Cathedral

Flynn watched Megan bring the gun down into a horizontal position and aim it at the opening. Nulty and Gallagher maneuvered around, and each took up a position behind the doors, pushing them against the last of the fleeing worshipers.

Megan dropped to one knee and steadied her aim with both hands.

Patrick Burke shouted to the policewoman, “Up the steps! Up to the front door!”

Betty Foster spurred the horse up the steps where they curved around to Fifty-first Street, and moved diagonally through the crowd toward the center doors.

Burke saw the last of the worshipers flee through the doors, and the horse broke into the open space between them and the portals. The policewoman reined the horse around and kicked its flanks. “Come on, Commissioner! Up! Up!”

Burke drew his service revolver and shouted, “Draw your piece! Through the doors!”

Betty Foster held the reins with her left hand and drew her revolver.

A few yards from the portals the big bronze ceremonial doors—sixteen feet across, nearly two stories high, and weighing ten thousand pounds apiece— began closing. Burke knew they were pushed by unseen persons standing behind them. The dimly lit vestibule came into sight, and he saw a nun kneeling there. Behind her, the vast, deserted Cathedral stretched back a hundred yards, through a forest of stone columns, to the raised altar sanctuary where Burke could see people standing. A figure in bright red stood out against the white marble.

The doors were half closed now, and the horse’s head was a yard from the opening. Burke know they were going to make it. And then … what?

Suddenly the image of the kneeling nun filled his brain, and his eyes focused on her again. From her extended arm Burke saw a flash of light, then heard a loud, echoing sound followed by a sharp crack.

The horse’s front legs buckled, and the animal pitched forward. Burke was aware of Betty Foster flying into the air, then felt himself falling forward. His face struck the granite step a foot from the doors. He crawled toward the small opening, but the bronze doors came together and shut in his face. He heard, above all the noise around him, the sound of the floor bolts sliding home.

Burke rolled onto his back and sat up. He turned to the policewoman, who was lying on the steps, blood running from her forehead. As he watched, she sat up slowly.

Burke stood and offered her his hand, but she got to her feet without his aid and looked down at her mount. A small wound on Commissioner’s chest ran with blood; frothy blood trickled from the horse’s open mouth and steamed in a puddle as it collected on the cold stone. The horse tried to stand but fell clumsily back onto its side. Betty Foster fired into his head. After putting her hand to the horse’s nostrils to make certain he was dead, she holstered her revolver. She looked up at Burke, then back at her horse. Walking slowly down the steps, she disappeared into the staring crowd.

Burke looked out into the Avenue. Rotating beacons from the police cars cast swirling red and white light on the chaotic scene and across the façades of the surrounding buildings. Occasionally, above the general bedlam, Burke could hear a window smash, a whistle blow, a scream ring out.

He turned around and stared at the Cathedral. Taped to one of the bronze ceremonial doors, over the face of St. Elizabeth Seton, was a piece of cardboard with handlettering on it. He stepped closer to read it in the fading light.

THIS CATHEDRAL IS UNDER THE CONTROL

OF THE IRISH FENIAN ARMY

It was signed, FINN MACCUMAIL.

Book IV

The Cathedral: Siege

Friendship, joy and peace! If the outside world only realized the wonders of this Cathedral, there would never be a vacant pew.

—Parishioner

CHAPTER 15

Patrick Burke stood at the front doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, his hands in his pockets and a cigarette in his mouth. Lightly falling sleet melted on the flanks of the dead horse and ran in rivulets onto the icy stone steps.

The crowds in the surrounding streets were not completely under control, but the police had rerouted the remainder of the marching units west to Sixth Avenue. Burke could hear drums and bagpipes above the roar of the mob. The two hundred and twenty-third St. Patrick’s Day Parade would go on until the last marcher arrived at Eighty-fourth Street, even if it meant marching through Central Park to get there.

Automobile horns were blaring incessantly, and police whistles and sirens cut through the windy March dusk. What a fucking mess. Burke wondered if anyone out there knew that the Cathedral was under the control of gunmen. He looked at his watch—not yet five thirty. The six o’clock news would begin early and not end until this ended.

Burke turned and examined the bronze ceremonial doors, then put his shoulder to one of them and pushed. The door moved slightly, then sprang back, closing. From behind the doors Burke heard a shrill alarm. “Smart sons of bitches.” It wasn’t going to be easy to get the Cathedral away from Finn MacCumail. He heard a muffled voice call out from behind the door. “Get away! We’re putting mines on the doors!”

Burke moved back and stared up at the massive doors, noticing them for the first time in twenty years. On a righthand panel a bronze relief of St. Patrick stared down at him, a crooked staff in one hand, a serpent in the other. To the saint’s right was a Celtic harp, to his left the mythical phoenix, appropriated from the pagans, rising to renewed life from its own ashes. Burke turned slowly and started walking down the steps. “Okay, Finn or Flynn, or whatever you call yourself—you may have gotten in standing tall, but you won’t be leaving that way.”

Brian Flynn stood at the railing of the choir loft and looked out over the vast Cathedral spread out over an area larger than a football field. Seventy towering stained-glass windows glowed with the outside lights of the city like dripping jewels, and dozens of hanging chandeliers cast a soft luminescence over the dark wooden pews. Rows of gray granite pillars reached up to the vaulted ceiling like the upraised arms of the faithful supporting the house of God. Flynn turned to John Hickey. “It would take some doing to level this place.”

“Leave it to me, Brian.”

Flynn said, “The first priority of the police is that mob out there. We’ve bought some time to set up our defense.” Flynn raised a pair of field glassess and looked at Maureen. Even at this distance he saw that her face was red, and her jaw was set in a hard line. He focused on Megan who had assembled three men and two women and was making an inspection of the perimeter walls. She had taken off the nun’s wimple, revealing long red hair that fell to her shoulders. She walked quickly, now peeling off her nun’s habit and throwing the black and white garments carelessly onto the floor until she was clad in only jeans and a T-shirt, which had a big red apple on it and the words I Love New York. She stopped by the north transept doors and looked up at the southeast triforium as she called out, “Gallagher!”

Frank Gallagher, dressed in the morning coat and striped pants of a parade marshal, leaned over the balcony parapet and pointed his sniper rifle at her, taking aim through the scope. He shouted back, “Check!”

Megan moved on.

Flynn unrolled a set of blueprints and rested them on the rail of the choir loft. He tapped the plans of the Cathedral with his open hand and said, as though the realization had just come to him, “We took it.”

Hickey nodded and stroked his wispy beard. “Aye, but can we keep it? Can we hold it with a dozen people against twenty thousand policemen?”

Flynn turned to Jack Leary standing near the organ keyboard beside him. “Can we hold it, Jack?”

Leary nodded slowly. “Twenty thousand, or twenty, they can only come in a few at a time.” He patted his modified M-14 rifle with attached scope. “Anyone who survives the mines on the doors will be dead before he gets three paces.”

Flynn looked closely at Leary in the subdued light. Leary looked comical in his colonial marching uniform and with his green-painted rifle. But there was nothing funny about his eyes or his expressionless voice.

Flynn looked back over the Cathedral and glanced at the blueprints. This building was shaped like a cross. The long stem of the cross was the nave, holding the main pews and five aisles; the cross-arms were the transepts, containing more pews and an exit from the end of each arm. Two arcaded triforia, long, dark galleries supported by columns, overhung the nave, running as far as the transepts. Two shorter triforia began at the far side of the transepts and overlooked the altar. This was the basic layout of the structure to be defended.

Flynn looked at the top of the blueprints. They showed the five-story rectory nestled in the northeast quadrant of the cross outside the Cathedral. The rectory was connected to the Cathedral by basement areas under the terraces, which did not appear on the blueprints. In the southeast quadrant was the Cardinal’s residence, also separated by terraces and gardens and connected underground. These uncharted connections, Flynn understood, were a weak point in the defense. “I wish we could have held the two outside buildings.”

Hickey smiled. “Next time.”

Flynn smiled in return. The old man had remained an enigma, swinging precipitantly between clownishness and decisiveness. Flynn looked back at the blueprints. The top of the cross was the rounded area called the apse. In the apse was the Lady Chapel, a quiet, serene area of long, narrow stained-glass windows. Flynn pointed to the blueprint. “The Lady Chapel has no outside connections, and I’ve decided not to post a man there—can’t spare anyone.”

Hickey leaned over the blueprints. “I’ll examine it for hidden passages. Church architecture wouldn’t be church architecture, Brian, without hollow walls and secret doors. Places for the Holy Ghost to run about—places where priests can pop up on you unawares and scare the hell out of you by whispering your name.”

“Have you heard of Whitehorn Abbey outside of Belfast?”

“I spent a night there once. Did you get a scare there, lad?” Hickey laughed.

Flynn looked out over the Cathedral again, concentrating on the raised area of black and white marble called the altar sanctuary. In the middle of the sanctuary sat the altar, raised still higher on a broad marble plinth. The cold marble and bronze of the area was softened by fields of fresh green carnations, symbolizing, Flynn imagined, the green sod of Ireland, which would not have looked or smelled as nice on the altar.

On both sides of the sanctuary were rows of wooden pews reserved for clergy. In the pews to the right sat Maureen, Baxter, and Father Murphy, all looking very still from this distance. Flynn placed his field glasses to his eyes and focused on Maureen again. She didn’t appear at all frightened, and he liked that. He noticed that her lips were moving as she stared straight ahead. Praying? No, not Maureen. Baxter’s lips were moving also. And Father Murphy’s. “They’re plotting dark things against us, John.”

“Good,” said Hickey. “Maybe they’ll keep us entertained.”

Flynn swung the field glasses to the left. Facing the hostages across the checkered marble floor sat the Cardinal on his elevated throne of red velvet, absolutely motionless. “No sanctuary in the sanctuary,” commented Flynn under his breath.

Leary heard him and called out, “A sanctuary of sorts. If they leave that area, I’ll kill them.”

Flynn leaned farther over the rail. Directly behind the altar were the sacristy stairs, not visible from the loft, where Pedar Fitzgerald, Megan’s brother, sat on the landing holding a submachine gun. Fitzgerald was a good man, a man who knew that those chained gates had to be protected at any cost. He had his sister’s courage without her savagery. “We still don’t know if there’s a way they can enter the crypt from an underground route and come up behind Pedar.”

Hickey glanced again at the blueprints. “We’ll get the crypt keys and the keys to this whole place later and have a proper look around the real estate. We need time, Brian. Time to tighten our defense. Damn these blueprints, they’re not very detailed. And damn this church. It’s like a marble sieve with more holes in it than the story of the Resurrection.”

“I hope the police don’t get hold of the architect.”

“You should have kidnapped him last night along with Terri O’Neal,” Hickey said.

“Too obvious. That would have put Intelligence onto something.”

“Then you should have killed him and made it look like an accident.”

Flynn shook his head. “One has to draw a line somewhere. Don’t you think so?”

“You’re a lousy revolutionary. It’s a wonder you’ve come as far as you have.”

“I’ve come farther than most. I’m here.”

CHAPTER 16

Major Bartholomew Martin put down his field glasses and let out a long breath. “Well, they’ve done it. No apparent casualties … except that fine horse.” He closed the window against the cold wind and sleet. “Burke almost got himself killed, however.”

Kruger shrugged. It never paid to examine these things too closely.

Major Martin put on his topcoat. “Sir Harold was a good sort. Played a good game of bridge. Anyway, you see, Flynn went back on his word. Now they’ll want to kill poor Harry as soon as things don’t go their way.”

Kruger glanced out the window. “I think you planned on Baxter getting kidnapped.”

Major Martin moved toward the door. “I planned nothing, Kruger. I only provided the opportunity and the wherewithal. Most of this is as much a surprise to me as it is to you and the police.” Martin looked at his watch. “My consulate will be looking for me, and your people will be looking for you. Remember, Kruger, the first requirement of a successful liar is a good memory. Don’t forget what you’re not supposed to know, and please remember the things you are supposed to know.” He pulled on his gloves as he left.

Megan Fitzgerald motioned to the three men and two women with her and moved quickly toward the front of the Cathedral. The five of them followed her, burdened with suitcases, slung rifles, and rocket tubes. They entered the vestibule of the north tower, rode up the small elevator, and stepped off into the choir practice room in the tower. Megan moved into the choir loft.

Jack Leary was standing at the end of the loft, some distance from Flynn and Hickey, establishing his fields of fire. Megan said curtly, “Leary, you understand your orders?”

The sniper turned and stared at her.

Megan stared back into his pale, watery eyes. Soft eyes, she thought, but she knew how they hardened as the rifle traveled up to his shoulder. Eyes that saw things not in fluid motion but in a series of still pictures, like a camera lens. She had watched him in practice many times. Perfect eye-hand coordination—“muscle memory” he had called it on the one occasion he had spoken to her. Muscle memory— a step below instinct, as though the brain wasn’t even involved in the process— optic nerves and motor nerves, bypassing the brain, controlled by some primitive bundle of fibers found only in the lower forms of life. The others stayed away from Leary, but Megan was fascinated by him. “Answer me, Leary. Do you know your orders, man?”

He nodded almost imperceptibly as his eyes took in the young woman standing in front of him.

Megan walked along the rail and came up beside Flynn and Hickey. She placed the field phone on the railing and looked at the outside telephone on the organ. “Call the police.”

Flynn didn’t look up from the blueprints. “They’ll call us.”

Hickey said to her, “I’d advise you not to upset Mr. Leary. He seems incapable of witty bantering, and he’d probably shoot you if he couldn’t think of anything to say.”

Megan looked back at Leary, then said to Hickey, “We understand each other.”

Hickey smiled. “Yes, I’ve noticed a silent communication between you—but what other type could there be with a man who has a vocabulary of fourteen words, eight of which have to do with rifles?”

Megan turned and walked back to the entrance of the choir practice room where the others were waiting, and she led them up a spiral iron staircase. At a level above the choir practice room she found a door and kicked it open, motioning to Abby Boland. “Come with me,” she said.

The long triforium stretched out along the north side of the Cathedral, an unlit gallery of dusty stone and airconditioning ducts. A flagpole of about twenty feet in length jutted out from the parapet over the nave, flying the white and yellow Papal flag.

Megan turned to Abby Boland, who was dressed in the short skirt and blue blouse of a twirler from Mother Cabrini High School, a place neither of them had heard of until a week before. “This is your post,” said Megan. “Remember, the rocket is to use if you see a Saracen—or whatever they call them here—coming through your assigned door. The sniper rifle is for close-in defense, if they come through the tower door there—and for blowing your own brains out if you’ve a mind to. Any questions? No?” She looked the girl up and down. “You should have thought to bring some clothes with you. It’ll be cold up here tonight.” Megan returned to the tower.

Abby Boland unslung her rifles and put them down beside the rocket. She slipped off her tight-fitting shoes, unbuttoned her constricting blouse, and sighted through the scope of the sniper rifle, then lowered it and looked around. It occurred to her that rather than freeing her husband, Jonathan, she might very well end up in jail herself, on this side of the Atlantic, too long a distance to intertwine their fingers through the mesh wire of Long Kesh. She might also end up dead, of course, which might be better for both of them.

Megan Fitzgerald continued up the stairs of the bell tower and turned into a side passage. She found a pull chain and lit a small bulb revealing a section of the huge attic. Wooden catwalks ran over the plaster lathing of the vaulted ceiling below and stretched back into the darkness. The four people with her walked quickly over the catwalks, turning on lights in the cold, musty attic.

Megan could see the ten dormered hatches overhead that led to the slate roof above. On the floor, at intervals, were small winches that lowered the chandeliers to the floors below for maintenance. She turned and moved to the big arched window at the front peak of the attic. Stone tracery on the outside of the Cathedral partially blocked the view, and grime covered the small panes in front of her. She wiped a section with her hand and stared down into Fifth Avenue. The block in front of the Cathedral was nearly deserted, but the police had not yet cleared the crowds out of the intersections on either side. Falling sleet was visible against the streetlights, and ice covered the streets and sidewalks and collected on the shoulders of Atlas.

Megan looked up at the International Building in Rockefeller Center directly across from her. The two side wings of the building were lower than the attic, and she could see people moving through the ice, people sitting huddled on the big concrete tubs that held bare plants and trees. The uniformed police had no rifles, and she knew that the Cathedral was not yet surrounded by the SWAT teams euphemistically called the Emergency Services Division in New York. She saw no soldiers, either, and remembered that Americans rarely called on them.

She turned back to the attic. The four people had opened the suitcases and deposited piles of votive candles at intervals along the catwalks. Megan called out to Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty. “Find the fire axes, chop wood from the catwalks, and build pyres around the candles. Cut the fire hoses up here and string the wire for the field telephone. Be quick about it. Mullins and Devane, grab an ax and come with me.”

Megan Fitzgerald retraced her steps out of the attic, followed by the two men who had posed as BSS Security, Donald Mullins and Rory Devane. She continued her climb up to the bell tower. Mullins carried a roll of communication wire, which he played out behind him. Devane carried the weapons and axes.

Arthur Nulty offered Jean Kearney a cigarette. He looked over her Kelly-green Aer Lingus stewardess uniform. “You look very sexy, lass. Would it be a sacrilege to do it up here, do you think?”

“We’ll not have time for that.”

“Time is all we’ve got up here. God, but it’s cold. We’ll need some warming and there’s no spirits allowed, so that leaves …”

“We’ll see. Jesus, Arthur, if your wife—what happens to us if we get her out of Armagh?”

Arthur Nulty let go of her arm and looked away. “Well … now … let’s take things one a time.” He picked up an ax and swung it, shattering a wooden railing, then ripped the railing from its post and threw it atop a pile of votive candles. “Whole place is wood up here. Never thought I’d be burning a church. If Father Flannery could see me now.” He took another swing with the ax. “Jesus, I hope it doesn’t come to that. They’ll give in before they see this Cathedral burned. In twenty-four hours your brothers will be in Dublin. Your old dad will be pleased, Jean. He thought he’d never see the boys again.” He threw a post on the woodpile. “She called them pyres, Megan did. Doesn’t she know that pyres refer only to places to burn corpses?”

CHAPTER 17

Patrick Burke posted patrolmen at each of the Cathedral’s portals with the warning that the doors were mined, then came back to the front of the Cathedral and approached a parked patrol car. “Any commo yet?”

The patrolman shook his head. “No, sir. What’s going on in there?”

“There are armed gunmen inside, so keep pushing the crowd back. Tell the officer in charge to begin a cordon operation.”

“Yes, sir.” The patrol car moved away through the nearly deserted Avenue.

Burke remounted the steps and saw Police Officer Betty Foster kneeling in the ice beside her horse.

She looked up at him. “You still here?” She looked back at the horse. “I have to get the saddle.” She unhooked the girth. “What the hell’s going on in there?” She tugged at the saddle. “You almost got me killed.”

He helped her pull at the saddle, but it wouldn’t come loose. “Leave this here.”

“I can’t. It’s police property.”

“There’s police property strewn up and down Fifth Avenue.” He let go of the saddle and looked at the bell tower. “There’ll be people in these towers soon, if they’re not there already. Get this later when they recover the horse.”

She straightened up. “Poor Commissioner. Both of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Police Commissioner Dwyer died of a heart attack—at the reviewing stands.”

“Jesus Christ.” Burke heard a noise from the bell tower overhead and pulled Betty Foster under the alcove of the front door. “Somebody’s up there.”

“Are you staying here?”

“Until things get straightened out.”

She looked at him and said, “Are you brave, Lieutenant Burke?”

“No. Just stupid.”

