Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

FOURTEEN

The Greenbriar—off Crete

Second mate Dennis Maguire was rounding the port side of the superstructure amidships when he saw her.

At least it seemed to be a her. He couldn’t be sure in the downpour. The figure stood a good fifty feet away in the center of the aft hold’s hatch, wrapped head to toe in some sort of blanket, completely unmindful of the driving rain as she stared aftward. He couldn’t make out any features in the dimness, but something in his gut knew he was looking at a she.

They’d run into the squall shortly after dark the first night out of Haifa. Maguire was running a topside check to make double sure everything was secure. A sturdy little tramp, the Greenbriar was. With a 200-foot keel and thirty feet abeam, she could haul good cargo in her two holds, and haul it fast. But any storm, even lightweight Mediterranean squalls like this one, could be trouble if everything wasn’t secured the way it was supposed to be. And Captain Liam could be hell on wheels if something went wrong because of carelessness.

So Maguire had learned: Do it right the first time, then double check to make sure you did what you thought you did.

And after he wound up this little tour of the deck, he could retire to his cabin and work on his bottle of Jameson’s.

I’m glad I haven’t touched that bottle yet, he thought.

Because right now he’d be blaming the whiskey for what he was seeing.

A woman? How the hell had a woman got aboard? And why would any woman want to be aboard?

She stood facing aft, like some green-gilled landlubber staring homeward.

“Hello?” he said, approaching the hatch.

She turned toward him but the glow from the lights in the superstructure weren’t strong enough to light her features through the rain. And then he noticed something: the blanket or cloak or robe or whatever she was wrapped up in wasn’t moving or even fluttering in the wind. In fact, it didn’t even look wet.

He blinked and turned his head as a particularly nasty gust stung his face with needle-sharp droplets, and when he looked again, she was gone.

He ran across the hatch and searched the entire afterdeck but could not find a trace of her. So he ran and told the captain.

Liam Harrity puffed his pipe and stared out at him from the mass of red hair that encircled his face.

“What have we discussed about you hitting the Jameson’s while you’re on duty, Denny?” he said.

“Captain, I swear, I haven’t touched a drop to me lips since last night.” Maguire leaned closer. “Here. Smell me breath.”

The captain waved him off. “I don’t want to be smelling your foul breath! Just get to your bunk and don’t be after coming to me with anymore stories of women on my ship. Get!”

Dennis Maguire got, but he knew in his heart there’d been someone out there in the storm tonight. And somehow he knew they hadn’t seen the last of her.

‡

Paraiso

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” the Senador said, shaking his head sadly.

Emilio Sanchez stood at a respectful distance from the father and son confrontation. He had moved to leave the great room after delivering Charlie here, but the Senador had motioned him to stay. Emilio was proud of the Senador’s show of trust and confidence in him, but it pained him to see this great man in such distress. So Emilio stepped back against the great fireplace and stared out at the seamless blackness beyond the windows where the clouded night sky merged with the Pacific. He watched their reflections in the glass. And listened.

“I thought we had an understanding, Charlie.” The Senador leaned forward, staring earnestly across the long, free-form redwood coffee table at his son who sat with elbows on knees, head down. “You promised me six months. You promised me you’d stay here and go through therapy...learn to pray.”

“It’s not what you think, Dad,” Charlie said softly in a hoarse voice. He sounded exhausted. Defeated.

The fight seemed to have gone out of Charlie. Which didn’t jibe at all with his recent flight from Paraiso. If he wasn’t bucking his father, why did he run?

Two days ago the Senador had called Emilio to his home office in a minor panic. Charlie was gone. His room was empty, and he was nowhere in the house or on the grounds. Juanita said she’d passed a taxi coming the other way when she’d arrived early this morning.

Emilio had sighed and nodded. Here we go again.

Fortunately Juanita remembered the name of the cab company. From there it was easy to trace that particular fare—the whole damn company was buzzing about picking up a fare at Paraiso that wanted to be taken all the way to Frisco. The driver had dropped his fare off on California Street.

Charlie had run to his favorite rat hole again.

