Jade

JADE

by Bradley S. O’Leary and Edward Lee

Published by Bradley S. O’Leary at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Bradley S. O'Leary

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Adult Reading Material

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

The old woman was kneeling in the middle of a broken future she could never have imagined thirty-five years ago when she looked down off the balcony onto Van Duyet Street in August 1963. Then, she’d been something close to a queen. She’d been the most powerful woman in the country. But now the truth and the decades brought their recompense.

Not a queen anymore, no. Now she more resembled a peasant woman in a simple robe and shawl, haggard by the weight of her seventy-five years.

Back then she’d helped rule a nation. Now all she did was pray.

She’d prayed for hours today. Sometimes she prayed for days. Mea culpa… Her knees ached against the splintered hardwood floor. Even in her advanced age, she welcomed the pain as an oblation. Hand-dipped tapers from the village filled the small room, their tiny flickers of light forever attempting to lick the shadows off the walls. She liked the sweet scents of the candles—rich aromas of bayberry and sandalwood—that and the salt-scent of the surf off the Tyrrhenian Sea when the wind was right. It was about all she had now—and perhaps all she deserved.

Armed men patrolled the grounds—Corsicans, she supposed, or maybe Sicilians ordered here by contacts from the United States. She never spoke to them. It was a weedy rundown estate—which she’d named the Domain of the Serene Light—with a large main house of stucco and block and a few smaller buildings. The estate sat secluded in the high hills, near the fleck of a town called Piccirilli at the very northwest fringes of Rome. Most of the villagers didn’t even know who she was, and those who had heard the rumors didn’t care. Time and fate have erased me, she thought during a pause to her prayers. I’m being wiped away, like chalk from slate… The house had been ransacked a few times in the early eighties—scavengers, no doubt, hunting for her spoils of the glory days. The armed guards had appeared shortly thereafter. But there were no spoils now—she’d given them all up, all the money and the things that that money had bought. Her confessor had said it was a step toward repentance.

She could only hope.

The gold and the casino shares, the numbered accounts from her profits of governing—she’d turned her back on it all, choosing instead to live on the modest interest of her family’s estate. She thought of Matthew forsaking the wealth of his post as tax collector to follow Jesus, and wondered if she could be half as worthy. Would God forgive her, and reward her for stopping the Anti-Christ? Or would she be eternally punished for what she did in His name?

Mea maxima culpa…

Her prayer time was over. The old woman gritted her teeth as she stood, then feebly crossed herself as her bones ticked. A large crucifix stood before her on the family altar, but in spite of her Catholicism, a few stray wisps of long-abandoned culture remained: a clipped apricot branch in the potiche vase (if it bloomed, she could expect good luck for a year), a brass censer for burning paper (the smoke of which was said to carry prayers), the screens of fabric mounted in beechwood frames, each set at different angles (for evil spirits could only move in straight lines). She stepped back with a sigh. Sometimes the days seemed to never end. Chau, her dowdy yet loyal housemaid, would be coming soon with a light meal of pho soup, tea, and banh la lieu sweet rice, but the old woman didn’t feel the least bit hungry. This week’s newspapers lay in a disheveled stack on a side table by the window: the Nguoi Viet, Nhan Dan, the International Herald Tribune, and Il Messeggero. She’d already read them, at least enough of them. Why bother anymore? she wondered. One day, she supposed, the truth would come. It would come knocking on her door like a khmoc—the mythic ghoul of her homeland—to kill her, bury her, then consume her after she’d had sufficient time to rot. Who could say what payment sin demanded? Or was it sin at all?

For a moment, then, the old woman felt dead—

—and—

—and was somewhere else now…

—the monk sat motionless as he burst into flames.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t flinch.

Opened eyes fixed fast as a long hush held dominion over the street. Only the crackle of fire could be heard, nothing more. The faded hyacinth-hued raiments of the Buddhist priest didn’t seem to burn at all, nor did the man himself; instead he remained sedately frozen in the tantric position, hands steepled in prayer, and his own eyes wide open as he ascended into his highest chakra…

…peering ever forth past the world to witness the sadhana—the sacred union of the deity and deitess. The sacred peace.

