The Sign (13 page)

“So?”

“Are you kidding me? The guy’s a living saint. He’s not gonna fake something like this. That’d be like—I don’t know—like saying the Dalai Lama’s a liar.”

Father Jerome wasn’t technically a living saint. There was no such thing, since dying was a prerequisite to receiving the honor of sainthood, at least as far as the Vatican was concerned. But he was pretty much a shoo-in for beatification, if not canonization, at some point in the future.

In his case, though, the term
saint
was more than appropriate.

He’d begun his life in 1949 as Alvaro Suarez, the son of a humble farming couple in the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains in northern Spain. His youth was far from cosseted. His father died when he was five, leaving his mother with the unenviable task of providing for six children in a Spain that was still under Franco’s iron fist and recovering from years of war. Raised a Catholic, the young Alvaro—the youngest of his siblings—showed a great resilience and generosity of character, especially during a harsh winter when a viral epidemic almost took away his mother and two of his sisters. He credited his faith with giving him the strength to forge ahead despite overwhelming odds, and with helping his mother and sisters pull through, and their salvation further solidified his bond with the Church. Throughout his youth, he was also particularly drawn to the stories of missionaries, of selfless souls doing the work of God in the less fortunate corners of the planet, and by the time he was in his teens, he knew he would devote his life to the Church. Having narrowly escaped becoming one himself, he chose to concentrate on helping orphans and abandoned children. He left home at seventeen and began his journey, joining a seminary in Andalusia before crossing into Africa, where he soon founded the first of many missions. En route, he took his first vows a few months short of his twenty-second birthday, choosing the name of Jerome after Jerome Emiliani, a sixteenth-century Italian priest and the patron saint of orphans. The modern Jerome’s hospices and orphanages were now scattered across the globe. His army of volunteers had turned around the lives of thousands of the world’s poorest children. His charitable work, as it turned out, had even outshone that of the historic figure who inspired him.

Forget the technicalities. The man was indeed a living saint, and Dalton’s point was hard to ignore. Provided what the monk had told Gracie really did involve Father Jerome.

“Yeah, but that wasn’t Father Jerome on the phone, was it? We don’t even know if the caller was really calling from Egypt, much less from the monastery,” she argued.

“Well, we do know Father Jerome is really there,” Finch pointed out.

The reports they’d pulled up after the call confirmed that Father Jerome was indeed in Egypt. He’d fallen ill while working at one of his missions there, close to the border with Sudan, a little over a year ago. After his recovery, he’d pulled back from active duty—he was just shy of sixty now—only going so far as to say he needed to take some time for himself, “to get closer to God,” in his own words. He’d subsequently retreated entirely from public view. Crucially, a couple of brief wire reports did have him traveling north and seeking out the seclusion of the monasteries of Wadi Natrun.

“And how could he actually have drawn what we saw? I mean, how would you draw it?” Gracie argued.

“We need to get a copy of that tape,” Dalton suggested.

Before ending his call, Brother Ameen had offered them a tantalizing piece of corroboration. A British film crew, working for the
BBC
, had visited the monastery several months earlier. They’d spent a few days there, filming part of a multi-episode documentary that compared the dogmatic approach to faith in Western churches with the more mystical approaches found farther east. They’d managed to get a quick peek inside the cave and shot some footage there, before being turned away by Father Jerome. Brother Ameen assured Gracie it included footage of the priest’s handiwork across its ceiling and walls.

It was proof that Gracie desperately needed to see. The problem was, getting hold of it would most likely alert the filmmakers to its significance—something they didn’t seem to have clicked to, so far—and Gracie could lose the lead on the story. A story that was still virtually exclusively hers.

She let herself sink into the sofa and heaved a sigh of frustration as she pondered Dalton’s suggestion. “No,” she decided, “not yet. We can’t risk it.”

She looked over at Finch, who nodded. After a moment, he said, “So what do you want to do?”

Gracie felt the air around her resonating with expectation. Warring sensations were tugging her in opposite directions, but, deep down, she knew that she’d already made the decision before she’d put down the phone.

