The Delphi Agenda (39 page)

He walked a few paces and said to Lisa, “If pain becomes necessary, though, well….” He stroked downward over the jagged scar, pressing hard to conceal his agitation. “Pain is sometimes necessary. It has always been so. We who are bound to the flesh are such weak, frail creatures, and prone to error. It is for your own good, yours and his, you see that, don’t you?” He turned and nodded at Sister Teresa, who went to a table in the near darkness and returned with a metal spike, each ends of which sprouted a pair of sharp metal tips. The device was attached to a leather strap.

“This,” she told Steve, “is called the Heretics’ Fork. You see? One end goes against your chest, the other just under your chin.” She fastened it around Steve’s neck. “For now your head is restrained so you don’t feel the points, but soon I will release your head. You will then have to hold it very carefully, and for such a long time you cannot help but get tired. If your head falls forward, well, I’m sure you understand. The pain will remind you, over and over. The forks won’t damage anything vital, but their bite into the underside of your chin and your chest will be unpleasant. Many who were resisting before have confessed or converted at the mere sight of it.”

Steve showed his teeth. It was not a smile.

“Now,” she said, taking in Lisa, Defago and the Prior General. “Let me finish telling you the story of Giordano Bruno’s end. It is a story we know well, we in the Order. True, after this event Cardinal Santaseverina and Robert Bellarmine felt they had eradicated the Pythos for good, that Bruno was the last, and they were wrong, but it was a triumph, nonetheless, and we learn the story well.”

She sighed. Defago put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

To Lisa the gesture spoke of inverse intimacy, a current of something deep and personal between them. Her mouth tightened and Lisa saw that the nun felt pain. And pleasure in that pain.

Sister Teresa spoke softly. The beads flew faster and faster between her fingers. “Word had gone out in Rome that an entertaining burning would take place. At 5:30 in the morning crowds had already gathered in the darkness along the route from the prison at Tornona to the Campo dei Fiori, the Field of Flowers. Bruno was taken from his cell and dressed in a long white gown painted with the cross of St. Andrew, devils and flames. He was accompanied by members of the Company of St. John the Beheaded, called the Brothers of Mercy and Pity. You’ve heard all this before, of course, how he was led in chains along the route. How he was apostate, a heretic, yet chatted amiably with the crowds along the route, spewing his poison.”

She paused and smiled grimly. “Jailers came to silence him. This they did by holding his head and driving a spike through his left cheek, tongue, and right cheek. They drove a second spike up from his chin through both lips. Together these spikes formed the cross that silenced him at last.

“He was tied to the stake with thick rope. The wood was piled to his chin, and the torch placed between his feet. The flames caught. He was not spared by the quick mercy of a broken neck, but was made to suffer to the full extent. His flesh crackled. They say his moans were pitiful to hear, though the crowd remained to watch just the same. One of the Brothers offered him the cross through the flames one last time, but he turned his head away, so it is said. His remains were smashed with a hammer and the ashes cast to the winds.”

Silence followed this somewhat stilted recitation.

Steve managed to ask what the point of the story was.

“The point?” she asked. “Very funny.” She undid the clamp holding his head. His chin dropped onto the sharp points of the fork. He lifted it, blood dripping from the fresh wounds, and showed his teeth once more.

Lisa said, “We don’t have the Document with us and he doesn’t know where it is.”

“It will be here soon enough,” the Prior General said, now standing near the circular stair.

Lisa smiled. “The Founding Document is not what’s coming.”

“What do you mean by that?” Defago snapped.

She shrugged. “I said you had become famous.”

Sister Teresa removed the Glock from her robes and held it loosely in her hand. “I will tell you something else,” she said grimly. “About your friend Rossignol. He was here, you know.” She lifted the gun. “I used this to break bones in his hands and knees. He wept, he screamed, you may be sure. And in the end he confessed.”

Lisa laughed. “And sent you chasing a phantom.”

“And for that he was burned like Bruno, still alive.” The nun lifted her gun to strike at Steve’s hands.

Lacatuchi commanded, “Stop.”

