Chapter Five

I

Jennifer’s head broke the surface and she hauled in a burning lungful of freezing air as she heard the throb of the gunships fading into the distance.

The scenario had played out just as she had always intended. If the worst were to happen in a combat situation, she hadn’t wanted anyone jeopardizing the outcome of a mission out of concern for her own personal survival.

None of the battlegroup had ever known that Jennifer had disabled her homing beacon ages ago.

The sea was unbearably cold. The chill was beginning to penetrate even the thick insulation of her flight suit, threatening to seize her limbs with the numbness rapidly spreading now beyond her hands and feet.

Jennifer inflated her life jacket and kicked out, back towards the shore of France.

II

The black helicopter came in low over a copse, threadbare here at the threshold of winter, its few remaining bits of foliage torn away by the violent downdraught of the chopper blades.

Mancini could barely conceal his puzzlement as the helicopter touched down in an isolated farmyard beyond the cluster of trees. Fields seemed to stretch forever in all directions, accentuating the sense of seclusion. But no one was forthcoming enough to answer the silent query etched on to Mancini’s tired face.

The helicopter taxied smoothly into the shelter of a large barn, an oblong of unpainted corrugated steel mottled with rust. The distinctive throb of the engine faded into an ever decreasing whine as it was shut down, and for several seconds all fell silent. Mancini felt momentarily awkward, as if the onus were on him to initiate some kind of response to their arrival in the middle of nowhere.

He was just about to open his mouth when whatever he was going to say was forestalled by a distant thud which sent a shudder through the hull of the stationary helicopter. Finally, one of his dour escorts reassured the increasingly puzzled priest.

“Just a few more minutes, Father,” he said crisply, “while we ride the elevator.”

It all made no sense to Mancini until he glanced out the window and realised that the aircraft was slowly sinking into the ground. An unprecedented wave of claustrophobia briefly gripped him. He felt himself breaking out into a cold sweat, could hear his own breathing reduced to shallow, inadequate gasps. A swift arrow prayer to the Virgin saw his condition ease, and the panic attack passed as quickly as it had begun.

The helicopter was descending an obviously manmade shaft, lined with grey metal plates secured in a patchwork by enormous rivets. From somewhere deep below, Mancini could hear the steady whir of machinery, and this noise grew in volume, climaxing in a resounding clank and a thud as the shaft opened out into a large hangar area where the helicopter came to a halt.

“Welcome to Abraham’s Bosom, Father,” the more talkative of the secret service men said.

III

It was late morning before Jennifer came to, chilly salt mist wrapping itself around her exhausted frame.

Shivering uncontrollably, she raised her head and winced. She felt as though she had been in a fight with an armoured personnel carrier and lost. The trail of dried blood down one side of her face told her that she must have hit her head against a rock or something. She recalled a particularly large swell driving her swiftly towards the shore, then nothing.

All in all, she was lucky to be alive. Although just how long such luck could last here on the enemy’s own ground remained to be seen.

One thing was certain. She would have to get up and active if she was to stand any chance of survival. She not only had to evade detection, but try somehow to ward off the more adverse effects of the cold.

Jennifer clambered to her feet and surveyed her immediate surroundings. She had been washed up on a narrow shale beach hemmed in completely by vaunting, near-vertical cliffs. The only way was up, and the only promise of ascent that presented itself to her scrutiny was a cleft in a slightly less steep part of the frowning forehead of granite at the far end of the shore.

Certainly enough to keep her busy for the next hour or three.

IV

“Abraham’s Bosom is a relic of the Cold War. Built more than fifty years ago and fully operational till the Wall came down. If the Soviets had ever tried anything, this is where resistance would have been coordinated from.”

Mancini’s escort and impromptu tour guide, a short, disheveled young man called Warren Shiminsky, halted at a door and placed the flat of his hand against a rectangular scanner. The old priest regarded the device with suspicion as it glowed pale green under Warren’s hand, and the young technician noticed his wary expression.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he sought to quickly reassure Mancini, “and it is very similar. Except that this one reads only biometrics and not microchips, believe me.”

Mancini felt suddenly stupid. He was so used to such technology being in the service of evil that he had become blind to its intrinsic neutrality.

“Yes, of course,” he acknowledged. “I’m sorry. Please, do continue.”

The door slid back and Mancini followed Warren into a second corridor. Like the first, it was awash with bright fluorescent light, and rang to the sound of their feet on the floor of close-fitting steel gridwork.

“So by the early nineties, this whole complex was pretty much redundant. Little more than a museum piece earmarked for parties of schoolkids to visit. It was largely abandoned except for a skeleton maintenance staff who kept the place ticking over. A rather expensive white elephant for the powers that be.”

They had reached another door, and Mancini watched as Warren went through the same security procedure. The door opened with a hiss of compressed air on to a stairwell.

“But as it turned out, this place wasn’t such a waste of taxpayers’ money after all,” Warren grinned as they descended a further level. “A veritable Godsend,

I’m sure you’d agree, Father.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Mancini agreed. “Nothing takes the Almighty by surprise. Not even Martinez.”

Arriving at the foot of the stairwell, Warren shook Mancini’s hand before leaving him in the charge of an armed agent.

