"He’s coming around," Giuliani said carefully. "He’s made real progress in the past few months, scientifically and emotionally. Eventually, he’ll see the logic. He’s the only one with any experience on the ground. He knows the languages, he knows the people, he knows the politics. If he goes, it maximizes the mission’s chances of success."
"The people he knew will be dead by the time we get there. Politics change. We’ll have the languages and we’ve got the data. We don’t need him—"
"He will save lives, Danny," Giuliani insisted. "And there is no other way for him to come to grips with what happened," he added. "For his own good, he’s got to go back."
"NOT IF YOU WENT DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND BEGGED ME," EMILIO SANDOZ repeated each time he was asked. "I’ll train your people. I’ll answer their questions. I’ll do what I can to help. I won’t go back."
Nor had Sandoz reconsidered his decision to leave the Society of Jesus, although this was not being made easy for him. His resignation was a private matter of conscience and should have been a straightforward administrative procedure, but when he signed the necessary papers "E. J. Sandoz" and sent them to the Father General’s Rome office in late September, they were returned — weeks later—with a memo telling him that his full signature was required. Once more, he took up the pen that Gina had brought him one Friday, its grip designed for stroke victims whose dexterity was as impaired as his own, and spent his evenings in painful practice. Not surprisingly, another month passed without the new paperwork being forwarded from Rome for signing.
He found Giuliani’s delaying tactics first tiresome and then infuriating, and ended them by sending a message to Johannes Voelker asking him to inform the Father General that Dr. Sandoz planned to be too sick to work until the papers arrived. The documents were hand-delivered the next morning by Vincenzo Giuliani himself.
The meeting in the Father General’s Naples office was brief and intense. Afterward, Sandoz strode to the library, stood still until he had the attention of all four of his colleagues, and snapped, "My apartment. Ten minutes."
"SOMEONE ELSE HELPED ME WITH THE PEN," SANDOZ TOLD CANDOTTI tightly, tossing a small stack of papers down onto the wooden table where John sat with Danny Iron Horse. At the bottom of each sheet, in unhandy cursive, was a reasonably legible signature: Emilio José Sandoz. "If you didn’t want to be a party to this, you might have been honest enough to tell me, John."
Sean Fein had been examining Sandoz’s personal photonics rig, but now he studied Candotti, as did Joseba Urizarbarrena, leaning against a half wall that separated the apartment from the stairway to the garage. Danny Iron Horse also glanced at John but said nothing, watching Sandoz move from place to place in the bare room, angry and keyed up.
John’s eyes dropped under the scrutiny. "I just couldn’t—"
"Forget it," Sandoz snapped. "Gentlemen, I ceased to be a Jesuit at nine o’clock this morning. I am informed that while I may resign from the Society or the corporation or whatever the hell it is now, I remain nevertheless a priest in perpetuity. Outside of emergencies, I am not permitted to exercise priesthood unless I am incardinated by a bishop into a diocese. I shall not seek this," he said, eyes sweeping over them all. "Thus, I am declared vagus, a priest without delegation or authority."
"Technically, that’s pretty much the situation for a lot of us since the suppression. Of course, sometimes we stretch the definition of ’emergency’ pretty thin," Danny pointed out amiably. "So. What’re your plans?"
The guinea pig, aroused by Emilio’s pacing, began to whistle shrilly. He went to the kitchen and got a piece of carrot, hardly aware of what he was doing. "I shall remain here until my expenses are paid," he said, dropping the carrot into the cage.
Iron Horse smiled humorlessly. "Let me guess. Did the old man have an itemized list going back to your first day in formation? You aren’t liable for that, ace."
"He can’t make you pay for them fancy braces either," Sean added, around a thin-lipped smile. "The Company is a great one for insurance these days. You’re covered."
Sandoz stood still and looked at Danny and then Sean for a moment. "Thank you. Johannes Voelker briefed me on my rights." John Candotti sat up straighter, hearing that, but before he could say anything, Sandoz continued. "There are, however, certain extraordinary debts for which I hold myself responsible. I intend to pay them off. It may take a while, but I retain my pension and I have negotiated a salary equal to that of a full professor of linguistics at Fordham for the duration of this project."
"So you’re staying, for now at least. Good," Joseba remarked, satisfied. But he made no move to leave.
Danny Iron Horse, too, settled in, making himself comfortable somehow in the little wooden chair. "What about after the K’San project?" he asked Sandoz. "Can’t hide forever, ace."
"No. I can’t." There was a silence. "Perhaps when this job is done, I’ll walk into Naples and call a news conference," Sandoz continued with airy bravado. "Admit everything. Announce that I ate babies! Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll lynch me."
"Emilio, please," John started, but Sandoz ignored him, pulling himself erect, the Spaniard in ascendance. "Gentlemen," he said, returning to the issue at hand, "I am not just leaving the active priesthood. I am apostate. If you do not wish to be associated with me under these conditions—"
Danny Iron Horse shrugged, unconcerned. "Doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m here to learn the languages." He glanced, brows up, at the others, who nodded their agreement, then returned his gaze to Sandoz. There was a single uneven breath, a slight diminution of the rigidity. Sandoz stood still for another few moments and then sat on the edge of his bed, silent and staring.
"Nice duds," Danny observed after a time.
Taken by surprise, Sandoz gave a sort of gasping laugh and looked down: blue jeans, a white shirt with narrow blue stripes. Nothing black. "Signora Giuliani’s selections," he told them self-consciously. "Everything seems big to me, but she says this is the style."
Glad of the change in subject, John said, "Yeah, they’re wearing everything loose these days." Of course, almost anything would have looked big on Sandoz’s fleshless frame, John realized with a start. Emilio had always been small, but now he looked wasted again—almost as bad as when he first got out of the hospital.
Apparently following the same line of thought, Iron Horse remarked, "You could stand to put a little weight on, ace."
"Don’t start," Emilio said irritably, standing. "All right. Break’s over. There’s work to do."
He went to the wall of sound-analysis equipment, evidently dismissing them. Joseba stood and Sean moved toward the stairs. John rose as well, but Danny Iron Horse sat there like a pile of rocks, hands behind his head. "I got one leg weighs more than you, Sandoz," he said, looking Emilio over with canny black eyes, small in the pitted face. "You eating?"
John tried to wave Danny away from an injudicious display of solicitude, but Sandoz pivoted on a heel, and said with brittle clarity, "Yes. I eat. Father Iron Horse, you are here to learn Ruanja and K’San. I don’t recall engaging you as a nurse."
"Well, good, because I’m not interested in the job," Danny said agreeably. "But if you’re eating and you look like you do, what I’m wondering is if you’ve got whatever D. W. Yarbrough was dying of, on Rakhat. Anne Edwards never did figure out what he had, before they both got killed, eh?"
"Jesus, Danny!" Sean burst out, as Joseba stared and John cried, "For God’s sake, Danny! What the hell are you trying to do?"
"I’m not trying to do anything! I’m just saying—"
"They kept me in isolation for months," Sandoz said, his color vanishing. "They wouldn’t have released me if I was carrying something. Would they?"