Virgin (26 page)

"How can I
believe that, Charlie? Every other time you've disappeared to Sodom-on-the-Bay
it's been for sex."

"Not this
time. I . . . I haven't been feeling well enough for sex."

"Oh?"

A premonition
shot through Emilio like a bullet. The
senador
should have felt it too,
but if he did, his face did not betray it. He was still staring at Charlie with
that same hurt
earnest expression. Emilio
rammed his fist against his thigh.
Bobo!
Charlie's pale, feverish look,
his weight loss . . . he should have put it together long before now.

"I've been
having night sweats, then I developed this rash. I didn't run off to Frisco to
get laid, Dad. I went to a clinic there that knows about . . . these
things."

The
senador
said
nothing. A tomblike silence descended on the great room. Emilio could hear the
susurrant flow through the air-conditioning vents, the subliminal rumble of the
ocean beyond the windows, and nothing more. He realized the
senador
must
be holding his breath. The light had dawned.

Charlie looked
up at his father. "I've got AIDS, Dad."

Madre.
Emilio exhaled.

"Wh-what?"
The
senador
was suddenly as pale as his son. "That c-can't be
t-true!"

He was stuttering.
Not once in all his years with him had Emilio heard that man stutter.

Charlie was
nodding. "The doctors and the blood tests confirmed what I've guessed for
some time. I've just been too frightened to take the final step and hear
someone tell me I've got it."

"Th-there's
got to be some mistake!"

"No
mistake, Dad. This was an AIDS clinic. They're experts. I'm not just HIV
positive. I've got AIDS."

"But
didn't you use protection? Take precautions?"

Charlie looked
down again. "Yeah. Sure. Most of the time."

"Most of
the time . . ." The
senador's
voice sounded hollow, distant.
"Charlie . . . what on earth . . . ?"

"It
doesn't matter, Dad. I've got it. I'm a dead man."

"No,
you're not!" the
senador
cried, new life in his voice as he shot
from his seat. "Don't you say that! You're going to live!"

"I don't
think so, Dad."

"You will!
I won't let you die! I'll get you the best medical care. And we'll pray. You'll
see, Charlie. With God's help you'll come through this. You'll be a new man
when it's over. You'll pass through the flame and be
cleansed, not just of your illness, but of your sinfulness as well. You're
about to be born again, Charlie. I can feel it!"

Emilio turned
away and softly took the stairs down to his quarters. He fought the urge to
run. Emilio did not share the
senador's
faith in the power of prayer
over AIDS. In fact, Emilio could not remember finding prayer useful for much of
anything, especially in his line of work. Rather than listen to the
senador
rattle
on about it, he wished to wash his hands. He'd touched Charlie today. He'd
driven Charlie all the way back from San Francisco today, sitting with him for
hours in the same car, breathing his air.

When he reached
the bottom floor, he broke into a trot toward his quarters. He wanted more than
to wash his hands. He wanted a shower.

The
Greenbriar

East of Gibraltar

"A woman
on board," Captain Liam Harrity muttered as he thumbed tobacco into the
bowl of his pipe. "What utter foolishness is this? Next they'll be after
telling me the ship can fly."

Gibraltar lay
three leagues ahead, its massive shadow looming fifteen degrees to starboard
against the hazy stars. Lights dotted the shores to either side as the
Greenbriar
prepared to squeeze between two continents and brave the Atlantic beyond. A
smooth, quiet, routine trip so far.

Except for this
woman talk.

Harrity leaned
against the
Greenbriar's
stern rail and stared at the glowing windows in
the superstructure amidships. A good old ship, the
Greenbriar.
A small
freighter by almost any standards, but quick. A tramp merchant ship, with no
fixed route or schedule, picking up whatever was ready to be moved, from the
Eastern Mediterranean to the UK and all points between, no questions asked.
Harrity had been in this game a long time, much of it spent on the
Greenbriar,
and this was the first time any of his crew had talked about seeing a woman
wandering the decks.

Not that there
weren't enough places to hide one, mind you. Small though she might be, the
ship had plenty of nooks and crannies for a stowaway.

But in all his years helming the
Greenbriar,
Harrity had
never had a stowaway--at least that he knew of--and he wasn't about to start now.
Like having a prowler in your house. You simply didn't allow it.

Maguire had
started the talk that first night out of Haifa. Harrity's thought at the time
was that Dennis had been nipping at the Jameson's a little earlier that usual.
He'd let it go and not given it another thought until two nights ago when Clery
said he'd seen a woman on the aft deck as they were passing through the Malta
Channel.

A temperate
man, Clery. Not the sort who'd be after seeing things that weren't there.

So Harrity
himself was keeping watch on the aft deck these past two nights. And so far no
woman.

He turned his
back to the wind and struck a wooden match against the stern rail. As he puffed
his pipe to life, relishing the first aromatic lungfuls, a deep serenity stole
over him. The phosphorescent flashes churning in the wake, the balmy, briny
air, the stars overhead, lighting the surface of the Mediterranean as it
stretched long and wide and smooth to the horizon. Life was good.

He sensed movement to his left, turned, and fumbled to catch his
pipe as it dropped from his shocked-open mouth. She was there, beside him, not
two feet away. A woman. She stood at the rail, staring into the east, back
along the route they'd sailed. She was wearing a loose robe of some sort,
pulled up around her head. Her features were hidden by the cowl of the robe.
Now he knew why Maguire had thought she'd been wrapped in a blanket.

