This was not the contemplative life she had imagined nuns led when she was a little girl. Mother Kazuko had explained to her that many of the major forms of combat had been invented by members of religious orders. English monks on the crusades, under the influence of the Biblical prohibition against spilling blood, had come up with the Friar Tuck-style quarterstaff technique as a way of crushing the skulls of the infidel without making them bleed. In the Far East, many of the martial arts had been developed for the self-defence of itinerant monks and priests. If the way of the Cross and the Sword was peculiar, it was at least well-travelled.
Since Turin, she had been deployed on average five times a year, had seen action on every continent—including Antarctica—and won herself several papal decorations she could never wear openly. Fadier Daguerre, her first master, passed her over to Mother Edwina, the English nun who served as a control for the Jesuits' covert activities, and to Cardinal Fabrizio DeAngelis, the Vatican's top computer jock. She became a valued arm of the church.
In a back street in Edinburgh, while tracing a missing Vatican banker and a suitcase full of negotiable bonds, she had been faced with the hardest choice of all. An assailant she could not easily disable had come at her with a knife. She shot without a conscious thought, as she had been trained, read the last rites over his bleeding corpse, and did her self-imposed penance for months afterwards. It had not got easier, but it was part of her calling. Like her father, she was prepared to die for her beliefs. Unlike him, she had learned to kill for them.
Between assignments, she worked out of apartments within the walls of the Vatican itself. Officially, she was a computer programmer and a translator in the Vatican Library. She saw Pope Georgi frequently, but the old intimacy between them seemed to have evaporated with his elevation. She wondered if the Pope still visited her mother. When he had been a Cardinal, Georgi had frequently dined in secret with Isabella Juillerat, and Chantal wondered sometimes if their relationship had ever run deeper than it appeared to. The Camerlengo, Cardinal Brandrcth, took an interest in her, and encouraged her to modernise the Vatican's slightly archaic computer systems. She pursued her own researches, and published widely, either as a collaborator with Father O'Shaughnessy or as sole author. She taught a course in Dublin, filling in for the Father when he was indisposed, and found students hadn't changed since her days at the Seminary. The novices still smoked dope, listened to prohibited Russian records and had thoughtless affairs.
Occasionally, she would try to use her contacts in the international intelligence community to dig into her father's still-open case file. None of the bodies who had conducted official or unofficial inquiries into the assassination had come to any concrete conclusions. It was generally agreed that the assassin had been Snordlij Svensson, a freelance working out of Rekjavik, who was himself killed within six months in an entirely unsuspicious domestic accident. Extensive examinations of Svensson's credit lines and accounting software had failed to isolate a specific employer for the Juillerat Sanction.
Having a daughter who was a sister had upset Isabella Juillerat for a while, but she had become reconciled to it. However, whenever Chantal saw her mother, Isabella would try to convince her to transfer to a more high-profile, glamorous branch of the church. With her qualifications, there was no reason Chantal should not rise to a cardinal's hat. Sooner or later, thanks to Vatican LXXXV, there would be another woman Pope, and, as Isabella pointedly said, "it has to be someone…"
Chantal worked with Mother Kazuko in 1996, putting an end to a series of obscene desecrations that had been taking place in West Coast churches. The culprits turned out to be a gangcult of diabolists operating out of Venice, California, and they had some fairly nasty attendant demons in with them. A specialist in cyberexorcism was flown in from Mexico City, where his services were constantly in demand, and they put an end to the infestation. The cyberexorcist was killed, and Chantal had taken over the ritual. Mother Kazuko was badly wounded in the five-day struggle, and had gone to a retreat to recoup her faculties.
Gradually, the hidden worlds were revealed to Chantal. First, the rational, expanding, exciting world of the international datanets. Then, the ancient, ritualistic, ever-changing, eternally constant world of the Church of Rome. And finally, the dark, barely-glimpsed, deeply disturbing world beyond. In the Vatican library, she was given clearance to access the forbidden books—the Lieber Eibon, The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Al-Hazred, The King in Yellow, Errol Undercliffe's Forgotten Byways of the Severn Valley, Julian Karswell's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Diabolical Genius, Edwin Winthrop's Riddles of the Mythwrhn, Robert Anton Wilson' UFOs From Atlantis—the Secret Exploded, John Sladek's Arachne Rising— and had attended with Father O'Shaughnessy the Secret Conclave of Vienna, during which leading theologians, scientists and politicians discussed some of the more disturbing developments of the last decade. Father O'Shaughnessy presented a paper charting the increasing instance of physical anomalies and the apparent break-down of the laws of physics, and dropped a few dark hints about the eternal balances of space and time and their possible fragility.
Sometimes, she had dreams. A moonlike plain of white salt. A tall, dark man in a broad-brimmed hat, with ancient eyes burning behind his mirrorshades. A bridge in the desert, thronged with gargoyles straight from Notre Dame. The maw of Hell, opening up in an ocean of sand.
Her counsellor-confessor assured her that her dreams were entirely normal for a cleric in her profession.
Then, towards the end of 1998, she was summoned to an audience with Pope Georgi…
VIII
THE VATICAN. 1998.
In the meeting room, Pope Georgi sat in front of an authentic, wall-covering Michelangelo. A white screen descended over the painting, and shutters rattled down over the windows. Chantal noticed how much older Georgi seemed now man when they first met. He wore a well-cut business suit and a skullcap. Only his ring of office betrayed his importance. Cardinals Brandreth and DeAngelis wore their red robes, and eyed each other with all the ferocity of Milanese society hostesses unwittingly arriving at a reception in identical "originals." In the Vatican, DeAngelis was known for his dress sense, and could often be found at society receptions in violently red evening clothes. Mother Edwina, the sharp and elegant Englishwoman who usually debriefed Chantal after her missions, wore a demi-wimple, a cream blouse and slacks. Father O'Shaughnessy, whom Chantal had not expected to be present, was, for the first time in her memory, dressed in cassock, collar and pom-pom biretta. Chantal had also turned up in full habit, and Father O'Shaughnessy grinned at the sight, mouthing "snap!" at her.
"Holy Father," she said, kissing Georgi's ring.
He signed a cross in the air, and indicated a chair. They all sat down at a circular table. Cardinal DeAngelis had a console in front of him. He dimmed the lights, and punched buttons. He worked the keyboard with the precise movements of an epicure picking at a supremely artistic salad.
"Excuse me, but I'm double-checking the security. We must take precautions."