“That’s what I thought.” She laughed. “God, I thought I was going to pass out when I saw that nun—I guess it wasn’t a nun—”

“Not likely.”

“That woman, pointing a gun at us.”

“You did fine.”

“Did I? I guess I did.” She paused and looked around. “I’m going to be on duty for a long time. I have to go back to Varick Street and get remounted.”

“Remounted?” A bizarre sexual image flashed through his mind. “Oh. Right. Keep close to the wall. I don’t know if those people up in the tower are looking for blue targets, but it’s better to assume they are.”

She hesitated. “See you later.” She moved out of the alcove, keeping close to the wall. She called back, “I didn’t just come back for the saddle. I wanted to see if you were all right.”

Burke watched her round the corner of the tower. This morning neither he nor Betty Foster would have given each other a second glance. Now, however, they had things going for them—riots, gunpowder, horses—great stimulants, powerful aphrodisiacs. He looked at his watch. This lull would not last much longer.

Megan Fitzgerald climbed into the bell room and stood catching her breath as she looked around the cold room, peering into the weak light cast by the single bulb. She saw Flynn’s radio jamming device on a crossbeam from which hung three huge bells, each with a turning wheel and a pull strap. Gusts of cold March wind blew in from the eight sets of copper louvers in the octagon-shaped tower room. The sound of police bullhorns and sirens was carried up into the eighteen-story-high room.

Megan grabbed a steel-cut fire ax from Rory Devane, turned suddenly, and swung it at one of the sets of louvers, ripping them open and letting in the lights of the city. Mullins set to work on the other seven louvers, cutting them out of their stone casements as Devane knelt on the floor and connected a field telephone.

Megan turned to Mullins, who had moved to the window overlooking Fifth Avenue. “Remember, Mullins, report anything unusual. Keep a sharp eye for helicopters. No shooting without orders.”

Mullins looked out at Rockefeller Center. People were pressed to the windows opposite him, and, on the roofs below, people were pointing up at the ripped louvers. A police spotlight in the street came on, and its white beam circled and came to rest on the opening where Mullins stood. He moved back and blinked his eyes. “I’d like to put that spot out.”

Megan nodded. “Might as well set them straight now.”

Mullins leaned out of the opening and squinted into his sniper scope. He saw figures moving around at the periphery of the spotlight. He took a long breath, steadied his aim, then squeezed the trigger. The sound of the rifle exploded in the bell room, and Mullins saw the red tracer round streak down into the intersection. The spotlight suddenly lost its beam, fading from white to red to black. A hollow popping sound drifted into the bell room, followed by sounds of shouting. Mullins stepped back behind the stonework and blew his nose into a handkerchief. “Cold up here.”

Devane sat on the floor and cranked the field phone. “Attic, this is bell tower. Can you hear me?”

The voice of Jean Kearney came back clearly. “Hear you, bell tower. What was that noise?”

Devane answered. “Mullins put out a spot. No problem.”

“Roger. Stand by for commo check with choir loft. Choir loft, can you hear bell tower and attic?”

John Hickey’s voice came over the line. “Hear you both. Commo established. Who the hell authorized you to shoot at a spotlight?”

Megan grabbed the field phone from Devane. “I did.”

Hickey’s voice had an edge of sarcasm and annoyance. “Ah, Megan, that was a rhetorical question, lass. I knew the answer to that. Watch yourself today.”

Megan dropped the field phone on the floor and looked down at Devane. “Go on down and string the wire from the choir loft to the south tower, then knock out the louvers and take your post there.”

Devane picked up a roll of communication wire and the fire ax and climbed down out of the bell room.

Megan moved from opening to opening. The walls of the Cathedral were bathed in blue luminescence from the Cathedral’s floodlights in the gardens. To the north the massive fifty-one-story Olympic Tower reflected the Cathedral from its glass sides. To the east the Waldorf-Astoria’s windows were lit against the black sky, and to the south the Cathedral’s twin tower rose up, partially blocking the view of Saks Fifth Avenue. Police stood on the Saks roof, milling around, flapping their arms against the cold. In all the surrounding streets the crowd was being forced back block by block, and the deserted area around the Cathedral grew in size.

Megan looked back at Mullins, who was blowing into his hands. His young face was red with cold, and tinges of blue showed on his lips. She moved to the ladder in the middle of the floor. “Keep alert.”

He watched Megan disappear down the ladder and suddenly felt lonely. “Bitch.” She was not much older than he, but her movements, her voice, were those of an older woman. She had lost her youth in everything but her face and body.

Mullins looked around his solitary observation post, then peered back into Fifth Avenue. He unfastened a rolled flag around his waist and tied the corners to the louvers, then let it unfurl over the side of the tower. A wind made it snap against the gray marble, and the Cathedral’s floodlights illuminated it nicely.

From the street and the rooftops an exclamation rose from the reporters and civilians still in the area. A few people cheered, and a few applauded. There were a few jeers as well.

Mullins listened to the mixed reaction, then pulled his head back into the tower and wiped the cold sleet from his face. He wondered with a sense of awe how he came to be standing in the bell tower of St. Patrick’s Cathedral with a rifle. Then he remembered his older sister, Peg, widowed with three children, pacing the prison yard of Armagh. He remembered the night her husband, Barry Collins, was killed trying to take a prison van that was supposed to contain Maureen Malone’s sister, Sheila. He remembered his mother looking after Peg’s three children for days at a time while Peg went off with hard-looking men in dark coats. Mullins remembered the night he went into the streets of Belfast to find Brian Flynn and his Fenians, and how his mother wept and cursed after him. But most of all he remembered the bombs and gunfire that had rocked and split the Belfast nights ever since he was a child. Thinking back, he didn’t see how he could have traveled any road that didn’t lead here, or someplace like it.

Patrick Burke looked up. A green flag, emblazoned with the gold Irish harp, hung from the ripped louvers, and Burke could make out a man with a rifle standing in the opening. Burke turned and watched the police in the intersection wheeling away the smashed spotlight. The crowd was becoming more cooperative, concluding that anyone who could put out a spotlight at two hundred yards could put them out just as easily. Burke moved into the alcove of the tower door and spoke to the policeman he had posted there. “We’ll just stand here awhile. That guy up there is still manufacturing adrenaline.”

“I know the feeling.”

Burke looked out over the steps. The green carpet was white with sleet now, and green carnations, plastic leprechaun hats, and paper pompoms littered the steps, sidewalks, and street. In the intersection of Fiftieth Street a huge Lambeg drum left by the Orangemen lay on its side. Black bowlers and bright orange sashes moved slowly southward in the wind. From the buildings of Rockefeller Center news cameramen were cautiously getting it all on film. Burke pictured it as it would appear on television. Zoom-in shots of the debris, a bowler tumbling end over end across the icy street. The voice-over, deep, resonant—“Today the ancient war between the English and the Irish came to Fifth Avenue….” The Irish always gave you good theater.

Brian Flynn leaned out over the parapet rail of the choir loft and pointed to a small sacristy off the ambulatory as he said to Hickey, “Since we can’t see the outside door of the bishop’s sacristy or the elevator door, the police could theoretically beat the alarms and mines. Then we’d have policemen massed in that small sacristy.”

Leary, who seemed to be able to hear things at great distances, called out from the far end of the choir loft. “And if they stick their heads into the ambulatory, I’ll blow—”

Hickey shouted back, “Thank you, Mr. Leary. We know you will.” He said softly to Flynn, “God Almighty, where’d you get that monster? I’ll be afraid to scratch my ass down there.”

Flynn answered quietly, “Yes, he has good eyes and ears.”

“An American, isn’t he?”

“Irish-American. Marine sniper in Vietnam.”

“Does he know why he’s here? Does he even know where the hell he is?”

“He’s in a perch overlooking a free-fire zone. That’s all he knows and all he cares about. He’s being paid handsomely for his services. He’s the only one of us besides you and me who has no relatives in British jails. I don’t want a man up here with emotional ties to us. He’ll kill according to standing orders, he’ll kill any one of us I tell him to kill, and if we’re attacked and overcome, he’ll kill any of us who survives, if he’s still able. He’s the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper, and the court of last resort.” “Does everyone know all of this?”

“No.”

Hickey smiled, a half-toothless grin. “I underestimated you, Brian.”

“Yes. You’ve been doing that. Let’s go on with this. The Archbishop’s sacristy— a problem, but only one of many—”

“I wish you’d brought more people.”

Flynn spoke impatiently. “I have a great deal of help on the outside, but how many people do you think I could find to come in here to die?”

A distant look came over the old man’s face. “There were plenty of good men and women in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916. More than the besieged buildings could hold.” Hickey’s eyes took in the quiet Cathedral below. “No lack of volunteers then. And faith! What faith we all had. In the early days of the First War, sometime before the Easter Rising, my brother was in the British Army. Lot of Irish lads were then. Still are. You’ve heard of the Angels of Mons? No? Well, my brother Bob was with the British Expeditionary Force in France, and they were about to be annihilated by an overwhelming German force. Then, at a place called Mons, a host of heavenly angels appeared and stood between them and the Germans. Understandably the Germans fell back in confusion. It was in all the papers at the time. And people believed it, Brian. They believed the British Army was so blessed by God that He sent His angels to intervene on their behalf against their enemy.”

Flynn looked at him. “Sounds like a mass hallucination of desperate men. When we start seeing angels here, we’ll know we’ve had it, and—” He broke off abruptly and looked at Hickey closely in the dim light. For a brief second he imagined he was back in Whitehorn Abbey, listening to the stories of the old priest.

“What is it, lad?”

“Nothing. I suppose one shouldn’t doubt the intervention of the supernatural. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

Hickey laughed. “If you can tell it tomorrow, I’ll believe it.”

Flynn forced a smile in return. “I may be telling it to you in another place.”

“Then I’ll surely believe it.”

Megan Fitzgerald came up behind George Sullivan setting the last of the mines on the south transept door. “Finished?”

Sullivan turned abruptly. “Jesus, don’t do that, Megan, when I’m working with explosives.”

She looked at Sullivan, dressed splendidly in the kilts of a bagpiper of the New York Police Emerald Society. “Grab your gear and follow me. Bring your bagpipes.” She led him to a small door at the corner of the transept, and they walked up a spiral stone staircase, coming out onto the long south triforium. A flagpole with a huge American flag hanging from it pointed across the nave toward the Papal flag on the opposite triforium. Megan looked to the left, at the choir loft below, and watched Flynn and Hickey poring over their blueprints like two generals on the eve of battle. She found it odd that such different men seemed to be getting on well. She hadn’t liked the idea of bringing John Hickey in at the last moment. But the others felt they needed the old hero to legitimize themselves, a bona fide link with 1916, as though Hickey’s presence could make them something other than the outcasts they all were.

She saw no need to draw on the past. The world had taken form for her in 1973 when she had seen her first bomb casualties in downtown Belfast on the way home from school, and had taken meaning and purpose when her older brother Tommy had been wounded and captured trying to free Sheila Malone. The distant past didn’t exist, any more than the near future did. Her own personal memories were all the history she was concerned with.

She watched Flynn pointing and gesturing. He seemed not much different from the old man beside him. Yet he had been different once. To Tommy Fitzgerald, Brian Flynn was everything a man should be, and she had grown up seeing Brian Flynn, the legend in the making, through her older brother’s eyes. Then came Brian’s arrest and his release, suspicious at best. Then the break with the IRA, the forming of the new Fenian Army, his recruiting of her and her younger brother Pedar, and, finally, her inevitable involvement with him. She had not been disappointed in him as a lover, but as a revolutionary he had flaws. He would hesitate before destroying the Cathedral, but she would see to it that this decision was out of his hands.

Sullivan called out from the far end of the triforium, “The view is marvelous. How’s the food?”

Megan turned to him. “If you’ve no qualms about feasting on blood, it’s good and ample.”

Sullivan sighted through his rifle. “Don’t be a beast, Megan.” He raised the rifle and focused the scope on Abby Boland, noticing her open blouse. She saw him and waved. He waved back. “So near, yet so far.”

“Give it a rest, George,” said Megan impatiently. “You’ll not be using it for much but peeing for yet a while.” She looked at him closely. George Sullivan was not easily intimidated by her. He had that combination of smugness and devil-may-care personality that came with handling high explosives, a special gift of the gods, he had called it. Maybe. “Are you certain Hickey knows how to rig the bombs?”

Sullivan picked up his bagpipe and began blowing into it. He looked up. “Oh, yes. He’s very good. World War Two techniques, but that’s all right, and he’s got the nerve for it.”

“I’m interested in his skill, not his nerve. I’m to be his assistant.”

“Good for you. Best to be close by if it goes wrong. Never feel a thing. It’ll be us poor bastards up here who’ll be slowly crushed by falling stone. Picture it, Megan. Like Samson and Delilah, the temple falling about our heads, tons of stone quivering, falling…. Someone should have brought a movie camera.”

“Next time. All right, George, the north transept is your sector of fire if they break in. But if they use armor through that door, Boland will lean over the north triforium and launch a rocket directly down at it. Your responsibility for armor is the south transept door below you. She’ll cover you and you’ll cover her with rifle fire.”

“What if one of us is dead?”

“Then the other two, Gallagher and Farrell, will divide up the sector of the dead party.”

“What if we’re all dead?”

“Then it doesn’t matter, does it, George? Besides, there’s always Leary. Leary is immortal, you know.”

“I’ve heard.” He put the blowpipe to his mouth.

“Can you play ‘Come Back to Erin’?”

He nodded as he puffed.

“Then play it for us, George.”

He took a long breath and said, “To use an expression, Megan, you’ve not paid the piper, and you’ll not call the tune. I’ll play ‘The Minstrel Boy’ and you’ll damn well like it. Go on, now, and leave me alone.”

Megan looked at him, turned abruptly, and entered the small door that led down to the spiral stairs.

Sullivan finished inflating the bagpipe, bounced a few notes off the wall behind him, made the necessary tuning, then turned, bellied up to the stone parapet, and began to play. The haunting melody carried into every corner of the Cathedral and echoed off the stone. Acoustically bad for an organ or choir, Sullivan thought, but for a bagpipe it was lovely, sounding like the old Celtic warpipes echoing through the rocky glens of Antrim. The pipes were designed to echo from stone, he thought, and now that he heard his pipes in here, he would recommend their use in place of organs in Ireland. He had never sounded better.

He saw Abby Boland leaning across the parapet, looking at him, and he played to her, then turned east and played to his wife in Armagh prison, then turned to the wall behind him and played softly for himself.

CHAPTER 18

Brian Flynn listened to Sullivan for a few seconds. “The lad’s not bad.”

Hickey found his briar pipe and began filling it. “Reminds me of those Scottish and Irish regiments in the First War. Used to go into battle with pipes skirling. Jerry’s machine guns ripped them up. Never missed a note, though—good morale-builder.” He looked down at the blueprints. “I’m beginning to think whoever designed this place designed Tut’s tomb.”

“Same mentality. Tricks with stone. Fellow named Renwick in this case. There’s a likeness of him on one of those stained-glass windows. Over there. Looks shifty.”

“Even God looks shifty in stained glass, Brian.”

Flynn consulted the blueprints. “Look, there are six large supporting piers— they’re towers, actually. They all have doors either on the inside or outside of the Cathedral, and they all have spiral staircases that go into the triforia…. All except this one, which passes through Farrell’s triforium. It has no doors, either on the blueprints or in actuality.”

“How did he get up there?”

“From the next tower which has an outside door.” Flynn looked up at Eamon Farrell. “I told him to look for the way into this tower, but he hasn’t found it.”

“Aye, and probably never will. Maybe that’s where they burn heretics. Or hide the gold.”

“Well, you may joke about it, but it bothers me. Not even a church architect wastes time and money building a tower from basement to roof without putting it to some use. I’m certain there’s a staircase in there, and entrances as well. We’ll have to find out where.”

“We may find out quite unexpectedly,” said Hickey.

“That we may.”

“Later,” said Hickey, “perhaps I’ll call on Renwick’s ghost for help.”

“I’d settle for the present architect. Stillway.” Flynn tapped his finger on the blueprints. “I think there are more hollow spaces here than even Renwick knew. Passages made by masons and workmen—not unusual in a cathedral of this size and style.”

“Anyway, you’ve done a superb job, Brian. It will take the police some time to formulate an attack.”

“Unless they get hold of Stillway and his set of blueprints before our people on the outside find him.” He turned and looked at the telephone mounted on the organ. “What’s taking the police so long to call?”

Hickey picked up the telephone. “It’s working.” He came back to the rail. “They’re still confused. You’ve disrupted their chain of command. They’ll be more angry with you for that than for this.”

“Aye. It’s like a huge machine that has malfunctioned. But when they get it going again, they’ll start to grind away at us. And there’s no way to shut it down again once it starts.”

Eamon Farrell, a middle-aged man and the oldest of the Fenians, except for Hickey, looked down from the six-story-high northeast triforium, watching Flynn and Hickey as they came out of the bell-tower lobby. Flynn wore the black suit of a priest, Hickey an old tweed jacket. They looked for all the world like a priest and an architect talking over renovations. Farrell shifted his gaze to the four hostages sitting in the sanctuary, waiting for some indication as to their fate. He felt sorry for them. But he also felt sorry for his only son, Eamon, Jr., in Long Kesh. The boy was in the second week of a hunger strike and wouldn’t last much longer.

Farrell slipped his police tunic off and hung it over the parapet, then turned and walked back to the wooden kneewall behind him. In the wall was a small door, and he opened it, knelt, and shone his flashlight at the plaster lathing of the ceiling of the bride’s room below him. He walked carefully in a crouch onto a rafter, and played the light around the dark recess, moving farther out onto the wooden beam. There was a fairly large space around him, a sort of lower attic below the main attic, formed by the downward pitch of the triforium roof before it met the outside wall of stone buttresses.

He stepped to the beam on his right and raised his light to the corner where the two walls came together. In the corner was part of a rounded tower made of brick and mortar. He made his way toward it and knelt precariously on a beam over the plaster. He reached out and ran his hand over a very small black iron door, almost the color of the dusty brick.

Eamon Farrell unhooked the rusty latch and pulled the door open. A familiar smell came out of the dark opening, and he reached his hand in and touched the inside of the brick, then brought his hand away and looked at it. Soot.

Farrell directed the light through the door and saw that the round hollow space was at least six feet across. He angled the light down but could see nothing. Carefully he eased his head and shoulders through the door and looked up. He sensed rather than saw the lights of the towering city above him. A cold downdraft confirmed that the hollow tower was a chimney.

Something caught his eye, and he pointed the light at it. A rung set into the brick. He played the light up and down the chimney and saw a series of iron rungs that ran up the chimney to the top. He withdrew from the opening and closed the thick steel door, then latched it firmly shut. He remained crouched on the beam for a long time, then came out of the small attic and moved to the parapet, calling down to Flynn.

Flynn quickly moved under the triforium. “Did you find something, Eamon?”

Farrell hesitated, then made a decision. “I see the tower as it comes through behind the triforium. There’s no doorway.”

Flynn looked impatient. “Throw me the rope ladder, and I’ll have a look.”

“No. No, don’t bother. I’ll keep looking.”

Flynn considered, then said, “That tower has a function—find out what it is.”

Farrell nodded. “I will.” But he had already found it, and found an escape route for himself, a way to get out of this mess alive if the coming negotiations failed.

Frank Gallagher looked out from the southeast triforium. Everyone seemed to be in place. Directly across from him was Farrell. Sullivan, he noticed, was making eyes at Boland across the nave. Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty were in the attic building bonfires and discussing, no doubt, the possibility of getting in a quick one before they died. Megan’s brother, Pedar, was on the crypt landing watching the sacristy gates. He was young, not eighteen, but steady as a rock. For thou art Peter, and upon this Rock, thought Gallagher, who was devoutly Catholic, upon this Rock,I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Thompson submachine gun helped, too.

