Crucified (17 page)

"Ready?" asked the boy.

"Do it," said the priest, with less conviction than the first time.

The boy poked the tip of the nail into his quivering palm, just as the executioner had done on Friday, then he raised the hammer over his head, and—

"Save me!" cried the priest.

—brought it down.

Clang!

+ + + 

The boy had bounced from one boarding school to another as his father, the ambassador, took postings at various embassies around the world. In the end, his father's lust for women embroiled him in scandal, making him a pariah in Washington.

Finished with school, the son announced that his life's work would be for the Church, and that caused his irate father to summon him home. There were money troubles that required new hands on the oars, a front man to puppet for the sinner.

The would-be priest got out of a cab and followed the path down through colorful autumn trees to the summer cottage above the ocean. It was no longer legal to build this close to the sea, but his father's hideaway had been grandfathered in as an exception to the law. The sinner didn't want a railing through his panoramic view, so there was nothing between the deck and the thirty-foot drop to the sea except a narrow strip of grass along the lip.

His father was sweeping leaves off the deck when he rounded one side of the cottage. His arrival made the sinner turn, and he slipped on a wet leaf, flying off the deck in a flail of arms and legs. With nothing to keep him from plummeting over the edge, he tumbled down the cliff face and struck the rocks in the foamy surf below.

The son approached the edge and looked down at his father.

The sinner was floating face down in the brine.

He was still alive.

The son felt nothing from all the neglect his father had heaped on him.

God would decide if the sinner should live or d
ie.

The son waited . ..

And waited . . .

Until his father ceased moving.

Then he went into the cottage to call for help.

+ + + 

"Hello, Father."

"Hello, my son."

It was more than a decade since they'd last seen each other in the Philippines.

"You recognize me?"

"The eyes are the window to the soul. And you have such striking eyes. What brings you to the Vatican?"

"I wish to become a priest."

"So you said when you were a boy. Remember?"

"Yes."

"You kept my secret. About my crucifixion."

"I said I would."

"That means so little these days."

"Not to me, Father. Will you hear my confession?"

"In the confessional?"

"Here will do."

The would-be priest spread his arms to take in the vast expanse of St. Peter's Square. A rare snowfall had whitened the cobblestones around the larger-than-life figures in the Nativity scene next to the well-lit Christmas tree by the obelisk. Bundled up, nuns slipped by with umbrellas to protect their cowls. Except for the striking of clocks, sounds were few in Bernini's colonnade.

The penitent told the priest about his father's death.

"There's a difference between misfeasance and nonfeasance," said his confessor. "You didn't push your father off the cliff. Your sin is that you weren't the Good Samaritan."

"Father?"

"Yes?"

"I wish to join the Legion of Christ."

"Ah," said the priest. "The shock troops of the Church."

"To feel worthy, I must test my faith."

"Test it how?"

"As you did. Will you crucify me?"

+ + + 

Clang!

Never had he felt such agony! So excruciating was the pain from his skewered palm that his mind had to scrunch like his eyes to hold back the scream.

Clang . . . clang . . .

In slipped the nail like a razor.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
 

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
stored,

He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
 

His truth is marching on.

The shadow of the hammer-wielding priest circled around the rock walls to the young man's other hand.

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
 

Since God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory—

Clang!

As the nail impaled his other palm, the penitent's eyes flew wide. He was suffering amid the foundations of Christianity, in the vault beneath the ruined church. Back then, believers had cowered in this catacomb, while martyrs were fed to the lions above. Now, through tears, he took in the flames of countless votive candles flickering around the altar that was
him.
And as he concentrated on the Christian marching hymn that his iPod earphones fed to his soul, the pain in his temples pounded the lights into the same fiery cross that had once converted Constantine.

In procession, that Christian battle hymn bled into another.

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
 

With the cross of Jesus going on before—

Clang!

One foot was nailed to the cross.

At the sign of triumph Satan's host doth flee;
 

On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!

Hell's foundations quiver at—

Clang!

His other foot was nailed to the cross.

Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
 

Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod ...

Suddenly, the pain was gone and all he felt was bliss. The cross blazed before him like a beacon in the darkness. The road behind him was the Way of the Cross, and he was now the vanguard of a long,
long
line of popes, and saints, and inquisitors, and crusaders, and martyrs, and apostles. Henceforth, the Legionary of Christ would march against all those who threatened
his
Church.

The crucifying priest signed him with the cross.

"Put you on the armor of God," he said, "that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the Devil."

Ephesians 6:11.

"Endure hardship, as a good soldier of Christ."

2 Timothy 2:3.

"It is
written,"
he said.

+ + +

Founded by Marcial Maciel in 1941, the Legion of Christ took its inspiration from the Cristero War of the 1920s. Waged by men known as Cristeros—soldiers of Christ-—this was an uprising against anti-Catholic laws in the Mexican Constitution of 1917. "I envied the ones who went out to fight for Christ,"

Maciel once said. "I, too, wanted to give my life for him."

As the youngest founder of a religious congregation in the history of the Catholic Church, Nuestro Padre—Our Father—

as Maciel came to be called, modeled his militant order on the Roman legions that spread Christianity throughout the empire after Constantine. There was no room for nonsense in the Legion of Christ. A legionary's crusade was to extend the Kingdom of Christ, and his life focused on the gospel, the Eucharist, and the cross.

