******
Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage
The Midnight Angel was tired. She hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours, and hadn’t eaten a proper meal—you couldn’t count the tasteless mess they served on the plane—in much longer. The flight from New York to Las Vegas had seemingly taken forever. The plane had been packed with Vegas junketeers eager to begin their carousing. Alcohol flowed freely and annoyingly uncontrolled laughter was all too common. She hadn’t been able to sleep at all.
There was no rest, the Angel thought, for the wicked.
She’s phoned The Hand right after her encounter with the Allumbrados in the Waldorf-Astoria’s parking garage. The Hand, though not exactly pleased with her news about Contarini and his aces, had been pleased with the way she’d handled herself.
“I knew you’d come through, Angel,” he’d told her. She’d smiled at his praise, puffed up with a pride that was almost sinful.
There was a thoughtful silence as The Hand pondered the information she’d relayed. The Angel could visualize his handsome face, his strong, dimpled chin, his wide brow crinkled with frown lines as he considered what to do.
“All right,” he finally said decisively. “I want you to go pick up the boy. We have to move fast. It’s important—vital—that you bring him to safety, so I’m sending you some help, an experienced agent named Billy Ray. He’s a top-flight man. Toughest bast—er, fellow I’ve ever run across, but I wouldn’t entirely trust him with all our plans.” He paused briefly and his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not sound, theologically speaking. But we use what tools we must. You’ll meet him in Las Vegas—”
“Vegas?” The Angel was so horrified with the thought of traveling to the American Gomorrah that she interrupted The Hand.
“That’s where the boy is. Actually, it’s a good thing he’s not in New York as the place seems to be crawling with Allumbrados right now. Take the first flight you can get. When you arrive at the Vegas airport check the Pan American customer service counter. I’ll fax you Ray’s photo so you can recognize him. Meet him in the Mirage lobby. That’s where the boy’s staying with his mother and bodyguard.”
“But—”
“No time for buts, honey. I know you can do this. We have to gather the boy to the safety of our bosom in the Peaceable Kingdom. I’ll see you soon.” He rang off before the Angel could further protest her exile to Las Vegas, but his final words of praise warmed her all through her flight across the continent.
The promised photo was in fact waiting for her when she’d arrived at the Vegas airport, along with the additional information that in a bit of fortuitous timing, Ray’s flight had arrived only a few minutes before her own. He was probably on his way to the Mirage, if he hadn’t reached it already.
Upon reflection, though, the Angel realized that maybe the timing wasn’t so fortuitous. She’d hoped to check into the hotel and maybe catch a few hours sleep. She definitely had to find something to eat. Her body burned calories at a prodigious rate. It seemed that she was always hungry. She ate and ate but never felt really satisfied. She worried about the sin of gluttony, but could she be considered a glutton if she never gained an ounce of weight?
It wasn’t really gluttony, the Angel thought, if you needed every mouthful you swallowed.
On her way to the pick-up spot for the hotel’s courtesy van, she stopped at an airport snack bar, looked over the menu board, and winced at the prices. They were outrageous. She had enough cash for a large soda and a couple of chocolate bars. Cadbury, the big ones with nuts and raisins. They were really quite nutritious.
She tried to eat slowly, but her hunger drove her to gulp down the chocolate bars quickly. Even so, a large soda without ice and three Cadbury bars failed to sate her appetite, but there was nothing to do about it but hustle off to the Mirage. Time was flying. She had to meet this Billy Ray. They had to make plans. She hoped he’d brought some money with him. Despite her careful shepherding of the funds The Hand had given at the start of her mission, she was almost stone broke.
Buzzing along on caffeine and sugar and lack of sleep, the Angel strode through the airport concourse, aware of every staring male eye, of every impure thought that must be hiding behind their bland but oh-so obvious expressions. She retrieved her one piece of luggage, a battered old duffel bag, from the revolving carousel, and went out into the blazing Vegas afternoon where she waited impatiently for the shuttle to come along on its appointed rounds and take her and about twenty other sweating tourists to the Mirage.