Devane and Mullins had the nicest views, Gallagher thought, but it was probably cold up there. Megan, Hickey, and Flynn floated around like nervous hosts and hostess before a party, checking on the seating and ambience.

Frank Gallagher removed the silk parade marshal’s sash and dropped it on the floor. He sighted his rifle at the choir loft, and Leary came into focus. He quickly put the rifle down. You didn’t point a rifle at Leary. You didn’t do anything to, with, or for Leary. You just avoided Leary like you avoided dark alleys and contagion wards.

Gallagher looked down at the hostages. His orders were simple. If they leave the sanctuary, unescorted, shoot them. He stared at the Cardinal. Somehow Frank Gallagher had to square this thing he was doing, square it with the Cardinal or his own priest later—later, when it was over, and people saw what a fine thing they had done.

CHAPTER 19

Maureen watched Flynn as he moved about the Cathedral. He moved with a sense of purpose and animation that she recognized, and she knew he was feeling very alive and very good about himself. She watched the Cardinal sitting directly across from her. She envied him for what she knew was his absolute confidence in his position, his unerring belief that he was a blameless victim, a potential martyr. But for herself, and perhaps for Baxter, there was some guilt, and some misgivings, about their roles. And those feelings could work to undermine their ability to resist the pressures that the coming hours or days would bring.

She glanced quickly around at the triforia and choir loft. Well done, Brian, but you’re short of troops. She tried to remember the faces of the people she had seen close in, and was fairly certain that she didn’t know any of them except Gallagher and Devane. Megan and Pedar Fitzgerald she knew of through their brother, Tommy. What had become of all the people she once called sisters and brothers? The camps or the grave. These were their relatives, recruited in that endless cycle of blood vengeance that characterized the Irish war. With that kind of perpetual vendetta she couldn’t see how it would end until they were all dead.

She spoke to Baxter. “If we run quickly to the south transept doors, we could be in the vestibule, hidden from the snipers, before they reacted. I can disarm almost any mine in a few seconds. We’d be through the outer door and into the street before anyone reached the vestibule.”

Baxter looked at her. “What in the world are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about getting out of here alive.”

“Look up there. Five snipers. And how can we run off and leave the Cardinal and Father Murphy?”

“They can come with us.”

“Are you mad? I won’t hear of it.”

“I’ll do what I damned well please.”

He saw her body tense and reached out and held her arm. “No, you don’t. Listen here, we have a chance to be released if—”

“No chance at all. From what I picked up of their conversation, they are going to demand the release of prisoners in internment. Do you think your government will agree to that?”

“I’m … I’m sure something will be worked out …”

“Bloody stupid diplomat. I know these people better than you do, and I know your government’s position on Irish terrorists. No negotiation. End of discussion.”

“… but we have to wait for the right moment. We need a plan.”

She tried to pull her arm away, but he held it tightly. She said, “I wish I had a shilling for every prisoner who stood in front of a firing squad because he waited for the right moment to make a break. The right moment, according to your own soldier’s manual, is as soon after capture as possible. Before the enemy settles down, before they get their bearings. We’ve already waited too long. Let go of me.”

“No. Let me think of something—something less suicidal.”

“Listen to me, Baxter—we’re not physically bound in any way yet. We must act now. You and I are as good as dead. The Cardinal and the priest may be spared. We won’t be.”

Baxter took a long breath, then said, “Well … it may be that I’m as good as dead … but don’t you know this fellow, Flynn? Weren’t you in the IRA together … ?”

“We were lovers. That’s another reason I won’t stay here at his mercy for one more second.”

“I see. Well, if you want to commit suicide, that’s one thing. But don’t tell me you’re trying to escape. And don’t expect me to get myself killed with you.”

“You’ll wish later you’d taken a quick bullet.”

He spoke evenly. “If an opportunity presents itself, I will try to escape.” He paused. “If not, then when the time comes I’ll die with some dignity, I hope.”

“I hope so, too. You can let go of my arm now. I’ll wait. But if we’re bound or thrown into the crypt or something like that—then, as you’re thrashing about with two shattered kneecaps, you can think about how we could have run. That’s how they do it, you know. They kneecap you hours before they shoot you in the heart.”

Baxter drew a deep breath. “I suppose I lack a sufficiently vivid imagination to be frightened enough to try anything…. But you’re supplying me with the necessary picture.” He took his hand away from hers and sat watching her out of the corner of his eyes, but she seemed content to sit there. “Steady.”

“Oh, take your bloody British steady and shove it.”

Baxter remembered her bravery on the steps and realized that part of that, consciously or unconsciously, was for him, or more accurately, what he represented. He realized also that her survival was to some extent in his hands. As for himself, he felt indignant over his present position but felt no loss of dignity. The distinction was not a small one and would determine how each of them would react to their captivity, and if they were to die, how they would die. He said, “Whenever you’re ready … I’m with you.”

Pedar Fitzgerald looked up the right-hand stairs as his sister came down toward him. He stood and cradled the Thompson submachine gun under his arm. “How’s it going, Megan?”

“Everything’s set but the bombs.” She looked down the stairs through the gate into the empty sacristy. “Any movement?”

“No. Things are quiet.” He forced a smile. “Maybe they don’t know we’re here.”

She smiled back. “Oh, they know. They know, Pedar.” She drew her pistol and descended the stairs, then examined the lock and chain on the gates. She listened, trying to hear a sound from the four side corridors that led into the sacristy. Something moved, someone coughed quietly. She turned and said to her brother in a loud voice, “When you shoot, boys, shoot between the bars. Don’t damage the lock and chain. Those Thompsons can get away from you.”

Pedar smiled. “We’ve handled them enough times.”

She winked at him and climbed back up the stairs, sticking the pistol in the waistband of her jeans. She moved close to him and touched his cheek lightly. “We’re putting all we’ve got on this, Pedar. Tommy is in for life. We could be dead or in an American prison for life. Mum is near dead for worry. None of us will see each other again if this goes badly.”

Pedar Fitzgerald felt tears forming in his eyes but fought them back. He found his voice and said, “We’ve all put everything on Brian, Megan. Do you … do you trust him … ? Can he do it, then?”

Megan Fitzgerald looked into her brother’s eyes. “If he can’t and we see he can’t, then … you and I, Pedar … we’ll take over. The family comes first.” She turned and climbed up to the sanctuary, came around the altar, and looked at Maureen sitting in the pew. Their eyes met and neither looked away.

Flynn watched from the ambulatory, then called out, “Megan. Come take a walk with us.”

Megan Fitzgerald turned away from Maureen and joined Flynn and Hickey as they began walking up the center aisle. “There are people in the sacristy corridors,” she said.

Flynn nodded as he walked. “They won’t do anything until they’ve established who we are and what we want. We’ve a little time yet.”

When they reached the front door, Flynn ran his hands over the cold bronze ceremonial doors. “Magnificent. I’d like to take one with me.” He examined the mines, then turned back and motioned around the Cathedral. “We’ve set up a perfect and very deadly cross fire from five long, concealed perches protected by stone parapets. As long as we hold the high spots we can dominate the Cathedral. But if we lose the high ground and the fight takes place on the floor, it will be very difficult.”

Hickey relit his pipe. “As long as there’s no fighting in the bookstore.”

Megan looked at him. “I hope you keep your sense of humor when the bullets start ripping through the smoke around your face.”

He blew smoke toward her. “Lass, I’ve been shot at more times than you’ve had your period.”

Flynn interrupted. “If you were a police commander, John, what would you do?”

Hickey thought a moment, then said, “I’d do what the British Army did in downtown Dublin in 1916. I’d call in the artillery and level the fucking place. Then I’d offer surrender terms.”

“But this is not Dublin, 1916,” said Flynn. “I think the people out there have to act with great restraint.”

“You may call it restraint, I’d call it cunning. They’ll eventually have to attack when they see we won’t be talked out. But they’ll do it without the big guns. More tactics, less gunpowder—gas, helicopters, concussion grenades that don’t damage property. There’s a lot available to them today.” He looked around. “But we may be able to hold on.”

Megan said, “We will hold on.”

Flynn added, “We have gas masks, incidentally.”

“Do you, now? You’re a very thorough man, Brian. The old IRA was always going off half-cocked to try to grab the British lion’s balls. And the lion loved it— loved feasting on IRA.” He looked up at the triforia, then down at the deserted main floor. “Too bad, though, you couldn’t find more men—”

Flynn interrupted. “They’re a good lot. Each of them is worth twenty of the old-type ruffians.”

“Are they, then? Even the women?”

Megan stiffened and started to speak.

Flynn interjected, “Nothing wrong with women, you old bastard. I’ve learned that over the years. They’re steady. Loyal.”

Hickey glanced at the sanctuary where Maureen sat, then made an exaggerated pretense of looking away quickly. “I suppose many of them are.” He sat at the edge of a pew and yawned. “Tiring business. Megan, lass, I hope you didn’t think I included you when I spoke about women.”

“Oh, go to hell.” She turned and walked away.

Flynn let out a long breath of annoyance. “Why are you provoking her?”

Hickey watched her walk toward the altar. “Cold, cold. Must be like fucking a wooden icebox.”

“Look, John—”

The telephone on the chancel organ beside the altar rang loudly, and everyone turned toward it.

CHAPTER 20

Brian Flynn put his hand on the ringing phone and looked at Hickey. “I was beginning to believe no one cared—one hears such stories about New York indifference.”

Hickey laughed. “I can’t think of a worse nightmare for an Irish revolutionary than to be ignored. Answer it, and if it’s someone wanting to sell aluminum siding for the rectory, I suggest we just go home.”

Flynn drew a deep breath and picked up the receiver. “MacCumail here.”

There was a short silence, then a man’s voice said, “Who?”

“This is Finn MacCumail, Chief of the Fenians. Who is this?”

The voice hesitated for a moment, then the man said, “This is Police Sergeant Tezik. Tactical Patrol Unit. I’m calling from the rectory. What the hell is going on in there?”

“Not much of anything at the moment.”

“Why are the doors locked?”

“Because there are mines attached to each one. It’s for your own protection, actually.”

“Why … ?”

“Listen, Sergeant Tezik, and listen very closely. We have four hostages in here— Father Timothy Murphy, Maureen Malone, Sir Harold Baxter, and the Cardinal himself. If the police try to force their way in, the mines will explode, and if they keep coming, the hostages will be shot and the Cathedral will be set afire. Do you understand?”

“Jesus Christ …”

“Get this message to your superiors quickly, and get a ranking man on the phone. Be quick about it, Sergeant Tezik.”

“Yeah … all right…. Listen, everything’s pretty screwed up here, so just take it easy. As soon as we get things sorted out, we’ll have a police official on the phone with you. Okay?”

“Make it quick. And no nonsense or there will be a great number of dead people you’ll have to answer for. No helicopters in the area. No armored vehicles on the streets. I have men in the towers with rockets and rifles. I’ve got a gun pointed at the Cardinal’s head right now.”

“Okay—take it easy. Don’t—”

Flynn hung up and turned to Hickey and Megan, who had joined them. “A TPU sergeant—spiritual kin to the RUCs and the Gestapo. I didn’t like the tone of his voice.”

Hickey nodded. “It’s their height. Gives them a sense of superiority.” He smiled. “Easier targets, though.”

Flynn looked at the doors. “We caused a bit too much confusion. I hope they reestablish some chain of command before the hotheaded types start acting. The next few minutes are going to be critical.”

Megan turned to Hickey and spoke quickly. “Do you want Sullivan to help you place the bombs?”

“Megan, love, I want you to help me. Run along and get what we need.” He waited until Megan left, then turned to Flynn. “We have to make a decision now about the hostages—a decision about who kills which one.”

Flynn looked at the Cardinal sitting straight on his throne, looking every inch a Prince of the Church. He knew it wasn’t vanity or affectation he was observing but a product of two thousand years of history, ceremony, and training. The Cardinal would be not only a difficult hostage but a difficult man to make a corpse of. He said to Hickey, “It would be a hard man who could put a bullet into him.”

Hickey’s eyes, which normally twinkled with an old man’s mischief, turned narrow and malevolent. “Well, I’ll do him, if”—Hickey inclined his head toward Maureen— “if you’ll do her.”

Flynn glanced at Maureen sitting in the clergy pews between Baxter and Father Murphy. He hesitated, then said, “Yes, all right. Go on and plant the bombs.”

Hickey ignored him. “As for Baxter, anyone will kill him. You tell Megan to do the priest. The little bitch should draw her first blood the hard way—not with Maureen.”

Flynn looked at Hickey closely. It was becoming apparent that Hickey was obsessed with taking as many people with him as possible. “Yes,” he said, “that seems the way to handle it.” He looked out over the vast expanse around him and said, more to himself than to Hickey, “God, how did we get in this place, and how can we get out?”

Hickey took Flynn’s arm and pressed it tightly. “Funny, that’s almost exactly what Padraic Pearse said when his men seized the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday. I remember it very clearly. The answer then, as it is now, is that you got in with luck and blarney, but you’ll not get out alive….” He released Flynn’s arm and slapped him on the back. “Cheer up, lad, we’ll take a good number of them with us, like we did in 1916. Burn this place down while we’re about it. Blow it up, too, if we get those bombs in place.”

Flynn stared at Hickey. He might have to kill Hickey before Hickey got them all killed.

Megan Fitzgerald mounted the sanctuary, carrying two suitcases. She walked rapidly to the right side of the high altar, and placed them beside a bronze plate set into the marble floor, then lifted the plate. John Hickey came up beside her and picked up the suitcases. “Go on.”

Megan descended a shaky metal ladder, found a light chain, and pulled it. Hickey climbed down and handed the suitcases to Megan, who placed them gently on the floor. They examined the unevenly excavated crawl space. Building rubble, pipes, and ducts nearly filled the space around them, and it was difficult to move or to see clearly. Megan called out, “Here’s the outer wall of the crypt.”

Hickey called back, “Yes, and here’s the wall of the staircase that continues down into the sacristy. Come along.” Hickey turned on a flashlight and probed the area to his front as he moved, dragging one of the suitcases behind him.

They followed a parallel course to the descending staircase wall, hunching lower as they progressed. The dirt floor turned to Manhattan bedrock, and Hickey called out, “I see it up ahead.” He crawled to a protruding mound from which rose the footing of a massive column. “Here it is. Come closer.” He played the light around the dark spaces. “See? Here’s where they cut through the old foundation and footing to let the sacristy stairs pass through. If we dug down farther, we’d find the sacristy’s subbasement. It’s somewhat like the layout of a modern split-level home.”

Megan was skeptical. “Damned confusing sort of place. The fire in the attic is much surer.”

“Don’t be getting cold feet, now, Megan. I’ll not blow you up.”

“I’m only concerned with placing them properly.”

“Of course.” Hickey ran his hand over the column. “Now the story is that when they blasted the new stairs through the foundation in 1904 they weakened these flanking columns. In architectural terms, they’re under stress. The old boy whose father worked on the blasting told me that the Irish laborers believed only God Almighty kept the whole place from collapsing when they set the dynamite. But God Almighty doesn’t live here anymore, so when we plant this plastic and it blows, nothing will hold up the roof.”

“And if it does hold up, will you be a believer then?”

“No. I’ll think we didn’t place the explosives properly.” Hickey opened the suitcase and pulled out twenty white bricks wrapped in cellophane. He tore the cellophane from the white, putty-like substance and molded a brick into the place where the bedrock met the hewn and mortared stone of the column footing. Megan joined him, and they sculpted the bricks around the footing. He handed her the flashlight. “Hold this steady.”

Hickey implanted four detonators, connected by wires to a battery pack, into the plastic. He picked up an alarm clock and looked at his watch. “It’s four minutes after six now. The clock doesn’t know A.M. from P.M., so the most time I can give it is eleven hours and fifty-nine minutes.” He began turning the clock’s alarm dial slowly counter-clockwise, talking as he did. “So I’ll set the alarm for five minutes after six— no, I mean three minutes after six.” He laughed as he kept turning the dial. “I remember once, a lad in Galway who didn’t understand that. At midnight he set the timer to go off at one minute after twelve, in what he thought would be the afternoon. British officer’s club, I think it was. Yes, lunchtime, he thought. Anyway, at one minute past midnight … he was standing before his Maker, who must have wondered how he became so unmade.” He laughed again as he joined the clock wire to the batteries.

“At least don’t get us killed until we’ve set the one on the other side.”

“Good point. Did I do that right? Well, I hope so.” He pulled the clock switch, and the loud ticking filled the damp space. He looked at her. “And don’t forget, my sharp little lass, only you and I know exactly where these are planted, which gives us some advantages and a bit of power with your friend, Mr. Flynn. Only you and I can decide if we want to give an extension of the deadline to meet our demands.” He laughed as he pushed the clock into the explosives and molded the plastic around it. “But if the police have killed us before then, well, at three minutes after six—which incidentally happens to be the exact time of sunrise—they’ll get a message from us, directly from hell.” He took some earth from the floor and pressed it into the white plastic. “There. That looks innocent, doesn’t it? Give me a hand here.” He spoke as he continued to camouflage the plastic explosives. “You’re young. You don’t want it to end so soon, I know, but you must have some sort of death wish to get mixed up in this. Nobody dropped you in through the roof. You people planned this for over a year. Wish I’d had a year to think about it. I’d be home now where I belong.”

He picked up the flashlight and turned it onto her face. Her bright green eyes glowed back at him. “I hope you had a good look at this morning’s sunrise, lass, because the chances are you’ll not see another one.”

Patrick Burke moved carefully from under the portal of the bronze ceremonial doors and looked up at the north tower. The Cathedral’s floodlights cast a blue-white brilliance over the recently cleaned stonework and onto the fluttering harp flag of green and gold, reminding Burke irreverently of a Disney World castle. Burke looked over the south tower. The louvers were torn open, and a man was looking down at him through a rifle scope. Burke turned his back on the sniper and saw a tall uniformed patrolman of the Tactical Patrol Unit hurrying toward him through the sleet.

The young patrolman hesitated, then said, “Are you a sergeant or better?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“I …”

“Lieutenant, Intelligence.”

The patrolman began speaking rapidly. “Christ, Lieutenant, my sergeant, Tezik, is in the rectory. He’s got a platoon of TPU ready to move. He wants to hit the doors with trucks—I don’t think we should do anything until we get orders—”

Burke moved quickly across the steps and followed the north wall of the Cathedral through the gardens and terraces until he came to the rear of the rectory. He entered a door that led to a large vestibule. Scattered throughout the halls and offices and sitting on the stairs were about thirty men of the Tactical Patrol Unit, an elite reaction force, looking fresh, young, big, and eager. Burke turned to the patrolman who had followed him. “Where’s Tezik?”

“In the Rector’s office.” He leaned toward Burke and said quietly, “He’s a little … high-strung. You know?”

Burke left the patrolman in the vestibule and moved quickly up the stairs between the sitting TPU men. On the next landing he opened a door marked RECTOR.

Monsignor Downes sat at his desk in the center of the large, old-fashioned office, still wearing his topcoat and smoking a cigarette. Burke stood in the doorway. “Monsignor, where’s the police sergeant?”

Monsignor Downes looked up blankly. “Who are you?”

“Burke. Police. Where is—?”

Monsignor Downes spoke distractedly. “Oh, yes. I know you. Friend of Father Murphy … saw you last night at the Waldorf … Maureen Malone … you were—”

“Yes, sir. Where is Sergeant Tezik?”

