Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper (14 page)

She put the letter down and got up. “I need a drink.” There was a liquor cabinet in a sideboard. He heard the tinkling of bottles bumping each other and watched the curve of her back arching gracefully like a musical clef. When she turned to him, there was a bottle of scotch in her hand. “Join me?”

It wasn’t his brand, but still, he could almost taste the warm, mellow sting. He’d gone a long time without and was proud of that. He was a better person for it, no doubt, and his family was better for it too. The Great Hall was hazy with particulate matter from the balky fireplace. Windowless and cut off from the outside, it was a sensory isolation chamber. He was tired, jet-lagged and off-kilter in unfamiliar surroundings. From the shadows, a beautiful young woman was waving a bottle of scotch at him.

“Yeah. Why not?”

In half an hour the bottle was half-empty. They were both drinking it neat. Will loved every mouthful, every swallow and with each one, the pleasantly rising tide of disinhibition.

She leaned on him for answers. She was a good interrogator, he had to admit. But he wasn’t going to just give it up. She’d have to work for it, ask the right questions, work past his balkiness. Plead. Cajole. Threaten. He was peppered: “Then what happened? There’s got to be more to it than that. What were you thinking? Please, go on, you’re holding back. If you don’t tell me everything, Will, I won’t help you with the rest of the poem.”

He realized he was taking a risk by opening the tent flaps and letting her inside. It was dangerous for him and dangerous for her but, damn it, she already knew more about the origins of the Library than anyone in Nevada or Washington. So he swore her to secrecy, the kind of oath solemnly taken by those with full glasses in their hands. Then he told her about the postcards. The “murders.” The Doomsday case. How the killings didn’t fit together. The frustrations. His partner who would become his wife. The breakthrough, shining a light on a man he knew, his college roommate, a pathetic computer genius who worked deep underground in a secret government base at Area 51. The Library. Government data mining. Shackleton’s financial scheme with Desert Life Insurance Company. The watchers. Becoming a fugitive. The final act, played out in a hotel suite in Los Angeles, which left Shackleton with a bullet in his brain. The hidden database. His deal with the feds. Henry Spence. Twenty twenty-seven.

He was done. He’d told her everything. The fire was dying, and the room had become even darker. After a long silence, she finally said, “Quite a lot to take in.” Then she poured herself another half inch of scotch, and mumbled, “That’s my limit. What’s yours?”

He took the bottle from her and poured. “I don’t recall.” The room was moving; he felt like a piece of driftwood on a choppy lake. He was out of practice, but he could get used to serious drinking again, no problem. It felt good, and he wanted the feeling to last. He could think of worse times to be numb.

“When I was little,” she said with a faraway lilt, “I used to take the book from the library and lie right here by the fire and play with it. I always knew there was something special about it. Something magic. All those names and dates and strange languages. It boggles the mind.”

“Yes it does.”

“Have you come to grips with it? I mean, after living with it for a time?”

“Maybe on an intellectual level. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

She paused, then said emphatically, almost defiantly, “I don’t find it frightening.”

He didn’t have a chance to respond because she was in too much of a hurry to finish her thought.

“Knowing there’s a predestined moment of dying. In some ways it’s comforting. All the running around, worrying about the future. What should we eat, what should we drink, what kind of airbags should we have in our cars, everything, ad nauseam. Maybe it’s best to just live our lives and stop worrying.”

He smiled at her, and said, “How old did you say you were?”

She crinkled her forehead as if to say, please don’t patronize me. “My parents were always cross with me because I never took religion seriously. The Cantwells are famous old Catholics. I liked the Latin bits, but I always found the rituals and ceremonies painfully irrelevant. Perhaps, in the morning, I’ll reconsider.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I’m knackered, so you must be absolutely paralytic.”

“I could sleep.” He finished his drink. Then, given their newly forged bond he felt comfortable enough to ask, “Do you mind if I bring the bottle with me?”