“I’m afraid my security clearance ends at this point,” he explained. “But anytime you’re passing Communications and Technical - “

“I’ll make a point of it,” Mancini promised with a smile, warming to the young man whose easy manner reminded him so much of Sebastian.

“And I’ll make you a decaf. But don’t hold that against me, okay?”

V

Jennifer let out a yell and found herself sliding back down the cliff face in a shower of loose stones.

Pressing her boots hard against the rough surface of the rock, they somehow served as a brake, and she came to a stop thirty or forty feet up. She risked a glance down at the harsh shoreline awash now with crashing breakers and steadied her irregular breathing.

It had taken her the best part of an hour to make it this far, wedging her lithe figure as firmly as she could into the long, tapering fault in the face of the cliff and, slowly but surely, inching her way higher.

Now, having encountered an unexpected subsidence in the million year old geological layer cake, Jennifer’s hands were bleeding, and her ascent had been put back at least another hour.

Feeling drops of rain on her face, Jennifer looked up and saw that the sky had turned an even more sullen grey. Slate coloured clouds were bubbling in rapidly from the ocean behind her, avowing a torrential downpour. The result would be too catastrophic to even contemplate if the deluge found her still on a cliff already slick with sea spray.

She dug her boot hard into a nub of rock and was just about to heave herself up towards the next available handhold, when Jennifer heard something else above the noise of the breakers and the keening wind.

Voices....

VI

“Holy Father.”

Mancini clung to the hand of the old man in the wheelchair, ignoring the two secret service men who flanked him protectively in the intimate, wood-paneled reception chamber. Not that they appeared to be nonplussed by Mancini’s show of emotion.

After all, the Awakening had put spirituality right back up there with Gucci in the fashion stakes.

“Holy Father,” Mancini whispered again, moved to tears. “Forgive me.”

The sense of failure which Mancini felt was so overwhelming, so sudden, now that he was in the presence of the Church’s supreme earthly figurehead. The loss was no longer merely personal. Mancini was convinced that he had failed Christ himself. But if the world-weary priest had been expecting a rebuke, it never came. Instead, he felt two hands close over his own, and a brotherly kiss planted on his head.

“There is nothing to forgive, Edward. Nothing.”

Mancini looked up into the eyes of His Holiness Pope John XXIV. The man he was privileged to call friend as well as father.

“Now,” the elderly pontiff smiled warmly, “enough of the formality.” He clutched Mancini’s hands ever more tightly. “It is so wonderful to see you, Edward.”

Mancini nodded slowly. “You too, Daniel,” he echoed the sentiment. “You too.”

It was the moment that Mancini had never dared hope for. He had heard rumours back on the Continent, talk of a bold rescue attempt by British special forces. But when all the newspaper stands had triumphantly reported the sacking of the Eternal City, with pictures of the Vatican in flames, Mancini could only pray that the rumours were true.

There were none of the traditional vestments to mark Daniel Monaghan’s papal authority. Just a thick woolen pullover and grey slacks. Only the gold Fisherman’s Ring betrayed the balding old man’s spiritual primacy. That, and the irrepressible aura of kindliness which served to enhance his natural joviality.

“You must be tired, my friend,” he acknowledged with typical concern. “Get some rest. We have much to talk about, but it can wait a while longer.”

Tired, yes. Mancini had never known weariness such as he felt now. But the hunger was unprecedented, too. Had he ever been so famished for the Bread of Heaven?

“And then I will hear your confession,” Daniel vowed, “before we celebrate the Holy Mass.”

Mancini smiled. Daniel had always known him better than he knew himself.

VII

The rain was pouring sharply now, and Jennifer knew that she was in serious trouble. Catch-22. Stay put, or climb. Either way, she was almost certain to find herself hurtling headlong to a horrible death on the rocks below.

And the voices directly above her had increased in volume and urgency. Some would have said that she was, very literally, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. In spite of her impossible predicament, Jennifer smiled wryly.

But her grim humour was short-lived, evaporating with a gasp as her foot slipped on the slick surface and she nearly fell. She clung to the cliff for all she was worth, hearing her nails break, and somehow locating a jagged crevice into which she rammed her fingers. She ignored the searing pain and the warm flow of blood as her fingers were torn by the razor-edged rock.

If the Grim Reaper wanted her, he had a damned good fight on his hands!

Although her death was purely academic, she was sure. Her grasp of French was lousy, but she could tell from the volume and tone of the voices that her presence had not gone undetected. One way or another, her fate was sealed.

Battered by the downpour, Jennifer felt her hold slipping once more and realised that this was it. Lady Luck had finally deserted her....

The rope ladder missed her by inches and Jennifer blinked the rain from her eyes and stared at it as though it were a mirage. It dangled about a foot or so to her left, tantalising her with its promise of deliverance.

But deliverance to what? When, after God knew how many years of torture and humiliation she was longing for death, would she curse the day she had fled from its welcoming embrace?

She was almost at the point of no return, and as she hesitated, all of Jennifer’s instincts screamed at her to reach for the ladder.

She was only seconds from oblivion when another voice joined those of her instincts, yelling down to her in perfect English.

“For pity’s sake, hurry! We don’t have much time!”