First a minute, then another minute. The monk did not burn, even in the growing cocoon of fire whose heat now rose to such a degree that the crowd peddled backward to keep from being scorched…

Several government policemen, in their blazing white uniforms, attempted to render aid but were pushed back by the crowd amid a chatter of protest. Vietnamese urbanites composed most of the crowd but there were also a handful of ARVN troops, some envoys from the Korean Embassy across the street, and the all-too-familiar journalists from the foreign wire services—all crowded around to bear the grim witness of yet another self-immolation. These acts had become a regular event since May, when loyal, Catholic government-led troops had opened fire on and killed nine rallying Buddhists in Hue. They’d been protesting government restrictions, which made it illegal to fly the Buddhist flag on Buddha’s birthday. Several killed were children. The first immolation, on June 11, had involved a high-echelon monk who’d ordered his acolytes to douse him with five gallons of gasoline. Then he ignited himself. The monk, astonishingly, had burned down completely to ash—everything except his heart. The same thing had happened several times since then.

Here, though, a pair of 716th MPs dashed over from the United States Operations Mission and shoved through the standing crush of figures, brandishing fire extinguishers. The Americans, of course, did not understand, nor would they ever, for this was not of their realm. In a few gaseous gusts, the fire was put out. Perhaps the very act closed some kind of interstice between this world and the other…for now the monk lay slung over, dead and blackened by crisped char. A stench of roasted meat wafted up, pressing against the onlookers and pasting sickened expressions onto the faces of the two U.S. military police. One of the Americans paled at the stench, then turned aside to vomit.

The interstice closed, slammed shut like a heavy vault door.

Yet another door remained open, the central door to the balcony of the gleaming white Presidential Palace. There, aloft above the masses and the street, a slim, beauteous woman peered down. At first glance, she might appear as an intricate figurine in her shimmering silk ao dai gown, graceful body-contours, and sparkling emerald jewelry, but then the figurine moved closer to the veranda. Straight sable-black hair framed a severe yet regally alluring face. She was looking at the macabre spectacle on the street below: the foolish crowd, the fading tendrils of smoke, and the monk’s blackened corpse.

Another one, she thought. In time, perhaps they’ll burn themselves out of existence—then the blight will be over. We can use the relocation camps for something more productive…

On the street, an American truck pulled up, then the two MPs took to the grisly chore of hoisting the dead monk’s body up into the back bed. When they’d finished, their hands came away black—

—and—

—she was back…

The memory and its visual undertow snapped. A phone rang distantly, then a knock did indeed come to the door.

But it was not the khmoc; it was Chau, and what she brought was not lunch on a tray but dread in her eye.

It’s him, Chau whispered.

Him, the old woman thought. No, time and fate had not erased her at all. Folly. A pipedream.

He says he would like to speak with you, Chau continued in her sibilant whisper. He says you may be in danger.

The old woman briefly closed her eyes and saw the delicate monster of her former self, the matriarch whose word brought death and whose gleaming eyes reflected so many men on fire…

Tell him I’m not here. Tell him I’m dead, the old woman ordered her housemaid. If time and fate will not erase me, then history will judge me. It’s God’s will. I am prepared to pay what I must. I don’t need a reporter for that. It’s all God, nothing but God…

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their

Creator with certain inalienable rights."

—Ho Chi Minh, 1945

CHAPTER ONE

(I)

Was it a dream?

He stands in some abyssal vale whose graven dark oozes crimson mists. He thinks of sepulchers and uteri, of palls and wedding gowns and semen and grave-dirt. The commingling of opposites, the shuddering contrast of utter truth.

The vale’s silence descends…like death. It’s an atrocious divergence against the fullness of his life’s revelations: the verity of his love and all the vision that his love once gave him. But then the vision contorts. Now he sees severed heads tossed into pits of lime. He sees bloated corpses washed up to burst on beaches of clean white sand, children raped in trenches, and the Ben Suc Viet Cong catching babies on bayonets.

My God, he whispered when he awoke.

The three-hundred-year-old grandfather clock struck 2:00 a.m. as the man drifted down the stairs. Soon, he found himself standing before the bookshelf in his quiet, dimly lit study. On the third shelf, he’d extracted a number of tomes on history and political analysis to reveal the face of a wired and digitalized fireproof document safe.

I can’t, he thought.

Solitude and the eerie hush of the house seemed to perch on his shoulder as he punched in the combination that only he knew—9-3-37. A tiny light blinked green, then a beep resounded.

And he opened the door to the safe.

I can’t bring myself to read this again…

He could see it there, in the safe’s black maw. All he need do was reach in and remove it, but then it would be easier, and less painful, to shove his hand in a slag furnace. It had been a decade since he’d read the thirty-five-year-old diary.

