Clearly delirious now, I saw the preacher crumple to the stones directly in front of me, followed by Miranda and her burly captor. “Miranda, no,” I groaned. But then, miraculously, Miranda pulled free and staggered to her feet. She stared down at Junior, whose head was lying in a pool of blood. “Dr. B, Dr. B,” she was sobbing. “Oh, dear God, Dr. B.” Behind her, striding toward me, I saw the angel of death coming to claim me. He was dressed in black, but instead of a scythe, he carried a rifle.
“Ah, lad, I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner,” said the angel of death, whose features crystallized into the face of Father Mike.
“Take Miranda,” I gasped. “Get her out of here.”
“Let’s see about you first, lad,” he said. “Hurt bad, are you?”
“Not sure. Hard to breathe. How’d you find me?”
“Saint Anthony,” he said. “Remember? ‘Tony, Tony, look around’?” He took hold of my collar and ripped open the front of my shirt. He looked startled, and then he began to laugh. “I’ll be damned. Maybe there’s something to the hocus-pocus after all.”
“What?” I looked down, expecting to see blood, but there was none. Then I remembered. “Oh, the vest.” The gift Hugh Berryman had sent to accompany the Arikara Indian skeleton was a vest — a Kevlar vest, a bulletproof vest — and the Bible verse Hugh had referenced, Ephesians 6:11, admonished, “Put on the full armour of God.” I’d recognized the vest right away; Hugh wore it whenever he worked a death scene, and I’d often teased him about it. But now I owed my life to it, and I vowed never to make fun of it again.
Before I could explain, Miranda reached to my chest, then held up the medallion Father Mike had given me to wear. The image of Saint Christopher had been obliterated; lodged in its place, at the center of the medallion, was a flattened lead slug. “My God,” Miranda breathed. “Incredible. Absolutely incredible. What are the odds? So you’re not even hurt?”
“Easy for you to say,” I grunted. “Feels like I’ve been kicked by a mule.” But even as I said it, the pain was beginning to ease.
“You’ll have a nasty bruise, I’m thinking,” said Father Mike. “Maybe even a cracked sternum. But all things considered, you’re one mighty lucky fella.” He leaned closer, noticing the vest, inspecting it. “Takin’ no chances, were you, Bill Brockton?” He smiled slightly. “This vest, by the by — it wouldn’t have stopped that slug, lad. It’ll stop a 9-millimeter, but not a .45, which is what the good reverend baptized you with.”
Miranda stared at Father Mike, then looked again at the shattered medallion, turning it this way and that in the faint light. Jutting from one edge of the crater was a splintered bit of something green and gold, an incongruously synthetic material. “This thing has a circuit board in it,” she said slowly. “Is this a tracking device? Have you been following Dr. Brockton?”
He shrugged. “Even Saint Anthony can use a bit of help.”
She eyed him warily. “So who are you, really? You’re clearly not a small-town Irish priest.”
Other things began to crystallize in my mind. “It wasn’t just coincidence that I met you that day in the library, was it? You’d been watching me, looking for an opening.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, lad. It’s true, I’d had my eye on you.”
“That was you with the binoculars and camera,” Miranda accused. “Watching us, taking pictures, the day we were up here on this bridge? You’ve been after the bones all along.”
“And that whole story about the IRA and your brother,” I added. “That was total bullshit.”
“No, not total. I did lose a brother in the Troubles, but it wasn’t the Brits killed him, it was me. A bomb I was rigging went off prematurely. So the penance part is true — I’ll be doing penance for Jimmy till the day I die.”
“But you’re not really a priest.”
He shrugged. “A priest, no. And if you ask the Holy Father about me, he’ll say he’s never heard of me. But I serve the church. I like to think of meself as a modern-day Knight Templar.”
“So why do you want the bones?” Miranda asked. “Or why does the pope, or whoever the hell is your boss?”
“To cover the church’s arse, Miss. If these are the bones of Christ, it buggers the story about the Resurrection and the ascension into Heaven. You can see the difficulty, can’t you?”
“But they’re not the bones of Christ,” I said. “They’re the bones of Meister Eckhart, a fourteenth-century theologian and preacher. I already told you that.”
“Aye, so you did. You also told me that Eckhart was murdered — crucified, no less — by a cardinal who later became pope.
And that Eckhart, not Christ, is the man on the Holy Shroud. Can’t you see how that would bugger the Holy Father if word got around?”
I felt like such a fool. It was obvious — in the way he carried himself, in the ease with which he handled the weapon — that he was a soldier or cop. Was he one of the pope’s Swiss Guards? Or part of some more secret agency — a Vatican version of the CIA? How could I have mistaken him for a simple village priest?
The rifle was slung loosely over his shoulder. It had a collapsible stock and a large-diameter scope that was designed either for low light or night vision. On top of the scope was a thin, cylindrical gadget that I guessed to be a targeting laser.
I felt an insane urge to laugh at the irony: Miranda and I had just escaped death at the hands of a Protestant fanatic, and now we were about to die at the hands of a Catholic assassin. I looked up at her, expecting to see sadness and fear in her face. Instead I saw stealth, cunning, and concentration. Almost imperceptibly she was edging behind Father Mike, edging toward the gun that had flown from my hand when Reverend Jonah’s bullet had slammed into my chest. She was three feet from it, then two feet from it, and then she was there, directly behind him. I needed to distract Father Mike, or whoever this guy was. “So will you do penance for killing Miranda and me, too? What sort of penance will our deaths require?”
As I asked the question, Miranda reached for the gun. Without even looking, Father Mike swept a leg in a wide, swift arc, knocking her feet out from under her. She landed hard, with a thud and a grunt. She kept trying, though, going for the gun and managing to get a hand on it just as Father Mike’s foot came down on her wrist. She cried out sharply in pain, and I struggled up to lunge for him. I was stopped short by the barrel of the rifle, jabbing into my throat two inches above the top of the Kevlar vest.
“I probably should kill you, lad, but I won’t. If I wanted you dead, I’d’ve let the reverend do the bloody bit. I don’t feel bad about shooting him and his ape — no penance needed for them two — but I don’t need more innocent blood on my hands. It’s asking for trouble, but I’ll be letting you go. I hope you don’t mind if I take a little souvenir with me, though.” He took the pistol from Miranda’s hand, then lifted his boot off her wrist. “Sorry to hurt you, miss. You strike me as a strong-headed lass, so I didn’t figure you’d listen if I just said, ‘Stop.’ I hope I’ve not done any serious harm.”