He shook off the initial shock and stuck his pipe bit between his
teeth. He should have been angry--furious, for sure--but he could find no
hostility within him. Only wonder at how she'd come up behind him without him
hearing her.

"And who would you be now?" he said.

The woman
continued her silent stare off the stern.

"What are
you after doing on me ship?"

Slowly she
turned toward him. He could not make out her features in the shadow of the
cowl, but he felt her eyes on him. And the weight of her stare was a gentle
hand caressing the surface of his mind, erasing all questions.

She turned and
walked away. Or was she walking? She seemed to glide along the deck. Harrity
had an urge to follow her but his legs seemed so heavy, his shoes felt riveted
to the deck. He could only stand and watch as she followed the rail along the
starboard side to the superstructure where she was swallowed by the deeper
shadows.

And then she was gone and he could move again. He sucked on his
pipe but the bowl was cold. And so was he. Suddenly the deck of the
Greenbriar
was a lonely place to be.

Cashelbanagh, Ireland

Like everyone
else, Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio had heard the endless talk about the green of
the Irish countryside, but not until he was actually driving along the roads
south of Shannon Airport did he realize how firmly based in fact all that talk
had been. He gazed through the open rear window at the passing fields. This
land was
green.
In all his fifty-six years he could not remember seeing
a green like this.

"Your
country is most beautiful, Michael," he said. His English was good, but he
knew there was no hiding his Neapolitan upbringing.

Michael the
driver--the good folk of Cashelbanagh had sent one of their number to fetch the
Monsignor from the airport--glanced over his shoulder with a broad,
yellow-toothed smile.

"Aye, that it is, Monsignor. But wait till you see
Cashelbanagh. The picture-perfect Irish village. As a matter of fact, if you're
after looking up 'Irish village' in the dictionary, sure enough it'll be saying
Cashelbanagh. Perfect place for a miracle."

"It is
much farther?"

"Only a
wee bit down the road. And wait till you see the reception committee they'll be
having for you."

Vincenzo wished
he'd come here sooner. He liked these people and the green of this land
enthralled him. But the way things were looking lately, he wouldn't get a
chance for a return visit.

And too bad he couldn't stay longer. But this was only a stopover,
scheduled at the last minute as he was leaving Rome for New York. He was one of
the Vatican's veteran investigators of the miraculous, and the Holy See had
asked him to look into what lately had become known as the Weeping Virgin of
Cashelbanagh.

The Weeping
Virgin had been gathering an increasing amount of press over the past few
weeks, first the Irish papers, then the London tabloids, and recently the story
had gained international attention. People from all over the world had begun to
flock to the little village in County Cork to see the daily miracle of the
painting of the Virgin Mary that shed real tears.
Healings had
been reported--cures, visions, raptures. "A New Lourdes!" screamed
tabloid headlines all over the world.

It had been
getting out of hand. The Holy See wanted the "miracle" investigated.
The Vatican had no quarrel with miracles, as long as they were real. But the
faithful should not be led astray by tricks of the light, tricks of nature, and
tricks of the calculated human kind.

They chose
Vincenzo for the task. Not simply because he'd already had experience
investigating a number of miracles that turned out to be anything but
miraculous, but because the Vatican had him on a westbound plane this weekend
anyway, to Sloan-Kettering Memorial in Manhattan to try an experimental
chemotherapy protocol for his liver cancer. He could make a brief stop in
Ireland, couldn't he? Take a day or two to look into this weeping painting,
then be on his way again. No pain, no strain, just send a full report of his
findings back to Rome when he reached New York.

"Tell me,
Michael," Vincenzo said. "What do you know of these miracles?"

"I'll be
glad to tell you it all, Monsignor, because I was there from the start. Well,
not the very start. You see, the painting of the Virgin Mary has been gracing
the west wall of Seamus O'Halloran's home for two generations now. His
grandfather Danny had painted it there during the year before he died. Finished
the last stroke, then took to his bed and never got up again. Can you imagine
that? 'Twas almost as if the old fellow was hanging on just so's he could be
finishing the painting. Anyways, over the years the weather has faded it, and
it's become such a fixture about the village that it faded into the scenery, if
you know what I'm sayin'. Much like a tree in someone's yard. You pass that
yard half a dozen times a day but you never take no notice of the tree. Unless
of course it happens to be spring and it's startin' to bloom, then you
might--"

"I understand,
Michael."

"Yes.
Well, that's the way it was after being until about a month ago when
Seamus--that's old Daniel O'Halloran's grandson--was passing the wall and noticed
a wet streak glistening on the stucco. He stepped closer, wondering where this
bit of water might be trickling from on this dry and sunny day, for contrary to
popular myth, it does
not
rain every day in Ireland--least ways not in
the summer. I'm afraid I can't say that for the rest of the year. But anyways,
when he saw that the track of moisture originated in the eye of his
grandfather's painting, he ran straight to Mallow to fetch Father Sullivan. And
since then it's been one miracle after another."

Vincenzo let
his mind drift from Michael's practiced monologue that told him nothing he
hadn't learned from the rushed briefing at the Vatican before his departure.
But he did get the feeling that life in the little village had begun to revolve
around the celebrity that attended the weeping of their Virgin.

And that would
make his job more difficult.

"There she
is now, Monsignor," Michael said, pointing
ahead
through the windshield.
"Cashelbanagh. Isn't she a sight."