Chapter Ten

I

Jennifer was woken early by Maryam’s quiet praying. She stirred and blinked the sleep from her eyes to see her companion kneeling on the floor of the foxhole, forehead touching the ground as her lips recited her devotion. On one level, the scene left Jennifer unfazed. Following the Awakening, open worship was a familiar enough practise. But at the same time she felt the same cynical disquiet she had known for most of her life towards religion.

Somehow, Jennifer and faith were about as compatible as oil and water.

A few moments later, Maryam ended her prayer and rose to her feet, shoving a well-thumbed copy of the Koran into a rucksack.

“Never thought I’d owe my life to a Muslim,” Jennifer muttered as she stretched.

Maryam froze and her dark eyes flashed. “Is that a problem, Major?”

“Sorry, no offence,” Jennifer yawned, adding by way of explanation: “Two tours of the Persian Gulf staring down the business ends of anti-aircraft guns manned by irate Islamic fundamentalists just didn’t prepare me for the privilege, that’s all.”

Maryam stared for a second longer then nodded curtly. She continued gathering items from the boxes in the foxhole, including a change of clothes which she tossed to Jennifer.

“You had best put these on,” she advised. “That flight suit will only slow you down.”

Jennifer took the bundle and stripped a little self-consciously, although Maryam was too busy either to notice or care. Jennifer hurriedly donned the grubby black denims and sweater, then slipped on a dark, heavy jacket whose previous owner had evidently not been too particular when it came to personal grooming. She tucked her hair beneath a thick woolen hat to complete the outfit.

Rummaging through another crate, Maryam withdrew a Kalashnikov rifle, slammed home a fresh magazine, and handed the weapon together with additional rounds to Jennifer.

“Just like the Girl Guides always say,” Jennifer murmured, weighing the weapon and accustoming herself to the feel of it. She slung it over her shoulder and saw Maryam’s quizzical expression.

“Be prepared,” Jennifer clarified simply.

II

Mancini had never felt such a burden of responsibility, not even when leading his little band of believers back in France. Then he had been just another pastor trying to do the best he could under exceptionally-trying circumstances. Teaching, admonishing, preparing the group for the ever-present possibility of martyrdom. Just trying to stay alive to see another sunrise.

But this? Daniel’s desire for him to assume the pastoral duties of his papacy was altogether something else.

“Lord,” he prayed in his new quarters - a sparsely-furnished yet comfortable room adjacent to Daniel’s - “I feel so unworthy, so unprepared for the task of feeding so large a flock.”

He paused and raised eyes to heaven, palms upturned to catch the fire of encouragement, of blessing - of purification.

“But your will be done, Lord,” he assented. “Only say the word and I shall be clean.”

III

They left the foxhole shortly before dawn. Maryam closed the trapdoor and Jennifer helped her cover the hatch with leaves and drag the heavy marker log back into place.

The early morning was still virtually dark, with just a slim sliver of a moon. It was also bitterly cold so that as Jennifer’s eyes gradually adjusted, she could make out her breath steaming in the chill air.

Maryam crouched beside her, motioning with her hand for Jennifer not to move. For almost five minutes they waited in complete silence, until Maryam was satisfied that they were indeed alone.

Then, with a whispered command, she began to move slowly across the clearing towards the trees. Jennifer fell in behind, her grip tightening automatically on the assault rifle slung from her shoulder.

Once inside the line of trees, Maryam halted again, turning her head this way and that like a wolf, listening for any sound beyond the sighing breeze and the creak of winter woodland. Jennifer listened too, but heard nothing she might have considered out of the ordinary. But once more, Maryam erred on the side of caution and made no attempt to move on for some minutes, by which time Jennifer was beginning to lose the feeling in her legs. She fidgeted half-involuntarily to encourage her circulation, earning herself a stern look from Maryam.

“Sorry,” Jennifer whispered; but Maryam had already begun to move deeper into the woods.

IV

Not for the first time since his arrival at Abraham’s Bosom, Father Mancini wept. The tears had first stung his eyes on entering the Chapel of St. Michael, on seeing so many in attendance at the early morning Communion service. As the devotion of the congregants had become more apparent, the tears had begun to spill out over Mancini’s cheeks.

Until now, as Daniel elevated the consecrated Host to the heavenly sound of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, the old priest fought to master his emotion.

From his vantage point to the left of the altar, Mancini’s gaze swept the several-hundred-strong congregation. As one, all genuflected towards the True Body, faces glowing, lost to the rapture of the moment. Someone somewhere began to cry out in tongues, and Mancini sought out the source of the unearthly syntax; realising after everyone else that the angelic language was tumbling from the lips of an ecstatic Daniel.

Mancini was well aware of the Scriptural basis for the charismata - gifts - of the Holy Spirit, but not until now had he witnessed their manifestation. If truth were told, he had always subscribed to the cessasionist school of thought, believing that such preternatural exercises had ceased with the close of the Apostolic era. He had always viewed with some scepticism the claims of those groups said to have recovered the charismata. But here, quite unexpectedly, he found this belief challenged.

