The Devil's Labyrinth (35 page)

C
HAPTER
65

R
YAN
M
C
I
NTYRE STEPPED
through the curtain onto the stage. Sofia Capelli was two steps ahead of him, Melody Hunt two behind. Once all three of them were in place, the Pope himself would step through the curtain, but even before the appearance of the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, the roar of the crowd was already setting not only the Plexiglas shields to vibrating, but the stage as well. The trembling of the floor beneath his feet, combined with the steadily building wave of noise rising over him, made Ryan step reflexively back; he might have fallen off the stage had Melody not instantly offered her support, steadying him so smoothly that he regained his balance before he’d completely lost it.

He looked out over the sea of people—more people than he’d thought the Common could even hold—all of them on their feet, cheering and clapping and waving signs offering the Pope a welcome in half a dozen languages. Some were even standing on their chairs, while the limbs of every tree sagged under the weight of even more people.

Yet even as Ryan gazed out at them, the roar began to fade from his consciousness, and a quiet serenity fell over him. Soon all of this would end, and the man in the cassock and miter—the man who led these misguided followers—would die for the glory of Allah. So, too, would Ryan and he would secure an eternity filled with Allah’s rewards for his martyrdom.

The roar of the crowd swelled as Ryan sensed that the Pope had joined them on the stage, and the man whose ring he had kissed only a little while ago stepped between himself and Melody to the front of the stage to acknowledge the welcome he was being given.

Now Ryan stood behind the Pope, Sofia to his right, Melody to his left.

The Pope raised his arms in benediction to the assembled, and the roar grew even greater. Then the Pope spoke his first words into the tiny microphone clipped to his vestments, and as his voice boomed out through the massive speaker system the crowd instantly quieted.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” he intoned, his voice carrying easily to every corner of the Common.

In unison, every person Ryan could see crossed themselves exactly the way Ryan and Melody and Sofia were crossing themselves. But the throng beyond the shield was following the lead of their Pope, while the three young people behind it were obeying the instructions of Father Sebastian Sloane.

“You must be perfect in every detail,”
he’d whispered to the dark force he had harnessed within each of them.
“Until the moment comes, perform the infidel rite, but think only of Allah. Allah, and me.”

“Amen,” the combined voice of the multitude intoned.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all,” the Pope proclaimed.

“And also with you,” the crowd responded.

Obeying the instructions of the dark force within him, Ryan turned to light the candles on the altar, Melody and Sofia flanking him, the Pope still facing the crowd. As they stepped toward the altar, they turned to smile at each other in anticipation of the moment so soon to come. Then, in unison, they lit the candles. Ryan felt the same serenity in the two girls that imbued his own soul. They—as he himself—were ready.

“Let us pray to the Lord.”

As one, the multitude bowed their heads and stood so silently that when a flock of pigeons suddenly rose into the air, Ryan could hear the flutter of their wings. As the birds vanished beyond the treetops, the Pope began to pray, his voice full and rich.

Before bowing his own head, Ryan looked out to the front row of seats, where Father Sebastian would be sitting with the rest of the school. But the chair the priest had been assigned was empty. Father Laughlin was there, and Sister Mary David, and Brother Francis, and all the other priests and nuns Ryan had come to know over the last two weeks, but Father Sebastian seemed to have vanished.

He couldn’t have, of course—he had to be there somewhere.

Ryan scanned the side sections, searching for the priest, and at the far end of the second row he saw a single man whose head wasn’t bowed. It was him! It was Father—

But it wasn’t! It wasn’t Father Sebastian at all.

Instead, Ryan found himself staring into the face of his own father. His father, in his uniform, his hat on his head!

No! It was impossible—it had to be a trick of the light!

Ryan looked away, but almost instantly his eye was caught by the glint of sunlight reflecting off some kind of polished metal, and when he looked to see what it was, he saw another unbowed head, this one halfway back in the seats, on the opposite side.

And again, Ryan would have sworn he was looking at his father.

The man, the sun still glinting off the medals on his chest, smiled at Ryan, and nodded slightly.

What was wrong? What was happening? He shouldn’t be seeing his father at all. He should be seeing Father Sebastian!

A burning sensation grew in his chest.

The Pope finished his prayer, then turned toward the enormous Bible on the altar as the Boston Children’s Choir, dressed in blue robes with gold trim, began to sing
Ave Maria.

The moment was approaching.

Ryan’s heart quickened as Father Sebastian’s voice whispered in his memory, repeating the instructions over and over.

The timing had to be perfect. One slip, and it could all go wrong. He eased slightly toward Melody, drawn to her now as he had been since the moment he’d first seen her.

The moment was very close now; the “amen” from the crowd that would mark the end of the next prayer would also mark the moment when he and Melody and Sofia would press the buttons that had been sewn into the sleeves of their cassocks.

The moment when they would greet Allah and receive his gifts.

