Father Molinari stood before an open pair of French doors in his Vatican office, gazing out on the Eternal City with his cell phone in hand, watching a phalanx of rain clouds lumbering in from the Tyrrhenian Sea. He had one more call to make. Then he could have a nice strong cup of chamomile tea, and if the good Lord was willing, finally get some rest.
The buildings of the city were hemorrhaging heat through a million small leaks and radiating even more from their red tile roofs. The rising calories wrinkled the air until it seemed that all the lights below were twinkling Christmas decorations.
His office at the Vatican tended to be on the chilly side and tonight the air had a particular bite to it, but he welcomed the bracing snap of winter weather. It was a sobering shock to his system, a sort of meteorological hair shirt, he thought with a wry smile.
Molinari looked at his watch. He wore an old Rolex, an Oyster Perpetual Explorer, a relic of the Fifties that used to be his father’s. Gabriel Molinari gave it to him on the day he was ordained. It was the same model that Sir Edmund Hillary wore when he climbed Mount Everest, so Molinari figured it was good enough for hiking up and down the stone staircases of Vatican City. It didn’t have any bells or whistles; it just kept good time, so he had learned to do time zone calculations in his head. It was trickier to do in the summertime because New Orleans ran on daylight savings time and Haiti didn’t. But this time of year, the two locales were in sync.
It was Tuesday, January 12, a few minutes before 10 p.m. That made it nearly 4 p.m. in Port-au-Prince and almost 5 p.m. in New Orleans. The weatherman on cable TV said it was a beautiful day in Port-au-Prince.
I suppose that’s something to be thankful for, Molinari thought dryly, and punched the phone number of the man in Haiti into his cell phone, then pressed Send. He didn’t have the number on speed dial or in his directory, just in case, although he knew that his phone logs were available if someone wanted to spy on him. Still, he reasoned that if they went so far as to look through his phone logs, his goose would already be cooked.
His new cell phone still seemed like a science fiction gadget to him. As a matter of fact, they all did. Pressing Send on his first one had taken him a long time to get used to. The first few weeks he had his old flip phone he’d keep forgetting, and just dial the number and hold the thing to his ear, waiting forever for the damn call to go through. Father Simone finally realized what was going on and came to his rescue, showing him the digital ropes.
He’s been a Godsend, Molinari thought, as he listened to the call ring on the other end. All these years shuttling back and forth to New Orleans, stuck in the middle and playing dumb and taking the heat from Nano, Simone had done a yeoman’s job. His rewards would be bountiful when all this was finally over, and God willing it would all be over very soon. The man in Port-au-Prince finally answered the phone.
Father Simone was working in his adjacent office by the glow of his screensaver, methodically catching up on a stack of boring paperwork that had been clogging his in-basket for the last week or so.
You would think this could all be done by inter-office email, he groused to himself, but no. The powers that be were in love with paper. Parchment was coded into their very DNA, he was sure of it; even resorting to plain old paper must have been an anguishing sacrifice for them, back in the day. A lot of the old-timers around the Vatican still looked on the computer as the work of the Devil.
On that point, Simone could agree with them. It erased time, distance and privacy, and had the power to link all the evil that was in the world. It could also link all that was good, but marshaling goodness was like herding cats while evil craved agreement and enjoyed marching in lockstep. On balance, he concluded, the scales were tipped toward darkness.
They always were; it was part of the entropy of the universe. Things fell apart. It was always much easier to destroy than it was to create, always easier to tear something down than to build it. The people back home in America used to say that it took a dozen men to build a barn and just one jackass to knock it down, which was true. The entire game was rigged to go downhill, and in the grand scheme of things hope amounted to little more than whistling in the dark. Goodness was a scam and heaven was a house of cards; reading the Book of Devlin had taught him that. No wonder the Cabal of Cardinals kept it under lock and key. And it was a good thing that Father Simone had the key.
Molinari’s muffled conversation penetrated his dyspeptic ruminations. He put his pen down and tilted his head to listen.
“The sacrifice was dreadfully painful, but necessary,” Molinari was saying.
Simone had a good idea what he was talking about, and to whom he was talking. He silently got up from his chair, carefully rolling it back on the worn rug. He slipped off his shoes and walked in his stocking feet toward the interoffice door. It was three centuries old and sported a massive keyhole. He got down on one knee and peered through. It was an old Vatican tradition, even before the Borgias threw their private parties featuring the scandalous Dance of the Walnuts. Oh, the things you’ll see, he thought, peeking through a Vatican keyhole...
Molinari was pacing his office, his cell phone pressed to his ear. “It grieves me as well, but the time draws near! The fate of billions of souls is at stake.”
He stopped at his desk and picked up a color laser printout from an open file folder. He studied the reproduction of the eight-by-ten glossy photo as he listened to the chatter at the other end, nodding in commiseration. His contact in Haiti was understandably concerned.
“Just three more months,” he assured the man, “and we will have beaten the Devil for all time.” Molinari put the photo back in the file and closed it. “The Lord will triumph, my friend.”
He said his goodbyes, and then he ended the call and put his phone on the desk. He didn’t like carrying the thing around with him. He picked up the file and slipped it in his desk drawer, then turned the key of the pickproof lock and clipped it to a silver chain around his neck. It was time for some tea and then to bed, though he doubted he’d be able to sleep.
He glanced at Simone’s office door. It was closed, but he could see light streaming under the door and leaking through the big keyhole. The poor man was still slaving away, Molinari thought. God bless him.
God help us, the man in Haiti thought.
The sun lay golden and low over the western sea. He was parked along the fence at Port-au-Prince International Airport, watching the planes come in. The woman’s Learjet was due to arrive any minute now.
He had a massive headache, made worse by the drumming and singing that had been going on all afternoon, somewhere in the neighborhood nearby. The tourists would simply think that they were happy island people, like the kompa band at the international terminal, but he knew better. The loas were being summoned; they would ride many people tonight. The island was in turmoil, and trouble walked the land. Zamba Boukman had come back home.
It had been a clear, balmy afternoon, but it was starting to get hazy now. The smog would be back tomorrow, mingling with the haze, and so now was the time to catch whatever fresh sea breeze that he could. Cooking fires lingered in the air as they always did. They blended with the aroma of jet fuel and diesel exhaust, along with the sewers and the gutters and the festering puddles and trash. Haiti had its own signature brand of musk, and it hung in the tropical atmosphere like a primordial funk. Some people called it the aroma of poverty, but he knew what it really was. It was the stench of fear.
He held his cell phone in the same fist that he was slowly and methodically rubbing against his forehead. It’s been a long day, and it will surely be a longer night, he thought, moving his fist in small circles. As he did, the sun glinted off his gold Rosicrucian ring.