A deep voice called out from behind a set of double doors to Burke’s right. “I’m in here!”

Burke moved through the doors into a larger inner office with a fireplace and bookshelves. Sergeant Tezik sat at an oversized desk in the rear room. “Burke. ID. Get your men out of the rectory and on the street where they belong. Help with crowd control.”

Sergeant Tezik stood slowly, revealing a frame six-and-a-half feet tall, weighing, Burke guessed, about two seventy-five. Tezik said, “Who died and left you in charge?”

Burke closed the door behind him. “Actually, Commissioner Dwyer is dead. Heart attack.”

“I heard. That don’t make you the PC.”

“No, but I’ll do for now.” Burke moved farther into the room. “Don’t try to take advantage of this mess, Tezik. Don’t play macho man with other people’s lives. You know the saying, Tezik: When a citizen is in trouble he calls a cop; when a cop is in trouble he calls Emergency Service.”

“I’m using what they call personal initiative, Lieutenant. I figure that before those bastards get themselves dug in—”

“Who have you called? Where are your orders coming from?”

“They’re coming from my brains.”

“That’s too bad.”

Tezik continued, unperturbed, “I can’t get an open line no place.”

“Did you try Police Plaza?”

“I told you, I can’t get through. This is a revolution, for Christ’s sake. You know?” He hesitated, then added, “Only the interphone in the Cathedral complex is working…. I spoke to somebody …”

Burke moved to the desk. “Who did you speak to?”

“Some guy—Finn?—something. Name’s on the Cathedral doors.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.” He thought a moment. “Said he had four hostages.”

“Who?”

“The Cardinal—”

“Shit!”

“Yeah. And they got a priest, too—Murphy. And some broad whose name I don’t remember—that peace woman, I think. Name was in the papers. And some English royalty guy, Baker.”

“Jesus Christ. What else did he say, Tezik? Think.”

Tezik seemed to be thinking. “Let me see…. He said he’d kill them—they always say that. Right? And burn the Cathedral—how do you burn a Cathedral—?”

“With matches.”

“Not possible. Stone don’t burn. Anyway, the doors are supposed to be rigged with explosives, but, shit, I have thirty-five TPU in the rectory, ready to go. I got a dozen more standing in the halls that lead to the sacristy. I got four-wheel-drive equipment from the Sanitation Department, with my men driving, ready to hit the doors, and—”

“Forget it.”

“Like hell. Look, the longer you wait, the deeper the other guy digs in. That’s a fact.”

“Where did you learn that fact?”

“In the Marines. ’Nam.”

“Sure. Listen, Tezik, this is midtown Manhattan, not Fuck Luck Province. A great cathedral full of art treasures has been seized, Tezik. And hostages, Tezik. The dinks never held hostages, did they? Police policy is containment, not cavalry charges. Right?”

“This is different. The command structure’s broken down. One time, near Quangtri, I was on patrol—”

“Who cares?”

Tezik stiffened. “Let me see your shield.”

Burke held out his badge case, then put it away. “Look, Tezik, these people who’ve taken the Cathedral do not present a clear or immediate danger to anyone outside the Cathedral—”

“They shot out a spotlight. They hung a flag from the steeple. They could be Reds, Burke—revolutionaries…. Fenians … what the hell are Fenians?”

“Listen to me—leave this to Emergency Services and the Hostage Negotiator. Okay?”

“I’m going in now, Burke. Now, before they start shooting into the city—before they start shooting the hostages … or burning the Cathedral—”

“It’s stone.”

“Back off, Lieutenant. I’m the man on the spot, and I have to do what I have to do.”

Burke unbuttoned his topcoat and hooked his thumbs into his belt. “No way.”

Neither man spoke for several seconds, then Tezik said, “I’m walking to that door.”

Burke said, “Try it.”

The office was very still except for the ticking of a mantel clock.

They both sidestepped clear of the desk, then faced off, each man knowing that he had unwittingly backed the other against a wall, and neither knowing what to do about it.

CHAPTER 21

Father Murphy addressed Maureen and Baxter sitting beside him on the pew. “I’m going to speak to His Eminence. Will you come with me?”

Maureen shook her head.

Baxter said, “I’ll be along shortly.”

Father Murphy crossed the marble floor, knelt at the throne and kissed the episcopal ring, then rose and began speaking to the Cardinal in a low voice. Maureen watched them, then said to Baxter, “I can’t stay here another moment.”

He studied her closely. Her eyes were darting around wildly, and he saw that her body was shaking again.

He put his hand on her arm. “You really must get a grip on yourself.”

“Oh, go to hell! How could you understand? For me this is like sitting in a room full of nightmares come to life.”

“Let me see if I can get you a drink. Perhaps they have tranquilizers—”

“No! Listen, I’m not afraid of …”

“Talk about it if it will help.”

Maureen tried to steady her shaking legs. “It’s lots of things…. It’s him. Flynn. He can … he has a power … no, not a power … a way of making you do things, and afterward you wished you hadn’t done them, and you feel awful. Do you understand?”

“I think—”

“And … these people … They’re my people, you see, yet they’re not. Not anymore. I don’t know how to react to them…. It’s like a family meeting, and I’ve been called in because I’ve done something terrible. They’re not saying anything, just watching me….” She shook her head. Once in, never out. She was beginning to understand what that really meant, and it had nothing to do with them but with oneself. She looked at Baxter. “Even if they don’t kill us … There are worse things….”

Baxter pressed her arm. “Yes … I think I understand—”

“I’m not explaining myself very well.”

She knew of that total suppression of ego that made hostages zombies, willing participants in the drama. And afterward the mixed feelings, confusion, guilt. She remembered what one psychologist had said, Once you’re a hostage, you’re a hostage for the rest of your life. She shook her head. No. She wouldn’t let that happen to her. No. “No!”

Baxter squeezed her hand. “Look here, we may have to die, but I promise you, I won’t let them abuse you … us. There’ll be no mock trial, no public recanting, no …” He found it difficult to say what he knew her fears were. “No sadistic games, no psychological torture …”

She studied his face closely. He had more insight into these things than she would have thought of a prim career diplomat.

He cleared his throat and said, “You’re a very proud woman…. It’s easier for me, actually. I hate them, and anything they do to me just diminishes them—not me. It would help if you established the proper relationship between yourself and them.”

She shook her head. “Yes. I feel like a traitor, and I’m a patriot. I feel guilty, and I’m the victim. How can that be?”

“When we know the answers to that, we’ll know how to deal with people like Brian Flynn.”

She forced a smile. “I’m sorry I bothered you with all of this.” Baxter started to interrupt, but she went on. “I thought you had a right to know, before I—”

Baxter grabbed at her arm, but she vaulted into the pew behind her, then jumped into the last row and grabbed at the two wooden columns of the carved screen, swinging her legs up to the balustrade before jumping down to the ambulatory six feet below.

Frank Gallagher leaned over the edge of the triforium. He pointed his rifle straight down at the top of her head, but the rifle was shaking so badly he didn’t fire.

Eamon Farrell sighted across the sanctuary at her back but shifted his aim to her left and squeezed off a single round, which exploded into the stillness of the Cathedral.

George Sullivan and Abby Boland in the long triforium at the front of the Cathedral looked quickly at the source of the shot, then down at the aim of Farrell’s rifle, but neither moved.

Leary had read the signs before Maureen even made her first move. As she came out of the pew he leaned farther over the parapet of the choir loft and followed her through his rifle scope. As she swung up to the balustrade he fired.

Maureen heard the sharp crack of Farrell’s fire ring out behind her, then almost simultaneously heard the report roll down from the choir loft. Farrell’s shot passed to her left. Leary’s shot passed so close over her head she felt it touch her hair, and the wooden column near her left ear splintered in her face. Suddenly a pair of strong hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her backward into the pew behind her. She looked up into the face of Harold Baxter. “Let go of me! Let go!”

Baxter was agitated and kept repeating, “Don’t move! For God’s sake, don’t move!”

A sound of running footsteps came to the sanctuary, and Maureen saw Megan leaning into the pew, pointing a pistol at her face. Megan spoke softly. “Thank you.” She cocked the pistol.

Baxter found himself sprawled over Maureen’s body. “No! For God’s sake, don’t.”

Megan screamed. “Move, you stupid bastard! Move!” She struck Baxter on the back of the head with her pistol, then pushed the muzzle into Maureen’s throat.

The Cardinal was halfway across the sanctuary, shouting, “Stop that! Let them alone!” Father Murphy moved quickly behind Megan and grabbed her forearms. He picked her high into the air, spun around, and dropped her on the floor. Megan slid on the polished marble, then shot up quickly into a kneeling position, and pointed the gun at the priest.

Brian Flynn’s voice came clearly from the communion rail. “No!”

Megan pivoted around and stared at him, her pistol still leveled in front of her.

Flynn jumped over the gate and mounted the steps. “Go into the choir loft and stay there!”

Megan knelt on the floor, the pistol shaking in her hand. Everyone stood around her, motionless.

John Hickey quickly mounted the sanctuary steps. “Come with me, Megan.” He walked to her, bent over at the waist, and took her arms in his hands. “Come on, then. That’s it.” He pulled her to her feet, and pushed her gunhand down to her side. He led her down the steps into the center aisle.

Flynn walked to the side of the pews and looked down. “Baxter, that was very gallant—very knightly. Stupid, too.”

Harold Baxter picked himself up, then pulled Maureen up beside him.

Flynn looked at Maureen. “You won’t get off that easy. And you almost got Sir Harry killed, too.”

She didn’t answer.

Baxter pressed a handkerchief to Maureen’s cheek, where she had been hit by the wooden splinters.

Flynn’s arm shot out and knocked Baxter’s hand away. He went on calmly, “And don’t think Mr. Leary is a bad shot. Had you gotten to the door he would have blown both your ankles away.” Flynn turned. “And that goes as well for His Eminence and the good Father. And if by some miracle someone does get out of here, someone else dies for it.” He looked at each of them. “Or should I just bind you all together? I’d rather not have to do that.” He fixed each of the silent hostages with a cold stare. “Do not leave this sanctuary. Do we all understand the rules? Good. Everyone sit down.” Flynn walked behind the altar and descended the steps to the crypt door landing. He spoke quietly to Pedar Fitzgerald. “Any movement down there?”

Fitzgerald answered softly. “Lot of commotion in the corridors, but it’s quiet now. Is anyone hurt? Is my sister all right?”

“No one is hurt. Don’t leave this post, no matter what you hear up there.”

“I know. Look out for Megan, will you?”

“We’re all watching out for Megan, Pedar.”

A TPU man burst into the Monsignor’s suite and ran to the inner office, out of breath. “Sergeant!”

Tezik and Burke both looked up.

The patrolman said excitedly, “The men in the corridors heard two shots fired—”

Tezik looked at Burke. “That’s it. We’re going in.” Tezik moved quickly past Burke toward the door. Burke grabbed his shoulders and threw him back against the fireplace.

Tezik recovered his balance and shouted to the patrolman, “Arrest this man!”

The patrolman hesitated, then drew his service revolver.

The telephone rang.

Burke reached for it, but Tezik snatched the phone away and picked up the receiver. “Sergeant Tezik, NYPD.”

Flynn sat at the chancel organ bench and said, “This is Finn MacCumail.”

Tezik’s voice was excited. “What happened in there? What’s all that shooting?”

Flynn lit a cigarette. “Two shots hardly constitute ‘all that shooting,’ Sergeant. You ought to spend your next holiday in Belfast. Mothers fire two shots into the nursery just to wake the children.”

“What—”

“No one is hurt,” interrupted Flynn. “An automatic rifle discharged by accident.” He said abruptly, “We’re getting impatient, Sergeant.”

“Just stay calm.”

“The deadline for the demands I’m going to make is sunrise, and sunrise won’t come any later because you’re fucking around to find your chiefs.” He hung up and drew on his cigarette. He thought about Maureen. He ought to tie her up for her own good, and for the good of them all, but perhaps he owed it to her to leave her options open and let her arrive at her own destiny without his interference, Sometime before sunrise they would be free of each other. or if not free, then together again, one way or the other.

CHAPTER 22

Sergeant Tezik replaced the receiver and glanced at Burke. “An automatic rifle went off by accident—that’s what he said…. I don’t know.” Tezik seemed to have calmed down somewhat. “What do you think?”

Burke let out a long breath, then moved to the window overlooking the Cathedral and pulled back the drapes. “Take a look out there.”

Sergeant Tezik looked at the floodlit Cathedral.

“Have you ever seen the inside of that place, Tezik?”

He nodded. “Holy Name Society communions. Couple of … funerals.”

“Yeah. Well, remember the triforia—the balconies? The choir loft? The acre or so of pews? It’s a deathtrap in there, Sergeant, a fucking shooting gallery, and the TPU will be ducks.” Burke let the drape fall and faced Tezik. “My intelligence sources say that those people have automatic weapons and sniper rifles. Maybe rockets. What do you have, Tezik? Six-shooters? Go back to your post. Tell your men to stand fast.”

Tezik walked to a sideboard, poured a glass of brandy, drank it, then stared off at a point in space for a full minute. He looked at Burke and said, “Okay, I’m no hero.” He forced a smile. “Thought it might be a piece of cake. Couple of medals. Mayor’s commendation … media stuff. You know?”

“Yeah, I’ve been to a lot of funerals like that.”

The other TPU man holstered his revolver and left as Tezik moved sullenly toward the door.

“And no funny stuff, Sergeant.”

Tezik walked into the outer office, then called back. “They want to speak to a high-ranking police official. Hope you can find one.”

Burke moved to the desk and dialed a special number to his office in Police Plaza. After a long delay the phone rang and a woman answered. “Jackson.”

“Louise, Burke here.”

Duty Sergeant Louise Jackson, a middle-aged black woman, sounded tired. “Lieutenant! Where are you?”

“In the rectory of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Put Langley on.”

“The Inspector’s in a helicopter with Deputy PC Rourke. They’re trying to establish a command structure, but we lost radio contact with them when they got close to the Cathedral. Jamming device there. Every telephone line in the city is overloaded except these special ones, and they’re not so good either. Everything’s pretty crazy here.”

“It’s a little messy here, too. Listen, you call the Hostage Negotiator’s office upstairs. Have them get hold of Bert Schroeder, quick. We have a hostage situation here.”

“Damn it. That’s what we thought. The BSS guarding the VIPs on the steps just called in. They lost some people in the shuffle, but they were a little vague about who and how.”

“I’ll tell you who and how in a second. Okay, call the Emergency Service office— Captain Bellini, if he’s available. Explain that the Cathedral is held by gunmen and tell them to assemble siege equipment, snipers, and whatever other personnel and equipment is necessary, in the Cardinal’s residence. Got that?”

“This one’s going to be a bitch.”

“For sure. Okay, I have a situation report and a message from the gunmen, Louise. I’ll give it to you, and you call the Commissioner’s office. They’ll call everyone on the Situation A list. Ready to copy?”

“Shoot.”

“At approximately 5:20 P.M. Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was seized by an unknown number of gunmen—” Burke finished his report. “I’m designating the rectory as the command post. Get Ma Bell on the horn and have them put extra phone lines into the rectory according to existing emergency procedures. Got that?”

“Yes…. Pat, are you authorized—?”

Burke felt the sweat collecting around his collar and loosened it. “Louise, don’t ask those kinds of questions. We’ve got to wing this one. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do your best to contact those people. Stay cool.”

“I’m cool. But you ought to see the people here. Everybody thinks it’s some kind of insurrection or something. Albany and Washington called the PC’s office— couldn’t get a straight answer from City Hall or Gracie Mansion—PC’s office called here. Want to know if it’s an insurrection—or a race riot. Can you tell if it’s an insurrection? Just for the record.”

“Tell Albany and Washington that nobody in New York cares enough to start an insurrection. As far as I can make out, the Fenians provoked a disturbance to cover their seizing of the Cathedral. It got out of hand—a lot of happy citizens cutting loose. Do you have any reports from our people in the field?”

“Not a one. You’re the first.”

“One more thing. Get John Hickey’s file sent here as soon as possible. And see what we have on a Northern Irishman named Brian Flynn.” He hung up.

Burke walked into the outer office. “Monsignor?”

Monsignor Downes put down his telephone. “I can’t get through to anyone. I have to speak to the Vicar General. I have to call the Apostolic Delegate in Washington. What’s happening? What is going on here?”

Burke looked into Downes’s ashen face, moved to the coffee table, and picked up a bottle of wine and a glass.

“Have some of this. The phones will be clear later. Couple of million people are trying to call home at the same time, that’s all. We’re going to have to use this rectory as a command post.”

Monsignor Downes ignored the wine. “Command post?”

“Please clear the rectory and evacuate all the office personnel and priests. Leave a switchboard operator on until I can get a police operator here.” Burke looked at his watch and considered a moment, then said, “How do I get into the corridor that connects with the sacristy?”

Monsignor Downes gave him a set of involved and disjointed instructions.

The door swung open and a tall man in a black topcoat burst in. He held up his badge case. “Lieutenant Young. Bureau of Special Services.” He looked at the Monsignor, then at Burke, and said, “Who are you?”

“Burke. ID.”

The man went directly to the coffee table and poured a glass of wine. “Christ— excuse me, Father—damn it, we’ve accounted for every VIP on the steps except three.”

Burke watched him drink. “Let me guess—ID guys are good at guessing. You lost the Cardinal, Baxter, and the Malone woman.”

Lieutenant Young looked at him quickly. “Where are they? They’re not in the Cathedral, are they?”

“I’m afraid they are.”

“Oh, Christ—sorry—shit. That’s it. That’s my job. Forget it. Forget it.”

“Three out of about a hundred VIPs isn’t bad.”

“Don’t joke! This is bad. Very bad.”

“They’re unharmed as far as I know,” added Burke. “They also have a parish priest—Murphy. Not a VIP, so don’t worry about that.”

“Damn it. I lost three VIPs.” He rambled on as he poured himself another glass. “Damn it, they should have sent the Secret Service. When the Pope came, the President sent the Secret Service to help us.” He looked at Burke and the Monsignor and went on. “Most of the BSS was up by the reviewing stands. Byrd had all the good men. I got stuck with a handful of incompetents.”

“Right.” Burke moved to the door. “Get some competent men to stay with Monsignor Downes here. He’s a VIP. I’m going to try to speak with the gunmen. They’re VIPs, too.”

Young glanced at Burke and said fiercely, “Why didn’t you tell us something like this was going to happen, Burke?”

“You didn’t ask.” Burke left the office, descended the stairs, and found an elevator that took him into the basement. He came upon a worried-looking Hispanic custodian. “Sacristy,” said Burke without preamble.

The man led him to a passage and pointed. Burke saw six TPU men standing along the walls with guns drawn. He held up his badge case and motioned the men to draw back from the sacristy. He unholstered his revolver, put it in his topcoat pocket, then walked down the short staircase to the opening of the passage. Burke put his head slowly around the corner and looked into the marble vaulted sacristy.

A TPU man behind him whispered, “Guy’s got a Thompson at the top of those stairs.”

Burke moved carefully into the sacristy, down the length of a row of vestment tables that ran along the wall to the right. At the end of the tables was another arched opening, and through it he could see a dimly lit polygon-shaped room of stone and brick.

Burke moved slowly toward the gates, keeping out of sight of the staircase opening. He heard muffled voices echoing down the staircase. Burke knew he had to speak with Finn MacCumail, and he had to have it together when he did. He leaned back against the marble wall to the side of the stairs and listened to his heart beat. He filled his lungs several times but couldn’t find his voice. His hands clutched around the revolver in his pocket, and he pulled his hand free and steadied it against the wall. He looked at his watch. One minute. In one minute he would call for Finn MacCumail.