Hunger still gnawed at her. To take her mind off her grumbling stomach, she studied the photo that The Hand had faxed to her. This Billy Ray didn’t look like anything special. He wasn’t very big. Didn’t appear to be particularly muscular. Didn’t even look too bright, actually. Still, there had to be something special about him if he worked for The Hand. The Hand clearly had confidence in his ability, if not his ultimate loyalty.
The thought that he had so much confidence in her warmed her heart. The Hand was a handsome man. Even more importantly, he was a man of and for God. She had given him her complete trust when she’d joined his group. The Angel knew that her mother wouldn’t have approved of her straying out into the world, but her mother was no longer with her and she had to do something with her life. At least her mother would have approved of the Angel’s decision to utilize her abilities in the service of the Lord. The Angel was sure of that.
When the shuttle finally arrived at the Mirage, the Angel trooped off the bus with the rest of the tourists. She endured a suggestive glance from the driver as he handed over her duffel bag and sighed in unselfconscious pleasure as she entered the cool lobby. She glanced around. It was bigger and much more crowded than she’d ever imagined it would be. It might not be as easy to spot Billy Ray as she’d thought.
She did, however, immediately spot an ice cream stand near the lobby’s far wall. Her stomach rumbled out loud. She had about three dollars left from the money The Hand had given her. She realized then of course that even if she’d wanted to get a room and rest before meeting Billy Ray, she couldn’t possibly afford it. She did have enough for an ice cream cone, though. Maybe a double scoop.
The ice cream boy, tall and thin and wearing a chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla spotted white suit, eyed her insouciantly as she approached.
“What can I get for you?” he asked with a leer.
“Chocolate cone,” the Angel replied frostily.
“Two scoops or one?” Somehow he made his query sound like an indecent proposal.
She pulled all her money out from the right front pocket of her tight leather jumpsuit, and frowned at two sweaty singles.
“One,” she said with disappointment.
“Here,” the ice cream boy said grandly, adding an extra scoop to the cone. “Just for you, babe.”
The Angel hesitated, but greed overcame her and she accepted the pilfered scoop of ice cream. Tonight she would pray long and hard over this, she thought.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Anytime, babe,” the ice cream boy called out as she drifted back into the maelstrom of the lobby. “Come see me again sometime,” he added hopefully.
The Angel took a lick of her cone and shivered ecstatically as the cold chocolate melted on her tongue. She took another lick, pausing part-way through as she caught a glimpse of a man who could be the one she was looking for, glanced at the photo to check, realized that he wasn’t her quarry, then turned and saw that she was walking right into a man who was looking at her with an expression that could only be described as predatory.
Their eyes met and she recognized him. It was the man in the photo. The man The Hand had called Billy Ray.
And then they collided.
As the Angel bumped into him words of apology were already on her lips, but his expression suddenly turned horrified and he moved quicker than anyone she had ever seen, smooth and graceful like Fred Astaire gliding around Ginger Rogers on the dance floor in those movies that her mother had always punished her for watching whenever she caught her. He was no longer staring at her, but rather at the ice cream cone which she clutched in her hand inches—just inches—from the jacket of his spotless, expensive-looking suit. The suit was very nice. Impeccable, really. He didn’t look like he’d just gotten off a plane after a long flight. He looked like he’d just come from a glamour shoot. Except, he wasn’t very handsome. There wasn’t anything really wrong with his features. His crooked nose was a little too long. His mouth a little too thin-lipped. His jaw line somehow unfitting. They just didn’t seem to all add up. It was almost like he’d had facial reconstruction surgery and had chosen randomly from a menu provided by the doctor.
His pale green eyes had transferred their gaze to her ice cream cone and its imminent impact with his faultless suit. The Angel jerked her arm back quickly and gravity did the rest.
The top scoop of chocolate shot forward in a flat trajectory and landed right where his lap would have been if he were sitting down. He looked at the soggy mass of ice cream sliding slowly down the front of his pants, then back up at the Angel.
