics turned into a reverberating whisper.
Usher thumbed on a pencil-thin flashlight and slashed it around the darkness.
“This way,” he whispered in an imitation of Nighthawk, grinning at the echoing sibilance of his own words.
They followed Usher down the aisle, past the rows of empty pews to the high altar set upon a dais in the rear of the nave. Two stairways flanked the altar. They were black marble, which contrasted vividly with the soft pastels of the cathedral’s painted interior. The stairs spiraled upwards into a small antechamber from where Nighthawk and his team could see inside the chapel’s central room.
The Capella della Sindone was the masterpiece of the baroque architect Guarino Guarini. It
was a perfectly round chamber of black marble roofed by an intricately decorated six-tiered dome that was said to enclose a bit of Heaven in its complexly ornamented cupola. Nighthawk could feel its holiness in his soul. He gazed upward, as if expecting to see cherubim and seraphim dancing like flights of fireflies through the enshrouding shadows.
An intricate baroque altar of black marble ornamented with detailed bronze friezes, sat atop three marble steps under the center of the soaring dome. The altar was surrounded by what looked like golden bars, but according to the guidebook the apparently metal bars were actually only gilt wood. Four marble angels holding unlit silver lamps clustered protectively around the altar like holy guardians. A reliquary, an iron box covered in intricate silver facings and spangled with precious stones, sat atop the altar’s highest point, protected by a gilded iron fence.
“There,” Nighthawk said quietly, gesturing at the reliquary.
Grubbs grinned. “Like taking candy from a baby,” he said.
He went up the marble dais, brushing away the gilt wood fence contemptuously as if it wasn’t even there. One of the guardian angels stood close enough to give him a boost up the altar. He clambered up to the altar’s pinnacle and braced himself to get a good grip on the gilded iron bars caging the reliquary. He pulled hard and a length of grillwork broke away with a loud screech.
Nighthawk glanced around the darkened room. It was probable that the chapel had a security system of some kind, but they’d been unable to discover any details concerning it. A brotherhood called the Savoias was charged with protecting it since an anti-religious fanatic had tried to burn it down a couple of years before.