Maureen sat in the pew, her face in her hands, and Father Murphy and the Cardinal sat flanking her, keeping up a steady flow of soothing words. Baxter returned from the credence table, where a canteen of water had been placed. “Here.”

She shook her head, then rose abruptly. “Let me alone. All of you. What do you know? You don’t know the half of it. But you will.”

The Cardinal motioned to the other two, and they followed him across the sanctuary and stood beside the throne. The Cardinal said quietly, “She has to make peace with herself. She’s a troubled woman. If she wants us, she’ll come to us.” He looked up at the altar rising from the sanctuary. “God has brought us together in His house, and we are in His hands now—us, as well as them. His will be done, not ours. We must not provoke these people and give them cause to harm us or this church.”

Baxter cleared his throat. “We have an obligation to escape if a clear opportunity presents itself.”

The Cardinal gave him a look of slight annoyance. “We are operating from different sets of standards, I’m afraid. However, Mr. Baxter, I’m going to have to insist that in my church you do as I say.”

Baxter replied evenly, “There’s some question, I think, concerning whose church this is at the moment, Your Eminence.” He turned to Father Murphy. “What are your thoughts?”

Father Murphy seemed to vacillate, then said, “There’s no use arguing about it. His Eminence is correct.”

Baxter looked exasperated. “See here, I don’t like being pushed about. We must offer some resistance, even if it’s only psychological, and we must at least plan to escape if we’re going to keep our sanity and self-respect. This may go on for days—weeks—and if I leave here alive, I want to be able to live with myself.”

The Cardinal spoke. “Mr. Baxter, these people have treated us reasonably well, and your course of action would provoke retaliation and—”

“Treated us well? I don’t give a damn how they treat us. They have no right to keep us here.”

The Cardinal nodded. “You’re right, of course. But let me make my final point, which is that I understand that much of the brashness of young men is a result of the proximity of young women—”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

The Cardinal smiled thinly. “I seem to be annoying you. I’m sorry. Well, anyway, don’t think for a moment that I doubt these people will kill me and Father Murphy as surely as they would you and Miss Malone. That’s not important. What is important is that we not provoke them into the mortal sin of murder. And also important to me is my obligation as guardian of this church. This is the greatest Catholic Cathedral in America, Mr. Baxter, Domus Ecclesiae, the Mother Church, the spiritual center of Catholicism in North America. Try to think of it as Westminster Abbey.”

Baxter’s face reddened. He drew a breath. “I have a duty to resist, and I will.”

The Cardinal shook his head. “Well, we have no such duty to wage war,” He moved closer to Baxter. “Can’t you leave this in God’s hands? Or, if you’re not so inclined, in the hands of the authorities outside?”

Baxter looked the Cardinal in the eye. “I’ve made my position clear.”

The Cardinal seemed lost in thought, then said, “Perhaps I am overly concerned about this church. It’s in my trust, you see, and as with anyone else, material values figure into my calculations. But we are agreed that lives are not to be needlessly sacrificed?”

“Of course.”

“Neither our lives”—he motioned around the Cathedral—“nor theirs.”

“I’m not so certain about theirs,” said Harold Baxter.

“All God’s children, Mr. Baxter.”

“I wonder.”

“Come now.”

There was a long silence, broken by Maureen Malone’s voice as she crossed the sanctuary. “Let me assure you, Cardinal, that each one of these people was spawned in hell. I know. Some of them may seem like rational men and women to you—jolly good Irishmen, sweet talk, lilting brogues, and all that. Perhaps a song or poem later. But they’re quite capable of murdering us all and burning your church.”

The three men looked silently at her.

She pointed to the two clerics. “It may be that you don’t understand real evil, only abstract evil, but you’ve got Satan in the sanctuary right now.” She moved her outstretched hand and pointed to Brian Flynn, who was mounting the steps into the sanctuary.

Flynn looked at them and smiled. “Did someone mention my name?”

CHAPTER 23

Burke moved closer to the stairway opening, drew a deep breath, and called out, “This is the police! I want to speak with Finn MacCumail!” He heard his words echo up the marble stairway.

A voice with a heavy Irish accent called back, “Stand at the gate—hands on the bars! No tricks. I’ve got a Thompson.”

Burke moved into view of the stairway and saw a young man, a boy really, kneeling on the landing in front of the crypt door. Burke mounted the steps slowly and put his hands on the brass gate.

Pedar Fitzgerald pointed the submachine gun down the stairs. “Stand fast!” he called back up the stairs. “Get Finn! There’s a fellow here wants a word with him!”

Burke studied the young man for a moment, then shifted his attention to the layout. The stairs split to the left and right at the crypt door landing. Above the crypt door was the rear of the altar, from which rose a huge cross of gold silhouetted against the towering ceiling of the Cathedral. It didn’t look to him as if anyone could get through the gates and up those stairs without being cut to pieces by overhead fire.

He heard footsteps on the left-hand stairs, and a tall figure emerged and stood outlined against the eerie yellow light coming from the glass-paneled crypt doors. The figure passed beside the kneeling man and moved deliberately down the dimly lit marble stairs. Burke could not clearly see his features, but saw now that the man was wearing a white collarless shirt and black pants, the remains of a priest’s suit. Burke said evenly, “Finn MacCumail?” To an Irishman familiar with Gaelic history, as he was, it sounded as preposterous as calling someone Robin Hood.

“That’s right.” The tall man kept coming. “Chief of the Fenians.”

Burke almost smiled at this pomposity, but something in the man’s eyes held him riveted.

Flynn stopped close to the gates and stared at Burke. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“Chief Inspector Burke, NYPD, Commissioner’s office.” He met the stare of the man’s deep, dark eyes, then looked down at his right hand and saw the large bronze ring.

Brian Flynn said, “I know who you are … Lieutenant. I have an Intelligence section too. That’s a bit galling, isn’t it? Well,” he smiled, “if I can be Chief of the Fenians, you can be a Chief Inspector, I suppose.”

Burke remembered with some chagrin the first rule of hostage negotiating— never get caught in a lie. He spoke in a slow, measured cadence. “I said that only to expedite matters.”

“Admirable reason to lie.”

The two men were only inches apart, but the gates had the effect of lessening the intrusion into their zones of protected territory. Still, Burke felt uncomfortable but kept his hands on the brass bars. “Are the hostages all right?”

“For the time being.”

“Let me speak with them.”

Flynn shook his head.

“There were shots fired. Who’s dead?”

“No one.”

“What is it you want?” Burke asked, though it didn’t matter what the Fenians wanted, he thought, since they were not going to get it.

Flynn ignored the question. “Are you armed?”

“Of course. But I won’t go against that Thompson.”

“Some people would. Like Sergeant Tezik.”

“He’s been taken care of.” Burke wondered how Flynn knew Tezik was crazy. He imagined that kindred spirits could recognize each other by the tone of their voices.

Flynn looked over Burke’s shoulder at the sacristy corridors.

Burke said, “I’ve pulled them back.”

Flynn nodded.

Burke said, “If you’ll tell me what you want, I will see that your demands are passed directly to the top.” He knew he was operating off his beat, but he knew also that he had to stabilize the situation until the Hostage Negotiator, Bert Schroeder, took over.

Flynn tapped his fingers on the bars, his bronze ring clanging against the brass in a nervous and, at the same time, unnerving way. “Why can’t I speak directly to someone of higher rank?”

Burke thought he heard a mocking tone in his voice. “They are all out of communication. If you turn off the jamming device—”

Flynn laughed, then said abruptly, “Has anyone been killed?”

Burke felt his hands getting sticky on the bars. “Maybe in the riot … Police Commissioner Dwyer … died of a heart attack.” He added, “You won’t be implicated in that—if you surrender now. You’ve made your point.”

“I haven’t even begun to make my point. Were those people on the horse injured?”

“No. Your men saw the policewoman from the towers. The man was me.”

Flynn laughed. “Was it, now?” He thought a moment. “Well, that makes a difference.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say that it makes it less likely that you are working for a certain English gentleman of my acquaintance.” Flynn considered, then said, “Are you wearing a transmitter? Are there listening devices in the corridors?”

“I’m not wearing a wire. I don’t know about the corridors.”

Flynn took a pencil-shaped microphone detector from his pocket and passed it over Burke’s body. “I think I can trust you, even if you are an intelligence officer specializing in hunting Irish patriots like myself.”

“I do my job.”

“Yes. Too well.” He looked at Burke with some interest. “The universal bloodhound. Dogged, nosy, sniffing about. Always wanting to know things. I’ve known the likes of you in London, Belfast, and Dublin.” He stared at Burke, then reached into his pocket and pushed a piece of paper through the gate. “You’re as good as anyone, I suppose. Here is a list of one hundred and thirty-seven men and women held by the British in internment camps in Northern Ireland and England. I want these people released by sunrise. That’s 6:03 A.M.—New York time. I want them flown to Dublin and granted amnesty by the British and Irish governments plus asylum in the south if they want it. The transfer will be supervised by the International Red Cross and Amnesty International. When I receive word from these two organizations that this is accomplished, we will give you back your Cathedral and release the hostages. If this is not done by sunrise, I will throw Sir Harold Baxter from the bell tower, followed by, in random order, the Cardinal, Father Murphy, and Maureen Malone. Then I will burn the Cathedral. Do you believe me, Lieutenant Burke?”

“I believe you.”

“Good. It’s important that you know that each of my Fenians has at least one relative in internment. It’s also important you know that nothing is sacred to us, not church or priests, not human life or humanity in general.”

“I believe you will do what you say you will do.”

“Good. And you’ll deliver not only the message but also the essence and spirit of what I’m saying. Do you understand that?”

“I understand.”

“Yes, I think you do. Now, for ourselves, our purpose is to be reunited with our kin, so we’ll not trade their imprisonment for ours. We want immunity from prosecution. We will walk out of here, motor to Kennedy Airport by means of our own conveyances, and leave New York for various destinations. We have passports and money and want nothing from you or your government except a laissez-passer. Understood?”

“Yes.”

Flynn leaned nearer the bars so that his face was very close to Burke’s. “I know what’s going through your mind, Lieutenant Burke—can we talk them out, or do we have to blow them out? I know that your government—and the NYPD—has a shining history of never having given in to demands made at gunpoint. That history will be rewritten before sunrise. You see, we hold all the cards, as you say—Jack, Queen, King, Ace, and Cathedral.”

Burke said, “I was thinking of the British government—”

“That, for a change, is Washington’s problem, not mine.”

“So it is.”

“From now on, communicate with me only through the telephone extension on the chancel organ. I don’t want to see anyone moving down here.”

Burke nodded.

“And you’d better get your command structure established before some of your cowboys try something.”

Burke said, “I’ll see that they don’t.”

Flynn nodded. “Stay close, Lieutenant, I’ll be wanting you later.” He turned and mounted the steps slowly, then disappeared around the corner of the right-hand staircase.

Burke stared up at the kneeling man with the Thompson, and the man jerked the barrel in a motion of dismissal. Burke took his hands off the brass gate and stepped down the stairs and out of the line of sight of the staircase. He wiped his sweaty palms across his topcoat and lit a cigarette as he walked to the corridor opening.

He was glad he wouldn’t have to deal again with the man named Brian Flynn, or with the personality of Finn MacCumail, and he felt sorry for Bert Schroeder, who did.

Captain Bert Schroeder stood with his foot on the rim of the fountain in Grand Army Plaza, smoking a short, fat cigar. A light sleet fell on his broad shoulders and soaked into his expensive topcoat. Schroeder watched the crowd slowly trailing away through the lamplit streets around him. Some semblance of order had been restored, but he doubted if he would be able to pick up his daughter and make it to his family party.

The unit he had been marching with, County Tyrone, his mother’s ancestral county, had dispersed and drifted off, and he stood alone now, waiting, fairly certain of the instinct that told him he would be called. He looked at his watch, then made his way to a patrol car parked on Fifth Avenue and looked in the window. “Any news yet?”

The patrolman looked up. “No, sir. Radio’s still out.”

Bert Schroeder felt a sense of anger at the undignified way the parade had ended but wasn’t sure yet toward whom to direct it.

The patrolman added, “I think the crowd is thin enough for me to drive you someplace if you want.”

Schroeder considered, then said, “No.” He tapped a paging device on his belt. “This thing should still be able to receive a signal. But hang around in case I want you.”

Schroeder’s pager sounded, and he felt his heart pound in a conditioned response. He threw down his cigar and shut off the device.

The driver in the patrol car called out, “Somebody grabbed somebody, Captain. You’re on.”

Schroeder started to speak and found that his mouth was dry. “Yeah, I’m on.”

“Give you a lift?”

“What! No … I have to … to call …” He tried to steady the pounding in his chest. He turned and looked up at the brightly lit Plaza Hotel on the far side of the square, then ran toward it. As he ran, a dozen possible scenarios flashed throughhis mind the way they always did when the call came—hostages—who? The Governor? The Mayor? Congressmen? Embassy people? But he pushed these speculations aside, because no matter what he imagined when the beeper sounded or the phone rang or the radio called his name, it always turned out to be something very different. All he knew for certain was that very shortly he would be bargaining hard for someone’s life, or many lives, and he would do it under the critical eyes of every politician and police official in the city.

He bounded up the steps of the Plaza, ran through the crowded lobby, then down a staircase to the line of wall phones outside Trader Vic’s. A large crowd was massed around the phones, and Schroeder pushed through and grabbed a receiver from a man’s hand. “Police business! Move back!”

He dialed a special operator number and gave her a number in Police Plaza. He waited a long time for a ring, and while he waited he lit another cigar and paced around to the extent of the phone cord.

He felt like an actor waiting for the curtain, apprehensive over his rehearsed lines, panicky that the ad libs would be disastrous. His heart was beating out of control now, and his mouth went dry as his palms became wet. He hated this. He wanted to be somewhere else. He loved it. He felt alive.

The phone rang at the other end, and the duty sergeant answered. Schroeder said calmly, “What’s up, Dennis?”

Schroeder listened in silence for a full minute, then said in a barely audible voice, “I’ll be at the rectory in ten minutes.”

He hung up and, after steadying himself against the wall, pushed away from the phones and mounted the steps to the lobby, his body sagging, his face blank. Then his body straightened, his eyes came alive, and his breathing returned to normal. He walked confidently out the front doors and stepped into the police car that had followed him.

The driver said, “Bad, Captain?”

“They’re all bad. Saint Pat’s rectory on Madison. Step on it.”

CHAPTER 24

Monsignor Downes’s adjoining offices were filling rapidly with people. Burke stood by the window of the outer office sipping a cup of coffee. Mayor Kline and Governor Doyle came in looking very pale, followed by their aides. Burke recognized other faces as they appeared at the door, somewhat hesitantly, as though they were entering a funeral parlor. In fact, he thought, as people streamed in and exchanged subdued greetings the atmosphere became more wakelike, except that everyone still wore topcoats and green carnations—and there were no bereaved to pay condolences to, though he noticed that Monsignor Downes came close to filling that role.

Burke looked down into Madison Avenue. Streetlights illuminated the hundreds of police who, in the falling sleet, were clearing an area around the rectory. Police cars and limousines pulled up to the curb discharging police commanders and civilian officials. Lines were being brought in by the telephone company, and field phone wire was being strung by police to compensate for the lost radio communication. The machine was moving slowly, deliberately. Traffic was rolling; civilization, such as it was in New York, had survived another day.

“Hello, Pat.”

Burke spun around. “Langley. Jesus, it’s good to see someone who doesn’t have much more rank than I do.”

Langley smiled. “You making the coffee and emptying the ashtrays?”

“Have you been filled in?”

“Briefly. What a fucking mess.” He looked around the Monsignor’s office. “It looks like Who’s Who in the East here. Has Commissioner Dwyer arrived yet?”

“That’s not likely. He died of a heart attack.”

“Christ. Nobody told me that. You mean that dipshit Rourke is in charge?”

“As soon as he gets here.”

“He’s right behind me. We put the chopper down in the courtyard of the Palace Hotel. Christ, you should have seen what it looked like from the air.”

“Yeah. I think I would rather have seen it from the air.” Burke lit a cigarette. “Are we in trouble?”

“We won’t be invited to the Medal Day ceremonies this June.”

“For sure.” Burke tapped his ash on the windowsill. “But we’re still in the game.”

“You, maybe. You got a horse shot out from under you. I didn’t have a horse shot out from under me. Any horses around?”

“I have some information from Jack Ferguson we can use when we’re on the carpet.” He took Langley’s arm and drew him closer. “Finn MacCumail’s real name is Brian Flynn. He’s Maureen Malone’s ex-lover.”

“Ah,” said Langley, “ex-lover. This is getting interesting.”

Burke went on. “Flynn’s lieutenant is John Hickey.”

“Hickey’s dead,” said Langley. “Died a few years ago…. There was a funeral … in Jersey.”

“Some men find it more convenient to hold their funeral before their demise.”

“Maybe Ferguson was wrong.”

“He saw John Hickey in Saint Pat’s today. He doesn’t make mistakes.”

“We’ll have the grave dug up.” Langley felt chilled and moved away from the window. “I’ll get a court order.”

Burke shrugged. “You find a sober judge in Jersey tonight, and I’ll dig it up myself. Anyway, Hickey’s file is on the way, and Louise is checking out Brian Flynn.”

Langley nodded. “Good work. The British can help us on Flynn.”

“Right … Major Martin.”

“Have you seen him?”

Burke inclined his head toward the double doors.

Langley said, “Who else is in there?”

“Schroeder and some police commanders, federal types, and people from the British and Irish consulates.” As he spoke, Mayor Kline, Governor Doyle, and their aides went into the inner office.

Langley watched them, then said, “Has Schroeder begun his dialogue yet?”

“I don’t think so. I passed on MacCumail’s—Flynn’s—demands to him. He smiled and told me to wait outside. Here I am.”

Deputy Police Commissioner Rourke hurried across the room and into the inner office, motioning to Langley to follow.

Langley turned to Burke. “Listen for the sounds of heads rolling across the floor. You may be the next Chief of Intelligence—I have this vision of Patrick Burke captured for eternity in a bronze statue, on the steps of Saint Patrick’s, astride a horse with flaring nostrils, charging up—”

“Fuck off.”

Langley smiled and hurried off.

Burke looked at the people milling about the room. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, past and present governors, senators, mayors, congressmen. It was a veritable Who’s Who in the East, but they looked, he thought, rather common and frightened at the moment. He noticed that all the decanters on the coffee table were empty, then fixed his attention on Monsignor Downes, still sitting behind his desk. Burke approached him. “Monsignor—”

The Rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral looked up.

“Feeling better?”

“Why didn’t the police know this was going to happen?”

Burke resisted several replies, then said, “We should have known. It was all there if we had only.. ”

Langley appeared at the double doors and motioned to Burke.

Burke looked at the Rector. “Come with me.”

“Why?”

“It’s your church, and you have a right to know what’s going to happen to it. Your Cardinal and your priest are in there—”

“Priests make people uncomfortable sometimes. They get in the way … unintentionally.”

“Good. That may be what this group needs.”

Monsignor Downes rose reluctantly and followed Burke into the inner office.

In the big room about forty men and women stood or sat, their attention focused around the desk where Captain Bert Schroeder sat. Heads turned as Burke and Monsignor Downes came into the room.