His eyes were wild
“Oh,” the Angel said. She hunkered down and tried to wipe the mess from the front of his pants. A glob of ice cream ran down his right pant leg, leaving a rather noticeable trail. Then she realized what she was doing. All she could say was “Oh,” again.
The fury disappeared from Ray’s face, to be replaced by an expression of sudden bemusement. “If you keep that up we’ll have to get a room.” He grinned crookedly. “Good thing we’re already in a hotel.”
The Angel stood up before him. She could feel a blush infuse her features, and that made her blush all the harder.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the way you introduce yourself,” Ray said, “but who the Hell are you, anyway?”
The Angel realized she was staring at him from the distance of only a few inches. Their eyes were on the same level. Their bodies were chest to chest, almost touching.
“The Hand sent me to meet you—”
“The Hand?” Ray interrupted.
She reached out and grabbed his arm to forestall, she was sure, another off-color comment. She had always thought it a corny cliché of romance novels, which she knew she shouldn’t read but sometimes couldn’t help herself, but his eyes did burn into hers. For a wild moment she thought he was going to kiss her right there, right in front of all the passers-by who were glancing curiously at the scene being played out before them.
Then he said, “Let go of my arm. It’s going numb.”
The Angel released him, flushing again with embarrassment. Once again her cursed body had shamed her. If she had hurt this agent of The Hand. If her clumsiness had damaged him—
Billy Ray flexed his hand to get the feeling back in his fingers. He smiled at her.
“That’s quite the grip you’ve got,” he said.
The Angel backed away, confused by his lightning-quick mood swings. “We must go,” she said. “We have a job to do.”
“Maybe,” Ray allowed. “If by ‘The Hand,’ you mean Leo Barnett.”
The Angel started, barely suppressing her urge to clamp a hand over his mouth. She looked wildly about to see if anyone had heard him blurt out his ridiculous indiscretion. “You’re not supposed to say his name,” she informed Ray in a ferocious whisper.
“What, Barnett’s?” he asked innocently.
“Shhhhh!”
“All right, all right,” Ray said, laughing. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk about this job we’re supposed to do together.”
“Where?” The Angel asked suspiciously.
“I suppose the coffee shop would do,” Ray said with a tinge of disappointment in his voice. “Although a room—”
”The coffee shop,” the Angel said definitively.
“All right,” Ray agreed, easily enough. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“The Midnight Angel,” she told him.
“Angel,” Ray repeated, nodding. “Cool. It fits you.”
“Not ‘Angel,’” she corrected. “The Angel.”
Ray frowned. “Whatever,” he said as they moved off together through the lobby. “I’m not going to call you ‘The.’”
New York City: The Waldorf-Astoria
Though it had been decades since he’d last seen it, the Waldorf-Astoria’s lobby was much as John Nighthawk remembered. Intimate lighting caressed dark wainscoting, potted palms, marble accents, and expensive carpets, as well as a huge bronze clock that dominated the room like an art deco behemoth. Nine feet in height and two tons in weight, its marble and mahogany base was topped by a bronze Statue of Liberty that gleamed in the twilight-lit lobby as if it had just been polished. Other statues incorporated into the ornate clock included Queen Victoria, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Ulysses S. Grant. It looked like a bastard to dust.
As I know well, Nighthawk thought. He had dusted and polished it himself often enough, ages ago in another lifetime before the Takisian virus had changed him and all the world.
The woman he’d been sent to meet was in a dark corner of the lobby, wraith-like in a vintage dress that made it look as if she’d been waiting for a dinner date for the last seventy-five years or so. The only thing that ruined the effect was her over-sized handbag. A small clutch purse would have gone much better with her black beaded dress and pert hat crowned by a single egret feather. Her ensemble brought back memories of the nineteen-twenties to Nighthawk. Some of them were fond.
Up close, she looked impossibly young in the uncertain light. Her brown eyes were as large and innocent as a doe’s. Her long, wavy hair cascaded down to the middle of her back like a golden waterfall. Nighthawk knew her real name, her background, and her ace abilities. But he called her the name she preferred, the name she’d taken from the bit of antique jewelry she wore on a black silk ribbon choker around her slender, elegant neck.
