Gypsies

1

Cardinal Palestrina was introduced to the upper echelons of the Washington diplomatic community, a few of whom were aware of his task here: the German envoy Max Vierheller and a man named Korchnoi from the Court of the Tsar.

Korchnoi drew him aside at a party at a Republican senator’s Virginia estate: led him out to a glassed veranda and lectured him as snow fell beyond the perimeter of the hothouse plants.

“Of course you know,” the Russian legate said in English, “it’s not simply a matter of this weapon or that weapon.” He gestured effusively with a goblet of Aztec wine. “What the Americans are offering is their involvement in the war. Does it really matter what gift they choose to signify it? It’s ceremony. Theater. The important thing is the prospect of an alliance between Rome and America. The infidels are terrified of it.”

“Until recently,” Cardinal Palestrina observed, “the Americans were the infidels.”

“Hardly,” Korchnoi said. “Heretics perhaps. A mongrel nation of Freemasons and Protestants—isn’t that what the clerics say? But the industrial power, the wealth, the military strength… these are things you can see for yourself.”

“Clearly,” Palestrina admitted. “I have no objection to the alliance. Nor does Rome—the Vatican and the Senate are agreed on that. But there’s more at stake than the fortunes of an alliance. You must have read De Officiis Civitatum. Adrian is a realistic pontiff but hardly a pragmatist. If we lend ecclesiastical approval to this project in particular—”

“Pardon me,” Korchnoi said, “but you begin to sound like an ideologue … a Jesuit.”

No, Cardinal Palestrina thought. The Jesuits had a rather more hard-nosed view of political reality. What I am, he thought, is a provincial bishop caught up in affairs beyond his station. I should never have gone to Rome. He might have been happy in some rural parish, vineyards and simple farmers and so on. He might have kept his scholarship down to a less conspicuous level. It was the unwise love of wisdom that had drawn him into ecclesiastical politics in the first place: a sin of pride or hubris.

Cardinal Palestrina was powerfully homesick.

“ Rome and America,” Korchnoi said, his eyes beginning to glaze. ” America and Europe. Think of it… think of it.”

In the morning Palestrina registered a Marconi message at the Vatican Consulate—essentially, that he had arrived and that the intelligence branch of the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs had been largely correct in its surmises—and then hired a taxi to carry him to the DRI.

He despised this building. He had official identification now, a photocard clasped to his clothing. He walked from the front gate through the snow to the inner building, the tiny portion of it in which he had learned to navigate. He went directly to Carl Neumann’s office.

“Is Walker still in the building?”

“For a time,” Neumann said. “I thought you’d finished with him.”

“A few more questions.”

“Well, if it’s necessary. We’re happy to cooperate, Your Eminence, as long as circumstances allow. But do understand, we’re approaching something of a cusp with this effort. Can you find the interrogation room by yourself?”

“No,” Palestrina confessed. Humiliating but true.

“I’ll take you there,” Neumann said. “And I’ll arrange for Walker to be waiting.”

Once again, Cardinal Palestrina joined the Gray Man in this cold and windowless cubicle. Walker regarded him with blank expectation.

Palestrina extracted a notebook from his robes. He had jotted down some of the questions he meant to ask. Too, the notebook gave him something to do with his hands … an excuse for avoiding Walker’s eyes.

He felt the hard contour of the chair beneath him. He felt an unpleasant churning in his stomach.

He began, “I want to make sure I have a fair and accurate understanding of what you’ve told me. I apologize if I repeat myself. You were one of three original, ah, products of this research?”

“There were three of us,” Walker agreed.

“And the other two escaped.”

“Yes.”

“They bore children.” “Yes.”

“You killed those two, but the children survived.”

The question seemed to trouble Walker. “The killing,” he said, “was a mistake. I’ve admitted to that. I was punished for it. I had sorcels to bring back Julia and William, but it was the children we were most interested in. But the children weren’t there! And William wouldn’t say where they’d hidden them! So I reached out …”

The Gray Man faltered.

Cardinal Palestrina said, “You killed them both— with your own hands?”

“I sent them home,” Walker said primly. “Certain parts of them. But of course you can’t be in two places at once.” He shook his head. “It was very bloody.”

Cardinal Palestrina closed his eyes briefly.

He said, “You were instructed to do this?”

“No,” Walker said. “I told you—I was punished for it.”

“And you couldn’t simply recover the children yourself?”

“They were too young to follow. They had no—” He seemed to search for a word. “No song. I couldn’t hear them.”

“But I assume you were able to trace them at a later date.”

“When they began to exercise their talents.”

“But you didn’t bring them back.”

“We wanted to make certain. No more mistakes.

We understood… Mr. Neumann explained… work like this takes time. There are spells that are best developed slowly. They come to maturity. But we planted the seed,” Walker said, “when the children were very young.”

“The seed?” Cardinal Palestrina asked.

“Bindings,” Walker said.

“Bindings of what nature?”

“Vanity and anger and fear.” The Gray Man smiled to himself. “A mirror, the kingdoms of the earth, her firstborn son…”

“Spells that would come to fruition in the future,” Palestrina interpreted.

“Yes.”

“Can you see the future?”

“No. But there are people here in the building who can. One of our other projects. ‘As through a glass, darkly’—you know the expression? We rely on their advice. It isn’t infallible but in this case it seems to be accurate.”

“The sorcels are coming to fruition.”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Oh yes.”

“And you’re certain you can recover the third generation—the male child?”

“He’s the one you want,” Walker said. “I can bring him back.”