When he set his hand on it, his soul felt drawn, quartered, and piked like the hordes of the enemies of Tamerlane. His spirit rent as raw meat on a butcher’s block. His life’s essence burned to the finest ash.

Perhaps this was his punishment for his sins—and his willing loss of innocence.

His heart slogged in his chest, and as he picked up the diary his hands began to tremble like an alcoholic in withdrawal. The diary’s cover—fashioned from the skin of a pit viper—faintly crinkled as it opened, and suddenly he was looking right back into the vale of his nightmare.

No, he thought. But…

Yes.

First, the letter, tipped in before the diary’s first entry. The florid blue script read:

I’m leaving this behind so that one day you can tell our daughter, and our son too…if he lives.

I have nothing to hide from them or from you. The ancient ghost-spirits whisper to me, they chatter of the death of my country and the darkness of the future. I hate the things I see. I’ve seen whole values of a culture corrode to dust. First, when I was growing up, I only saw ideals. I only saw the black and the white.

But everything is really gray.

I am not a Communist, and I am not a Catholic.

I’m a patriot. I’ve done many things for my country, none that I’m ashamed of. And I know too well what the Catholics and the French were trying to do in South Vietnam—to preserve it as a puppet state. The United States prefers to use us as tools and to make promises they’ll never keep. We are yellow and they are white. No one trusts them and no one trusts McCaffrey. And you should know why.

I am an anomaly just as this country is an anomaly. I am a perversion of the order and the rule…but so are you.

I don’t know if I’ll be alive when you return. That’s why I’m leaving this. When I’m gone, I want you to take our daughter and our son to America. Some of what I’ve written will verify what you either already know or sorely suspect.

The rest of it you could probably never imagine.

I long for my soul to touch you one more time,

Jade

A single tear welled in the man’s eye as he stared at the waterleaf sheet. This note, and the diary behind it, was the last remnant of his love.

Then he opened the book to a random entry…

April 11, 1963: I spotted the captain almost immediately, and I caught him looking at me from my first note to the last. Most of the time my case briefings were very accurate; not only did the captain attend the piano recital as I was told, the photograph in his file had been taken very recently. It seemed odd, though—he looked younger in real life. He nearly had the face of a child.

Like the child I had been once?

By now I’d proven myself well to my superiors, and my cover as a concert pianist and daughter of a French war hero worked perfectly. The captain was U.S. Army, another of what the Americans liked to refer to as a technical advisor. There were sixteen thousand of them in our country now, and if the war didn’t end, there might be a million. Funny how the Americans would always invent names to suit their purposes, like some petty bid for absolution. Burning a village down was rendering the perimeter safe. Forcing families from their homes was security relocation. And now this: training the men of Vietnam to kill each other was technical advice.

The captain wore his Class-A uniform. Shining silver bars on the epaulets. Combat Infantry Badge. The Rifle Expert award. I’d seen all of that before. The Americans gave the C.I.B. to anyone who sets foot in a combat zone. It didn’t matter if they’d ever seen combat. It didn’t matter if they’d never seen death.

I’ve seen death, and he is my lover.

I had just started my first sonata when I spotted him—I knew he was the one even before I saw the youthful gleam of his face. It was the ASA patch on his jacket shoulder. We get lots of them. The eagle’s claw snatching the lightning bolt from the sky.

Army Security Agency.

My fingers glissaded over the ivory keys. The notes flowed like cascades of spring water, singing through the notes. Music was my magic. Making music was the only thing I could keep for myself. The only gift that was pure, unstained, honest.

The applause sounded like surf when I’d finished. I drifted about the crowd, then, to receive the typical compliments and accolades, and all the while I noted how intently the captain’s eyes drifted with me. I made him work for it at first. Bait taunting the fish. He’d shoulder his way through the crowd, and just as he got close, I’d move somewhere else. But eventually, I let him catch me. He was handsome, bright in the eye, and very smart. But, like most Americans, he was somewhat shy. So I asked him if he’d like to escort me back to my room at the hotel for a drink. His face gave up a bit of shock, and then came more nervousness when I took hold of his hand as we walked out of the atrium.

There were cabs and pedis waiting outside the hall. How much longer till he gets it? I wondered. Of course, it was the strange land and the strange people. I wondered how he acted around women in his own country.

I won’t bite, I said when he got into the cab, and it was difficult for me not to laugh when I’d said it. Soon we were kissing in the backseat, and for good measure, I took his hand and placed it on my breast…

I’d already been given the room key by the case officer, who’d had someone else rent the room earlier in the day. I took my young captain up the back stairs, to avoid being seen by the clerk.