Reluctantly she lowered it.

Defago said, “What are you doing? They need persuading. They must undergo the Question.”

“We’ll wait for word,” the Prior General said. “Time to think.”

The nun stalked away, gun at her side, followed by the monk.

Her whisper resonated around the vast chamber. Echoes scrambled the syllables. “What troubles you, my priest?”

“That fat fool….” He broke off.

“You don’t like to stop once started,” she said.

He could only nod.

She continued. “The people he sent won’t find the Document in Foix’s apartment. You see their confidence? They’ve hidden it, or left it with someone, or sent it somewhere. We’re never going to get it.”

Again he nodded. “The Question is the only path to an answer.”

“Yes, my priest, I know.”

“You are my dark angel, my help, my weapon. I promised you they would beg, and so they will. If that fool interferes….” Again he couldn’t finish the thought, but she understood him well.

He could only conclude, “Our turn will come.”

The lock was a new type, more intricate than any Dupond had encountered before. In frustration he went back to the car for his jack and jimmied it open, certain the noise would attract attention.

The passageway was narrow, cement-lined, and longer than he expected. At the end it turned right and climbed a short set of stairs. At the top another door opened into Lacatuchi’s office.

The ceiling fixtures were off. A desk lamp and a standing floor lamp beside the sofa provided the only light. The enormous desk was a dark plain of polished wood.

There had been no response to the noise he’d made. No rushing feet, no shouts. The abbey was silent. He closed the door carefully and walked around the room, stopping to take a handful of pistachios from the cloisonné dish on the coffee table. At the window he looked at the town across the river, cracking open the pistachios. He chewed absently, dropping the shells on the floor. His previous haste had deserted him, replaced by a terrible lethargy.

It was already too late. The SUV had gotten lost. They were useless anyway. Besides, he was no longer certain of their mission: protect, abduct or destroy? They might prove to be in the way, or worse. For all he knew they had orders to shoot everyone.

As for the religious people, Lacatuchi and the others, they certainly had Lisa and her friend by now, but where? He had no idea. They were simply gone.

Then, he thought ruefully, there was Captain Hugo. He, too, could be on his way by now.

He needed to do some triage, sort out his options.

Do nothing.

Get out.

Find the girl, nab her, find out where the object was, learn the secret. If he did that, he would auction it off.

All the options seemed increasingly unlikely.

Finally he shook himself, popped the last pistachio into his mouth and strode purposefully to the main office door. He might as well be moving as doing nothing in here. Even if the girl was already dead maybe he could salvage something from this mess.

He went into the hallway between the office and the abbey. The desk with its computer was deserted, the computer turned off. A large playing card from a modern reproduction of the famous fifteenth century Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck lay beside the keyboard. Something about the image on the card attracted his attention and he picked it up.

It was a large card, about seven inches tall. One side was blank red. The other depicted a collapsing tower. There was lighting, fire and smoke all around it, and two figures falling.

He felt a shiver of apprehension. The image foretold disaster, the release of madness and despair, the upsetting of the order of the world.

He hoped it wasn’t prophetic.

The small antechamber between the hallway and the abbey contained only the door to the elevator. He shrugged. What, at this point, did he have to lose? There was no one around. Perhaps he would discover something interesting. He pressed the call button.

* * *

Lacatuchi, halfway between the staircase and the light, saw the nun and her monk move away into the darkness near the north wall. Their enthusiasm for the Question troubled him.

But he had not become the Prior General by being weak. He had maneuvered his way through the dark and twisted passages of the Order, an Order that was itself nearly invisible even to the knowing eye. It was small, well-organized, fiercely dedicated, and he had risen to run it. So despite his doubts and occasional hesitations, he was not weak.

His predecessor had recruited Defago, who had in turn brought in the nun. They had served well until the death of Foix. He admitted that. They had discovered the identity of the Pythos, defeated his defenses. They had eliminated him.

Just a few days ago it had seemed his triumph would culminate sixteen hundred years of history.

Since they had killed Foix, though, they had become increasingly intractable, and now, after the afternoon at the Basilica, impossible to control.