Over the years, during repeated trips in search of Charlie, Emilio had been in and out of so many gay bars in San Francisco that some of the regulars had begun to think he was a maricon himself. To counteract that insulting notion, he’d made it a practice to bust the skull anyone who tried to get friendly.

But this time he hadn’t found Charlie down in the Tenderloin. Instead, he’d traced him to the Embarcadero. Charlie had taken a room in the Hyatt, of all places.

When Emilio had knocked on his door, Charlie hadn’t acted surprised, and he hadn’t launched into his usual lame protests. He’d come quietly, barely speaking during the drive back.

That wasn’t like Charlie. Something was wrong.

“What am I to think, Charlie?” the Senador was saying. “You promised me. Remember what you said? You said you’d ‘give it the old college try.’ Remember that?”

“Dad—”

“And you were doing so well! Doctor Thompson said you were very cooperative, really starting to open up to him. And you seemed to be getting into the spirit of the prayer sessions, feeling the presence of the Lord. What happened? Why did you break your promise?”

“I didn’t break my promise.” He didn’t look up. He stared at the table before him, seemingly lost in the redwood whorls. “I was coming back. I needed—”

“You don’t need that...sort of...activity,” the Senador said. “By falling back into that sinfulness you’ve undone all your months of work!”

“I didn’t go back for sex.”

“Please don’t make this worse by lying to me, Charlie.”

During the ensuing silence, Emilio realized that normally he too would have thought Charlie was lying, but today he didn’t think so.

“It’s the truth, Dad.”

“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 turned.

“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, 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 the ship might be, she 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 than usual. He’d let it go and not given it another thought until two nights ago when Cleary said he’d seen a woman on the aft deck as they were passing through the Malta Channel.

A temperate man, Cleary. 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 stood there, beside him, not two feet away. A woman…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. Its cowl hid her features. 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?”

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.

‡

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 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 became part of 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.”

They were crossing a one-car bridge over a gushing stream. As Vincenzo squinted ahead, his first impulse was to ask, Where’s the rest of it? But he held his tongue. Two hundred yards down the road lay a cluster of neat little one- and two-story buildings, fewer than a dozen in number, set on either side of the road. One of them was a pub—Blaney’s, the gold-on-black sign said. As they coasted through the village, Vincenzo spotted a number of local men and women setting up picnic tables on the narrow sward next to the pub.

Up ahead, at the far end of the street, a crowd of people waited before a neat, two-story, stucco-walled house.

“And that would be Seamus O’Halloran’s house, I imagine,” Vincenzo said.

“That it would, Monsignor. That it would.”

There were hands to shake and Father Sullivan to greet, and introductions crowded one on top of the other until the names ran together like watercolors in the rain. The warmest reception he’d ever had, an excited party spirit running through the villagers. The priest from Rome was going to certify the Weeping Virgin of Cashelbanagh as an inexplicable phenomenon of Divine origin, an act of God made manifest to the faithful, a true miracle, a sign that Cashelbanagh had been singled out to be touched by God. There was even a reporter from a Dublin paper to record it. And what a celebration there’d be afterward.

Vincenzo was led around to the side of the house to stare at the famous Weeping Virgin on Seamus O’Halloran’s wall.

Nothing special about the painting. Rather crude, actually. A very stiff looking half profile of the Blessed Mother in the traditional blue robe and wimple with a halo behind her head.

And yes indeed, a gleaming track of moisture was running from the painting’s eye.

“The tears appear every day, Monsignor,” O’Halloran said, twisting his cloth cap in his bony hands as if there were moisture to be wrung from it.

“I can confirm that,” Father Sullivan said, his ample red cheeks aglow. “I’ve been watching for weeks now.”

As Vincenzo continued staring at the wall, noting the fine meshwork of cracks in the stucco finish, the chips here and there that revealed the stonework beneath, the crowd grew silent around him.

He stepped closer and touched his finger to the trickle, then touched the finger to his tongue. Water. A mineral flavor, but not salty. Not tears.

“Would someone bring me a ladder, please. One long enough to reach the roof.”