“Miss Cameo?” he asked.
“Cameo will do,” she replied.
Nighthawk nodded. “Mr. Contarini sent me to escort you to his tower suite,” he said. Contarini hadn’t resorted to a fictitious name for this business, but he wanted Cameo kept in the dark about his relationship with the Church. Nighthawk paused, glancing around their corner of the lobby. “I thought that you were going to bring a bodyguard with you?” he asked.
“That’s right,” the young ace said. “I did.”
“Where is he?”
Cameo held out her handbag. Nighthawk took it from her and looked inside. Among the usual trove of feminine paraphernalia was a battered old fedora.
“A hat?” Nighthawk said.
Cameo nodded. “How perceptive of you.”
He handed the purse back to her. He knew all about Cameo and her hat. He had researched her thoroughly before entering in negotiations with her on the behalf of the Cardinal. However, he didn’t think it prudent to let her know that he knew.
“Don’t sass your elders, missy,” he said briefly. “If you’ll come this way.”
Cameo accepted his rebuke in silence. They went to the elevator bank and took one nearly to the top of the Waldorf’s Tower block, the suite on the forty-first floor where Contarini always stayed when he was in New York City. Nighthawk led her to the apartment, opened the door with his key, and took her through the anteroom, a couple of sitting rooms and living rooms, to arrive at last in a spacious library.
Glassed-in ceiling-to-floor bookcases covered two adjacent walls. Most of the glossy black bookshelves now housed vintage bric-a-brac of various sorts, though some books and folios were still on the shelves. A comfortable-looking sofa and matching love seat ranged against the two other walls. The rest of the furniture consisted of a black wood desk which matched the bookshelves, and scattered leather chairs and floor lamps. The ancient reliquary that Grubbs had given his life to obtain was on a low coffee table in front of the sofa. The Cardinal waited on the sofa with an aura of impatience clinging to him like a wet swimsuit. He was incognito, wearing a six thousand dollar Armani suite with suave elegance. Usher stood silently at one end of the sofa. Magda, looking as disapproving as always, at the other.
Contarini didn’t bother to rise as Nighthawk and Cameo entered the room.
“I am Romulus Contarini,” he announced in his deep actor’s voice. His English was colored by a slight Italian accent that only made it sound more lyrical than English usually does. His handsome lips were pursed as he gazed at Cameo, as if he didn’t approve of her obvious youth, or perhaps of her, herself, in general. Nighthawk knew that the Cardinal didn’t like wild carders, though he was not averse to using them to further his schemes.
Cameo nodded. “Mr. Contarini. Nice to finally see you face to face after so many chats on the telephone.”
She glanced at Usher and Magda, but Contarini didn’t bother to introduce them.
“Nice to see you,” he said, coming down slightly on the last word. “I’m glad that you weren’t foolish enough to take the down payment we had deposited in your account, and...” He paused, as if groping for a word.
Cameo’s eyebrows rose. “And abscond with it?”
Contarini inclined his silver-haired head.
“Are we not both business people, Mr. Contarini?” Cameo asked. “We both have reputations to maintain. I trusted you enough to come to this—” Cameo paused for a moment as she glanced around the sumptuously furnished room “—elegant but rather private meeting place to channel an unknown object for a fee of two hundred thousand dollars. If I trusted you enough to accept your offer, surely you trusted me enough to fulfill my part of the bargain.”
Contarini grunted inelegantly as Nighthawk suppressed a smile. He thought he was going to like Cameo just fine. After she finished her business with Contarini, he had something else for her to do, something that was as important to him as this rigmarole was to the Cardinal.
The Cardinal turned to Usher, and nodded at the reliquary. “Open it.”
The big man bent over the old box. They had looked inside it just once before while they were on the road to Rome, just to make sure that they hadn’t been tricked into stealing a decoy. They hadn’t.
