“Easy for you to say,” I grunted. “Feels like I’ve been kicked by a mule.” But even as I said it, the pain was beginning to ease.
“You’ll have a nasty bruise, I’m thinking,” said Father Mike. “Maybe even a cracked sternum. But all things considered, you’re one mighty lucky fella.” He leaned closer, noticing the vest, inspecting it. “Takin’ no chances, were you, Bill Brockton?” He smiled slightly. “This vest, by the by—it wouldn’t have stopped that slug, lad. It’ll stop a 9-millimeter, but not a .45, which is what the good reverend baptized you with.”
Miranda stared at Father Mike, then looked again at the shattered medallion, turning it this way and that in the faint light. Jutting from one edge of the crater was a splintered bit of something green and gold, an incongruously synthetic material. “This thing has a circuit board in it,” she said slowly. “Is this a tracking device? Have you been following Dr. Brockton?”
He shrugged. “Even Saint Anthony can use a bit of help.”
She eyed him warily. “So who are you, really? You’re clearly not a small-town Irish priest.”
Other things began to crystallize in my mind. “It wasn’t just coincidence that I met you that day in the library, was it? You’d been watching me, looking for an opening.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, lad. It’s true, I’d had my eye on you.”
“That was you with the binoculars and camera,” Miranda accused. “Watching us, taking pictures, the day we were up here on this bridge? You’ve been after the bones all along.”
“And that whole story about the IRA and your brother,” I added. “That was total bullshit.”
“No, not total. I did lose a brother in the Troubles, but it wasn’t the Brits killed him, it was me. A bomb I was rigging went off prematurely. So the penance part is true—I’ll be doing penance for Jimmy till the day I die.”
“But you’re not really a priest.”
He shrugged. “A priest, no. And if you ask the Holy Father about me, he’ll say he’s never heard of me. But I serve the church. I like to think of meself as a modern-day Knight Templar.”
“So why do you want the bones?” Miranda asked. “Or why does the pope, or whoever the hell is your boss?”
“To cover the church’s arse, Miss. If these are the bones of Christ, it buggers the story about the Resurrection and the ascension into Heaven. You can see the difficulty, can’t you?”
“But they’re not the bones of Christ,” I said. “They’re the bones of Meister Eckhart, a fourteenth-century theologian and preacher. I already told you that.”
“Aye, so you did. You also told me that Eckhart was murdered—crucified, no less—by a cardinal who later became pope.
And that Eckhart, not Christ, is the man on the Holy Shroud. Can’t you see how that would bugger the Holy Father if word got around?”
I felt like such a fool. It was obvious—in the way he carried himself, in the ease with which he handled the weapon—that he was a soldier or cop. Was he one of the pope’s Swiss Guards? Or part of some more secret agency—a Vatican version of the CIA? How could I have mistaken him for a simple village priest?
The rifle was slung loosely over his shoulder. It had a collapsible stock and a large-diameter scope that was designed either for low light or night vision. On top of the scope was a thin, cylindrical gadget that I guessed to be a targeting laser.
I felt an insane urge to laugh at the irony: Miranda and I had just escaped death at the hands of a Protestant fanatic, and now we were about to die at the hands of a Catholic assassin. I looked up at her, expecting to see sadness and fear in her face. Instead I saw stealth, cunning, and concentration. Almost imperceptibly she was edging behind Father Mike, edging toward the gun that had flown from my hand when Reverend Jonah’s bullet had slammed into my chest. She was three feet from it, then two feet from it, and then she was there, directly behind him. I needed to distract Father Mike, or whoever this guy was. “So will you do penance for killing Miranda and me, too? What sort of penance will our deaths require?”