Three men ran off immediately, and five minutes later he was climbing to the top of the gable over the Weeping Virgin’s wall. He found wet and rotted cedar shakes at the point. At his request a pry bar was brought and, with O’Halloran’s permission, he knocked away some of the soft wood.

Vincenzo’s heart sank when he saw it. A cup-like depression in the stones near the top of the gable, half filled with clear liquid. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that water collected there on rainy days—rarely was there a week, even in the summer, without at least one or two rainy days—and percolated through the stones and grout of the wall to emerge as a trickle by the painting’s eye.

The folk of Cashelbanagh were anything but receptive to this rational explanation of their miracle.

“There may be water up there,” O’Halloran said, his huge Adam’s apple bobbing angrily, “but who’s to say that’s where the tears come from? You’ve no proof. Prove it, Monsignor. Prove those aren’t the tears of the Blessed Virgin.”

He’d hoped it wouldn’t turn out like this. He’d hoped discovery of the puddle would be enough, but obviously it wasn’t. And he couldn’t leave these people to go on making a shrine out of a leaky wall.

“Can someone get me a bottle of red wine?” Vincenzo said.

“This may be Ireland, Monsignor,” Father Sullivan said, “but I hardly think this is time for a drink.”

Amid the laughter Vincenzo said, “I’ll use it to prove my theory. But it must be red.”

While someone ran to Blaney’s pub for a bottle, Vincenzo climbed the ladder again and splashed all the water out of the depression. Then he refilled it with the wine.

By evening, when the Virgin’s tears turned red, Vincenzo felt no sense of victory. His heart went out to these crestfallen people. He saw his driver standing nearby, looking as dejected as the rest of them.

“Shall I call a taxi, Michael?”

“No, Monsignor,” Michael sighed. “That’s all right. I’ll be taking you back to Shannon whenever you want.”

But the airport was not where Vincenzo needed to go. He hadn’t figured on this quick a resolution to the question of the Weeping Virgin of Cashelbanagh. His flight out wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow night.

“Can you find me a hotel?”

“Sure, Monsignor. There’s a lot of good ones in Cork City.”

They passed Blaney’s pub again on the way out of town. The picnic tables were set and waiting. Empty. The fading sunlight glinted off the polished flatware, the white linen tablecloths flapped gently in the breeze.

If only he could have told them how he shared their disappointment, how deeply he longed for one of these “miracles” he investigated to pan out, how much he needed a miracle for himself.

‡

Cork Harbor, Ireland

Carrie’s heart leapt as she recognized the crate on the pallet being lifted from the aft hold of the freighter.

“There it is, Dan!” she whispered, pointing.

“You sure?” He squinted through the dusky light. “Looks like any of a couple of dozen other crates that’ve come out already.”

She wondered how Dan could have any doubt. She’d known it the instant it cleared the hold.

“That’s the one. No question about it.”

She locked her gaze on the crate and didn’t let it out of her sight until Bernard Kaplan’s man cleared it through Irish customs and wheeled it over to them on a dolly.

“Are you quite sure you’ll be wanting to take it from here yourself?” He was a plump little fellow with curly brown hair, a handlebar mustache, and a Barry Fitzgerald brogue.

Dan glanced at her. “Well...”

“Quite sure, Mr. Cassidy.” Carrie extended her hand. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Ferris. Just remember, your crate’s got to be at Dublin harbor the morning after tomorrow, six sharp or, believe me youse, she’ll miss the loading and then God knows when she’ll get to New York.”

“We’ll be there.”

“I hope so, ‘cause I’m washing me hands of it now.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve got turty-four hours. Plenty of time. Just don’t you be getting yourself lost along the way.”

He waved and walked off.

“Now that we’ve got her,” Dan said, tapping the top of the crate, “what do we do with her? We’ve got to find a place to store her overnight.”

“Store her? We’re not sticking her in some smelly old warehouse full of rats.”

“What do you think crawls around the hold of the Greenbriar, my dear?”

She caught an edge on his voice. Not sharp enough to cut, but enough for Carrie to notice.

