Fury and the Power (29 page)

He smiled ironically, let go of their hands, made the sign of the cross over Sherard and Bertie. Turned to go to his bedroom as the papal secretary stepped forward to escort them out.

"If it would not be a difficulty," Leoncaro said, pausing, "please bring the girl to me. Tomorrow at three-thirty in the papal library. I'm most anxious to see and talk to her. Laurent will make those arrangements. I'm scheduled for an audience with some distinguished members of the American laity, whom I have had cooling their heels for the better part of a week due to my ear problem. Is it who, or
whom
, in English, Laurent?"

"I'm not at all certain, Holiness. I'll look it up right away."

"Don't you ever sleep, Laurent? Do it tomorrow. Has Pasquale remembered that I needed a new toothbrush?"

T
om and Bertie were in the car taking them back to the Excelsior Hotel when Bertie broke a long brooding silence.

"His Holiness knows something we don't know," she said. "Tom, do I scare easily?"

"You're braver than I am."

"Not now I'm not," she said, clinging to his unbroken arm and huddling close to him. "Tom, please don't make a big scene when we see Gwen."

"I'm just going to quietly strangle her."

L
eoncaro, on his Swedish orthopedic bed, a practical luxury to preserve the structural integrity of his aging lower back, had not been able to fall asleep as promptly as usual. There was an odor in the air of the spartan bedroom (in spite of sealed windows and the additional air purification system installed in the papal suite to screen out the tiniest pathogens that were always kicking around inside hospitals) that had something to do with the cloud of disaster lingering over a wide area of Rome toward the midnight hour, more to do with an unspeakable entity already prospering infernally on earth when Rome was a collection of hovels and sheepcotes.

His nose wrinkled at this first disagreeable sign of intrusion, which he had the option to forcibly reject if he chose. Still, Leoncaro reflected, perhaps it
was
time that they meet again.

He abandoned the effort to sleep, reached for a robe, and sat on the side of the low bed. Yawning from time to time, he read his Bible until church bells announced a new day and, at one minute past midnight, the advent of his longtime adversary.

"As usual your foulness precedes you," Leoncaro said gruffly, setting his Bible and reading glasses aside. He looked around the small room, which was mirrorless, undecorated except for the large carved ebony crucifix above the bed.

A coarse smoky image was raveling kinematically while keeping cautious distance from him. An eyespot became visible, expanded from embryonic blandness into a steadfast iris afire with contempt.

"And—as usual—I find
you
in reduced circumstances. Millennia of riches and spoils surround you, but you might as well be in that squalid goat-hide tent on the lower steppes—or do I have the place and circumstances of our last meeting wrong?"

"You know that you do," Leoncaro said, snuffling into a handkerchief, disgust in his eyes.

"Oh, yes, it's clear to me now," Mordaunt said, even as a second, rudimentary eye and a dark mystical rubbing of a face, satirically like that of the Shroud of Turin, appeared to annoy Leoncaro. "On my last visit you were beset by creditors and largely dismissed by your peers. A routinely ignored voice in the House of Lords. Considered somewhat dangerous for your views. '
Fiel pero desdichado
.' Wasn't that the motto on the family coat of arms?
Faithful but unfortunate
. How appropriate even now, in your present co-opted persona."

"You seem to be in a gloating mood."

"Why not? You're losing ground while doing my work for me.
Caretaker?
Not much."

"I don't recall losing the Second World War. I do recall the penalty you earned for starting it. Now, how is it I do
your
work, Trickster?"

"Insisting on the doctrines of a mythological, obsolete religion. You don't protect souls with that claptrap; you subjugate them. What is a pope but a man with a book, a mitre, and the head of an ass?"

"An
enduring
religion. Mythological? No more than the true Eternal Soul is a myth."

"Religious faith is spiritual ignorance.
Credo quia absurdum
. Ignorance spawns delusion. The more fiercely the ignorant believe in the unknowable, the more fanatical they become, and, in groups, horrifically mad. My kind of folks, Caretaker."

"Once it reaches us, the fertilization and evolution of a new soul is slow and arduous. In the beginning of its earthly cycles, each soul requires the sanctuary of a sane system of values so that it may begin to mature. I don't feel that I'm wasting my time in theological pedantry, no matter how many setbacks the Caretakers must endure to graduate a cosmic soul from the earthly plane. Belief in God, through whatever religion inspires it and however 'god' is idealized by the creative unconscious, is essential to the development of metaphysical perception. A liberating force, Mordaunt, achieved only through the steady progress of a soul making its rounds. As for your methods—the more outrageously you behave, the more the souls need us. Oh, you have your Malterran misfits to bend to your whims and promises, but you can't construct anything with them that will last. You will never be strong enough."

The large crucifix fell from the wall across the bed, missing Leoncaro by inches. He looked at it, then at the still-unresolved, unreliable shape of Mordaunt hovering futilely in front of him.

"It didn't destroy Him then; it won't bother Him now. Time for you to go."

"I'll be back," Mordaunt said, "in strength none of you can overcome. You left me with a means to heal myself. And now I will use her."

"I wouldn't roll those dice if I were you. If she doesn't know about you yet, she soon will. On the earthly plane you're all flash and not enough powder; no match for the gifts of Eden Waring."

"The beauty of it is, Caretaker, she will use her greatest power against
herself
. And I walk away the winner. Now when shall we two meet again?" he asked mockingly. "In thunder, lightning, or in reign of blood?"

"Get lost" Leoncaro said, but he didn't feel as tough as he sounded.

SAN FRANCISCO

OCTOBER 21

2:50 P.M. PDT

O
n an afternoon when the prevailing winds had gentled and a high-pressure system centered just offshore provided such a mild but radiant atmosphere it was as if all of the Bay Area, with its waters of lapping indigo, its strings of bridges and wharves and towers, had been captured inside a crystal bell...