Why are we going this way? he asked.

The view, I told him. From the back stairs you can see the Xa Loi Shrine. It’s beautiful at night, with all the candles burning inside…

When we got to the second-floor landing we could see it in the distance, past the floodlights of Diem’s palace. But the captain’s shyness had faded. As I gazed out at the Xa Loi, about the only thing left in my country that hadn’t been molested, the captain’s hands were sliding up my skirt. I led him inside, amused by his crude groping, and in time, I began to enjoy it.

Some part of me always did.

I want to make love to you now, he said when we were in the room.

Don’t be in such a hurry, I said. I laughed and playfully pushed him away, then yanked him back by his tie and began to loosen it. I want it to be special. I’m going into the bathroom to freshen up, and while I’m doing that, I want you to take off your clothes and get into bed.

He agreed with a sly grin. Now the boyish timidity had reformed into something else: lust.

I went into the bathroom and slowly stripped, looking at my beauty in the mirror. I stood there for a while, smoking a Seven Filter cigarette, tapping my foot as I waited. Then, through the door, I heard him get in the bed.

He would soon be my lover—mine and death’s.

It didn’t take long.

Goddamn! he shouted.

Naked, I rushed from the bathroom. What’s wrong?

He sat bolt upright in the bed, feeling at his back with an angry expression. I’ve been bit!

Let me see.

He stood up, bashfully covering his genitals with his hands. I examined his back and said, I don’t see anything.

I’m telling you something bit me!

I threw back the bedcovers and—

The captain gasped.

A tiny snake, less than six inches long, squirmed in the bed.

Oh, shit! A snake! I just got bit by a snake!

Laughter fluttered from my mouth. It’s nothing but a baby vine snake. They’re all over the place. They come from the Locust Park.

That damn thing might be poisonous!

They’re not poisonous, I assured him. And it’s just a baby. Its teeth aren’t even big enough to break the skin. I took the room-service menu, scooped the tiny snake off the bed, and dumped it out the window.

There, see? No more snake.

The captain seemed allayed for a moment, one hand still covering his genitals, the other reaching behind him. Are—are you sure it’s not poisonous?

Of course. Grass snakes are like the water beetles and skinks. They’re everywhere, and they’re harmless.

Well… It sure feels like it broke the skin. Felt like a bee sting.

I scoffed and looked at his back again. There’s no bitemark, and even if there was, it can’t hurt you. I brushed my hand along his cheek to further reassure him. Don’t worry, darling, you’re fine. If it were poisonous, you’d be sick by now.

He seemed to consider this and its logic, and at the same time his eyes found their way to my naked body.

Uh, well. I guess you’re right.

Okay, then.

Now his mind was off the tiny snake and on me. On my breasts. On my curves and my lines and my skin. And especially my legs.

We embraced and kissed. His kisses, at first, were skittish, but it didn’t take long before they grew ravenous. His hands explored my body and mine his. Soon we were on the floor, entwined in one another, and he was hard.

I straddled him then, let him penetrate me, and then I was riding him. I was riding the ripples of my pleasure and my greed. I was gasping, my breasts full of heat, my skin sheened in sweat.

It was always the same, all that deep, pure pleasure. Like a wave breaking over my head.

But I needed more.

I couldn’t stop looking into his eyes. My lover always taught me to look for the passion, the need, the transformation. I always had to see it. I had to see that glare of lust looking back at me, and what it changed into when they realized—

God, what’s happ—

Shh! I said, still riding him, stabbing myself on him. My own ecstasies were beginning to crest, and the captain was beginning to die. Now he was bucking between my legs, and this only heightened my pleasure. I pinned his shoulders down, riding him more fiercely and looking right in his eyes.

It’s impossible to describe the transition. It’s spectral, even erotic. When you’re looking in their eyes, you’re looking into their souls. You see the lust burning there like a pair of white-hot ingots, and then it changes, it transforms, the bright light turning dark as they realize they’re dying.

And then the light goes out.

You’re looking right into the essence of their life at the very moment in which it ends.

But death be not proud. The captain was dead but I didn’t let that curtail my own desires…

Later I left his corpse lying there on the floor. Of course, there’d been the tiny bitemark which I assured him didn’t exist. The spot of blood on his back looked like a thistle prick. But that was all it took.

It wasn’t a harmless vine snake that my cover agents had planted in the bed. It was a swamp adder.

The hemolytic venom splits your blood cells until they can no longer deliver oxygen to your body.