Things hadn’t been quite the same between them since finding the Virgin. They’d had some moments of closeness on the plane to Heathrow after out-foxing that Israeli intelligence man, or whoever he was, and some of that had lingered during the whirl of booking the shuttle to Shannon and finding a hotel room in Cork City. But once they were settled in, a distance began to open between them.

It’s me, she thought. I know it’s me.

She couldn’t help it. All she could think about since they’d set their bags down in the Drury Hotel was that crate and its precious contents. They’d had days to kill and Dan wanted to see some of the countryside. Carrie had gone along, but she hadn’t been much company. One day they drove north through the rocky and forbidding Burren to Galway Bay; on another he took her down to Kinsale, but the quaint little harbor there only made her think about the Greenbriar and worry about its voyage. She fought visions of rough seas capsizing her, of her running aground and tearing open her hull, seawater gushing into the cargo hold and submerging the Virgin’s crate, the Mediterranean swallowing the Greenbriar and everything aboard. She spent every spare minute hovering over the radio, dissecting every weather report from the Mediterranean.

Obsessed.

She knew that. And she knew her obsession was coming between her and Dan. But as much as she valued their love, it had to take a back seat for now. Just for a while. Until they got to New York.

After all, what could be more important than seeing the Blessed Virgin safely to her new Resting Place—wherever that may be?

They hadn’t made love since finding the Virgin, and she sensed that was what was bothering Dan the most. In New York they suffered through much, much longer intervals without so much as touching hands, but that was different. Here they’d been sleeping in the same bed every night and Carrie had put him off again and again. She wasn’t sure why.

After they were resettled in New York, Carrie was sure things would get back to normal. At least she hoped so. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she didn’t feel quite the same about Dan. She still loved him fiercely, but she didn’t want him as she had two weeks ago when they’d left New York for Israel.

Because right now, it just didn’t seem...right.

“We’re taking her back to the hotel with us.”

“What?” She could see his body stiffening with tension. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not? We’re paying for the room and there’s nothing that says we can’t keep a crate in it. Besides, it’s only for two nights.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

She gave him a long, level look. “I assure you, Dan, I am not kidding.”

‡

Dan slipped his arms around her waist from behind and nuzzled her neck. Carrie felt her whole left arm break out in gooseflesh.

“Not now, Dan,” she said, pulling free and stepping away from him. She pointed to the crate. Her voiced lowered to a whisper of its own accord. “Not with her here.”

Two bellmen had lugged the Virgin’s crate up to their second-floor room and left it on the floor by the window. Beyond the window the River Lee made its sluggish way to the sea.

Dan returned her whisper, Elmer Fudd style. “We’ll be vewy, vewy quiet. She’ll never know.”

Carrie had to laugh. “Oh, Dan. I love you, I do, but please understand. It just wouldn’t be right.”

He stared at her a moment. Was that hurt in his eyes? But he seemed to understand. She prayed he did.

He sighed. “All right, then, how about we go down to the lounge and see Hal Roach? He’s only down from Dublin for one night.”

“I don’t think so.” She wasn’t really in the mood for Ireland’s answer to Henny Youngman.

“How about we just go for a walk?”

Carrie shook her head. “I think I’d rather just stay here.”

Dan’s expression tightened. “Watching over her, I suppose.”

She nodded. “In a way, yes.”

“Don’t you think you might be getting just a little carried away with this, Carrie?”

Yes, she thought. Yes, I might.

But the Virgin was here, and so here is where Carrie wanted to be. Simple. She’d waited all this time on tenter hooks for the Virgin’s arrival from Haifa, and she wasn’t about to let her out of her sight until her crate was safely on board the ship in Dublin Harbor.

“I just want to stay here with her, Dan. Is that so bad?”

“Bad? No. I can’t say it’s bad. But I don’t think it’s healthy.”

He stared again, then shrugged resignedly. “All right. This is your show. We’ll do it your way.” He stepped closer and kissed her forehead. “But I do need to get out of this room... stretch my legs... maybe cross the river and grab a pint. I’ll be back soon.”

Before Carrie could think of anything to say, he was out the door and she was alone in the room.

