It always rained in London, Devereaux thought. Thus the umbrella.
And then, one day, it rained in central Florida as well.
“Why begin the murders now?” Devereaux said. “You could have killed Tunney at any time.”
“Perhaps we didn’t know we would be involved at first.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you the truth.”
“No. Not all of it.”
Petersen pushed forward then and his timing was nearly perfect. Devereaux did not expect the big man to have such resources of strength. His body hurtled like a shell into Devereaux and sent him sprawling on the dusty floor, cracking his head against a corner beam. The rats scurried away to far corners, turned, bared their teeth again, and made their crooning sound.
Petersen grasped the fallen pistol and fired. The shot cracked the silence like a sudden thunderclap on a warm summer day.
Devereaux had been moving from the minute he struck the ground. The bullet ripped the wood behind him, sending splinters like fragments of a bomb into his body. He kept twisting away, blood welling on the whiteness of his shirt.
Twisting, twisting.
Petersen raised the heavy gun and fired again. Devereaux leaped up and ran suddenly to a boarded window frame and threw himself against it, splintering dry, rotten wood. He fell out of the cabin, into the sand and wild grass clinging to the key at the edge of the water.
Petersen lunged from the cabin and ran around the corner, the pistol in his hand. The finishing touch.
Devereaux hit him with both hands folded together into a human pile driver. Petersen felt the blow in his belly and fell forward, still holding the pistol.
Devereaux scrambled behind him on the loose sand.
Petersen raised the pistol, tried to turn.
The copper-sheathed wire was out of Devereaux’s bracelet and around his neck.
Petersen gasped as he felt the cutting edge against his throat. He dropped the pistol and grasped the wire with his hands.
Slowly, Devereaux pulled, leaning back with all his weight against the wriggling form of the terrified man.
The big man’s body jerked up sharply, following the wire encircling his throat, his back arching to the breaking point.
When Devereaux released the wire, Petersen’s head slumped forward and the body fell on the blood-soaked sand.
Devereaux stood over the dead man, the wire in his hand. The pain from the wounds was spreading across his belly. He reached down for his pistol and then found himself on his knees.
He felt strange, light-headed. He dabbed at the dampness on his shirt and found it was blood.
Slowly, as though he were falling in a dream, he let himself fall forward to the sand, his face next to the staring, dead face of the man called Petersen. His eyes closed and he lay motionless on the ground, without thoughts or senses.
25
The silence from Rome was easy to explain in retrospect: Cardinal Ludovico was simply not told of the death of Martin Foley until the delicate negotiations in Prague were nearly concluded.
The journey across a quarter of the world had been long, made longer by Ludovico’s grief.
When the Pan American jumbo jet from London finally touched down late Saturday afternoon at Miami International, Ludovico was very nearly unable to continue. His collapse was physical as well as mental; grief had sapped his strength as surely as a long illness.
For six days, he had sat in on the concluding portion of the negotiations for the Concordance.
He had cabled Foley once and now regretted the sarcasm and scolding that had turned out to be his last words to Martin.
The entourage in Prague had sought to hold back the news of the death. They reasoned among themselves that if the Cardinal knew, he would be unable to continue the negotiations. They did not know the strength of their master. When he learned of his protégé’s death, he went on as before and the Concordance was sealed; he did not falter as he finished the details and made arrangements to fly to America. They were all amazed at Cardinal Ludovico’s strength. But it was strength summoned at a great price.
The work of the Congregation and the work of the Church cannot be impeded by considerations of personal sorrow, he told his secretary. And the secretary thought he understood and thought it was a privilege to serve one of the great Princes of the Church.
He had stayed over in London Friday night, busying himself with cables, drafts of cables, telephone calls that reached out like a spider’s web to agents throughout the world.
Only later in the London night, with mists shrouding the city lights and fog scratching at the windows of his suite, did Ludovico sit alone in the darkness, in the large leather chair turned to the window, and count his loss. It was the loss of a son to him in every sense except the biological.
Martin had been murdered, of course; there was no doubt of that. When he had been informed at last of the death, he had gone to his opposite number in the negotiations and asked him sharply what had happened. The other side made every effort to assure him that they were not involved. But Ludovico, who knew them so well, could never be certain that he could trust the final word of a Soviet.
Martin.
Tears misted his eyes as the fog misted the great city beyond his window; the tears would have surprised his secretary, who only saw the strength of the Prince.
I am truly alone, he thought at last, as the London dawn gave fitful light at last. He felt naked and frightened at that moment, as though he were an old, old man who had survived every member of the family and all the friends of youth and now waited for the end, wondering what would be revealed on the other side of the curtain.
One needs affection, he thought in pity for himself; one cannot love in the abstract. He had realized it long before he met the young, boyishly hopeful and open cleric from Liverpool; celibacy was a concept and not a reality, ever. It forbade not only sex, which was not so difficult as one grew older, but affection, intimacy, a family, a special sense of weddedness to blood, a wife and children. At the last, a priest was merely a man and a man always had to surrender himself to another; to love a wife or child; to find one person to give a gift of love to.
One of the rumors had it that Ludovico had taken Martin as his lover.
It was a terrible rumor and it was not untypical of the stories that made the rounds of the trattorias in the old quarter of the city or even in the halls of the Vatican bureaucracy. The Church was old; Rome was old; a certain veneer of cynicism covered the dealings of both, like moss on a tomb. All things were possible.
A priest, Ludovico had thought when the rumor came to him, is suspected of everything because he presumes to be beyond the mean spiritual life of others. That is what he explained to Martin when he told him of the rumor. He knew the rumor would shock this open man because he had come to Rome with such naïve expectations.
I love you, Martin.
But he had never said it. The Cardinal was a cold Prince, leonine in presence and dignified in manner; he loved Martin as truly as a father and he sought to show his affection as a father would. He sought Martin’s advancement at the expense of others who might have been better qualified; he gave Martin gifts, he showed him finally the narrow way of wisdom that was far different from the easy way of simple faith. Faith, he had once told Martin, sustains us when we cannot explain anymore. But in the Congregation, one always sought to explain.