The choir finished, and the crowd stood silent, muted by the beauty not only of the song, but of the voices that had sung it.

The Pope turned to the altar, and the waiting Eucharist. “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, Creator of the fruit of the Earth. The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” he said. He picked up the small silver pitcher and poured a drop of water into the chalice of wine.

“Lord wash away my iniquity, cleanse me from my sins.” The Pope washed his hands in the basin set upon the altar for that purpose, then dried them on a linen towel.

“Let us pray.”

Ryan looked beyond the edge of the stage.

Once more his father was smiling at him, and once more he felt the burning in his chest.
It wasn’t possible—it couldn’t be his father—
and yet it
was,
and he was looking directly into Ryan’s eyes, and he was raising his hand to his chest as if he were feeling the same burning that was now searing Ryan’s heart.

Without thinking, Ryan raised his right hand, and slipped it beneath the surplice and between the buttons on the cassock.

His fingers closed on the silver crucifix.

The crucifix his father had promised would protect him.

The crucifix he had intended to leave hidden in the wall.

Now, with his father’s eyes fixed on him, with his father smiling at him, and with his father’s gift clutched in his hand, a new energy flooded through him, bursting from his heart and his soul to flow through his body.

And he realized what he and Melody and Sofia were about to do.

Ryan stared at his father, who was now standing at the very edge of the stage. He was reaching out to Ryan, as if to put his hand right through the Plexiglas, to touch him.

Ryan’s gaze shifted to Sofia. Her fingers were twitching, and he saw them disappear into the sleeves of her cassock.

The sleeves where the triggers were hidden.

He turned the other way; Melody, too, was slipping her fingers into her sleeves.

He heard the Pope begin the doxology. The last four lines of the prayer had begun.

“I will praise Thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart.”

Ryan’s gaze flashed back to his father, and everything inside him changed. His right hand still clutching his father’s crucifix, he reached over with his left and grabbed Melody’s hand, feeling the energy of the silver cross flow through his arm and hand into her own. Melody’s eyes widened, and she looked at him in terror as comprehension suddenly dawned in her mind.

“And I will glorify Thy name forevermore.”

Ryan and Melody lunged toward the Pope. As his lips formed the final word, they threw themselves on him, toppling him near the end of the altar and onto the floor, all of them falling just as Sofia, still heeding only the instructions Father Sebastian had planted in her mind, pressed the buttons in the cuffs of her cassock.

The concussion of the twin bombs exploding knocked the breath from Ryan, and for an instant he lay paralyzed, certain he was dead. But a moment later he felt the crucifix in his right hand; felt Melody stir beside him. Beneath them, the Pope struggled, and Melody began to pull away from him, trying to free herself from Ryan’s grip so the fallen Pope could recover himself. But if he let go of her hand—

Still holding Melody with his left hand, Ryan released his grip on the silver crucifix and tore her cassock away with his right. Flinging it to the far end of the stage, he ripped off his own and a moment later it fell onto Melody’s, both the cassocks lying in a crumpled heap, the full Mass on the altar itself standing between them and the Pontiff.

“Bombs,” Ryan whispered, his voice nearly failing him. He clutched at the crucifix once more, and again it lent him the energy he needed.

“We were supposed to kill you,” he whispered to the Pope, who was now on his knees, steadying himself against the altar with his right arm as he reached out to Melody with his left. “Father Sebastian—”

His voice broke, and suddenly all he wanted was to see his father again. He turned away from the kneeling Pontiff, but when he tried to search for the man who only a moment ago had been reaching out to him, all he saw was the Plexiglas shield, smeared with the flesh and blood of Sofia Capelli.

Beyond the shield, the crowd was screaming and backing away, crushing against the temporary fencing, but Ryan barely saw any of it. Then there were security men in black suits swarming everywhere, and someone was helping Ryan to his feet and someone else was tending to Melody and a dozen people seemed to be crowded around the Pope and the altar was dripping with blood and bits of Sofia’s flesh and hair and clothing clung to the purple curtain behind the altar and—

Ryan was going to faint.

He knew it; knew it as certainly as he’d ever known anything in his life. He was going to faint, and there was nothing he could do about it.

And then, as the darkness began to close in around him, it happened again.

His father was right there, standing at the end of the stage, watching him.

Making certain he was all right.

And then, as his father looked down on him one last time, the faintness drained away from Ryan, and he nodded to his father.

Everything, he knew, was finally going to be all right.

E
PILOGUE

ROME
†
SIX MONTHS LATER

R
YAN PRESSED HIS
back against the cold stone wall of the catacomb and tried to control his rising panic, but the same bitter taste at the back of his tongue, the same hammering heart and the same cold sweat he remembered from being in the tunnels under St. Isaac’s Academy were starting to overwhelm him.