Well, not completely alone. The Virgin was here. She knelt beside the crate and rested her head on its lid. For one shocking, nerve-rattling moment she thought she heard a heartbeat, then she realized it was her own.

“Don’t worry, Mother Mary,” she whispered to the crate. “I won’t leave you alone here. You’ve given me comfort through the years when I needed it, now I’ll stand by you.” She patted the lid of the crate. “Till death do us part.”

‡

The Judean Wilderness

“Why?”

Kesev stood atop the tav rock with the thieves’ rope knotted around his neck and screamed out at the clear, pitiless night sky. “Why do You torment me like this? When will You be satisfied? Have I not been punished enough?”

But no reply came from on high, just Sharav’s ceaseless susurrance, whispering in his ears. Not that he’d expected an answer. All his countless entreaties down through the years had been ignored. Why should this one be any different?

The Lord tormented him. Kesev was not cut out to be a Job. He was a fighter, not a victim. And so the Lord took extra pains to beleaguer him. Not that he was without fault in this. If he had been at his post when the errant SCUD had crashed below, he could have chased off the Bedouin boys when they wandered into the canyon, and hidden the scrolls before the government investigative teams arrived.

And then the Mother would still be safely tucked away in the Resting Place instead of...where?

Where was she?

Gone. Gone from Israel. Kesev had exhausted all his contacts and what limited use he dared make of his Shin Bet resources, but she had slipped through his fingers. He’d sensed the Mother’s slow withdrawal from their homeland. He didn’t know how, or in which direction she’d been taken, but he knew in the core of his being that she was gone.

He also knew it was inevitable that soon she would be revealed to the world and made a spectacle of, a sensational object of scientific research and religious controversy. Why else would someone steal her away?

The Lord would not stand for that. The Lord would rain his wrath down upon the Earth.

Perhaps that was the meaning behind all this. Perhaps the theft of the Mother was the event that would precipitate the Final Days. Perhaps...

Kesev sighed. It didn’t matter. He’d failed in his task and now he could see no need to prolong further the agony of this life. Since his usefulness on Earth was at an end, surely the Lord would let him end his time on earth as well. He would not see the Final Days, and certainly he did not deserve to see the Second Coming. He did not even deserve to see tomorrow.

He checked once more to make sure the rope was securely tied around the half-sunk boulder about thirty feet back. Then he stepped to the edge of the tav and looked down at his Jeep parked below. He’d left plenty of slack, enough to allow him to fall within a dozen feet of the ground. The end would be quick, painless. If he was especially lucky, the force of the final jolt might even decapitate him.

Without a prayer, without a good bye, without a single regret, Kesev stepped off the edge and into space.

He kept his eyes open and made no sound as he hurtled feet first toward the ground. He had no fear, only grim anticipation and...hope.

‡

Cork City, Ireland

Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio wandered through the thick, humid air near Cork City’s waterfront. He’d turned off St. Patrick’s Street and was looking for a place to have a drink. His doctors had all warned him against alcohol but right now he didn’t care. He’d had a long hard day of crushing people’s hopes and fervor, and he needed something. Something Holy Mother Church could not provide. He needed a different kind of communion.

All the pubs on St. Patrick were crowded and he didn’t feel like standing. He wanted a place to rest his feet. He spotted a pair of lighted windows set in dark green wood. “Jim Cashman’s” read the sign, and there was a Guinness harp over the slate where the dinner menu was scrawled in chalk.

Vincenzo peeked through the open door and saw empty seats.

Bono! He’d found his place.

He made his way to the bar and squeezed into a space between two of the drinkers—a space that would have been too narrow for him just a year ago.

Amazing what cancer can do for the figure.

The bartender was pouring for someone else so Vincenzo took a look around. A small place, this Jim Cashman’s—hardwood floor and paneling, a small bar tucked in the corner, half a dozen tables arrayed about the perimeter, a cold fireplace, and two TVs playing the same rugby match.

None of Cashman’s dozen or so patrons paid him any attention. And why should they? He wasn’t wearing his collar. He’d left that and his cassock back in his hotel room; he was now a thin, sallow, balding, gray-haired man in his fifties dressed in a white shirt and black trousers. Nothing at all priestly about him.