Suffocation from the inside out.

I calmly rummaged through his trousers, extracted the items I needed. Ah, my darling captain, I mockingly spoke to the dead man. You’ve left me your wallet and your keys, and these wonderful numbers which are undoubtedly the combination to your office safe. And we’ll try your birth date just in case. I smiled down at the corpse. Your general will never know that we’ve copied the entire report that you so lovingly put together for your Joint Chiefs and President Kennedy, and your actions make you a traitor. And, of course, before your body is found, your keys and your wallet will be back in your pockets, and you will be buried with honors.

I’d turn the wallet and keys over to my case officer in a few hours. The assignment crew had booked the room from Friday till Sunday. Which meant the body wouldn’t be found until Monday morning by the maids. This left plenty of time for our covert operatives to use the keys to get into the captain’s office, open his safe, and photograph the disposition report we knew he was compiling.

You see, we knew exactly what they were doing. Dozens and dozens of reports ordered by President Kennedy, to determine the progress of the war they didn’t even call a war. The rumors were rife: that these reports would assure Kennedy that the war was going well and that the ludicrous Strategic Hamlets Program was successful at thwarting Viet Cong aggression. If what we were hearing from our own sources was true, these reports would form a blueprint for total American withdrawal. And we also knew that there were those in Washington who wanted Diem deposed first. Deposed or, more preferably, dead.

Then Kennedy could walk away with clean hands.

I wiped down the few objects I’d touched with rubbing alcohol; I’m sure that by now the white mice and Civil Guard and Nhu’s secret police had my fingerprints in their records. Then, on the floor, I left a white cotton brassiere, a brand we knew was exclusively sold in the U.S. Post Exchanges.

I was ready to leave, out the backstairs the way I came, back into the embrace of the night. I felt slaked, like a wolf having just devoured a dumb animal, and my heart still hot by the lust and then the death beaming in his eyes. My other lover is death, he takes them from me at the moment of greatest passion.

But before I left, I looked at the corpse one last time. By the way, I said to the dead man. You can call me Jade.

The man felt as though his beating heart had been riven. He stared at the snakeskin diary, felt its slippery bumps between his fingers. What he’d just read was but a single entry, six or seven pages.

But the diary itself was inches thick.

(II)

The clinicians were all the same, and it scarcely mattered that they were the finest in Italy. The country wasn’t enough—We need the finest in the world, Salemi thought, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before God provided just that…

God, or earthly fortune.

Either of the two will be sufficient…

The ample gold crucifix swayed from his neck as Cardinal Arcangelo Salemi sat in the waiting cove, hands clasped and leaning over into his thoughts. The place was the Universale di Roma Policlinico—the University of Rome’s highly esteemed medical center. The entire floor of the cancer wing stood eerily quiet. Even at this hour—well past 2:00 a.m.—one might expect more apparent activity of the night shift. Yet all Salemi remained aurally cognizant of were a few distant echoes of nurses’ heels on the tile floor and the wall clock ticking from the transom of the ward entrance. The plainclothed Swiss Guard at the door of Room 2-16 stood motionless, silent as a creek-mud golem abandoned by its creators. Another guard sat outside in the Cadillac, more than likely just as still, just as silent, waiting for news.

In a sense, all of life revolved around exactly that: waiting. Life waiting for itself to end, to spawn new life. And for men such as Salemi? Life was but a short race of its own, a plea to guide the masses into God’s embrace before the tape at the finish line was severed and life on earth was finished. It begins at the end and it ends at the beginning, he murmured under his breath.

The door guard’s steely eyes darted over. Your Eminence? Did you say something?

A stressed smile, a turn of brow. No, no, son. Just an old man talking to himself.

You look tired, Your Eminence. Would you like me to have some coffee sent up?

No thank you. I’m fine.

Cardinal Salemi counted time—and what this time added up to—in irresolute moments of fear and contemplation. But a man of faith should fear nothing, right? Salemi chuckled without humor. He wished it could be that simple. He honestly did not fear death; death was just a necessary incipient of transcendence. What he feared were the potential outgrowths of death, the byways to certain truths that might be formed. Save for the grace of God, Salemi was not psychic. Instead, he suspected that God’s lips had whispered to him, through the steady tick of the clock, a fraction of a second before he heard the door click open, and the sharp footsteps that followed it.

Salemi knew before he could even be told, and somehow he felt no surprise. Just remorse and the aforementioned fear…

Your Eminence?