On an afternoon when every breath was a tonic, the heart racing and tingling from the pure enchantment of being outdoors...

On an afternoon of pleasantries and nostalgia at lunch with her best friend Megan, and shopping after...

On an otherwise agreeable and diverting afternoon, Eden Waring got the pain in her neck.

She had just taken two steps inside the revolving door of the Mark Hopkins's entrance, shopping bags in both hands and a dress box under one arm, when it hit her, penetrating deep like a red-hot knitting needle. The pain similar to what she had experienced the time she thought she'd broken her neck diving for a loose ball her junior year at Cal Shasta.

Eden stopped immediately, afraid to take another step. She dropped one of the bags and grasped her neck with her left hand, a fearful bracing.

The concierge was passing by; he stopped immediately with a concerned smile.

"Are you all right?"

"I, uh, must have twisted my neck coming in the door. I was trying not to drop anything." The pain, an isotope beneath her palm, was at its worst for only a few seconds before tempering to a deep ache. Eden found it bearable then to massage with her fingers, turn her head cautiously left-right on its bony pivot.

The concierge, a silky-looking man with an almost fluorescent pallor, picked up the dropped shopping bag, tucking something filmy back between layers of purple tissue-wrap.

"I can have your purchases sent to your suite for you. It's Miss Bell, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm, uh, my neck is really beginning to feel okay now?"

"You might want to consult Heinrich in the spa," he suggested. "If you're having a muscle spasm. I get them all the time myself, but Heinrich does wonders in only a few minutes. I'll call for you; to be sure he can see you right away."

"I don't know what happened. Maybe I didn't stretch enough this morning. I've played basketball most of my life; my body's used to a certain warm-up routine or I cramp easily. Maybe I'll see Heinrich later, but it's very kind of you."

"Please don't feel shy about calling if there's anything I can do," he said with that tone of unctuous appreciation five-star hotel employees have for the celebrated and the deeply monied.

Eden took the public elevator to the nineteenth floor. There was no one else with her. She used the small interval to press the index finger of her left hand against the site of the occult third eye on her forehead.

Okay, what's going on? What's happened to you?

Nothing specific came to mind. Then she tensed. Black-gloved hands reaching for her. A sensation of being dragged. Bump bump and pavement scraping skin, the fiery bloom of a contusion on her hip.

Trouble.
Wasn't that just like her?

Eden opened her eyes and felt momentarily displaced, a breath of coldness on her face, as if yesterday had returned. Fog wisping away from the surface of black water. Bubbles where the chain-wrapped body of the assassin had gone down. Open eyes, open mouth, no change of expression at the shocking immersion nor as he swallowed brackish death. Bubbles. Ah, God. She had not blinked or looked away; she was there at her own insistence, standing in the cluttered bow of the trawler with men she didn't know and never wanted to know. Diesel stench and clammy fish rot giving her a sick stomach. Feeling the chill of three A.M., cheekbones near to freezing. No forgiveness in her heart although he had spared Betts. To Eden he was only a sharp blade narrowly missing her own throat. Thus his penalty for failure. The deep salt sleep. It had always been that kind of world and now she had willingly contributed to its avid monstrousness. And gone shopping.

Refocused, Eden realized that the elevator door probably had been standing open for several seconds. A blond young room service waiter bent over a wheeled table was looking oddly at her, waiting to board.

"Sorry," Eden told him, with a lame lipless smile. She gathered her things and got out of his way, walked slowly to the key-operated penthouse elevator. The ache in her neck still bearable but not improving. A dud vacancy in the middle of her brain.
Where are you, what's happening?
She stumbled on the carpet for no reason; it was as flat as the baize on a pool table. Disoriented again, feeling zero g in the pit of her stomach, being lifted, conveyed somewhere—what was that odor, engine oil? And smoke, and, Jesus!
Blood
—at the speed of a razzle-dazzle carnival thrill ride.

Come back to me. Now!

Beside the vestibule doors of the secluded penthouse suite Eden rested her forehead against the wall for half a minute, missing that buzz around her navel that always told her the manifestation of her doppelganger was imminent.

Here we go again
, she thought dispiritedly.
What could have happened to her, with Tom and Bertie around?

She rang the bell. The door was opened by a Blackwelder detective named Vicky Janssen, diminutive but with a collection of advanced degrees in deadly martial art forms, and, undoubtedly, although Eden hadn't asked, she was highly proficient with the .32-caliber Heckler and Koch automatic she carried.

"Hi, welcome back; how was lunch? Was I right about Kuleto's?"

"Megan and I had a great time. Thanks, Vicky. Where's Betts?"

"Getting some rays on the terrace. She has company."

"Oh. Police again?" Eden frowned. They were required, by the attorneys Vaughn Blackwelder had provided, to make an appointment if they had further questions for Betts about her kidnapping.

"No, it's Mr. Ruddy. He brought her flowers again today."

"Oh" Eden said again. "Bless his heart." His presence, instead of the official interrogators they'd endured, was a relief. Or was it?

Vicky had one of those smiles that served as silent commentary:
 
wry, jaundiced, perplexed. Her response to Eden's expression was cheerful admonition.

"You know, a different hairstyle; and he certainly could use a little help picking out his clothes, but that's the way these old bachelors are. Here, let me carry your things for you. Looks like you cleaned out most of the boutiques on Union Street?"

She followed Eden through the living room of the suite, furnished with Chinese antiques and neo-classic pieces, deeply lacquered surfaces reflecting sunlight from the greenery-sheltered, twenty-five-foot terrace. Eden greeted the Filipino nurse on duty, who was on her way to the kitchen. She heard Betts's roguish laughter before she stepped outside, sounds to gladden her heart.