He turned to the solitary drinker to his left, a plump, red-faced fellow in a tour bus driver’s outfit, sipping from a glass of rich dark liquid.

“May I ask what you’re drinking, sir?”

The fellow stared at him a moment, as if to be sure this stranger with the funny accent was really speaking to him, then cleared his throat.

“‘Tis stout. Murphy’s stout. Made right here in Cork City.”

“Oh, yes. I passed the brewery on the way in.”

Michael had driven him through the gauntlet of huge gleaming silver tanks towering over both sides of the road on the north end of town, and he remembered wondering who in the world drank all that brew.

Vincenzo said, “I tried a bottle of Guinness once, but didn’t care for it very much.”

The driver made a face. “What? From a bottle? You’ve never had stout till you’ve drunk it straight from the tap as God intended.”

“Which would you recommend for a beginner, then?”

“I like Murphy’s.”

“What about Guinness?”

“It’s good, but it’s got a bit more bite. Start with a Murph.”

Vincenzo slapped his hand on the bar. “Murphy’s it is!” He signaled the barkeep. “A pint of Murphy’s, if you would be so kind, and another for my advisor here.”

When the pints arrived, Vincenzo brushed off the driver’s thanks and turned to find a seat.

“Stout’s food, you know,” the driver called after him as Vincenzo carried his glass to a corner table. “A couple of those and you can skip a meal.

Good, he thought. I can use a little extra nourishment.

He’d lost another two pounds this week. The tumors in his liver must be working overtime.

“Good for what ails you too,” the driver added. “Cures all ills.”

“Does it now? I’ll hold you to that, my good man.”

He took a sip of the Murphy’s and liked it. Liked it a lot. Rich and malty, with a pleasant aftertaste. Much better than that bottle of Guinness he’d once had in Rome. One could almost believe it might cure all ills.

Vincenzo smiled to himself. Now wouldn’t that be a miracle.

He looked at the faces around Jim Cashman’s and they reminded him of the faces he’d seen in Cashelbanagh, only these weren’t stricken with the bitter disappointment and accusation he’d left there.

It’s not my fault your miracle was nothing more than a leaky roof.

A young sandy-haired fellow came in and ordered a pint of Smithwick’s ale, then sat alone at the table next to Vincenzo’s and stared disconsolately at the rugby game. He looked about as cheerful as the people Vincenzo had left at Cashelbanagh.

“Is your team losing?” Vincenzo said.

The man turned and offered a wan smile. “I’m American. Don’t know the first thing about rugby.” He extended his hand. “Dan Fitzpatrick. And I can guess by your accent that you’re about as far from home as I am.”

Vincenzo shook it and offered his own name—sans the religious title. No sense in putting the fellow off. “I happen to be on my way to America. I’m leaving for New York tomorrow.”

“Really? That’s where my...home is. Business or pleasure?”

“Neither, really.” Vincenzo didn’t want to get into his medical history so he shifted the subject. “I guess something other than rugby must be giving you such a long face.”

He wanted to kick himself for saying that. It sounded too much like prying. But Dan seemed eager to talk.

“You could say that.” He flashed a disarming grin. “Woman trouble.”

“Ah.”

Vincenzo left it at that. What did he know about women?

“A unique and wonderful woman,” Dan went on, sipping his ale, “with a unique and wonderful problem.”

“Oh?” Through decades of hearing confessions, Vincenzo had become the Michelangelo of the monosyllable.

“Yeah. The woman I love is looking for a miracle.”

“Aren’t we all?” Myself most of all.

“Not all of us. Trouble is, mine really thinks she’s going to find one, and she seems to be forgetting the real world while she’s looking for it.”

“And you don’t think she’ll find it?”

“Miracles are sucker bait.”

Vincenzo sighed. “As much as I hate to say it. I fear there is some truth in that. Although I prefer to think of the believers not as suckers, but as seekers. I saw a village full of seekers today.”

Vincenzo went on to relate an abbreviated version of his stop in Cashelbanagh earlier today. When he finished he found the younger man staring at him in shock.