Mayor Kline rose from his chair and offered it to Downes, who flushed and sat quickly. The Mayor smiled at his own beneficence and good manners, then held his hands up for silence. He began speaking in his adenoidal voice that made everyone wince. “Are we all here? Okay, let’s begin.” He cleared his throat. “All right, now, we have all agreed that the City of New York is, under law, primarily responsible for any action taken in this matter.” He looked at his aide, Roberta Spiegel. She nodded, and he went on. “So, to avoid confusion, we will all speak to the perpetrators with one voice, through one man….” He paused and raised his voice as though introducing a speaker. “The NYPD Hostage Negotiator … Captain Bert Schroeder.”

The effect of the Mayor’s delivery elicited some applause, which died away as it became apparent that it wasn’t appropriate. Roberta Spiegel shot the Mayor a look of disapproval, and he turned red. Captain Schroeder rose and half acknowledged the applause.

Burke said softly to Langley, “I feel like a proctologist trapped in a room full of assholes.”

Schroeder looked at the faces turned toward him and drew a deep breath. “Thank you, Your Honor.” His eyes darted around the room. “I am about to open negotiations with the man who calls himself Finn MacCumail, Chief of the Fenian Army. As you may know, my unit, since it was started by Captain Frank Bolz, has concluded successfully every hostage situation that has gone down in this city, without the loss of a single hostage.” He saw people nodding, and the terror of what he was about to undertake suddenly evaporated as he pictured himself concluding another successful case. He put an aggressive tone in his voice. “And since there’s no reason to change tactics that have been so successful in criminal as well as political hostage situations, I will treat this as any other hostage situation. It will not be influenced by outside political considerations … but I do solicit your help and suggestions.” He looked into the crowd and read expressions ranging from open hostility to agreement.

Burke said to Langley, “Not bad.”

Langley replied, “He’s full of shit. That man is the most political animal I know.”

Schroeder went on. “In order to facilitate my job I’d like this room cleared of everyone except the following.” He picked up a list written on Monsignor Downes’s stationary and read from it, then looked up. “It’s also been agreed that commanders of the field operations will headquarter themselves in the lower offices of the rectory. People connected with the negotiations who are not in this office with me will be in the Monsignor’s outer office. I’ve spoken to the Vicar General by phone, and he’s agreed that everyone else may use the Cardinal’s residence.”

Schroeder glanced at Monsignor Downes, then went on. “Telephones are being installed in the residence and … refreshments will be served in His Eminence’s dining room. Voice speakers will be installed throughout both residences for paging and so that you may monitor my phone conversations with the perpetrators.”

The room filled with noise as Schroeder sat down. The Mayor raised his hands for silence the way he had done so many times in the classroom. “All right. Let’s leave the Captain to do his job. Everyone, Governor, ladies and gentlemen— please clear the room. That’s right. Very good.” The Mayor went to the door and opened it.

Schroeder mopped his brow and waited as the remaining people seated themselves. “All right. You know who I am. Everyone introduce themselves in turn.” He pointed to the sole woman present.

Roberta Spiegel, a good-looking woman in her early forties, sat back in a rocking chair and crossed her legs, looking bored, sensual, and businesslike at the same time. “Spiegel. Mayor’s aide.”

A small man with flaming red hair, dressed in tweeds, said, “Tomas Donahue, Consul General, Irish Republic.”

“Major Bartholomew Martin, representing Her Majesty’s government in the … absence of Sir Harold Baxter.”

“James Kruger, CIA.”

A muscular man with a pockmarked face said, “Douglas Hogan, FBI.”

A rotund young man with glasses said, “Bill Voight, Governor’s office.”

“Deputy Commissioner Rourke … Acting Police Commissioner.”

A well-dressed man with a nasal voice said, “Arnold Sheridan, agent-in-charge, State Department Security Office, representing State.”

“Captain Bellini, NYPD, Emergency Services Division.”

“Inspector Philip Langley, NYPD, Intelligence Division.”

“Burke, Intelligence.”

Schroeder looked at Monsignor Downes, who, he realized, had not left. Schroeder considered for a moment as he sat at the man’s desk with his gold-crossed stationery stacked neatly in a corner, then smiled. “And our host, you might say, Monsignor Downes, Rector of Saint Patrick’s. Good of you to … come … and to let us use … Will you be staying?”

Monsignor Downes nodded hesitantly.

“Good,” said Schroeder. “Good. Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Burke, why the hell did you open negotiations? You know better than that.”

Burke loosened his tie and sat back.

Schroeder thought the question may have sounded rhetorical, so he pressed on. “You didn’t make any promises, did you? You didn’t say anything that might compromise—”

“I told you what I said,” interrupted Burke.

Schroeder stiffened. He glared at Burke and said, “Please repeat the exchange, and also tell us how he seemed—his state of mind. That sort of thing.”

Burke repeated what he had said earlier, and added, “He seemed very self-assured. And it wasn’t bravado. He seemed intelligent, too.”

“He didn’t seem unbalanced?” asked Schroeder.

“His whole manner seemed normal—except for what he was saying, of course.”

“Drugs—alcohol?” asked Schroeder.

“Probably had less to drink today than anyone here.”

Someone laughed.

Schroeder turned to Langley. “We can’t get an angle on this guy unless we know his real name. Right?”

Langley glanced at Burke, then at the Acting Commissioner. “Actually, I know who he is.”

The room became quiet.

Burke stole a look at Major Martin, who seemed impassive.

Langley continued. “His name is Brian Flynn. The British will certainly have a file on him—psy-profile, that sort of thing. Maybe the CIA has something, too. His lieutenant is a man named John Hickey, thought to have died some years ago. You may have heard of him. He’s a naturalized American citizen. We and the FBI have an extensive file on Hickey.”

The FBI man, Hogan, said, “I’ll check.”

Kruger said, “I’ll check on Flynn.”

Major Martin added, “Both names seem familiar. I’ll wire London.”

Schroeder looked a bit happier. “Good. Good work. That makes my job—our jobs—a lot easier. Right?” He turned to Burke. “One more thing—did you get the impression that the woman who fired at you was shooting to kill?”

Burke said, “I had the impression she was aiming for the horse. They probably have some discipline of firepower, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

The policemen in the room nodded. Commissioner Rourke said, “Does anybody know anything about this group—the Fenians?” He looked at Kruger and Hogan.

Kruger glanced at Major Martin, then replied, “We have almost no funds to maintain a liaison section on Northern Irish affairs. It has been determined, you see, that the IRA poses no immediate threat to the United States, and preventive measures were not thought to be justified. Unfortunately, we are paying for that frugality now.”

Douglas Hogan added, “The FBI thought it was the Provisional IRA until Major Martin suggested otherwise. My section, which specializes in Irish organizations in America, is understaffed and partly dependent on British Intelligence for information.”

Burke nodded to himself. He was beginning to catch the drift. Kruger and Hogan were being petulant, taking an I-told-you-so line. They were also covering themselves, rehearsing for later testimony, and laying the groundwork for the future. Nicely done, too.

Commissioner Rourke looked at Major Martin. “Then you are … I mean … you are not …”

Major Martin smiled and stood. “Yes, I’m not actually with the consulate. I’m with British Military Intelligence. No use letting that get about, though.” He looked around the room, then turned to Langley. “I told Inspector Langley that something was—what is the term?—coming down. But unfortunately—”

Langley said dryly, “Yes, the Major has been very helpful, as have the CIA and FBI. My own division did admirably too; and actually missed averting this act by only minutes. Lieutenant Burke should be commended for his resourcefulness and bravery.”

There was a silence during which, Burke noticed, no one yelled “Hooray for Burke.” It occurred to him that each of them was identifying his own objectives, his own exposure, looking for allies, scapegoats, enemies, and trying to figure how to use this crisis to his advantage. “I told Flynn we wouldn’t keep him waiting.”

Schroeder said, “I won’t begin a dialogue until I clarify our position.” He looked at Bill Voight, the Governor’s aide. “Has the Governor indicated that he is willing to grant immunity from prosecution?”

Voight shook his head. “Not at this time.”

Schroeder looked at Roberta Spiegel. “What is the Mayor’s position regarding the use of police?”

Roberta Spiegel lit a cigarette. “No matter what kind of deal is concluded with London or Washington or anyone, the Mayor will enforce the law and order the arrest of anyone coming out of that Cathedral. If they don’t come out, the Mayor reserves the right to send the police in to get them.”

Schroeder nodded thoughtfully, then looked at Arnold Sheridan.

The State Department man said, “I can’t speak for the administration or State at this time, and I don’t know what the Attorney General’s position will be regarding immunity from federal prosecution. But you can assume nobody in Washington is going along with any of those demands.”

Schroeder looked at Tomas Donahue.

The Irish Consul General glanced at Major Martin, then said, “The Irish Republican Army is outlawed in the Irish Republic, and my government will not accept members of the IRA or offer them sanctuary in the unlikely event the British government decides to release these people.”

Major Martin added, “Although I do not represent Her Majesty’s government, I can assure you the government’s position is as always regarding the IRA or whatever they’re calling themselves today: Never negotiate, and if you do negotiate, never concede a single point, and if you do concede a point, never tell them you’ve conceded it.”

Roberta Spiegel said, “Now that we know what uncompromising bastards we are, let’s negotiate.”

Commissioner Rourke said to Schroeder, “Yes, now all you have to do is talk them out, Bert. They’ve involved the Red Cross and Amnesty, so we can’t easily lie to them. You’ve got to be very … very …” He couldn’t come up with the word he wanted and turned to Captain Bellini, who had said nothing so far. “Captain, in the unlikely event Bert can’t do it, is the Emergency Services Division ready to mount an … assault?”

Bellini shifted his massive frame in his small chair. The blue-black stubble on his face gave him a hard appearance, but the area under his eyes had gone very pale. “Yeah … yes, sir. When the time comes, we’ll be ready.”

Schroeder reached for the telephone. “Okay. I know where everyone’s coming from. Right?”

Monsignor Downes spoke. “May I say something?”

Everyone looked at him. Schroeder took his hand off the receiver, smiled, and nodded.

Downes said softly, “No one has said anything about the hostages yet. Or about the Cathedral.” There was a silence in the room and Monsignor Downes went on. “If, as I assume, your first responsibility is to the hostages, and if you make this clear to your superiors and to the people inside the Cathedral, then I don’t see why a compromise can’t be worked out.” He looked around the room.

No one took it upon himself to explain the realities of international diplomacy to the Monsignor.

Schroeder said, “I haven’t lost a hostage—or for that matter a building—yet, Monsignor. It’s often possible to get what you want without giving anything in return.”

“Oh … I didn’t know that,” said Monsignor Downes quietly.

“In fact,” continued Schroeder assuringly, “the tack I am going to take is pretty much as you suggested. Stick around, you’ll see how it’s done.” He picked up the telephone and waited for the police operator at the switchboard. He looked around the room and said, “Don’t be disturbed if he seems to be winning a few rounds. You have to give them the impression they’re scoring. By sunrise he’ll tire—you ever go shark fishing? You let them run out the line until you’re ready to reel them in.” He said to the police operator, “Yes, get me the extension at the chancel organ.” He put his elbows on the desk and waited. No one in the room moved.

CHAPTER 25

Governor Doyle put down the telephone and looked around the crowded outer office. People were jockeying for the newly installed phones, and a cloud of blue smoke hung over the elegant furnishings, reminding him of a hotel suite on election night, and that reminded him of the next election. He spotted Mayor Kline talking to a group of city and police officials and came up behind the Mayor, taking his arm in a firm grip. “Murray, I have to speak to you.”

The Mayor let himself be propelled by the bigger man into the hallway and up to a landing on the staircase that led to the priests’ rooms. The Mayor escaped the Governor’s grasp and said, “What is it, Bob? I have things to do.”

“I just spoke to Albany. The main concern up there is civil disobedience.”

“I didn’t think enough people lived in Albany to have a riot.”

“No, here. In Manhattan. That mob outside could explode again … with all the drinking….”

The Mayor smiled. “What makes this Saint Patrick’s night different from all other Saint Patrick’s nights?”

“Look, Murray, this is not the time for your wisecracking. The seizure of this Cathedral may be just a prelude to a larger civil insurrection. I think you should call a curfew.”

“Curfew? Are you crazy? Rush hour traffic is still trying to get out of Manhattan.”

“Call it later, then.” The Governor lowered his voice. “My analysts in Albany say that the only thing keeping this situation cooled down is the sleet. When the sleet stops, the bars will empty and there could be trouble—”

The Mayor looked incredulous. “I don’t care what your analysts in Albany say. This is Saint Patrick’s Day in New York, for God’s sake. The biggest parade in the world, outside of the May Day Parade in Moscow, has just ended. The largest single party in New York—maybe in America—is just beginning. People plan this day all year. There are over a million people in midtown alone, jammed into bars, restaurants, and house parties. More liquor and food is consumed tonight than any other night of the year. If I called a curfew … the Restaurant Owners’ Association would have me assassinated. They’d pour all the unconsumed beer into the Rockefeller Center skating rink and drown me in it. Shit, you try to enforce a curfew tonight.”

“But—”

“And it’s religious. What kind of an Irishman are you? That’s all we need—a Jewish Mayor calling off Saint Patrick’s Day. It’d be easier to call off Christmas. What kind of yo-yos are giving you advice in Albany? Fucking farmers?”

The Governor began pacing around the small landing. “Okay, Murray. Take it easy.” He stopped pacing and thought a moment. “Okay, forget the curfew. But I do think you need the State Police and the National Guard to help keep order.”

“No. No soldiers, no State Police. I have twenty thousand police—more than a full army division. Little by little we’ll get them out on the street.”

“The Sixty-ninth Regiment is mustered and in a position to lend a hand.”

“Mustered?” Kline laughed. “Plastered is more like it. Christ, the enlisted men got off duty from the armory at two o’clock. They’re so shitfaced by now they wouldn’t know a rifle from their bootlaces.”

“I happen to know that the officers and most of the noncoms are at a cocktail party in the armory right now, and—”

“What are you trying to pull?”

“Pull?”

“Pull.”

The Governor coughed into his hand, then smiled good-naturedly. “All right, it’s like this—you know damned well that this is the biggest disturbance to hit New York since the blackout of ’77, and I have to show that I’m doing something.”

“Fly to Albany. Let me run my city.”

“Your city. It’s my state! I’m responsible to all the people.”

“Right. Where were you when we needed money?”

“Look … look, I don’t need your permission to call out the National Guard or the State Police.”

“Call your Attorney General and check on that.” Mayor Kline turned and took a step toward the stairs.

“Hold on, Murray. Listen … suppose Albany foots the bill for this operation? I mean, God, this will cost the city millions. I’ll take care of it, and I’ll get Washington to kick in a little extra. I’ll say it was an international thing, which it is—like the consulate protection money. Okay?”

The Mayor arrested his descent down the stairs and turned back toward the Governor. He smiled encouragingly.

The Governor went on. “I’ll pay for it all if you let me send in my people—I need to show a state presence here—you understand. Okay? Whaddaya say, Murray?”

The Mayor said, “The money to be paid to the city within thirty days of billing.”

“You got it.”

“Including all overtime and regular time of all the city departments involved, including police, fire, sanitation, and other municipal departments for as long as the siege lasts, and all expenses incurred in the aftermath.”

“All right….”

“Including costs of repair to municipal property, and aid to private individuals and businesses who sustain a loss.”

The Governor swallowed. “Sure.”

“But only the Sixty-ninth Regiment. No other guard units and no State Police— my boys don’t get along with them.”

“Let me send the State Police into the boroughs to fill the vacuum left by the reassignment to Manhattan.”

The Mayor considered, then nodded and smiled. He stuck out his hand, and they shook on it. Mayor Kline said loudly, so that the people in the hallway below could hear, “Governor, I’d like you to call out the Sixty-ninth Regiment and the State Police.”

Colonel Dennis Logan sat at the head table in the 69th Regiment Armory hall on Lexington Avenue. Over a hundred officers, noncommissioned officers, and civilian guests sat or stood around the big hall. The degree of intoxication ranged from almost to very. Logan himself felt a bit unsteady. The mood this year was not boisterous, Logan noticed, and there was a subdued atmosphere in the hall, a result of reports of the disturbance in midtown.

A sergeant came toward Logan with a telephone and plugged the phone into a jack. “Colonel, the Governor is on the line.”

Logan nodded and sat up straight. He took the receiver, glanced at Major Cole, then said, “Colonel Logan speaking, sir. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you, Governor.”

“I’m afraid not, Colonel. A group of Irish revolutionaries has seized Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.”

The Colonel felt a heaviness in his chest, and every part of his body went damp, except his throat. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m calling the Sixty-ninth Regiment to duty.”

Colonel Logan looked around the hall at the scene spread out before him. Most of the officers and NCOs were wobbling, a few were slumped over tables. The enlisted men were home by now or scattered throughout every bar in the metropolitan area.

“Colonel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Full gear, riot-control equipment, weapons with live ammunition.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Assemble outside the Cardinal’s residence on Madison for further orders. Don’t delay.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is the Sixty-ninth ready, Colonel?”

Logan started to say something rational, then cleared his throat and said, “The Fighting Irish are always ready, Governor.”

“This is Captain Bert Schroeder of the New York Police Department.” Schroeder reached out and turned on the switches that activated the speakers in both residences.

A voice with an Irish accent came into the room and echoed from the outer office, which quickly became still. “What took you so long?”

Burke nodded. “That’s him.”

Schroeder spoke softly, pleasantly, a tone designed to be soothing. “Things were a bit confused, sir. Is this—?”

“Finn MacCumail, Chief of the Fenians. I told Sergeant Tezik and Lieutenant Burke I wanted to speak with a high ranking man. I’m only up to a captain now.”

Schroeder gave his standard reply. “Everyone that you would want to speak to is present. They are listening to us from speakers. Can you hear the echo? We’ve all agreed that to avoid confusion I will do the speaking for everyone. They’ll relay messages through me.”

“Who are you?”

“I have some experience in this.”

“Well, that’s interesting. Are there representatives of the Irish, British, and American governments present?”

“Yes, sir. The Police Commissioner, the Mayor, and the Governor, too.”

“I picked a good day for this, didn’t I?”

Burke said to Schroeder, “I forgot to tell you, he has a sense of humor.”

Schroeder said into the telephone, “Yes, sir. So let’s get right down to business.”

“Let’s back up and establish the rules, Captain. Is everyone in contact with their capitals?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have Amnesty International and the Red Cross been contacted?”

“It’s being done, sir.”

“And you are the mouthpiece?”

“Yes, sir. It’s less confusing. I think you’ll find the arrangement acceptable.” Schroeder sat at the edge of his chair. This was the most difficult part, persuading wild-eyed lunatics that it was better to speak to him than to the President of the United States or the Queen of England. “So, if we can proceed …”

“All right. We’ll see.”

Schroeder exhaled softly. “We have your demands in front of us, and the list of people you want released from Northern Ireland. We want you to know that our primary concern is the safety of the hostages—”

“Don’t forget the Cathedral. It’s ready to be burned down.”

“Yes. But our primary concern is human life.”

“Sorry about the horse.”

“What? Oh, yes. We are too. But no one—no human—has been killed, so let’s all work to keep it that way.”

“Commissioner Dwyer is feeling better, then?”

Schroeder shot a look at Burke and covered the mouthpiece. “What the hell did you tell him about Dwyer?”

“Rule number one. The truth.”

“Shit!” Schroeder uncovered the mouthpiece. “The Commissioner’s death was from natural causes, sir. You have not killed anyone.” He stressed again, “Our goal is to protect lives—”

“Then I can burn down the Cathedral after I get what I want?”