In New York, it was the Phillip’s bedtime. After his bath, Nancy lay on the bed with her infant beside her. He was powdered and diapered on a soft fluffy towel. He was placidly playing with a plush toy, clutching at it, putting the bear’s snout in his mouth. She opened her cell phone and reread Will’s last message.
Arrived safely. Home soon. Love U.
She sighed and typed a reply. Then she stroked Phillip’s soft, round belly making him giggle, and kissed him on both cheeks.

To Will, the long, upstairs hallway was swaying like a suspension bridge in a canopy jungle. It was a pleasant, free sensation, and he felt light on his feet, as if the law of gravity was about to be suspended. He carefully followed Isabelle as she tiptoed as not to wake the old man. He wasn’t sure, but she seemed to be under the demon’s influence too—she was weaving around invisible obstacles and midway down the corridor she brushed the wall with her shoulder. She opened his bedroom door with a whispered flourish. “Here you are.”

“Here I am.”

It was dark and the quarter moon shining through the lace curtains turned the furniture into black-and-gray shapes. “You’ll never find the light,” she said.

He followed her in, watching her slender silhouette against a window. Dormant circuits in his brain started tripping, the ones dealing with booze and women. He heard himself saying, “You don’t have to turn the light on.”

He knew that was all it would take. He sensed that her pump was primed by the drink, the excitement of discovery, the isolation of the country.

They were on the bed. Clothes were being shed in the once-in-a-lifetime way that marked first times. Cool, dry flesh became warm and damp. The heavy bed frame creaked at its joints, and the high-pitched squeals of wood on wood played counterpoint to their low grunts. He wasn’t sure how long they were taking or if he was doing well. He only knew that it felt good.

When they were done the room was completely quiet until she said, “Wasn’t expecting that.” Then, “Did you bring the bottle?”

It was safely standing on the floor by the bed. “I don’t have a glass.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She took a swig, gave it back to him, and he did the same.

His head was swimming. “Look, I…”

She was already off the bed, reaching in the dark for her things, saying a quick sorry, when she brushed her hands against his privates, fishing for her knickers. “What time should I wake you?” she asked.

He was taken aback, unused to being on the receiving end of casual sex. “Whatever works for you,” he said. “Not too late.”

“We’ll have a cooked breakfast, then we’ll get on with it. I can’t find my other sock—
now
can I turn the light on?”

He closed his eyes protectively at the flare and felt a peck on the lips, then squinted at her naked retreat, her clothes bundled under one arm. The door closed, and he was alone.

When he retrieved his cell phone from his pants pocket, the little red light was flashing. He opened it and read a text message.
Not mad at you anymore. Miss U. Philly misses U 2. I read the poem. Amazing. Call me soon.

He realized he’d been holding his breath for an uncomfortably long time, and his audible exhale sounded like a low woof. There was something unspeakable about texting her back while naked and wet from another woman. He thought about it for a while, then tossed the phone on the bed and took another hit from the bottle instead.

Outside, the tail end of the cold front was sending chilly, rolling winds through the back garden. A night-vision monocular scope was poking through the dripping branches of a lush stand of rhododendrons. Through the scope, Will’s window glowed uncomfortably bright.

When Will rose to go to the bathroom, DeCorso saw his naked torso pass by. It was the first time he’d made him in hours; he was certain he was in the house, but still it reassured him to confirm his man was present and accounted for. A minute earlier, when the room was dark, he’d gotten a fleeting look of a woman’s bare ass, goddess green in the scope’s optics. Piper was having a better night than he.

It was going to be a long, cold stretch of time until morning, but he was steadfastly resigned to doing what watchers do.

FELIX LED THE congregation in the Prime prayers. Mercifully, it was the shortest office of the day because he was desperately fatigued, and his head was pounding again. The cathedral was filled with his brothers and sisters, dutifully responding, lifting their voices in prayer song that was surely as sweet as the songbirds perched on the rooftops of the church calling to their number in the nearby oaks. It was the rarest time of year, when the atmosphere within the cathedral was, in a word, heavenly—neither too cold nor too warm. It would be a shame, he thought, to depart this earth in the glory of summertime.

