“Not me, Your Eminence,” he said matter-offactly. “But a thing will be done. The less you know, the better.”
With that, Michael turned and walked out, leaving the Cardinal of Los Angeles to wrestle with a conscience he had ignored for many, many years.
Nina Myers picked herself up off the floor. She could hear nothing but a loud ringing in her ears.
The garage was on fire. She saw the smoke and the flames, but she couldn’t hear the noise. If fire trucks were on their way, she had no idea. The garage— what she could see of it through clouds of dust and smoke — had been blasted by the bomb. Chunks of wall had been blown away, and the big garage door was twisted on its hinges.
She knew she’d been unconscious, but she didn’t know for how long. Her mind had constructed a fantasy of sleep and vacation. Was she on vacation? Had she been sleeping? No, she didn’t sleep in a garage. A bomb. A bomb had exploded. She’d been concussed. She might be seriously injured. Nina’s eyes swam in and out of focus, so from a kneeling position she patted her hands up and down her body. She felt skin, and clothes, and wetness that was probably her blood. She was cut! No, not her blood. Diana Christie’s blood, splattered all over her. Diana had been blown up.
Weirdly, it occurred to Nina that Jack Bauer had first come to CTU the night before after being nearly blown up. Shit, she was coming in second to him already. She felt professional jealousy rear its ugly head.
You are delirious, lady. Unrattle your brain!
Nina grabbed hold of something sturdy — a tabletop? — and pulled herself to her feet. She shook her head but still couldn’t see, so she felt her way to a wall, and then to the interior door. She had to get out. She had to stop the ringing in her head. And she was sure there was something important about the bomb that had just gone off. Something she couldn’t quite draw into the clear part of her brain…
Jon Boorstein liked his brand-new BMW 730i. He liked ordering Armani (in the same waist size for the last seven years, thanks to his trainer Gunnar). He liked Cannes and he liked the after-parties at the Oscars.
He did not, however, like his job. His job was the price he paid for the good things in life.
“But what a fuckin’ price,” he muttered as he glided his Beemer through the self-opening gate of Mark Gelson’s Malibu home.
He hopped out and walked through the door, which was opened by Lucia, without breaking stride. He didn’t look at the elaborately carved crucifix hanging on the wall — the thing always gave him the creeps. Walking by that thing was about the only time Boorstein ever appreciated his Judaism, which forbade graven images.
Mark was sitting on the deck overlooking the sand and the Pacific, reading the Times. Though he was good-looking by any other standard, in Hollywood he was over the hill. Some actors, especially men, aged into new roles and remained sex symbols — hell, Bruce Willis was heading toward fifty, wasn’t he? Others couldn’t let go of the man they’d been in their twenties, so they got grouchier as they aged, and the resentment showed.
Boorstein had tried, a year or two ago, to encourage Gelson to move past his Future Fighter persona. If he’d managed the aging process well, he’d have a whole new set of doors opening for him. But Gelson couldn’t, so he didn’t, and now he was slowly dropping down on Boorstein’s must-call-back list.
“Hey, Jon,” Gelson said, as though surprised to see him. “What’s up?”
“Headlines,” Boorstein said, sitting down. “They’re up all over the place, and they’re talking about you. But not the way we want.”
“Don’t PR guys say there’s no such thing as bad publicity?”
“They do say that,” Boorstein agreed irritably. “But they don’t have clients who talk about blowing people up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gelson said. “It’ll all blow over soon enough.”
Boorstein heaved a dramatic sigh. “Maybe, maybe not. Here’s the problem, my friend. You are moving out of the where-are-they-now file and into the what-have-they-done-with-their-life file. That means that people aren’t doing bios on you, but when you fall on your face, they want to tell that story.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Gelson said. “You pitch that to Entertainment Weekly?”
Boorstein snorted. “Them I tell about your next this, your upcoming that. But you I level with. The mug shot was already in the paper. But I know two reporters who are doing a follow-up, digging up dirt.” Boorstein’s voice grew suddenly grave, and his cavalier movements settled into focused attentiveness. “So tell me, is anyone going to find out about this whole Catholic Church thing?”
Gelson looked calm, almost serene. “I don’t think I care anymore, Jonny. I don’t scream and shout about it. Why should they care?”
“Because Catholics go see movies. And if they hear that you are a schizophrenic—” “Schismatic,” Gelson corrected.
“Yeah, that. Then they might stop going to see your movies, and then people would stop paying you, and I wouldn’t get paid, and that would be bad.”
Gelson looked out at the ocean. “You know, the Catholic Church is the oldest continuously existing entity in the Western world. That’s a powerful thing all by itself. Then of course you add the grace of God and — well, never mind. But it’s been around. And it’s worked. It brought education and enlightenment. It was Catholic priests in Ireland that preserved Western civilization during the Dark Ages. One church, unbroken, unchanged. That’s why it lasted. It remained true. Until the sixties.”
Boorstein wished he didn’t need the history lesson, but he did. If anyone had ever told him about Vatican II, and the massive changes the Pope had ordered, he didn’t remember. But Gelson told him in detail about the changes in the catechisms, in the Mass, and so many other vital parts of the service.
“Hundreds of years, Jonny. Hundreds. And then, wham! It all gets changed by one man.”
“By… the Pope,” Boorstein reminded him.
“Not my Pope,” Gelson said.
Boorstein shrugged. “Look, none of your fans are going to care about a theological debate. Just don’t say or do anything crazy. Okay?”
Gelson shrugged. “No promises.”
17. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 A.M. AND 11 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
“You know, I came across an honest-to-god coincidence once,” Harry Driscoll said as he and Jack Bauer drove back to Jack’s car. “When I got out of the academy, I moved into apartment 432 at 1812 Delaware Avenue, and I got a new phone number. Swear to god the phone number was 432–1812.”
“No kidding,” Jack said.
“No kidding,” Harry repeated. “But in twenty years of detective work, that’s the only goddamned coincidence I ever came across. There are no coincidences. Ever.”
“St. Monica’s,” Jack said, cutting to the chase.
“Saint friggin’ Monica’s,” the fireplug of a detective replied. “Why is it you go there twice in one night. The priest that I arrest, who works there, gets shot. And now the guy who rented the car that shot me up, who seems to have disappeared, runs a business that takes care of the place.” Harry shook his head in disbelief. “You keep chasing this C–4 all over the city, and we keep ending up back at St. Monica’s every time.”
“I’m with you,” Jack said, “but where’s the next step? At least, where is it as far as the terrorists are concerned? You’ve absolutely got a criminal investigation to chase down, with child molestation and priests who should probably be castrated. But what about the plastic explosives? There’s no connection for me, as far as I can tell.”