Schroeder looked around the room again. Everyone was bent forward in their chairs, cigars and cigarettes discharging smoke into the quiet atmosphere. “No, sir. That would be arson, a felony. Let’s not compound the problem.”

“No problem here. Just do what you’re told.”

“Are the hostages safe?”

“I told Burke they were. If I say something, that’s what I mean.”

“I was just reassuring everyone here. There are a lot of people here … Mr. MacCumail, to hear what you have to say to them. The Rector of the Cathedral is here. He’s very concerned about the Cardinal and the others. They’re all counting on you to come through. Listen, is it possible to speak with the hostages? I’d like to—”

“Perhaps later.”

“All right. Fine. Okay. Listen, I’d like to speak to you about that spotlight. That was a potentially dangerous act—”

“Not if you have the County Antrim shooting champion in the bell tower. Keep the spotlights off.”

“Yes, sir. In the future, if you want something, just ask me. Try not to take things into your own hands. It’s easier, sometimes, to ask.”

“I’ll try to remember that. Where exactly are you calling from?”

“I’m in the Rector’s office.”

“Good. Best not to get too far from the center of things.”

“We’re right here.”

“So are we. All right, I have other things to see to. Don’t be calling me every minute on some pretext. The next call I receive from you will inform me that the three governments and the two agencies involved are ready to begin working out the details of the transfer of prisoners.”

“That may be some time. I’d like to be able to call you and give you progress reports.”

“Don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”

“I’m here to help.”

“Good. You can start by sending the keys to me.”

“The keys?” He looked at Monsignor Downes, who nodded.

Flynn said, “All the keys to the Cathedral—not the city. Send them now, with Lieutenant Burke.”

Schroeder said, “I’m not sure I can locate any keys—”

“Don’t be starting that bullshit, Captain. I want them within ten minutes or I raze the Altar of the Blessed Sacrament. Tell that to Downes and he’ll produce all the keys he’s got, and about a hundred he hasn’t got.”

Monsignor Downes came toward the desk, looking very agitated.

Schroeder said quickly into the phone, “All right. There was a misunderstanding. The Monsignor informs me he has a complete set of keys.”

“I thought you’d find them. Also, send in corned beef and cabbage dinners for forty-five people. I want it catered by … hold on, let me check with my American friend here.” There was a short silence, then Flynn said, “John Barleycorn’s on East Forty-fifth Street. Soda bread, coffee and tea as well. And a sweet, if you don’t mind. I’ll pay the bill.”

“We’ll take care of that … and the bill, too.”

“Captain, before this night is through there won’t be enough money in the city treasury to buy you a glass of beer. I’ll pay for the food.”

“Yes, sir. One more thing. About the time limit … you’ve presented us with some complicated problems and we may need more time to—”

Flynn’s voice became belligerent. “No extensions! The prisoners named had better be free in Dublin when the first light breaks through the windows of the Lady Chapel. Dawn or dead, Schaeffer.”

“Schroeder. Look—”

“Whatever. Happy Saint Paddy’s Day to you. Erin go bragh.”

There was a click, and the sound of the phone hummed in the room. Captain Schroeder put down his telephone, shut off the speakers, and relit his cigar. He tapped his fingers on the desk. It had not gone well. Yet he felt he’d dealt with harder men than Finn MacCumail. Never as well spoken, perhaps, but crazier, certainly.

He kept reminding himself of two facts. One was that he’d never had a failure. The other was that he’d never failed to get an extension of a deadline. And much of his success in the first fact was a result of his success in the second. He looked up at the silent assembly. “This one is going to be rough. I like them rough.”

Captain Joe Bellini stood at the window with his tunic open, his thumbs hooked into his gun belt. His fingers ran over his cartridge loops. He had a mental picture of his Emergency Services Division assaulting the big gray lady out there. He didn’t like them rough; he didn’t like them easy. He didn’t like them at all.

Brian Flynn sat at the chancel organ beside the sanctuary and looked at the book resting on the keycover. “Schaeffer.” He laughed.

John Hickey picked up the book, titled My Years as a Hostage Negotiator, by Bert Schroeder. “Schaeffer. Very good, Brian. But he’ll be on to you eventually.”

Flynn nodded. “Probably.” He pushed back the rolltop cover of the keyboard and pressed on a key, but no sound came from the pipes across the ambulatory. “We need the key to turn this on,” he said absently. He looked up at Hickey. “We don’t want to hurt him too badly professionally. We want him in there. And toward the end, if we have to, we’ll play our trump card against him—Terri O’Neal.” He laughed. “Did ever a poor bastard have so many cards stacked against him without knowing it?”

CHAPTER 26

Flynn said, “Hello, Burke.”

Burke stopped at the bottom of the sacristy stairs.

Flynn said, “I asked for you so you’d gain stature with your superiors.”

“Thanks.” Burke held up a large key-ring. “You want these?”

“Hand them through.”

Burke climbed the steps and handed the keys through the bars.

Flynn produced the microphone sensor and passed it over Burke’s body. “They say that technology is dehumanizing, but this piece of technology makes it unnecessary to search you, which always causes strained feelings. This way it’s almost like trusting one another.” He put the device away.

Burke said, “What difference would it make if I was wired? We’re not going to discuss anything that I won’t report.”

“That remains to be seen.” He turned and called out to Pedar Fitzgerald on the landing. “Take a break.” Fitzgerald cradled his submachine gun and left. Flynn and Burke stared at each other, then Flynn spoke. “How did you get on to us, Lieutenant?”

“That’s no concern of yours.”

“Of course it is. Major Martin?”

Burke realized that he felt much freer to talk without a transmitter sending his voice back to the rectory. He nodded and saw a strange expression pass briefly over Flynn’s face. “Friend of yours?”

“Professional acquaintance,” answered Flynn. “Did the good Major tell you my real name?”

Burke didn’t answer.

Flynn moved closer to the gate. “There is an old saying in intelligence work— ‘It’s not important to know who fired the bullet, but who paid for it.’” He looked at Burke closely. “Who paid for the bullets?”

“You tell me.”

“British Military Intelligence provided the logistics for the Fenian Army.”

“The British government would not take such a risk because of your petty war—”

“I’m talking about people who pursue their own goals, which may or may not coincide with those of their government. These people talk of historical considerations to justify themselves—”

“So do you.”

Flynn ignored the interruption. “These people are monumental egotists. Their lives are meaningful only as long as they can manipulate, deceive, intrigue, and eliminate their enemies, real or imagined, on the other side or on their own side. They find self-expression only in situations of crisis and turmoil, which they often manufacture themselves. That’s your basic intelligence man, or secret policeman, or whatever they call themselves. That’s Major Bartholomew Martin.”

“I thought you were describing yourself.”

Flynn smiled coldly. “I’m a revolutionary. Counterrevolutionaries are far more despicable.”

“Maybe I should get into auto theft.”

Flynn laughed. “Ah, Lieutenant, you’re an honest city cop. I trust you.” Burke didn’t answer, and Flynn said, “I’ll tell you something else—I think Martin had help in America. He had to. Be careful of the CIA and FBI.” Again Burke didn’t respond, and Flynn said, “Who gains the most from what’s happened today?”

Burke looked up. “Not you. You’ll be dead shortly, and if what you say is true, then what does that make you? A pawn. A lowly pawn who’s been played off by British Intelligence and maybe by the CIA and FBI, for their own game.”

Flynn smiled. “Aye, I know that. But the pawn has captured the archbishop, you see, and occupies his square as well. Pawns should never be underestimated; when they reach the end of the board, they turn and may become knights.”

Burke understood Brian Flynn. He said, “Assuming Major Martin is what you say he is, why are you telling me? Am I supposed to expose him?”

“No. That would badly compromise me, you understand. Just keep an eye on him. He wants me dead now that I’ve served his purpose. He wants the hostages dead and the Cathedral destroyed—to show the world what savages the Irish are. Be wary of his advice to your superiors. Do you understand?”

“I understand that you’ve gotten yourself in a no-win situation. You’ve been sucked into a bad deal thinking you could turn it around, but now you’re not so sure.”

“My goal is uncompromised. It’s up to the British government to release my people. It will be their fault if—”

“For God’s sake, man, give it up,” Burke said, his voice giving way to impatience and anger. “Take a few years for aggravated assault, false imprisonment, whatever the hell you can work out with the DA.”

Flynn gripped the bars in front of him. “Stop talking like a fucking cop! I’m a soldier, Burke, not a bloody criminal who makes deals with DAs.”

Burke let out a long breath and said softly, “I can’t save you.” “I didn’t ask you to—but the fact that you mentioned it tells me more about Patrick Burke, Irishman, than Patrick Burke, policeman, is willing to admit.”

“Bullshit.”

Flynn relaxed his grip on the bars. “Just take care of Major Martin and you’ll save the hostages and the Cathedral. I’ll save the Fenians. Now run along and bring the corned beef like a good fellow, won’t you? We may chat again.”

Burke put a businesslike tone in his voice. “They want to haul the horse away.”

“Of course. An armistice to pick up the dead.” He seemed to be trying to regain control of himself and smiled. “As long as they don’t make corned beef out of it. One man with a rope and an open vehicle. No tricks.”

“No tricks.”

“No, there have been enough tricks for one day.” Flynn turned and moved up the stairs, then stopped abruptly and said over his shoulder, “I’ll show you what a decent fellow I am, Burke—everyone knows that Jack Ferguson is a police informer. Tell him to get out of town if he values his life.” He turned again and ran up the stairs.

Burke watched him disappear around the corner on the landing. I’m a soldier, not a bloody criminal. It had been said without a trace of anguish in his voice, but the anguish was there.

Brian Flynn stood before the Cardinal seated on his throne. “Your Eminence, I’m going to ask you an important question.”

The Cardinal inclined his head.

Flynn asked, “Are there any hidden ways—any secret passages into this Cathedral?”

The Cardinal answered immediately. “If there were, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Flynn stepped back and pointed to the towering ceiling at a point above the crypt where the red hats of the deceased archbishops of New York hung suspended by wire. “Would you like to have your hat hung there?”

The Cardinal looked at him coldly. “I am a Christian who believes in life everlasting, and I’m not intimidated by threats of death.”

“Ah, Cardinal, you took it wrong. I meant I’d tell my people in the attic to take an ax to the plaster lathing until that beautiful ceiling is lying in the pews.”

The Cardinal drew a short breath, then said softly, “To the best of my knowledge, there are no secret passages. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

“No, it doesn’t. Because I suspect that there are. Now, think of when you were first shown your new cathedral by the Vicar General. Surely there must be an escape route in the event of insurrection. A priest’s hole such as we have in Ireland and England.”

“I don’t believe the architect considered such a thing. This is America.”

“That has less meaning with each passing year. Think, Your Eminence. Lives will be saved if you can remember.”

The Cardinal sat back and looked over the vast church. Yes, there were hollow walls with staircases that went somewhere, passages that were never used, but he could not honestly say that he remembered them or knew if they led from or to an area not controlled by these people. He looked out over the marble floor in front of him. The crypt lay below and, around the crypt, a low-ceilinged basement. But they knew that. He’d seen Hickey and Megan Fitzgerald descend through the bronze plate beside the altar.

Two thirds of the basement was little more than crawl space, a darkness where rats could scurry beneath the marble floor above. And above that darkness six million people passed every year to worship God, to meditate, or just to look. But the darkness below their feet stayed the same, until now—now it was seeping into the Cathedral and into the consciousness and souls of the people in the Cathedral. The dark places became important, not the sanctified places of light.

The Cardinal looked up at the figures standing tensely in the triforia and the choir loft, like sentinels on dark, craggy cliffs, guards on city walls. The eternal watchman, frightened, isolated, whispering, “Watchman, what of the night?”

The Cardinal turned to Flynn. “I can think of no way in and, by the same token, no way out for you.”

“The way out for me will be through the front doors.” He questioned the Cardinal closely about the suspected basement beneath the nave, passages between the basements outside the Cathedral, and the crawl space below.

The Cardinal kept shaking his head. “Nonsense. Typical nonsense about the church. This is a house of God, not a pyramid. There are no secrets here, only the mysteries of the faith.”

Flynn smiled. “And no hoards of gold, Cardinal?”

“Yes, there is a hoard of gold. The body and blood of Christ that rests in the Tabernacle, the joy and goodwill and the peace and love that resides with us here— that is our hoard of gold. You’re welcome to take some of that with you.”

“And perhaps a few odd chalices and the gold on the altars.”

“You’re welcome to all of that.”

Flynn shook his head. “No, I’ll take nothing out of here but ourselves. Keep your gold and your love.” He looked around the Cathedral and said, “I hope it survives.” He looked at the Cardinal. “Well, perhaps a tour will refresh your memory. Come with me, please.”

The Cardinal rose, and both men descended the steps of the sanctuary and walked toward the front of the Cathedral.

Father Murphy watched the Cardinal walk off with Flynn. Megan wasn’t in sight, Baxter was sitting at the end of the pew, and John Hickey was at the chancel organ, speaking on the field phone. Murphy turned to Maureen. “You want desperately to do something, don’t you?”

She looked at him. The catharsis of an escape from death made her feel strangely relaxed, almost serene, but the impulse for action still lay within her. She nodded slowly.

Father Murphy seemed to consider for a long time, then said, “Do you know any code—such as Morse code?”

“Yes. Morse code. Why?”

“You’re in mortal danger, and I think you should make a confession, in the event something happens … suddenly….”

Maureen looked at the priest but didn’t answer.

“Trust me.”

“All right.”

Murphy waited until Hickey put down the field phone and called out, “Mr. Hickey, could I have a word with you?”

Hickey looked over the sanctuary rail. “Use the one in the bride’s room—wipe the seat.”

“Miss Malone would like to make a confession.”

“Oh,” Hickey laughed. “That would take a week.”

“This is not a joking matter. She feels her life is in mortal danger, and—”

“That it is. All right. No one’s stopping you.”

Father Murphy rose, followed by Maureen.

Hickey watched them move toward the side in the rail. “Can’t you do it there?”

Murphy answered. “Not in front of everyone. In the confessional.”

Hickey looked annoyed. “Be quick about it.”

They descended the side steps and walked across the ambulatory to the confessional booth beside the bride’s room. Hickey raised his hand to the snipers in the perches and called out to the two retreating figures. “No funny business. You’re in the cross hairs.”

Father Murphy showed Maureen into a curtained booth, then entered the archway beside it. He went through the priest’s entrance to the confessional and sat in the small, dark enclosure, then pulled the cord to open the black screen.

Maureen Malone knelt and stared through the curtain at the dim shadow of the priest’s profile. “It’s been so long, I don’t know how to begin.”

Father Murphy said in the low, intimate whisper cultivated for the confessional, “You can begin by locating the button on the door frame.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a button there. If you press it, it buzzes in the upstairs hall of the rectory. It’s to call a priest when confessions are not normally held, in case you have a need for instant forgiveness.” He laughed softly at what Maureen thought must be an occupational joke in the rectory.

She said excitedly, “Do you mean we can communicate—”

“We can’t get any signal back, and in any case we wouldn’t want one. And I don’t know if anyone will hear us. Quickly, now, signal a message—something useful to the people outside.”

Maureen drew the curtain farther to cover her hand, then ran her fingers over the oak frame and found the button. She pressed it several times to attract someone’s attention, then began in halting Morse code. THIS IS MALONE. WITH FR. MURPHY.

What should she say? She thought back to her training—Who, what, where, when, how many?OBSERVED 13-15 GUNMEN IN CATHEDRAL. SNIPER IN EACH TRIFORIUM.ONE IN CHOIR LOFT. MAN AT SACRISTY STAIRS WITH THOMPSON SUB.ONE OR TWO MEN/WOMEN IN EACH TOWER. TWO OR MORE IN ATTIC.POSTS CONNECTED BY FIELD PHONES. HOSTAGES ON SANCTUARY.

She stopped and thought of the snatches of conversation she’d overheard, then continued in a faster, more confident signal.VOTIVE CANDLES PILED IN ATTIC. BOMB? UNDER SANCTUARY.

She stopped again and tried desperately to think—Who, what, where … ? She went on. MACCUMAIL IS BRIAN FLYNN. JOHN HICKEY, LIEUTENANT. MEGAN FITZGERALD THIRD IN COMMAND. OBSERVED MINES ON DOORS, SNIPER RIFLES, AUTOMATIC RIFLES, PISTOLS, M-72 ROCKETS, GAS MAS—

“Stop!” Murphy’s voice came urgently through the screen.

She pulled her hand away from the buzzer.

Murphy said somewhat loudly, “Do you repent all your sins?”

“I do.”

The priest replied, “Say the rosary once.”

Hickey’s voice cut into the confessional. “Once? By God, I’d have her on her knees until Easter if we had that long. Come on out.”

Maureen came out of the confessional as Father Murphy came through the archway. Murphy nodded to Hickey. “Thank you. Later I’d like the Cardinal to hear my confession.”

Hickey’s wrinkled face broke into a mocking smile. “Now, what have you done, Father?”

He stepped very close to Hickey. “I’ll hear the confessions of your people, too, before this night is over.”

Hickey made a contemptuous sound. “No atheists in cathedrals, eh, Padre?” He stepped back from the priest and nodded. “Someone once said, ‘By night an atheist half believes in God.’ Maybe you’re right. By dawn they’ll all turn to you as they see the face of death, with his obscene gaping grin, pressed against the pretty windows. But I’ll not make a confession to any mortal man, and neither will Flynn nor that she-devil he sleeps with.”

Father Murphy’s face reddened. He went on, “I think Harold Baxter will want to make his peace as well.”

“That heathen? In a Catholic church? Don’t bet the poor-box money on it.” Hickey turned and looked up at the solitary figure sitting in the pew on the sanctuary. “This whole operation may have been worth the while just to see that Protestant bastard on his knees in front of a Catholic priest. All right, let’s get back to the corral.”

Maureen said to Hickey, “I hope I live long enough to see how you face death.” She turned and walked with the priest in silence to the communion rail. She said, “That man … There’s something … wicked …”

The priest nodded. As they came up to the communion rail she said, “Do you think we got through?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know Morse code?”

He reached out and opened the gate in the rail. “No, but you’ll write out those dots and dashes for me before I make my confession.” He waved her through the rail absently. As she passed him she reached out and squeezed his hand. He suddenly came alert. “Wait!”

She turned on the steps. “What is it?”

He looked at Hickey, who was standing near the confessional watching them. He reached into his vestment and handed her a set of rosary beads. “Get back here and kneel at the rail.”

She took the beads and glanced at Hickey. “Stupid of me—”

“My fault. Just pray he doesn’t suspect.” The priest walked into the sanctuary.

Maureen knelt at the rail and let the string of beads hang loosely from her hands. She turned. Her eyes rose over the Cathedral, and she peered into the dimly appreciated places. Dark figures like ravens stared down at her from the murky balconies. Megan was moving near the front doors like a shadow, and an unearthly stillness hung over the cold, gray towering stonework. She focused on John Hickey. He was staring at the confessional and smiling.

CHAPTER 27

Brian Flynn helped the Cardinal up into the bell room. The Cardinal looked at the torn copper louvers. Flynn said to Donald Mullins, “Have you formally met the Archbishop of New York?”

Mullins knelt and kissed the episcopal ring, then rose.

Flynn said, “Take a break, Donald. There’s coffee in the bookstore.”

Mullins went quickly down the ladder.

Flynn moved to the opening in the tower and looked out into the city. There was a long silence in the cold, drafty room. “That’s incredible, you know … an armed revolutionary kneels in the dust and kisses your ring.”

The Cardinal looked impatient. “Why are we up here? There can be no hidden passages up here.”

