Restlessness boiled in the pews. He sensed it but ignored it; he was not speaking to them.
He spoke to Phuong, who thought he would lose his soul.
He spoke to his own doubt, his heart. In a clear voice that was not afraid.
“Why did I return?
“Because it was time, because there was no reason not to return. If I told them that — if I told the people in your government that or the Church, those who questioned me would not believe me. They wanted secrets from me because that is what is in their own hearts; they have doubts as well and they were afraid of me.”
Yes, he could see that; doubt shrank from him, cowered before him.
“I saw many things. I put them down. I felt many things. I put them down. Some of you will be amazed at the matters I have written of—”
He smiled.
Murmurs broke through again. It seemed inevitable that one woman, finally, bent double by deformity, would rise and cry out: “Please, please! Cure me—”
“I cannot,” Leo Tunney said quietly, distracted from his words.
“Please! Cure me!”
“You can only cure yourself.” Words faltered again; doubt smiled at him. “It is the power of doubt in your—”
The woman, wart-faced, mean and twisted, her arms knobby sticks poking from the folds of her dress, screamed: “You cured her! You cured her and you won’t cure me!”
She shook her hand at Lu Ann Carter.
The woman who said she had been cured turned and looked at the old woman, at the tears of frustration staining the cheeks. Lu Ann Carter rose, stared, her face ashen, her eyes wide and hunted; she saw them all as they were, murmuring, hating her, rising in the pews—
She turned and Tunney stared at her.
Eyes of peace, she thought again. Holy.
In that moment, she understood as well and reached for his hand over the Communion railing. “Please,” she said softly. “Please.”
He understood, she thought in terror. He understood and it didn’t matter to him.
A fever came over them; hysteria backed against them; they felt flushed and mad.
“Please,” Lu Ann began, turning to those in the pews. “This is a good man! Please, this is a holy man and now I see it. And I’m a sinner, daughter of the devil! Daughter of evil and this is a man of God come down to cure me!” The voice rose, the muddy accent could not hold it, it rose like a clear running stream never heard before in the wilderness. “I sinned, and I beg God for my heart, I beg His forgiveness!”
Tunney stared at her amazed.
And he saw Phuong again, as clearly as if he were still there, holding the sparrow body in his own frail arms, feeling life leaving her.
He touched Lu Ann Carter’s milk-white arm as he had touched her that first day, when she had risen and cast off her crutches and straightened before him.
“You are a holy man,” she said, tears streaking her cheeks. “All this trick of mine, this deceit, and you knew and forgave—”
“Nothing.” He stepped back. Even this, he thought, his eyes opening wide. “No.” He understood—
“I sinned against—”
No. This cannot be the truth; there had been a miracle! He stepped back, bumped into the step, nearly stumbled and fell.
“No miracles!” Lu Ann cried then, in a rapture, spreading her arms. “Nothing but lies of Satan.”
Hysteria broke around them. There were moans and shouts from the pews, sobs and cries.
“Forgive me, Father!” Lu Ann cried. She looked up, she held out her arms.
Tunney did not understand; he began a sign of blessing.
And then he stopped.
“I lied to you,” Lu Ann cried. “Forgive me! I was wicked, I am cast down!”
He stared at her.
Slowly, Lu Ann Carter showed him. She began to bend back into the position of a cripple, she began to separate her back and shoulders, to form the horrible hunch that pushed her head forward.
Doubt grinned in Tunney’s mind; it loomed over him; doubt showed him its triumph.
“But you gave me faith!” Lu Ann Carter cried.
Miracles.
Then Leo Tunney moaned, a single horrible sound, the moan of the soul; he had uttered it when he felt the lightness of Phuong’s body suddenly collapse into the heaviness of death as he held her.
All tricks, all fakes, life without miracles, he thought feverishly. All of it was a trick.
Phuong!
At that moment, six rapid sounds of explosions came sharply one after the other from the back of the church. The booms seemed to shake the building, and the crowd, caught in a panic already fed by hysteria, suddenly surged forward, pushing against the pews, leaping over the backs of the pews; others in the crowd — turned into a mob now — pushed along the walls away from the explosions, down the aisles, surging toward the altar.
Another explosion.
Another and another.
They knocked the old priest backward, sending him stumbling against the altar steps; he felt himself falling before the surge of blind bodies—
Screams and terror in the air.
He cried out but had no voice; doubt choked him. He felt the bodies surging over him, crushing him. He felt pain, felt the feet kicking at him, the breath crushed out of his lungs. A weight fell on his heart.
Death and doubt came in black, grinning waves over his mind, suffocating him. He could not see. The blackness held him, strangling him.
“Father!” he cried out once.
Pain and bodies pressing, falling, legs and arms. Blood and pain.
And Tunney smelled death; he was in the village again hidden in the jungle; he saw the child dead, the life that had come from his loins; he saw the dying all around him; he saw the men who marched through the village, burning and killing; he heard the screams; he saw the bombs falling in their beautiful patterns from the waves of planes glimpsed overhead, falling like a shower of stones flung on the sea.
He saw all of it and saw the beauty in death.
Why did I resist You? he thought.
I didn’t understand before.
Of course. It was so simple.
My God—
29
Hanley awoke at the buzz of the red telephone on his desk. For a moment, he did not move. He blinked his eyes in the harsh fluorescent light and then looked down the length of his body sprawled on the black leather couch. He realized he had not even removed his shoes before falling asleep. That annoyed him.
He pushed his body up and reached for the telephone. His watch — a twenty-four-hour Swiss-made chronometer — read: 1816. Quarter past six on a Sunday night.
“Hanley.”
The familiar voice at the other end of the line sounded weak.
Hanley had spent the last thirty-seven hours in his office, except for the unplanned meeting yesterday morning with the Assistant Director of the Agency on a park bench. So much had happened in the past day and a half. And now the voice was thin at the other end of the line; something had gone wrong.
“Report,” Hanley said.
“I was shot for starters.”
“What happened?”
“I underestimated my opponent.”
“Levity,” Hanley said.
“Not really. I don’t feel funny.”
“Are you all right?”
“For now. I’ve got some wounds but they’re superficial. The bullet missed me. Wood splinters.”