Holograph, my ass.
I was still very shaky—no longer shivering, but just shaky—as I made my way to the door. I had to get the hell out of there. He didn’t attempt to stop me.
“What now?” I asked, hoping he’d give me a clue about where the heck I was supposed to find this “source” blood.
“They will come to collect what they can of the blood you spilled, then I don’t know,” he said, slipping into a good ole Middle Eastern drug high, which I recognized from my days with the guys in Iraq. He began chanting in a low rumble that sounded terrifying in the close confines of that tiny stone house.
I tried the door.
Damn! It’s stuck! No, it’s not. Breathe. Calm down. Breathe.
The knob finally turned, but the gate was still locked down. I reached down and saw that the padlock was locked from the inside and the key was still attached. He wasn’t apparently trying to keep me a prisoner here.
I unlocked it, lifted it, and took a huge gulp of the fresh spring air outside the confines of this sicko’s hashish den.
As the heavy gate began to rise, I could hear chanting that matched the priest’s coming from many, many voices. Fear—and a million more questions—ran through my brain.
Sensory overload. Get out. Get straight. You’ve probably been drugged. Get out. Get straight.
I lifted the gate all the way up and was astonished at the sight. Like a specter or a movie about the Middle Ages, coming up the path to the door where I stood were dozens of burning candles held by white-robed monks.
Their haunting chant—“Pater noster qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum”—reverberated like angel song in the crisp night air. The closer they came the more clearly I could see them. Embroidered on their robes were large yellow crosses that shimmered in the dusk. The shape of the cross was the same as that worn by Father Paulo.
26
I stepped aside as the line of hooded monks—male and female, young and old—walked solemnly past me while bowing their heads to me as though I were some sort of religious figure myself.
The first monk, a woman of eighty years or so, walked inside the house first, and the others filed in after her, chanting, “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo,” as she walked toward Paulo.
I turned and headed back toward the parking lot.
I could see still Mr. Cesur standing there, waiting outside the car as though we’d been gone for only ten minutes instead of one whole day. He asked no questions, nor did he even inquire about Father Paulo. He opened the car door for me, and I flopped into the backseat exhausted.
What now? Where the hell should I go?
Anywhere but here. “The airport.”
I grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the stash in the seat console as the nearly battery-depleted phone began to ring. The ringtone was not the usual one I’d heard on Sadowski’s phone, but, bizarrely, the classic Dragnet theme: dum-da-dum-dum. Caller ID: “Unknown.”
“I swear every priest is insane!” I said out loud, although Mr. Cesur was in his own world at that point.
I immediately recognized the voice. “So the old SOB is still alive and kicking.” Maureen!
“Ms. Wright-Lewis!”
“I think you have earned the right to use my first name.”
“But how did you find me, and how the hell did you know about the priest?”
“You forget with whom you are dealing, dear. Old spies don’t really fade away.”
“You don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.”
Stop gushing. You don’t even know the woman. Just because she’s alive and not looking to kill you …
I continued, unashamed: “I was beginning to think I was trapped inside Rosemary’s Baby,” I joked. “Am I still a wanted woman?”
“More than you can imagine. It’s imperative that you keep deep undercover. No one—not your friends nor your family—must know your whereabouts or be able to contact you. I’ve lived most of my life this way, and now you have to. Until your name is cleared, that is.”
“But you found me. How hard would it be for everyone else? And I have two friends who are helping me.”
“Again, trust no one. The more contact you make with the outside world, the easier it will be to find you. I can’t stress that enough. Tell me, Alessandra…”
My name has never sounded so, well, seductive.
“Did you find any proof yet that the others survived?”
“I think so. The old priest had a book hidden away that has never been opened before. It is the supposed diaries of all the eyewitnesses to the event. The birth.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end. She may have been the greatest sleuth the world had ever known, but—damn!—if even she couldn’t keep a natural reflex from surfacing once in a while …