But he wasn’t at St. Isaac’s anymore—all that was over, and half a year had passed, and until an hour ago he’d thought Rome was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. For almost a week he and his mother had been touring the city, seeing not only the fountains and piazzas and ruins everyone else saw, but things no one else ever saw: rooms in the Vatican to which the public was never invited, but which the Pope had led them through, explaining everything they were seeing, taking a whole day simply to show Ryan and his mother the heart of the Eternal City. “And you must see the catacombs,” he’d told them at the end of that day. “No visit to Rome is complete without it. It is only there that you will truly understand what our earliest believers suffered for the true faith.”

So they came to the catacombs today, and now everything that had happened at St. Isaac’s was flooding back to him as he tried to walk with his mother and their guide sixty feet beneath the streets of the ancient city.

Dim light bulbs were strung every twenty feet or so, but they emitted no more light than had their counterparts in the maze of tunnels beneath the school, and he could barely see anything except the next bulb. Between those small beacons, the darkness closed around Ryan with a cold fist.

It was as if he was caught once again in one of the horrible nightmares he’d had at school. Once again he was lost in the dark, trying to navigate dark tunnels, feeling eyes everywhere, watching him from somewhere beyond the reach of his own eyes.

He gulped at the musty air, trying to rid himself of the rising panic, and looked around for his mother and their guide. Faint tendrils of their voices echoed from somewhere in the distance, but they had vanished into the darkness ahead.

He needed to catch up.

But just like in a nightmare, he couldn’t make his feet move; it was as if they were mired in thick mud.

He leaned against the wall for a moment, the cold stone on his back settling his nerves slightly, and he tried again.

Touching both sides of the narrow tunnel, he took one step, and then another, finally making his way through the ancient passage that the early Christians had carved by hand out of the stone beneath the city.

I can do this.

He closed his eyes and wiped the sleeve of his shirt over his sweating face.

And heard footsteps.

He whirled, but saw nothing.

He heard the footsteps again, and once more spun around to gaze into the darkness. The footsteps stopped, and now the tunnel was filled with nothing but a terrible silence that was as suffocating as the musty air.

Settle down! Just walk.

With the sheer force of his will he tamped the rising panic down.

Now he could hear the sound of voices again.

But was it his mother and the guide? Or was it something else, something close behind him, something that would vanish if he turned to look.

He forced the dark thoughts from his mind, concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other, praying he was going in the right direction, and hadn’t somehow gotten turned around in the dark.

On both sides of the tunnel, small crypts—barely more than shelves—had been carved out of the stone, and each of the shelves still held the bones where the dead had been laid so many centuries ago. Ryan began counting them as he passed, trying to keep his mind on something other than the phantom footsteps he still heard behind him.

And ahead of him.

And all around him.

Footsteps exactly like those he had heard in the tunnels beneath St. Isaac’s the night he had followed the two priests to the dark crypt far below the school.

The crypts here were different, though. Many of them had carvings on their stone walls, and he tried to focus his mind on them and ignore the phantom presence he felt all around.

Then, illuminated by one single lightbulb that seemed to be brighter than the others, he saw a familiar symbol carved into the back of one of the niches.

It was a circular pattern that he recognized in an instant.

The same symbol that had been drawn in chalk on the floor around Jeffrey Holmes’s coffin was etched here in the eternal stone!

The labyrinth.

Ryan’s whole body trembled. This had to be a nightmare—it couldn’t possibly be real. He heard the footsteps behind him again, but they were much closer this time. He steeled himself to spin around and face whatever lurked in the darkness, but before he could turn, something reached out of the blackness.

It was an arm that slipped around his neck and held him utterly immobile.

A rough hand groped at his chest, tearing open his shirt, and then he felt a fist close around the crucifix—his father’s crucifix—that had hung around his neck since that morning six months ago when he had been sent by Sebastian Sloane to kill the Pope.

He felt a terrible jerk.

The silver chain broke.

And a soft voice spoke in his ear: “
For the salvation of Christ.
”

Ryan dropped to the floor of the tunnel as his assailant fled, and a moment later even the footsteps faded away.

The tunnels were silent for a moment, and then a single word floated out of the darkness: “Ryan?”

It was his mother’s voice that made Ryan realize he must have cried out loud as the arm slid around his neck.

Now, emerging from the darkness ahead, he could see his mother and the guide coming back for him.

He touched his chest and felt the empty place where his father’s crucifix had lain heavily since that morning on the Boston Common.

And all he felt was a profound relief.

It was over. The whole thing was finally over.

Wherever that cross had come from, he was certain that it was now going back where it truly belonged.

And wherever it was going, it no longer had anything to do with him, and it had nothing to do with his father’s love for him.

That love, he knew, would always be with him.

“Ryan?” his mother called out again.

Ryan got to his feet and brushed the dust from his pants, and by the time his mother reached him, it was as if nothing had happened at all. “Let’s go home,” he whispered. “I just want to go home.”