The man in the clean white lab coat approached the connected row of seats, and stopped. More clinicians, Salemi thought. Preceptors of medicine fully divorced from civil emotion. Of course. They witnessed death every day—the same way a baker witnessed dough—to the point of cauterization. The lifeblood burned to a halt at the quick.

They weren’t allowed to feel, for that would obfuscate their purpose in the world.

But right now, Salemi wondered about his own purpose…

The man’s blue plastic name tag over a breast pocket stuffed with pens read VALDI/CHIEF OF ONCOLOGY. Perhaps the Americans, slated to arrive tomorrow from Johns Hopkins, would offer better news than what this dry, stocky automaton Valdi was so carefully unwrapping for him.

Wishful thinking…

The granite words jumbled, cold as pithy writing and backing up like a paper in a jammed printer. Salemi understood them without really listening. Instead, his mind darted to more worldly things: the newspapers, the media, Time magazine. In his mind he saw the approach of the Prefect of the Papal Household, and the look in his hooded eyes which would announce the commencement of the most critical duties that Salemi would ever perform in his sixty-four years.

The stone-like words struggled to surface, Dr. Valdi’s lips barely moving, but Salemi still couldn’t quite make them out. He didn’t really need to. A moment later, the doctor offered a sheet of paper. The biopsy report, Salemi realized. The single sheet seemed too thin for so grievous a message. It drooped in his hand like something already dead.

Salemi looked at it.

CYTOLOGY REPORT

CLINICAL CONSULTATION: Large Cell Coaxial Mass

Specify: Right Lung Mass Aspirate:

_ Negative

_ Atypical

x Positive

MICROSCOPIC DESCRIPTION: Right lung aspirate showing numerous malignant large cells, some of which showing prominent nucleoli, whereas others showing large vesicular irregular nuclei, consistent with non-keratinizing carcinoma, probably large-cell differentiated type of adenocarcinoma.

PATHOLOGY DIAGNOSIS: Positive for Malignant Cells.

Then the cardinal, with a pinch of something like annoyance in his expression, glanced back up to the portly doctor. It’s terminal, isn’t it? So why don’t you just come right out and tell me?

Dr. Valdi’s nervousness broke through the professional crust. He began to stutter slightly; his fingers flinched. Your Eminence, though the clinical consultative report is reasonably clear, uh, there are other…avenues of therapeutic reactivity that might propose…ameliorations…regarding the initial diagnoses.

Something happened then that hadn’t happened to Salemi in decades. Anger sparked in his gut. He wanted to jump up, grab Valdi by his clinical collar, and lay a backhand across his face—not exactly befitting of a high member of the Sacred College of Cardinals. It was just that sometimes things seemed so futile. The whole world danced around the truth with such ease, but what Salemi could never reckon was why?

Instead, the cardinal merely rose to his feet, handed back this death warrant to its scrubbed messenger. We are grateful for your efforts, doctor, but—

Another flow of uninterpretable words, which Salemi detected only in splintered fragments, such as, a salvo of chemotherapeutic regimens and retro-oxidant immuno-stimulations and trimatrixed radio toxemia and more and more.

Salemi snapped. Please, doctor. Just tell me.

But, Your Eminence, I—

The anger flashed back. Is he dying? Salemi shouted.

The words rocketed off the hard, impeccable walls. The heads of a few nurses peeked out from doorways. Even the stolid guard turned in his startlement.

The cardinal’s objections seemed to take seconds to fade from its sharp, clap-like echo. I apologize, sir, Salemi began. As you may imagine, I’m not all myself tonight.

Of course, Your Eminence, the doctor bumbled. I only mean that there is always hope. Just as you have seen miracles in your life’s devotion to God, I’ve seen miracles in this hospital. Many times.

That was it. The cause of the doctor’s circumvention. The man was tripping over his own words simply because he could not conceive of a priest who would not look for any and all hope. But none of this was about hope at all. It was about reality in a real world.

Finally the doctor regained his clinical sterility. But to answer your question, Eminence, purely from an index of statistics—yes. I would have to state that this initial prognosis is terminal. The Holy Father is dying.

Salemi nodded. He felt a tear well in his eye and heard a single strained sob escape from the sentry at the door. Very well. But I’m afraid my next question is just as difficult, Dr. Valdi—

Valdi gulped, cleared his throat. Six weeks, perhaps, to a year. But, Your Eminence, that’s only based on a gauged set of stat—

Salemi cut the rest off with a gentle yet deliberate motion of his hand. How is he now?

Sedated, asleep.

