Chapter Seventeen

I

16 Hours to Extraction A bitter wind blew over Salisbury, or at least what remained of it. Mancini stared out across the devastated landscape of smoking rubble and wondered how anyone could have possibly survived. Yet by the hour, and against all the odds, scores of the injured and dispossessed were arriving at the relief camp set up in the lee of the cathedral.

Mancini gazed up the ruined cathedral, but a shell of the imposing building it had once been. Only its famous spire remained untouched by Martinez’s blitz, still defiantly pointing heavenwards like an admonition in stone.

The grounds of the cathedral had been turned into a mini township of tents and Mancini began to move among them, speaking words of encouragement to the medical team struggling to cope with the influx of survivors.

Cries of pain and destitution filled the refugee camp, a chorale of misery that could not have failed to move the hardest heart.

“Adrenalin!” someone called out inside one tent. “Now!”

Mancini halted and ducked under the flap. His eyes immediately alighted upon the young female doctor bending over the inert body of an overweight man.

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s gone into arrest,” the doctor snapped without looking up. She took the syringe thrust towards her by a colleague and rammed the needle into the man’s chest. She injected the precious adrenalin and attempted to save her patient. Yet all her best efforts proved futile.

And all the time, Mancini watched. All of his instincts urged him to step forward, call this soul back from the brink of eternity just as had happened so unexpectedly at Bath. The eyes of the doctor silently implored such intervention, but something beyond Mancini adjured him to do otherwise.

Healing power flowed through Mancini’s body as though he were a conduit relaying divine grace from heaven to earth. But Mancini was beginning to realise that such power could not be exercised on mere human whim. The Giver of this grace had to needfully govern it dispensation. And here, the Giver was clearly saying no.

Mancini raised a hand in blessing, made the sign of the cross and committed the already departed soul of the man into God’s keeping. He saw protest on the taut features of the doctor.

“Leave him now,” he told her gently. “His time had come.”

He left the tent and spent the rest of the afternoon moving around the camp, ministering to the injured and dying. Later, he held a small intimate Mass for the medical team and members of the security forces assigned to guard the relief effort. Revitalised by the True Body of their Saviour, they resumed their duties with a new heart. By now, darkness was falling, and one of Mancini’s bodyguards advised him that a storm was moving in and that it was time to leave for the return flight to Abraham’s Bosom.

Mancini gave no answer. He sensed the destiny of the world riding on the wind.

II

Under the cover of darkness, Jennifer and Maryam left Zoar. Maryam led the way through the trees for about a mile-and-a-half to where a black Land Rover lay hidden beneath a camouflage net interwoven with dead foliage.

“Now,” Maryam said as she climbed into the passenger seat, “you recall the route?”

“Burned into my mind,” Jennifer confirmed. In just a few short hours, she had memorised a network of back roads and lanes to the bridge where she and Maryam intended to intercept the train. The exercise had been an intense one, but Jennifer’s military training had proven more than equal to the challenge.

Shunting the Land Rover into gear, she eased it from its hiding place and wove in and out of the trees to a lane cutting through the dense woodland. They drove without lights, but the way ahead was as distinct as if they had been driving in the middle of the day, thanks to the night vision goggles they were wearing.

“US technology, Israeli military issue,” Maryam revealed. “The colonel has some useful contacts.”

“What would we do without Ebay, eh?” Jennifer remarked wryly, marveling at the superior resolution. And gone was the typically cumbersome design which usually hallmarked such equipment. These goggles might easily be mistaken for a pair of cool shades.

“Although we must be aware that the enemy are not dissimilarly equipped,” Maryam warned.

Jennifer nodded. “And if they’ve got thermal imagers in to the bargain, our engine’s heat signature will stick out like a whore in a nunnery.”

“A danger anticipated by our engineers,” Maryam replied. “Inbuilt coolant pumps deal with ninety-five percent of our heat emissions.”

Jennifer pursed her lips in admiration. “You never cease to amaze.”

“Be prepared, remember?” Maryam smiled.

They both fell silent after the brief exchange, conscious of the need to remain vigilant. For the first couple of miles they encountered nothing except startled wildlife springing out of their way as the Land Rover bore down on them out of the moonless night. Then, as they rounded a curve, and the gradient of the lane rose sharply, the diffuse glow of approaching headlamps could be seen ahead where the lane crested into a bank of light mist.

“Whoa!” Jennifer blurted, and wrenched the Land Rover into the trees where she slid to a halt and switched off the engine. They both held their breath as the gleam of the lights grew brighter and an enemy jeep mounted the ridge before growling its way down the steep slope. But the patrol passed by their position in a matter of seconds and vanished into the darkness.

“Close call,” Jennifer breathed at length. “We’ll give it a few more minutes.”

Once they were sure that the jeep had gone for good, Jennifer turned the key in the ignition and the Land Rover purred into life. She suddenly realized just how quiet the engine sounded and commented on this as she reversed carefully back on to the lane.

“Another gift from our engineers,” Maryam explained matter-of-factly. “Engine mufflers. The closest thing to silent running.”

They took the remainder of their journey as cautiously as possible, repeating their evasive maneuver on several more occasions until, finally, at the end of two hours, Jennifer braked on the weed-ridden arch of the disused bridge. From her earlier briefing back at Zoar, Jennifer had learned that the bridge had once served a busy coal yard fed by the railway. When the line had closed, the yard had shared its fate, and since then the bridge had served no one but the birds and bats who used it as a roosting spot.

They hid the Land Rover in the abandoned yard on the other side of the line, rolling the vehicle into a dilapidated shed full of the smell of decay and ancient coal dust. They covered the Land Rover with an old tarpaulin and then sprinted back to their vantage point on the bridge to wait for the train scheduled to pass beneath it.