The Prior General knew torturing the man would gain them nothing and would only waste time, time they didn’t have. They must get the Founding Document safely stored away deep in the Vatican archives. There would be no resolution without it.

Diplomacy. Emmer and her friend still had not seen Alain on the other side of the room, unconscious and chained to a wall. He would talk to them, make an exchange. Even if she were the Pythia, without the Founding Document she would lose legitimacy. The Struggle would be over.

He came to a decision.

“Release him,” he commanded.

Defago turned. “What?”

“You heard me. Release him.”

The nun watched Defago consider this order. She watched him stroke his cheek with the pad of his thumb, tugging down at his eyelid.

Finally the monk said, “No.”

Lacatuchi controlled his astonishment at this insubordination with an effort. “Do as I say.”

“I ask an explanation,
Eminence
.”

The emphasis was so insolent Lacatuchi knew in that moment that if he had a weapon he would shoot the monk.

But he had no weapon and so he walked evenly to the chair, removed the heretics’ fork from Steve’s neck and began undoing the restraining straps.

The next events happened simultaneously in a series of strobe-lit flashes.

Sister Teresa began toward the light at the same time Defago screamed, “What are you doing?” and lunged toward his superior. He knocked against the Judas Chair, toppling it. Three more steps and he had seized his superior’s neck with both hands.

The nun backed up in order to detour around the fallen chair.

Dupond stepped from the elevator, turned to his left and froze in place.

Lisa lunged to the end of the chain and was yanked to a halt.

The two SWAT members, weapons drawn, descended the last turn of the stair. The hanging light flared in their night vision gear and washed out most of the middle of the room. They stopped, momentarily disoriented.

The Prior General toppled backward with Defago on top of him, screaming incoherently with rage.

When Xavier tried to drag Defago off of his boss, Sister Teresa took aim and with perfect efficiency shot him in the leg. One arm flew up and hit the bulb overhead, sending chaotic shadows leaping. He fell with a scream, clutching his knee.

One of the SWAT team, hearing the muffled shot, turned toward it and fired reflexively. His weapon was not equipped with a silencer and made a horrific bang that reverberated around the room. The bullet ricocheted off the paving and sent sparks flying toward her skirts. Teresa began batting at them with her gloved hand.

Steve shook off the last of his restraints and raced to Lisa and began undoing the chain holding her to the post.

Defago pressed his thumbs deep into the fat on either side of the Prior General’s windpipe. Strange gargling sounds came from the Rumanian’s throat. His eyes bulged. The monk lifted Lacatuchi’s head and pounded on the stone, over and over. Blood began seeping out in a spreading crimson stain.

The nun turned toward Defago but Lisa, now free, had taken a step toward her.

Steve hissed, “Don’t.” Before he could pull her back the SWAT team had a moment of arbitrary decision-making and seized him by the arms. “You better come with us,” one said. They dragged him away toward the circular stair.

Sister Teresa’s prosthetic foot caught in a crack between paving stones and twisted. In fury she turned toward Lisa, but her veil caught on a spike in the question chair and pulled away. Her hand flew up to too late it. Her yellow-tinted shooting glasses flew to the floor and her gray-blond hair spread in half a dirty halo behind her head. She cupped her free hand over the gaping hole in the ghastly, puckered scar. Her eyes reflected an implacable hatred. She snarled something inarticulate. Her other hand held the pistol.

With the next faltering step her prosthetic foot caught on the edge of a paving stone, disconnected, and clattered away. The blunt stump of her leg fell heavily onto the stone floor and she fell with a scream of pain. Almost immediately she began clawing at the slick floor with her free hand, raising the pistol with the other.

What Lisa saw was an obscene distortion of a human being, half grub, half mammal, pulling itself painfully toward her over the uneven stone floor alternately lit by the swinging lamp and plunged into phantasmagoric shadow.

This image abruptly faded and she saw a swollen sun of a dark and angry red squatting over a sheet of flat black water. With great difficulty she lifted her own foot and put it down. The next step was as difficult. Where was she going? Why was she making this terrific effort?