The Cardinal leaned over and removed a rectangular length of stained linen, folded upon itself several times. His fingers caressed it as he lifted it from the box; his lips murmured ancient Latin prayers. He held it to his chest for a moment, his eyes lifted to Heaven.
Nighthawk glanced at the others. Cameo was watching the Cardinal, uncertain, frowning. Usher stood as relaxed as always, instantly ready to run, to leap across the room, to dive to the floor, to do whatever the next second might call for. Magda’s eyes were riveted on the Mandylion, as if wishing she were the one caressing it. A sheen of sweat covered her forehead. Her lips were clenched in passionate desire that was almost lustful.
Contarini took a deep breath, as if he were wallowing in the scent of the cloth which had once covered the dead, bleeding body of Jesus Christ, and then suddenly held it out to Cameo.
“Take this. Sit there.”
Cameo looked from the Shroud to Contarini’s face, to Nighthawk.
“Is that the Shroud of Turin?” she asked, wide-eyed.
Nighthawk only nodded.
Cameo wet her lips. “Where...how...” Her voice ran down.
“Don’t ask, missy,” Nighthawk said softly. “Just take it. Or walk away.”
Contarini thrust it again toward her. “Take it,” he said commandingly, “and call Our Lord and Savior.”
Cameo hesitated for a moment. Any sane person would, Nighthawk thought, and then she took the Shroud from Contarini and sank into the luxurious old armchair he’d indicated. She took a deep breath and held it. For a moment her eyes were unfocused, and then her expression changed utterly and it was clear to Nighthawk that someone else was looking out of her eyes at them. Nighthawk felt his heart skip a beat, then hurry as if to catch up. He swayed on his feet, caught in the grip of powerful emotion, torn by fear and hope intermingled, as he had been on that day in 1946 when he lay dying in a hospital bed as the Takisian virus came raining down out of the sky and touched him with the glory of God on high, turning him into something more than human but perhaps somewhat less than angelic.
“I say,” Cameo said in an uncertain voice. “Wha—what’s happening?”
Contarini fell down on his knees, muttering wildly in Italian, his head bowed as if he were afraid to look upon his Lord revealed. Magda stared as if she’d been gaffed, her cheeks puffed out in astonished ecstasy. Only Usher, Nighthawk saw, observed unperturbed, still ready for anything.
“My Lord!” the Cardinal finally said, holding out his hands beseechingly.
The person looking out through Cameo’s eyes focused on him
“My Lord?” she repeated. “What’s this all about?” She looked around. “Why am I here in my apartment again? I died, didn’t I?”
Nighthawk had the sudden realization that something had gone terribly wrong.
Contarini frowned. “Died—yes, and risen as before. But—your apartment! I don’t understand. What do you mean? Who are you?”
“Who am I?” Cameo repeated, more in indignation than as an actual question. “Who are you, sir, and what are you doing in my apartment? I—what’s that voice in my head saying? I... I’m a woman!” she exclaimed, holding her hands out, examining them in what Nighthawk thought was half shock, half delight. Her hands went down to her thighs, gripping them, hard. “I’ve got both of my legs!”
Suddenly, Nighthawk knew. “Mr. Porter,” he said quietly.
Cameo looked at him. “You know me? What am I doing here? Am I alive, again? What—the voice in my head! It’s all so confusing!”
“What’s happened?” Contarini demanded in a shrill voice, just on the edge of losing control.
“Apparently,” Nighthawk said, immersed in memories of long ago when he’d worked in this hotel and known quite well the man who had lived for many years in this very suite, “Cameo has channeled the spirit of someone we hadn’t intended.”
“If not the spirit of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” Contarini demanded, “then whose is it? For God’s sake, whose?”
Nighthawk cleared his throat. “Apparently,” he said, “it’s Cole Porter.”
Contarini’s eyes looked as if they were going to bug out of his head. Magda observed the proceedings with a baffled expression that was quickly sliding toward unimaginable fury while Usher tried unsuccessfully to smother a snort of uncontainable laughter.