“Eleven o’clock,” Jennifer noted, examining the luminescent hands on her wristwatch. “Another hour.”

She sat down and leaned back against the parapet, removing a packet of mints from her pocket, a parting gift from Aaron.

“So, Lieutenant,” she broached, offering one of the sweets to Maryam. “What’s your story? How come you got hooked up with the good colonel?”

Taking the mint, Maryam hesitated, frowning, as if trying to gauge whether Jennifer was serious or not. Jennifer shrugged at her doubtful mien. “Well, I guess there’s always I-spy.”

III

The security forces had vehemently protested, just as Mancini knew they would. But he had remained resolute in his insistence on staying at the camp, and the soldiers had finally ceded to his demand and set to forming a tight cordon around the pontiff’s tent.

Daniel had been far from happy with the arrangement either, only grudgingly accepting it after Mancini agreed to have hourly transmissions sent to Abraham’s Bosom to verify that he was safe.

“Every hour, on the dot,” Daniel had grumbled anxiously. “Otherwise I’ll personally fly out there myself to bring you home.”

“And of that I have no doubt,” Mancini had smiled. “Don’t worry, my friend. I am in the hands of God.There is no safer place.”

Handing the mic back to the pilot of the helicopter, Mancini had glimpsed the look of uncertainty clouding the stocky young soldier’s expression.

“You think me to be just a crazy old man, too, Sergeant Devane?” Mancini had asked softly. The sergeant had appeared startled, trying to mask his obvious doubt behind a contrived smile. But Mancini had patted his shoulder.

“No, no, come now, Andrew. Speak your mind. We are all friends here.”

The smile vanished as Devane sighed. “It’s my job to take risks, Holy Father, however great. I’m just finding the reasons for this one a little hard to understand, that’s all.”

“As well you might,” Mancini acknowledged quietly, leaning back into the embrace of the seat usually reserved for the co-pilot. “As well you might.”

He steepled his gnarled hands, pressing the tips of his index fingers into the corners of his eyes as he considered his response.

“Andrew, “ he said at last, “do you remember what the Apostle Peter did in the Garden of Gethsemane?”

Devane nodded. “He attacked the men sent to arrest Our Lord.”

“Why?”

“Because he did not realise that Jesus had to suffer and die as the Scriptures had foretold.”

“And do you think that even after the Lord had commanded him to put away his sword, Peter was any more enlightened?”

Devane pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I guess not, Holy Father.”

“And you guess right, Andrew. Our Lord’s reasoning was totally beyond the comprehension of Peter and the other apostles. Their natural instincts were fight or flight. What Jesus did made no sense to them whatsoever.”

Mancini smiled. “All I ask, Sergeant, is that you trust God even if you do not really understand. And I promise you that, in time, all will be made clear.”

IV

“I was born in Algiers,” Maryam began her story, huddled next to Jennifer on the bridge. “Then, when I was five years old, my parents moved to Paris where my father, a communications engineer, had found work.

“Back then, French society was beginning to simmer with ill-feeling, a burgeoning animosity towards immigrant communities, and our neighbourhood was no exception. People resented the perception of foreigners invading their country, stealing their jobs and housing. Race riots were not uncommon. I can remember my mother being out of her mind with worry one day when the news reported running battles between police and neo-fascist demonstrators along the route that my father normally took home from work. She telephoned all the hospitals when he did not arrive on time. It was three hours before he reached home. He had been forced to detour and got himself caught in a traffic gridlock. By then, my mother was near to collapse.”

Maryam inhaled deeply. “My faith had always been a major part of my life, had shaped who I was. But living within such a society made me all the more zealous for my beliefs. I do not mean fanaticism, I mean passion. When the government barred all religious symbolism and introduced a secular dress code within school, I deliberately flouted the new law and marched into class wearing my hijab. Hostility either makes or breaks faith. By the express mercy of Allah, my own faith grew stronger in spite of the adversity.

“And then, after everything - Martinez. One Friday, very soon after his Strasbourg press conference, I came to understand what it meant to be part of his new, perfect world order. Armed police stormed our mosque as though we were common criminals, gunning down the imam, tearing up centuries-old copies of the Koran, herding the worshippers together like cattle before cold-bloodedly butchering them where they stood, my parents included. A few of us escaped, but our lives had changed forever. Many sold out to Martinez, but those of us who refused were forced into hiding.

“It was shortly afterwards that I encountered the colonel. My brother, Ahmed, and I were in an alleyway, scouring the waste bins at the rear of a restaurant for scraps. We were so hungry, so desperate, that we never saw the three policemen creeping up on us. They struck Ahmed unconscious, cornered me, and I had nowhere to run. They told me that if I was not prepared to have the new identification implant sanctioned by Martinez, then I should not expect to eat. And then one began to remove his belt as his colleagues looked on, scorning my plight.

“I was on the very verge of being violated, of having the very last vestige of my dignity stolen from me, when Colonel Levi and several of his men appeared as if by a miracle. In an instant, my fortunes changed, and the colonel accepted me into his cell like a daughter. I was filled with so much anger, so much hatred. But the colonel taught me how to temper the will for revenge so that it does not make us become as inhuman as the very evil we are pledged to fight.”

Maryam shrugged herself out of her memories. “And the rest, as you would say, is history.”

Jennifer didn’t know what to say as from far away, the rumble of a train drifted on the light breeze, urging Maryam to her feet.

“One day, when we are less pressed for time, you must tell me your own story, Major.” She extended her hand and hauled Jennifer up in a sign of comradeship. “But right now, let us strike a blow for the justice of God, and rescue your friend.”