“You’re a priest?”

“Why, yes. A monsignor, to be exact.”

“That’s great!” he snapped, quaffing the rest of his ale. “And you’re going to New York? Just great! That really caps my day! No offense, but I hope we don’t run into each other.”

Without another word he rose and strode from Jim Cashman’s pub, leaving Vincenzo Riccio to wonder what he had said or done to precipitate such a hasty departure.

Perhaps Dan Fitzpatrick was an atheist.

‡

After a second pint of Murphy’s Vincenzo decided he’d brooded enough about miracles and unfriendly Americans. He pushed himself to his feet and ambled into the night.

A thick cold fog had rolled up from the sea along the River Lee, only a block away, and was infiltrating the city. Vincenzo was about to turn toward St. Patrick Street and make his way back to his hotel when he saw her.

She stood not two dozen feet away, staring at him. At least he thought she was staring at him. He couldn’t tell for sure because the cowled robe she wore pulled up around her head cast her face in shadow, but he could feel her eyes upon him.

His first thought was that she might be a prostitute, but he immediately dismissed that because there was nothing the least bit provocative about her manner, and that robe was anything but erotic.

He wanted to turn away but he could not take his eyes off her. And then it was she who turned and began to walk away.

Vincenzo was compelled to follow her through the swirling fog that filled the open plaza leading to the river. Strange... the lights that lined the quay silhouetted her figure ahead of him but didn’t cast her shadow. Who was she? And how did she move so smoothly? She seemed to glide through the fog...toward the river...to its edge...

Vincenzo shouted as he saw her step off the bulkhead, but the cry died in his throat when he saw her continue walking with an unbroken stride...upon the fog. He stood gaping on the edge as she canted her path to the right and continued walking downstream. He watched until the fog swallowed her, then he lurched about, searching for someone, anybody to confirm what he had just seen.

But the quay was deserted. The only witnesses were the fog and the River Lee.

Vincenzo rubbed his eyes and stumbled back toward the pub. The doctors had told him to stay away from alcohol, that his liver couldn’t handle it. He should have listened. He must be drunk. That was the only explanation.

Otherwise he could have sworn he’d just seen the Virgin Mary.

‡

The Judean Wilderness

Kesev sobbed.

He was still alive.

When will this END?

He’d tried numerous times before to kill himself but had not been allowed to die. He’d hoped that this time it would work, that his miserable failure to guard the Resting Place would cause the Lord to finally despair of him and let him die. But that was not to be. So here was yet another failure—one more in a too-long list.

The jolt from the sudden shortening of the rope had knocked him unconscious but had left his vertebrae and spinal cord intact. Its constriction around his throat had failed to strangle him. So now he’d regained consciousness to find himself swinging gently in Sharav a dozen feet above the ground.

For a few moments he let tears of frustration run through the desert dust that coated his cheeks, then he reached into his pocket for his knife and began sawing at the rope above his head.

Moments later he was slumped on the ground, pounding his fists into the unyielding earth.

“Is it not over, Lord?” he rasped. “Is that what this means? Do You have more plans for me? Do You want me to search out the Mother and return her to the Resting Place? Is that what You wish?”

Kesev struggled to his feet and staggered to his Jeep. He slumped over the hood.

That had to be it. The Lord was not through with him yet. Perhaps He would never be through with him. But clearly He wanted more from him now. He wanted the Mother back where she belonged and was not about to allow Kesev to stop searching for her.

But where else could he look? She’d been smuggled out of Israel and now could be hidden anywhere in the world. He had no clues, no trail to follow...

Except the Ferris woman. Who was she? Had that strange, unsettling nun on the plane been her, or someone pretending to be her? And did it matter? All he knew was that the Explorer he’d seen in the desert that day had been rented on her card. There might be no connection at all. The Mother could have been stolen days before then.

He gazed up into the cold, unblinking eye of the night.

“All right, Lord. I’ll continue looking. But I search now on my terms, my way. I’ll find the Mother for You and bring her back where she belongs. But you may not like what I do to the ones who’ve caused me this trouble.”