With a conviction that surprised her, she said, “I have to go there.” Her eyes danced from Finch to Dalton and back, hoping to find some support.

“I want to believe him,” she explained. “I mean, look, none of this makes sense, right? But what if it’s all real? Can you imagine? If what he’s saying is true . . . Jesus.” She sprang to her feet, pacing around now, gesturing with her arms, her decision somehow liberating her, unleashing a surge of energy that was intoxicating. “I don’t know how this happened, I don’t know what’s really going on here, but, like it or not, we’re part of it, we’re caught up in something . . . exceptional. And the story’s not here anymore. It’s in Egypt. It’s in that monastery. And that’s where I need to be.” She fixed on them fervently. “I mean, what are we gonna do? We can’t stay on this ship forever. We sure as hell can’t go home, not while this thing isn’t resolved.” She paused, studying them, willing a reaction out of them, then she reiterated, “The story’s in Egypt.”

Finch looked thoughtfully at Dalton, turned back to her, and, after an uncertain, so-pregnant-it-must-be-triplets pause, he smiled.

“Let’s do it. Even if it means disappointing the kids. Again.” Finch had two under-tens, a son and a daughter. And although he was divorced, he was still friends with his ex-wife and had been planning to spend Christmas Day with them.

Gracie acknowledged Finch’s comment with a sheepish, clenched expression. She knew it would be tough on him. She didn’t have that problem. She was single and wasn’t seeing anyone special. She wasn’t a huge fan of the end-of-year holidays anyway. As a kid, she’d hated them, especially after her mom died. The cold weather, the short days, the passing of another year, one less year of life—it all felt morbid and sad to her. She turned to Dalton. He nodded, his expression pensive but supportive. He was in too.

Gracie beamed back. “Great.”

“I’ll go talk to the captain,” Finch said. “See how quickly he can get us choppered off this ship. You guys start packing.”

A lesser producer would have debated the point to death before covering his ass by getting his news director’s approval. Finch was rock solid, and right now, Gracie was hugely grateful to have him in her corner. He looked at her, as if reading the thoughts written across her face, gave her a nod of unflinching support, then left the room.

She crossed over to the window again and looked out. The shelf was still disintegrating, but the sign was long gone. In her mind’s eye, she saw it again, and as she relived the shock and awe it had generated in her, in everyone on that ship, a shiver of doubt crept into her.

Her back still to Dalton, she asked, “What do you think? Are we making the right call here?”

He joined her at the window. She glanced over at him, and thought she’d rarely seen him wearing such a solemn expression.

“We’re talking about Father Jerome,” he said, his voice lacking any traces of uncertainty. “If you’re not going to believe him . . . who are you going to believe?”

Boston, Massachusetts

M
att guided the Mustang back onto the expressway and headed north, toward the city. He was cruising on auto-pilot, without any specific destination in mind, just putting some distance between him and the guys in the Chrysler.

He felt shattered. His brain was all tangled up, and he was having trouble making sense of what had happened since Bellinger called him. After the adrenaline rush from tagging the Chrysler, his body was now crumbling from under him. He needed to rest and think things through, but there were no obvious spots where he could crash out and no one to take him in. No spunky-and-resourceful girlfriend, no reluctantly supportive buddy, no irritable-but-still-smitten ex-wife.

He was on his own.

He rode up the expressway for a while, then drifted onto the South Station off-ramp and ended up at a fifties-style diner on the corner of Kneeland, the only place in town that he knew would be open this late.

He looked like a real mess and drew a couple of contemptuous glances as he stepped inside, which wasn’t ideal. The last thing he needed right now was to get noticed. He disappeared into the men’s room and cleaned himself up as best he could, then grabbed a stool at the far end of the bar. He ordered himself a coffee and decided to add on a cheeseburger, not knowing when he’d have a chance to eat in peace again, and hoping the caffeine-and-protein boost would help carry him through until daybreak.

