"I see two possibilities, which are far from exclusive. First, simple folk rumor, and the universal and long recognized tendency of any story to grow in the telling. The identification of the child bringing succor with the Christ child would be quite natural for people raised to believe unquestioningly in Christ's reality and dual nature, human and divine. The more so if in fact an image of the Christ child dressed in the pilgrim's characteristic garb preexisted the events that gave rise to the story, rather than came about as a result of them.
"The other possibilities? That Christian Spanish leaders, secular and of the church, deliberately created the tale, whether tailoring facts to fit or making it all of whole cloth, as a propaganda ploy. If you can credit the church fathers with such cynicism."
"You'd be surprised what I wouldn't put past the church. Please forgive me if I offend," Annja said.
Bobadilla laughed. "Not at all. In turn, forgive me if I presume, but something in your tone of voice – are you a lapsed Catholic?"
Annja nodded. "Raised by nuns," she said. "At a Catholic orphanage in New Orleans."
" Pobrecita," the professor said, clucking sympathetically. "We at least got to escape from our nuns by going home at the end of the school day!"
The monsoon had come to Cebu Island, tucked into the Philippine archipelago between Luzon in the north and Mindanao to the south. Riding the taxi back from Cebu City to the international airport, across the Opon Channel on Mactan Island, Annja found the torrent falling from the sky perfectly appropriate. First, as a metaphor for her Philippine expedition, which was a total wash. And as portrayal of her mood.
The driver chattered cheerfully in Spanish, so incessantly and inconsequentially she wished she'd never let him know she understood the language.
It wasn't that difficult to tune him out, since not only did he not seem to require any response from his passenger, but he also seemed not to have to breathe. He rattled ceaselessly about local politics, corrupt and rife with coups and rumors of coups and the weather, which she could see for herself was lousy.
She had paid her visit that morning to the Basilica Minor del Santo Niño. The Cebu church was a typical colonial structure with two bell towers, built of coral blocks that gave it an unfortunate corroded appearance, as if it suffered severe acne. A pleasant young sacristan in a white gown over black trousers, who spoke excellent English, showed her the sights.
These included the Santo Niño himself, or rather a replica of the miraculous image, which had been given to the queen of the Cebuanos by Magellan. Forty-odd years later the Spanish returned and found the natives hostile. They set the village on fire and when it was subsequently found in a burned-out house, the image of the Santo Niño was either charred beyond recognition or miraculously unscathed. Her guide smilingly refused to say which. And since the original was kept under lock and key in the associated convent, she was not likely to find out.
It hardly mattered to her current quest.
As for local legends about the Holy Child, especially nocturnal perambulations and aid to the needy, the sacristan hadn't heard of any. The Santo Niño was mostly a pretext for a big annual party, it appeared.
Annja gazed out the window. In all the brochures in Annja's hotel, Cebu City portrayed itself as the real economic miracle city of Southeast Asia. For all Annja knew, it could be. It certainly had its share of gleaming new skyscrapers. But that didn't mean it lacked slums.
They drove through one. At this point of the mid-afternoon there was miraculously little traffic. The cab was like a blocky little sampan making its way down a vast, empty river between steep green slopes. Miserable shanties of rain-warped planks and rusted sheet metal stuck up out of the vegetation on stilts like exotic weeds. This, she knew too well, wasn't the worst of it. The real poverty was to be found in the city dumps, which were inhabited by tens if not thousands of truly desperate people.
But this slum smelled more than bad enough. The air carried the scents of petroleum fractions, rotting vegetation, untreated sewage, rancid peanut oil and general misery.
For this, she thought, I did such damage to my tailbone, my spine and my budget, with all this globe hopping? She was retrograding Magellan, circumnavigating the globe ass backward. She wasn't even sure why.
Her eyelids drooped. Her head dropped toward the glass of the door where she sat directly behind the driver, mainly so she couldn't hear him quite as well. Its impact against her forehead woke her.
The cab was slowing. A truck was stalled out in the lane right ahead of them with its hood up and engine steaming into the rain. Away up on a hillside across the highway a dirty white flower bloomed. She saw an intense blue-white light spiraling toward her, drawing a twisty white trail behind it.
She recognized it only because she had seen the movie Black Hawk Downfive times when she had been going through an Orlando Bloom phase.
As the soldiers did in that movie, she shouted, "RPG! Get out now!"
The driver turned an almost comical gape of surprise and incomprehension toward her as she yanked her door open. He was not reacting. She grabbed the collar of his shirt and with her feet to the back of his seat kicked for all she was worth, hoping vaguely to yank him out the back door with her.
The shirt collar tore away in her hand. She flew backward out of the cab as white light dazzled her eyes and the most terrible crack of thunder she had ever heard drove sound from her ears. She rolled over and over backward at least three times before coming back to something like self-awareness. She was sitting on the wet asphalt with her back to a concrete lane barrier, her hair hanging like fresh-dredged kelp in her face, clutching a sorry half circle of sodden, once-white cloth in her hand.
She smelled gasoline. The little Toyota cab blazed quite merrily in the downpour. Tendrils of black, black smoke undulated out of the windows and grew together into an imposing black stalk that kept growing to meet the low-hanging, lead-colored clouds.
Annja steeled herself to charge the wreck. She could not permit the innocent driver to burn to death if she could help it.
Then she noticed the flame-wrapped silhouette behind the wheel lacked a head. The rocket grenade had apparently struck the post of the driver's door, right beside the windshield. The jet of incandescent copper it spewed, meant to cut deep into the entrails of a tank, had decapitated the man far more efficiently than a guillotine.
The police called it a random terrorist attack by Moro separatists. Since she had seen nothing beyond the flash and smoke of the RPG launch, they were even more eager to see her leave the country than the Mexican cops had been. No doubt they feared she might sue them for psychological damage.
She cried halfway across the Pacific. When she did manage to drop off to sleep, she kept waking up sweating and shouting from visions of the little cheerful man, his word flow unkindly cut off, burning to death.
Another victim of her quest, her curse. Another innocent she could not save.
Annja was so dragged out that after disembarking at LAX, to the unspoken but unmistakable relief of the flight crew, she didn't think to turn her cell phone on until she had cleared customs.
The phone rang moments after she turned it on.
"Annja? This is Doug. Where the hell have you been?"
"About there. What do you want, Doug? I've had a long day."
"Long day? It's what, not even noon there?"