The Pope’s personal physician has been attending a medical conference in Brussels but he’s been recalled and will arrive tomorrow afternoon. Several deacons of the Prefecture of the Papal Household are already on their way here. The prefect himself will be here within the hour. The deacons will remain available round the clock, to see to the Holy Father’s needs when he awakes. A guard will stand at the door at all times. If you need me for anything, tell the guard. I must return to the Papal Palace right now and confer with the secretariat, but I’ll be back in a few hours.

Yes, Your Eminence, Valdi replied.

Thus far, the press knew nothing. They’d been told a snippet of the truth, which sufficed considering the situation: The Pope had simply been admitted to the hospital for a routine examination. It wouldn’t be long before the rest came unloosed, an inevitability. Salemi didn’t have much time before something else just as inevitable must be set into motion, which spurred him to add, And, doctor, the Holy Father and the Holy Catholic Church of Rome must insist upon your utmost discretion.

Understood, Your Eminence.

God bless you, Salemi offered.

Then he left the ward.

* * * *

As they crossed the Tiber at the Cavour Bridge, the river below looked frozen in the lucent moonlight. Salemi felt frozen too. Being personally appointed as camerlengo proved the greatest honor of his life, and it was something that all his years of curial training, devotion, and the love of God should have suitably prepared him for by now.

Now, though, he felt skittish and incompetent as a vicar’s errand boy.

Drive faster if you can, vice-corporal, Salemi requested of the driver just as they traversed the bridge onto the Via della Conciliazione. The Cadillac surged at the instant of the command, smoothly pressing Salemi back into his seat.

Well, not quite that fast…

The driver, also with the Swiss Guard detachment, knew his duties well. No formality, no excess of talk. Tonight he was the call driver, so that’s what he would do: he would drive. If Salemi told him to get out of the car and stand on his head before the Trevi Fountain, the vice-corporal would do it without hesitancy. If some hostile person were to attack Salemi, the driver would draw his SIG pistol and shoot that person dead, without question and without a word. Nonetheless, Salemi felt anything but safe. Tonight the truth was his assailant, along with the entails of his holy function. He pictured himself in a medieval stone cubby whose only light drew lines around the seams of the trapdoor overhead, the rusted iron ring well out of his reach…

The big car seemed to siphon through the night; Salemi eventually began to feel more comfortable. There was something soothing about the muffled backseat quiet, the hum of the tires, and the engine’s barely perceptible running sounds. Now that the truth had had time to affirm itself, the cardinal’s mind freed up its clutter, and he could see more clearly, as he would expect himself to.

The pope is dying, he thought as if to challenge his resolve. The Holy Father will be dead in six weeks to a year.

There. Now he could think.

He could think about the grievously important duties that would soon be forthcoming—not just his holy obligations assigned by the universal church, but other, less tangible onuses. Darker ones. The teeming night beyond the glass showed him images of the future: as camerlengo—the Vatican’s chamberlain—he would remove the fisherman ring from the pope’s dead finger and destroy it on the spot, as defined by the law of the Holy See, so that no apostolic seals would ever see its unique impression again. He would utter the graven words Extra omnes and thereby banish all unauthorized personnel from the Papal Edifice. He would close down the Domus Sanctae Marthae and the Sistine Chapel. He would seal the pope’s study and living quarters, and secure any personal papers or correspondence.

Then Salemi would undertake the most paramount task of all. He would officially declare the interregnum, acknowledging to the Church and to the world that the Holy Father was dead, and that the Roman Catholic faith was without a divine successor to St. Peter. And after that, Cardinal Arcangelo Salemi would call the next elective conclave to order.

But these concerns were by far a lesser worry.

God help me…

He’d heard the most vague rumors in the past, and had paid them little mind until, just a month or so ago, he’d received a phone call from America, which spilled seeds of dread into Salemi’s mind. Though the caller had remained anonymous, it was the words he’d used, the phraseologies and the structure of terms, that left no doubt in the cardinal’s perceptions that the caller was in some way connected to the intelligence community, and privy to some very deep secrets. But the things the caller had implied…

Could these things be true?

Salemi paled to wonder.