Cardinal Palestrina looked up from his notes. “One other thing… something you said at our last session, something I didn’t understand. You mentioned that you had help. What did you mean by that?”

Walker—his face old and lined but still disturbingly childlike—beamed at Cardinal Palestrina. “His name,” the Gray Man said, “is Tim.”

Cardinal Palestrina stood to leave the room, hesitated a moment, and finally turned back. An unscheduled question had occurred to him; he wasn’t sure how to ask it.

Or whether he should. An Antiochene bishop from Malabar, visiting Rome for some ecumenical event, had once confided in Palestrina his belief that the profoundest of the venial sins was longing. As pride is the sin of the angels, longing is the sin of the clergy. Then, Cardinal Palestrina thought, I must be guilty.

He said, “What you call the plenum … is it infinite in extent?”

“There are worlds upon worlds,” Walker said. “An infinity. That’s what they tell me.”

“But surely you can’t see it, or feel it, or whatever you do—not all of it?”

“No. Not all of it. And I can only travel where they go. But sometimes I dream of other places.”

Palestrina whispered, “Is everything out there— everything we could imagine?”

“Maybe,” Walker said.

“Is—” But the Cardinal was embarrassed by his own question. “Is God out there?”

The Gray Man smiled faintly. “God is everywhere… isn’t he?”

“And Paradise?” Palestrina said. “A world where mankind never fell from grace? The Garden, Mr. Walker? Is that out there too?”

Walker laughed.

“If it is,” he said, “I’ve never found it.”

Cardinal Palestrina turned away before Walker could see him blushing; the door clattered shut with a shocking finality.

2

Walker watched in bewilderment as the Papist emissary left the room.

He was inclined to like Cardinal Palestrina, who seemed like a well-meaning person. But he was disturbed by the Cardinal’s nervous tics, his expression of barely restrained queasiness. And now this business about Paradise. It was not something Walker had encountered before, least of all in the corridors of the DRI.

Lacking other instruction, Walker returned to his own room deep in a subcellar of the Institute, down a corridor where sweating pipes ran overhead.

Walker’s room contained a carpet and a framed photograph of the Rocky Mountains; a spring-mattress bed with a thin cotton blanket; and a television set with a round, bulky tube on a gooseneck swivel. He used the television sparingly. There was never anything to watch but the government channel, news and public affairs and a few shabby variety shows. Of these, Walker preferred the news. He liked the maps, the animated arrows darting across the Mediterranean toward Sicily. He liked the aerial photos of Turkish cities as European aircraft flew over them, props whirling, bombs tumbling like confetti.

He understood the political stakes that had brought Cardinal Palestrina across the Atlantic; he understood the war in the Middle East. Walker wasn’t stupid. But—although he understood— Walker simply didn’t care very much. There had always been wars and there would always be wars; there were wars everywhere. War had nothing to do with it. It was the search itself that obsessed him: the nagging sense of presence across those unfathomable distances. The complex, luminous web of magical obligation. A longing for the completion that this effort would bring him: a fulfillment.

Walker believed—although he seldom allowed the thought to become explicit—that he had lost something long ago, and that bringing Karen White’s son Michael back to the DRI would return it to him. What was this lost thing? Well, he didn’t know. Maybe something as ethereal as a scent, a memory, a feeling; or maybe something tangible, a reward. Something he had owned once; something which had slipped away. Walker often had dreams in which he lost his wallet or his hat, and he would wake up groping the bedsheets frantically—it was here, I know it was here somewhere.

But he never permitted himself to dwell on this. If he thought about it too much when he was alone—and he was almost always alone—his eyes would tear, his fists would clench. The DRI surgeons had cauterized most of his capacity for emotion, but the emotions he did feel were capricious and sometimes scalding. He tried diligently to suppress them.

But he wanted that lost thing back.

After dinner in the commissary Walker went to see Tim.

Neumann had given Tim a luxurious room on the third floor, high enough to afford him a view of the city, which was dark now, dark clouds rivering above it. Tim was at the window peering out. Walker, who was not stupid, and who understood the nature of the spells that had been cast over the years, was careful to stand erect, to fix a smile on his face, to assume an air of authority.

Doing so, he caught sight of his own reflection in the window and thought, How old I seem! Of course, he was old. He had lost track of his precise age but he was certainly old enough to be Tim’s father—that was in the nature of things. And Tim was a grown-up man. Not a middle-aged man but not a young man, either. Walker was vigorous but he knew that age and time were pressing him and he hoped he would not die before he recovered the precious thing he had lost.

He said, “You like the city?”

Tim turned to face him.

Timothy Fauve had changed a great deal over the last six months. Now his eyes were clear, his clothes and countenance were clean, he looked healthy. His dark hair was down to his shoulders but it was not matted. He had shaved. His hands were steady.

Tim said, “Hello, Walker.” Added, “I don’t think it’s the kind of place you really like. Let’s say I appreciate it.”

Walker broadened his smile slightly. “You’ve come a long way.”

“About as far as you can go. All kinds of ways.” “We won’t be here much longer. Are you ready?” “I think so.”

This was more tentative than Walker liked. He frowned and saw Tim react with a wince. “You understand how hard we’ve worked to get to this stage.”

Tim nodded vigorously.

“You know what we’ve done for you.”

“Sure I do. Of course.”

“And what’s at stake.”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain you’re ready to finish it?” “Absolutely,” Tim said.

“Good.” Walker relaxed. “How about a game of chess?”

He gave away odds of a vizier and a rook. Walker was a good chess player. Swift, methodical, and clean —he wielded the chess pieces like a surgeon wielding a knife.