The tongues ended abruptly, and Mancini sat astounded and fascinated. What did it all mean? He knew that St Paul had also spoken of the gift of Interpretation of Tongues, and the old priest scanned the congregation expectantly, eagerly anticipating that someone would be granted the grace to translate the pontiff’s words.

The divine presence was so real, so tangible in this sanctuary, charging the reverent atmosphere with an expectation of supernatural contact which Mancini had rarely experienced before. So when no interpretation appeared forthcoming, the priest could not help but feel a slight twinge of disappointment.

Daniel’s ecstatic utterance still echoed in his mind. The strangeness of it struck Mancini, for each and every word which the pontiff had spoken was replaying itself with peculiar clarity despite his inability to recognise the language.

“Listen! Listen to what the Spirit is saying!”

Mancini turned his head instinctively to discover the source of the androgynous voice which had whispered so urgently beside his right ear. He saw no one. But as he frowned, and the strange recollection of Daniel’s words continued, the same disembodied voice spoke again, gradually increasing in volume until it drowned out the mental recording of the unfamiliar tongue uttered by Daniel.

And suddenly it was no longer so unfamiliar at all! Mancini realised with awe that he was somehow receiving a direct translation of what Daniel had said. Not for one moment did Mancini feel that he was not in control of the whole situation. If he had so wished, he could have remained absolutely quiet and kept the divine relay of information to himself.

At once, Mancini understood what the Bible meant, about the ‘spirit of the prophets being subject to the prophets’. Unlike demonic possession, the inspiration of the Holy Ghost left a person in full charge of his or her reason and faculties. Yet, paradoxically, Mancini did not feel that he could have kept the knowledge to himself for anything.

“Behold!” he found himself crying out, stepping forward, pointing towards the elevated Host.

“Behold, the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world!”

Groans, sighs and weeping overcame the congregation, with many falling to their knees in homage before the True Body of the King of kings.

“By virtue of this sacrifice, you are redeemed,” Mancini continued to relay the whisper of perfect English. “By virtue of the offering of My body and blood, you are become the children of God. Through the power of My Name, My Blood, My Cross, you are more than conquerors! Take and eat, that you may be one with Me, just as I and My Father are One!”

The voice which Mancini had heard so distinctly fell silent and the priest stood quietly, surveying the crowded chapel. His whole being - body, soul and spirit - was consumed with awe and reverence and indescribable joy.

“Amen,” the congregation breathed as one.

Glancing towards Daniel, Mancini saw the elderly pontiff staring straight back at him, tears streaming down his own cheeks as he nodded knowingly.

Only then did Mancini feel the blood dripping from his fingertips.

V

Jennifer winced as Maryam gripped her shoulder. She halted and dropped to her stomach with the beautiful Muslim freedom fighter right beside her.As ever, only Maryam’s glittering dark eyes were visible behind the black niqab wrapped around her head and face.

“Enemy transport,” Maryam murmured, gesturing with a nod towards a narrow road visible in the half-light beyond the tree line, less than a hundred yards from their position. Jennifer followed Maryam’s gaze and saw a covered army lorry idling on the verge. A couple of armed soldiers paced up and down alongside the wagon.

“Troop carrier?” Jennifer suggested, but Maryam shook her head.

“Prisoner transfer. Station Twelve is both a high security penitentiary and way point.”

“Way point?”

Maryam removed a pair of compact binoculars from her pocket and raised them to her eyes.

“While transportation to the labour camps is arranged,” she whispered, then lowered the binoculars in response to Jennifer’s long silence. “You did not know this?”

Jennifer shook her head, feeling her blood chill. Surely this was all just some terrible nightmare from which she would awaken at any moment. Could civilisation really have taken such a backward step?

“We know nothing for certain,” Maryam explained, returning to her surveillance. “Little more than a rumour, of a destination somewhere in Poland or the Czech Republic. But if it is true....”

Maryam’s voice trailed off and Jennifer stared intently at the stationary lorry, her resolve hardening. Better that these people had resisted capture and died with a bullet in the back than for them to face the unimaginable horrors awaiting them in some twenty-first century concentration camp.

“We have to help them,” she hissed, and tried to rise from her hiding place. But Maryam caught her arm roughly.

“Some are beyond our help,” she countered firmly. “As much as we might wish it otherwise. We must trust that Allah will be their vengeance, as he will prove to be for all Peoples of the Book.”

But Jennifer remained adamant. “We can’t just leave them,” she began to insist.

The loud cracking of fallen branches and dead undergrowth somewhere off to their right snapped their attention back towards the interior of the wood. They hunkered lower, their bodies as flat as possible to the ground. As they watched, they saw two more soldiers appear through the trees, laughing and dragging a young girl along between them. Maryam placed the binoculars to her eyes once more, regarded the scene for a second or two, then passed the powerful optics to Jennifer.

Jennifer squinted into the eyepieces, gently rotating the focusing wheel. What she saw sickened her to the stomach. The girl could barely support herself. Her face was swollen and bloodied, her clothes torn open to expose the pale flesh of her violated body to the unforgiving cold. The ordeal she must have suffered at the hands of her two captors was all too apparent. Jennifer felt a white hot rage as she lowered the binoculars and challenged Maryam with one look.

“Very well,” Maryam agreed. “May God deliver them into our hands.”