Although his body still ached from his fall, the food and the coffee helped clear his mind. He asked the waitress for a refill and sifted through his options. He didn’t hold out much hope of being able to do anything to help Bellinger. It seemed pretty clear to him that the hit team that came after them were connected to whatever had happened to Danny, and they weren’t messing around. He was facing pros with serious resources and no inhibitions, and his options were limited, especially given that he didn’t really know much beyond the cryptic words Bellinger had left him with—and the idea that Danny could still be alive. If he was going to get anyone to help him—the press, maybe even the cops, he wasn’t sure who at this point—he needed to know more about what was going on. He could think of two threads to tug. One was the tracker. The other was Bellinger. Or, more accurately, whatever it was that Bellinger knew that put him in their crosshairs. His heart sank at the thought of the harmless scientist, his brother’s buddy, and the dire situation he must now be in, and he seethed with frustration at not being able to do something about it.

Not yet, anyway.

He needed to check the tracker’s position, and he also wanted to see what he could find at Bellinger’s place. And for both lines of attack, he needed to go online.

By now, it was well past midnight, and hotel business centers were the only option at this hour. He asked his waitress and got directions to a nearby Best Western, raided an
ATM
three doors down from the diner, and pulled into the hotel’s parking lot fifteen minutes later.

The business center by the soulless lobby was open all night, but it was restricted to hotel guests. Given that his home was off-limits for the time being, the idea of a safe bed and a hot shower had its merits, so he gave the receptionist a fake name, took a single, and paid in cash. He was soon ensconced at a workstation with a high-speed connection pumping information to his screen.

He logged onto the tracker’s website and checked its position. Having been a car thief, he appreciated the value of trackers more than anyone, especially when it came to covetable, high-value classics like his Bullitt Mustang. Right now, he was more grateful than ever for having it. The contract he’d taken out had the tracker set up to transmit its location every thirty seconds when the car it was attached to was on the move. It would hibernate and ping its location once every twelve hours if the car was stationary. Assuming the car wasn’t spending a lot of time on the road, the tracker’s battery would normally last around three weeks between recharges, only Matt was pretty sure it was near the end of that cycle and running low on juice. It probably wouldn’t last more than a few days before conking out.

It hadn’t moved. Which was both good and bad. If the goons were still there, it meant they weren’t on his tail, but then again, it also meant they weren’t giving up easily. He moved on and trawled the online white pages for Bellinger’s home address, which he found with ease. Clearly, Bellinger wasn’t too fussy about his privacy, though it was frightening how much information one could find about anyone online. It was over in Inman Square, a trendy, upmarket enclave in neighboring Cambridge that Matt had visited a few times. Danny had lived there too, right up to his disappearance, Matt thought, preferring the sound of that to the words he would have used before tonight: his death. At this hour, it was only a quick hop there. One that couldn’t wait.

Matt jotted down the address and was about to log off when he thought of something else. He Googled “Antarctica” and “sky” and “news” and let the billion-dollar algorithms do their thing. He hadn’t taxed them too hard. Almost instantly, they presented him with over a million hits. The first page was dominated by news reports about a huge ice shelf breaking off, and Matt clicked on the first link, the one of the Sky news channel, and read through the report.

It was less than enlightening. He sat back and digested it, perplexed as to how it could possibly be linked to Danny or lead to the vicious reaction that targeted Bellinger. He re-read it and was none the wiser, and was about to get up when a link below the article caught his eye. It mentioned an “unexplained sighting” on the frozen continent. He clicked on it, and it took him to a related article that had an accompanying, YouTube-like video clip.

This one had more bite.

He felt a tightening at the back of his neck as he read the report and watched the short video of the reporter and the apparition over the ice shelf. He re-read the report and viewed the clip a second time, his face flickering with confusion. He dug deeper and initiated a new search, and got a geyser of hits related to the unexplained sighting, and as he skimmed through them and let the implications they debated sink in, a grim realization dropped further into the roiling pit of his stomach.

This was no small event.

If Danny was somehow involved in it—
against his will,
Bellinger had insinuated, though Matt couldn’t even begin to imagine what his involvement could have been—then the stakes were much higher than Matt had imagined.