Through his good eye, he saw the monks sneaking furtive glances from the pews. He was their father, and they were worried about him and, indeed, worried about themselves. The death of an abbot was always a time of worldly concern. A new abbot inevitably changed things and altered the rhythms of abbey life. After all these years, they were used to him. Perhaps, he thought, they even loved him. Adding to the uncertainty, the chain of succession was cloudy. His prior, Paul, was far too young for the bishop to elevate, and there was no other candidate within their walls. That meant an outsider. For their sakes, he would try to live as long as he could, but he knew better than most that God’s plan was set and inalterable.

From the high, carved pulpit, he searched the length of the cathedral for his visitor, but Luke was not to be found. He was not terribly surprised.

As Psalm 116, a Prime standard, was drawing to a close, he was suffused with a sudden joyful realization: that at the moment he had completed his confessional letter, Luke had arrived. Surely, this was providential. The Lord had heard his prayers and was providing an answer. In praise, he decided to insert one of his favorite old Prime hymns into the service, the ancient
Iam Lucis Orto Sidere
, Star of Light Now Having Risen, a poem dating back centuries, as far back as the lifetime of the blessed spiritual founder of their Order, Benedict of Nursia.

Iam lucis orto sidere,
Deum precemur supplices,
ut in diurnis actibus
nos servet a nocentibus.
Now in the sun’s new dawning ray,
lowly of heart, our God we pray
that He from harm may keep us free
in all the deeds this day shall see.

The congregation seemed uplifted by the hymn. The high, soprano voices of the young nuns sounded lovely within the hollow, echo chamber of the great cathedral.

Ut cum dies abscesserit,
noctemque sors reduxerit,
mundi per abstinentiam
ipsi canamus gloriam.
That when the light of day is gone,
and night in course shall follow on,
we, free from cares the world affords,
may chant the praises that is our Lord’s.

At the conclusion of the service, Felix felt rejuvenated, and if his vision was doubled and his eye was painful, he hardly noticed it. As he left the church, he motioned to Brother Victor and asked the hostillar to bring the night visitor to his rooms.

Sister Maria was waiting for him at the abbot house and immediately began to ply him with tea and coarse oatmeal drizzled with honey. He took a few mouthfuls to assuage her but gestured to have it cleared away when Brother Victor came knocking.

When he saw Luke enter, he instantly remembered the day some forty years earlier when he had first laid eyes on him. Felix had been prior when the strapping young man, who more resembled a soldier than a bootmaker’s apprentice, arrived at the gate seeking entrance into the brotherhood. He had traveled from London, seeking out the island refuge because he had heard of the piety of the community and the simple majestic beauty of the monastery. Felix was quick to warm to the sincerity and intelligence of the lad and let him enter as an oblate. And Luke had repaid him by earnestly throwing himself into study, prayer, and work with a gleeful intensity and warmth of spirit that gladdened the hearts of all the members of the order.

Now he was looking at an old soul in his fifties, still tall and sturdy but thick around the middle. His face, which had been taut and beautiful, had been tugged at by time and was sagging and deeply inscribed. The glowing childlike smile was gone, replaced by the downward droop of scabbed lips. He was dressed in the simple, worn clothes of a tradesman, his streaked hair pulled tightly back into a knot.

“Come in, my son, and sit by me,” Felix said. “I can see that it is you, dear Luke, disguised as an old man.”

“I can see that it is also you, Father,” Luke replied, staring at the abbot’s bulging eye and the familiar but aged face.

“You notice my malady,” Felix observed. “It is well you came to visit today. Perhaps tomorrow you would have been visiting my tomb. Sit. Sit.”

Luke rested himself on a soft, horsehair chair. “I am sorry to hear this news, Father.”

“I am in God’s hands, as is every man. Have you been fed?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Tell me, why did you not come to the cathedral for Prime? I sought you out.”

Luke glanced uncomfortably at the finery of the abbot’s great room, and said simply, “I could not.”

Felix gently and sadly nodded. He understood, of course, and he was grateful the man had returned after all these years to close the long arc of two lives that had crossed for a while, then diverged on one terrible day.