That's what the Legionary wanted.

But Satan had other plans.

Who else could have perverted the devotion to Christ of the
Kristos
in the Philippines? In 1996, a Japanese non-Christian was crucified in Cutud so he could petition God to cure his sick brother.

He turned out to be an actor in sadomasochistic pom. His crucifixion was filmed for video release in the sex shops of Japan.

Who else was polluting sinless souls with pop culture, with a false madonna mocking the Virgin Mary and Christ's crucifixion onstage, and with peddlers of heresy suggesting that Mary Magdalene had mothered Christ's child and begotten a line of royalty in Europe?

Who else was to blame for Nuestro Padre's fall from grace under allegations of sexual abuse?

And now, with darkness closing in on the Kingdom of Christ—and with infidels, heretics, atheists, pagans, skeptics, perverts, and heathens gathering for the Apocalypse—who was trying to unleash the satanic threat of the Judas relics on the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church?

 Only the Legionary stood between the darkness and the light. But how could he hope to defend his Church in this all-or-nothing crusade when—having verbalized the blasphemies in those accursed Inquisition records—he had conjured the Devil and let Satan take possession of his mind?

Good Lord!

Was that, too, not
written
in the Bible?

Jesus asked him, saying: What is thy name? 
But he said:
Legion.
Because many devils were entered into him.

—Luke 8:30.

For he said unto him: Go out of the man, thou unclean spirit.

And he asked him: What is thy name? And he saith to him: My
name is
Legion,
for we are many.

—Mark 5:8-9.

With that in mind, the Legionary of Christ slipped away, and Satan once again took the wheel of the car. The Fiat abandoned the road for a bumpy path that ended in a dark pocket on the riverbank. Here, the possessed priest parked, got out, looked around, and walked to the back of the car.

The corpse of Lenny Jones lay hog-tied in the trunk.

The killer hauled the remains out and lugged them down to the water. Then he went back to the trunk for a hammer. Swinging it repeatedly, he pulverized Lenny's face beyond recognition.

After dumping the mangled mess into the stream and watching it float away, he cleaned himself up in the water and churned the bloody ground into mud.

As he embarked on the journey to his next kill, the clouds broke to reveal the hunter's moon.

"That looks tasty," Wyatt said. "What is it?"

"Hopple popple," Liz replied, isolating the casserole's ingredients with her fork. "Diced potato, bacon, onion, and scrambled eggs. You're late, and we couldn't wait."

"Sorry, but a colleague phoned with a promising lead.

Speaking of which, where's Lenny?"

Yesterday, in the beer hall, they had agreed to meet for brunch in the hotel's restaurant so Lenny could show them the war archive kept by his grandfather, Trent Jones. In an email sent shortly after the bomber was found, Lenny had told Balsdon and Swetman that he'd bring the file to Germany.

"Missing in action," Sweaty said. "I rang his room, but he wasn't there."

"So what are
you
eating?"

"Apfelpfannkuchen."

"Gesundheit," Wyatt blessed him.

"Apple pancakes to you."

"But not to you?"

"I
did
spend a year in a Stalag Luft camp."

Wyatt caught the eye of the waitress across the restaurant and used sign language to place his order. He pointed to Liz's hopple popple, then to himself. The blonde with two braids smiled, nodded, scribbled on her notepad, and went to the kitchen.

Rook sat down.

Unlike the beer hall, this restaurant irked him. Those around him wore suits, ties, jeans, and designer labels. There wasn't a dirndl or any lederhosen in sight. Years ago, Wyatt had cleaned out a stash of his dad's youthful relics, including a grade three social studies text. Published in the mid-1950s, the book was a trip around the world, with Dutch kids in wooden shoes and Chinese kids in triangular hats. Wyatt wished it was still like that—not a global village of homogenized beings produced by jet planes, franchises, and TV.

But then, of course, he'd be wearing a coonskin cap.

"Strange, Lenny being late," said Liz. "Can't imagine what would be more pressing than us."

"Maybe that barmaid who was . . ."

"Who was
what?"

"Zaftig,"
Swetman suggested.

"Right," Wyatt agreed.

"You think Lenny's in bed with that buxom beer-hall babe?"

"She would be more pressing," the historian punned.

Liz rolled her eyes.

"While we're waiting," Wyatt said, turning to the radioman of the shot-down Halifax, "tell us what happened the night you bailed out over Nazi Germany."

+ + + 

'"Pilot to crew. Bail out.' That's what Wrath said to the six of us through the plane's intercom," Swetman told his two brunch companions all these years later.

Listening to him, Wyatt and Liz could picture the frantic scramble in the
Ace of Clubs.
The guns of the Junkers 88 had obviously done real damage to the tail section. That was evident from the erratic way the crippled plane was flying. Swetman and Balsdon were in the compartment under the cockpit and behind the nose cone. Above them, Wrath struggled to keep the
Ace
as level as possible while the crew prepared to abandon the aircraft.

Ox, the flight engineer, secured the skipper's parachute, then descended to the nose compartment, where Nelson, the bomb-aimer, was about to open the hatch in the floor. Having doused the reading lights within his blackout curtain, Balls, the navigator, crawled forward to join the queue. All except the rear gunner would escape by the nose hatch.