But true or not, he knew now that he had no choice but to engage an investigation. There could be no doubt, no doubt at all as to the genuineness of a papal candidate…

The night blurred by on either side, and Vatican Hill rose to the west. Soon the limousine was pulling up, then stopping, at the private entrance—one of six—past the Viale Vaticano. The pair of guards (these in full dress uniform and with ornate yet very loaded Schmidt-Rubin rifles) expressionlessly examined the vehicle, then the vice-corporal’s identification card even though they’d seen it, and him, countless times. The port guard shined a wickedly bright flashlight into Salemi’s face, then nodded curtly as if to apologize for carrying out his security orders. Another moment more was consumed as the sentries rolled lighted mirrors beneath the limousine’s chassis. Checking for bombs, Salemi thought. What a scary place the world has become.

Drop me at the Gardens, please, the camerlengo said.

Your Eminence?

I’ll be fine. I’d prefer to walk back to the Papal Chambers. I need the air to clear my head. The scents of the gardens…you know.

The driver consented despite the objection made plain by his hesitance. Thank you, vice-corporal. Return directly to the prefect’s office. I’m afraid you’ll be ferrying deacons back and forth to the hospital for the rest of your shift.

Yes, Your Eminence. Good night, Your Eminence.

May the Lord keep you…

The long car idled away. Salemi stood in its wake of red taillights. He glanced down at his hands and was unsettled by the image; his hands looked bathed in blood. Your blood be upon your own heads, the words from Acts came to mind as he stared now at the Vatican Palace. Looks like I’m not the only one awake in the middle of the night, he thought when he spied a light flick on. He recognized it at once: Cardinal Ruini’s study. Ruini was the Vicar of the Diocese of Rome, and one of only three men who would not lose his holy appointment once the pope died. The second would be Bill Baum, the Major Penitentiary.

The third was Salemi himself.

The camerlengo must never lose his appointment, for it was his duty to serve as God’s messenger of death.

A quick walk about the fringes of the Gardens did indeed refresh him with its scents of fresh pine bark and polemoniums and walls of roses. Soon I’ll be closing all this down, he reminded himself, and everything in this miniature nation will come to a halt until the smoke turns color.

Soon, yes, but how soon?

A sudden flapping sound startled him. He jerked around with a breath caught in his chest. A single sheet of paper, carried by the wind, skipped along the finely edged path. Salemi smiled at his startlement—it was a page of L’Osservatore Romano—Vatican City’s newspaper. Yes, a scary place indeed, he jested. Litterbugs have invaded the Holy Roman Church…

When he felt better, he left the Gardens, headed back toward the Papal Edifice, passing the vast Academy of Sciences to his left, and the Vatican Museums. Beyond this, alongside of the Basilica, he could see the newly built Domus Sanctae Marthae, where all the cardinals would live once the conclave was officially brought to order. The notion fairly sickened Salemi; the Domus had cost twenty million dollars, and had been built because the old apostolic apartments were deemed too small and only contained 118 rooms where there were now 120 cardinals. Twenty million dollars because we were two rooms short. That’s a lot of shelters for the homeless. Salemi, in fact, had more than a few problems with Vatican affairs. Sometimes the bishops fought with the cardinals the same way the U.S. Congress gridlocked their country into a state of governmental standstill. Logrolling and buying votes, and missing their own synods and ecumenical councils because they were all too busy with speaking engagements. No restrictions on the import and export of funds didn’t sit well with the camerlengo either, nor did the legal provision that all Vatican banking operations and expenditures remained freely and legally cloaked in secrecy. Lastly, it was interregnum law—that the body of the pope must never be autopsied. In this day and age? Salemi thought. That’s asking for trouble.

The bright lights of the Doric palace entryway blared down. Two more uniformed Swiss Guards nodded without utterance and opened the huge door for Salemi. Once inside, the scape of Renaissance beauty prolapsed into a scape of dry, cold business. Nothing but a government office building, he thought. Though the opaque glass of each door was dark at this hour, Salemi could still read their stencils: Department Of Economic Services, Department Of Technical Affairs, Post And Telegraph Office, Office For Civil Records.

Yes, all dark, all empty.

Save for one.

Office Of The Vatican Secretariat Of State.

When Salemi entered, he frowned, as he always did, at the room’s only significant decoration: a portrait of Pope Benedict I, who’d ineptly allowed the Church to be invaded by the Lombards.

The office desk attendant—a young seminarian from Madagascar—jumped to attention as if Salemi were a high-ranking military officer. Your Eminence! he exclaimed.

Good evening, son—

I’ve heard…rumors, Your Eminence. The young man’s gleaming night-dark face seemed odd speaking perfect Italian. Rumors to the effect that—

God gives no girth for rumors, son, and neither does His work. We are all but flesh, and we die.

Yes, Your Eminence.

Now the boy seemed shamed, embarrassed, but