Flynn said, “Have you had many dealings with Gordon Stillway?”

The Cardinal answered, “We planned the latest renovations together.”

“And he never pointed out any curiosities to your No secret—”

“I’m not in the habit of entertaining the same question more than once.”

Flynn made an exaggerated bow. “Pardon me. I was only trying to refresh your memory, Your Eminence.”

“What exactly do you want with me, Mr. Flynn?”

“I want you to speak with the negotiator, and I want you to talk to the world. I’m going to set up a conference in that press room so conveniently located in the subbasement below the sacristy. You will go on television and radio—”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

“Damn it, you’ve done enough talking on television and radio to damage our cause. You’ve used your pulpit long enough to speak out against the IRA. Now you’ll undo that damage.”

“I spoke out against murder and mayhem. If that equals speaking out against the IRA, then—”

Flynn’s voice rose. “Have you seen a British internment camp? Do you know what they do to those poor bastards in there?”

“I’ve seen and heard reports, and I’ve condemned the British methods in Ulster along with the IRA methods.”

“No one remembers that.” He put his face close to the Cardinal’s. “You’ll announce to the world that as an Irish-American, and as a Catholic prelate, you are going to Northern Ireland to visit the camps.”

“But if you clear them out, who is there left to visit, Mr. Flynn?”

“There are hundreds in those camps.”

“And the ones to be released are the relatives of the men and women with you. Plus, I’m sure, a good number of important leaders. The rest can stay so you can still claim some moral justification for your bloody methods. I’m not as naïve as you believe, and I won’t be used by you.”

Flynn let out a deep breath. “Then I won’t guarantee the safety of this church. I’ll see that it’s destroyed no matter what the outcome of the negotiations!”

The Cardinal moved near Flynn and said, “There is a price, Mr. Flynn, that each man must pay for each sin. This is not a perfect world, and the evildoers in it often escape punishment and die peacefully in their beds. But there is a higher court …”

“Don’t try to frighten me with that. And don’t be so certain that court would damn me and issue you wings. My concept of heaven and heavenly justice is a bit more pagan than yours. I picture Tirna-n’Og, where warriors are given the respect they no longer receive on earth. Your heaven has always sounded very effeminate to me.”

The Cardinal didn’t reply but shook his head.

Flynn turned away from him and looked into the blue city lights. After a time he said, “Cardinal, I’m a chosen man. I know I am. Chosen to lead the people of Northern Ireland out of British bondage.”

He turned back to the Cardinal and thrust his right hand toward him. “Do you see this ring? This is the ring of Finn MacCumail. It was given me by a priest who wasn’t a priest. A man who never was, in a place that never was what it seemed to be. A place sanctified by Druids a thousand years or more before the name Jesus Christ was ever heard in Erin. Oh, don’t look so skeptical—you’re supposed to believe in miracles, damn it.”

The Cardinal looked at him sadly. “You’ve shut God’s love out of your heart and taken into your soul dark things that should never be spoken of by a Christian.” He held out his hand. “Give me the ring.”

Flynn took an involuntary step back. “No.”

“Give it to me, and we’ll see if the Christian God, your true God, is effeminate.”

Flynn shook his head and held up his hand balled into a fist.

The Cardinal dropped his outstretched arm and said, “I see my duty clearly now. I may not be able to save this church or save the lives of anyone in here. But before this night is over I’ll try to save your soul, Brian Flynn, and the souls of the people with you.”

Flynn looked down at the bronze ring, then at the Cardinal, and focused on the large cross hanging from his neck. “I wish sometimes that I’d gotten a sign from that God you believe in. But I never did. By morning one of us will know who’s won this battle.”

CHAPTER 28

Monsignor Downes stood at the window of his inner office, chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes and staring out at the floodlit Cathedral through a haze of blue smoke. In his mind’s eye he saw not only smoke but fire licking at the gray stone, reaching from the stained-glass windows and twining around the twin spires. He blinked his eyes and turned toward the people in the room.

Present now besides himself was Captain Schroeder, who probably wouldn’t leave until the end, and sitting in his chairs were Lieutenant Burke, Major Martin, and Inspector Langley. Captain Bellini was standing. On the couch were the FBI man, Hogan, and the CIA man, Kruger—or was it the other way around? No, that was it. All six men were rereading a decoded message brought in by a detective.

Patrick Burke looked at his copy of the message.—DER SANCTUARY.MACCUMAIL IS BRIAN FLYNN. JOHN HICKEY, LIEUTENANT. MEGAN FITZGERALD THIRD IN COMMAND. OBSERVED MINES ON DOORS, SNIPER RIFLES, AUTOMATIC RIFLES, PISTOLS, M-72 ROCKETS, GAS MAS—

Burke looked up. “D-E-R Sanctuary. Murder? Ladder? Under?”

Langley shrugged. “I hope whoever that was can send again. I have two men in the upstairs hall waiting to copy.” He looked at the message again. “I don’t like the way it ended so abruptly.”

Bellini said, “I didn’t like that inventory of weapons.”

Burke said, “Malone or Baxter sent it. Either of them would know Morse code and know that this is the stuff we’re looking for. Right? And if, as the Monsignor says, the buzzer is in the confessional, then we might rule out Baxter if he’s, as I assume, of the Protestant persuasion.”

Major Martin said, “You can assume he is.”

The Monsignor interjected hesitantly. “I’ve been thinking … perhaps Mr. Baxter will make a confession … so they can send again. Father Murphy will hear His Eminence’s confession and vice versa—so we can expect, perhaps, three more messages….”

“Then,” said Martin, “we’re out of sinners. They can’t go twice, can they?”

Monsignor Downes regarded him coolly.

Bellini said, “Is that okay, Monsignor? I mean, to use the confessional to do that?”

Downes smiled for the first time. “It’s okay.”

Major Martin cleared his throat. “Look here, we haven’t considered that this message might be a ruse, sent by Flynn to make us believe he’s well armed…. A bit subtle and sophisticated for the Irish … but it’s possible.”

Langley replied, “If we had the complete message, we might have a better idea of its authenticity.”

Schroeder said to Langley, “I need information on the personalities in there. Megan Fitzgerald. Third in command.”

Langley shook his head. “I’ll check the files, but I’ve never heard of her.”

There was a period of silence in the room, while in the outer office men and women arrived and departed, telephones rang constantly, and people huddled in conversation. In the lower floors of the rectory police commanders coordinated crowd control and cordon operations. In the Cardinal’s residence Governor Doyle and Mayor Kline met with government representatives and discussed larger issues around a buffet set up in the dining room. Phones were kept open to Washington, London, Dublin, and Albany.

One of the half-dozen newly installed telephones rang, and Schroeder picked it up, then handed it to the CIA man. Kruger spoke for a minute, then hung up, “Nothing on Brian Flynn or Megan Fitzgerald. Nothing on the Fenians. Old file on John Hickey. Not as good as yours.” Two phones rang simultaneously, and Schroeder answered both, passing one to Hogan and one to Martin.

The FBI man spoke for a few seconds, then hung up and said, “Nothing on Flynn, Fitzgerald, or the Fenians. You have our file on Hickey. The FBI, incidentally, had an agent at his funeral checking out the mourners. That’s the last entry. Guess we’ll have to add a postscript.”

Major Martin was still on the telephone, writing as he listened. He put the receiver down. “A bit of good news. Our dossier on Flynn will be Telexed to the consulate shortly. There’s a capability paper on the Fenian Army as well. Your files on Hickey are more extensive than ours, and you can send a copy to London, if you will.” He lit a cigarette and said in a satisfied tone, “Also on the way is the file on Megan Fitzgerald. Here’s a few pertinent details: Born in Belfast, age twenty-one. Father deserted family—brother Thomas in Long Kesh for attacking a prison van. Brother Pedar is a member of the IRA. Mother hospitalized for a nervous breakdown.” He added caustically, “Your typical Belfast family of five.” Martin looked at Burke. “Her description—red hair, blue eyes, freckles, five feet seven inches, slender— quite good-looking according to the chap I just spoke to. Sound like the young lady who pegged a shot at you?”

Burke nodded.

Martin went on. “She’s Flynn’s present girl friend.” He smiled. “I wonder how she’s getting on with Miss Malone. I think I’m starting to feel sorry for old Flynn.”

A uniformed officer stuck his head in the door. “Chow’s here from John Barleycorn’s.”

Schroeder reached for the telephone. “All right. I’ll tell Flynn that Burke is ready with his fucking corned beef.” He dialed the operator. “Chancel organ.” He waited. “Hello, this is Captain Schroeder. Finn MacCumail? …” He pushed the switches to activate all the speakers, and the next room became quiet.

“This is Dermot. MacCumail is praying with the Cardinal.”

Schroeder hesitated. “Mr…. Dermot—”

“Just call me Hickey. John Hickey. Never liked these noms de guerre! Confuses everyone. Did you know I was in here? Have you got my file in front of you, Snider?”

“Schroeder.” He looked down at the thick police file. Each man had to be played differently. Each man had his own requirements. Schroeder rarely admitted to having anyone’s file in front of him as he negotiated, but it was equally important not to get caught lying to a direct question, and it was often convenient to play on a man’s ego.

“Schroeder? You awake?”

Schroeder sat up. “Yes, sir. Yes, we knew you were in there. I have your file, Mr. Hickey.”

Hickey cackled happily. “Did you read the part where I was caught trying to blow up Parliament in 1921?”

Schroeder found the dated entry. “Yes, sir. Quite”—he looked at Major Martin, who was staring tight-lipped—“quite daring. Daring escape too—”

“You bet your ass, sonny. Now look at 1941. I worked with the Germans then to blow up British shipping in New York harbor. Not proud of that, you understand; but a lot of us did that in the Second War. Shows how much we hated the Brits, doesn’t it, to throw in with the bloody Nazis.”

“Yes, it does. Listen—”

“The Dublin government and the British government both sentenced me to death in absentia on five different occasions. Well, as Brendan Behan once said, they can hang me five times in absentia, too.” He laughed.

There was some laughter from the adjoining office. No one in the inner office laughed. Schroeder bit his cigar. “Mr. Hickey—”

“What do you have for February 12, 1979? Read it to me, Schaeffer.”

Schroeder turned to the last page and read. “Died of natural causes, at home, Newark, New Jersey. Buried … buried in Jersey City Cemetery….”

Hickey laughed again, a high, piercing laugh. Neither man spoke for a few seconds, then Schroeder said, “Mr. Hickey, first I want to ask you if the hostages are all right.”

“That’s a stupid question. If they weren’t, would I tell you?”

“But they are all right?”

“There you go again. Same stupid question,” Hickey said impatiently. “They’re fine. What did you call for?”

Schroeder said, “Lieutenant Burke is ready to bring the food you ordered. Where—?”

“Through the sacristy.”

“He’ll be alone, unarmed—”

Hickey’s voice was suddenly ill-tempered. “You don’t have to reassure me. For my part I’d like you to try something, because quicker than you can make it up those stairs with a chaincutter or ram, the Cardinal’s brains would be running over the altar, followed by a great fucking explosion that they’d hear in the Vatican, and a fire so hot it’d melt the brass balls off Atlas. Do you understand, Schroeder?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And stop calling me sir, you candy-assed flatfoot. When I was a lad, if you looked at a constable cross-eyed he’d knock you into next week. Now you’re all going round calling murderers sir. No wonder they picked New York for this. Fucking cops would rather bat softballs with a bunch of slum brats than bat heads. Also, while I’m on the subject, I don’t like your voice, Schroeder. You sound mealy-mouthed. How the hell did you get picked for this job? Your voice is all wrong.”

“Yes, sir … Mr. Hickey…. What would you like me to call you … ?”

“Call me a son of a bitch, Schroeder, because that’s what I am. Go on, you’ll feel better.”

Schroeder cleared his throat. “Okay … you’re a son of a bitch.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I’d rather be a son of a bitch than an asshole like you.” He laughed and hung up.

Schroeder put down the receiver, took a long breath, and turned off the speakers. “Well … I think …” He looked down at Hickey’s file. “Very unstable. Maybe a little senile.” He looked at Burke. “You don’t have to go if you …”

“Yeah. I have to go. I damn well have to go. Where’s the fucking food?” He stood.

Langley spoke. “I didn’t like that part about the explosion.”

Major Martin said, “I’d have been surprised if they hadn’t set it up with explosives. That’s their specialty.”

Burke moved toward the door. “The Irish specialty is bullshit.” He looked at Martin. “Not subtle or sophisticated bullshit, of course, Major. Just bullshit. And if they had as much gelignite and plastic as they have bullshit, they could have blown up the solar system.” He opened the door and looked back over his shoulder. “Forty-five meals. Shit, I wouldn’t want to have to eat every meal over the number of people they have in there.”

Bellini called out at Burke’s retreating figure. “I hope you’re right, Burke. I hope to Christ you’re right.” He turned back to the people in the room. “He doesn’t have to shoot his way in there.”

Schroeder looked at Monsignor Downes, who appeared pale, then turned to Bellini and said irritably, “Damn it, Joe, stop that. No one is going to have to shoot his way into that Cathedral.”

Major Martin was examining some curios on the mantelpiece. He said, as though to himself but loud enough for everyone to hear him, “I wonder.”

CHAPTER 29

Flynn stood with Maureen on the landing in front of the crypt entrance. He found a key on the ring and opened the green, glass-paneled door. Inside, a set of stairs descended into the white-marbled burial chamber. He turned to Pedar Fitzgerald. “Somewhere in there may be a hidden passage. I’ll be along shortly.”

Fitzgerald cradled his submachine gun under his arm and moved down the stairs. Flynn shut the door and looked at the inscription in the bronze. Requiescant In Pace. “May they rest in peace,” he said. Below the inscriptions were plaques bearing the names of the former archbishops of New York who were buried in the crypt. He turned to Maureen. “You remember how frightened we were to go down into Whitehorn Abbey’s crypt?”

She nodded. “There have been too many graves in our lives, Brian, and too much running. God, look at you. You look ten years older than your age.”

“Do I? Well … that’s not just from the running. That’s partly from not running fast enough.” He paused, then added, “I was caught.”

She turned her head toward him. “Oh … I didn’t know.”

“It was kept quiet. Major Martin. Remember the name?”

“Of course. He contacted me once, right after I’d gone to Dublin. He wanted to know where you were. He said it would go easier on Sheila … and he said they would cancel the warrant for my arrest … Pleasant sort of chap, actually, but you knew he’d pull your fingernails out if he had you in Belfast.”

Flynn smiled. “And what did you tell this pleasant chap?”

“I would have told him to go to hell except I thought he might actually go and find you there. So I told him to fuck off.”

Flynn smiled again, but his eyes were appraising her thoughtfully.

She read the expression in his face. “I want you to understand that I never turned informer. Traitor, if you like, but never informer.”

He nodded. “I believe you. If I didn’t, I’d have killed you long ago.”

“Would you?”

He changed the subject. “You’re going to get people hurt if you try to escape again.”

She didn’t respond.

Flynn took a key from his pocket and held it out. “This is the key to the padlock on that chain. I’ll open it now, and you can go.”

“Not without the others.”

“But you’d try to escape without the others.”

“That’s different.”

He smiled and kept the key in front of her. “Ah, you’re still a street fighter, Maureen. You understand that there’s a price to pay—in advance—for a bit of freedom. Most men and women in this world would leave here quickly through the offered gate, and they wouldn’t even entertain the thought of escaping with bullets whistling about their ears. You see, your values and requirements are reversed from ordinary people’s. We changed you forever in those years we had you.”

She remembered the way he had of interpreting for her all of her motives and actions, and how he had once had her so confused about who and what she was that she’d fallen into his power, willingly and gladly. She looked at him. “Shut up.”

Flynn hesitated, then pocketed the key and shifted to another topic. “I chatted with the Cardinal. He believes in the ring, you know. You didn’t believe because you thought that as a halfhearted Christian you shouldn’t. But His Eminence is about as good a Christian as they make, you’ll agree, and for that reason he believes.”

She looked at the crypt door. “I never said I didn’t believe in such things. I told you in Whitehorn Abbey on the evening I left that I couldn’t understand why any power—good or evil—would pick you as their mortal emissary.”

He laughed. “That’s a terrible thing to say. You’re a master of the low blow, Maureen. You’d be a bitch except you’ve got a good heart.” He moved closer to her. “How do you explain the fact of Father Donnelly’s disappearance? I’ve searched for that man—if man he was—over these past years, and no one has even heard of him.”

She stared through a glass pane into the white, luminescent crypt and shook her head.

Flynn watched her, then put a different tone in his voice and took her arm in a firm grip. “Before I forget, let me give you one good piece of advice—don’t provoke Megan.”

She turned toward him. “The fact that I’m still breathing provokes her. Let me give you a piece of advice. If you get out of here alive, get as far from her as you can. She draws destruction like a lightning rod, Brian.”

Flynn made no response and let go of her arm.

She went on. “And Hickey … that man is …” She shook her head. “Never mind. I see you’ve fallen in with a bad lot. We hardly know each other anymore, Brian. How can we give each other advice?”

He reached out and touched her cheek. There was a long silence on the crypt landing. Then from the sacristy corridor came the sound of footsteps and the squeaking of wheels on the marble floor. Maureen said suddenly, “If Major Martin caught you, how is it that you’re alive?”

Flynn walked down the stairs and stood at the gate.

She followed. “Did you make a deal with him?”

He didn’t answer.

“And you call yourself a patriot?”

He looked at her sharply. “So does Major Martin. So do you.”

“I would never—”

“Oh, you’d make a deal. Popes, prime ministers, and presidents make deals like that, and it’s called diplomacy and strategy. That’s what this life is all about, Maureen—illusion and semantics. Well, I’m making no deals today, no accommodations, no matter what names the negotiator gives me for it to make it more palatable. That should make you happy, since you don’t like deals.”

She didn’t reply.

He went on. “If you agree that the deal I made with Major Martin wasn’t so awful, I’ll put Sheila’s name on the list of people to be released.”

She looked at him quickly. “You mean, it’s not—”

“Changes things a bit, doesn’t it? Looking ahead, were you, to a tearful reunion with little Sheila? Now you’ve nothing whatsoever to gain from this. Unless, of course, you see my point in trafficking with the enemy.”

“Why is it so important to you that I tell you that?”

A voice called out, “This is Burke. Coming in.”

Flynn said to Maureen, “We’ll talk again later.” He shouted into the sacristy, “Come on, then.” He drew back his jacket and adjusted the pistol in his waistband, then said to her, “I respect your abilities as a fighter enough to treat you like a man. Don’t try anything, don’t make any sudden moves, don’t stand behind me, and keep silent until you’re spoken to.”

She answered, “If that was a compliment, I’m not flattered. I’ve put that behind me.”

“Aye, like a reformed whore puts the streets behind her, but the urge is still there, I’ll wager.”

She looked at him. “It is now.”

He smiled.

Burke appeared from the sacristy corridor, pushing a serving cart. He rolled the cart over the marble floor and stopped at the bottom stair below the gate.

“Do you know Miss Malone?” Flynn asked.

Burke nodded to her. “We’ve met.”

“That’s right,” said Flynn. “Last evening at the Waldorf. I have a report on it. Seems so long ago, doesn’t it?” He smiled. “I’ve brought her here to assure you we haven’t butchered the hostages.” He said to her, “Tell him how well you’ve been treated, Maureen.”

She said, “No one is dead yet.”

Burke replied, “Please tell the others that we are doing all we can to see that you’re safely released.” He put a light note in his voice. “Tell Father Murphy he can hear my confession when this is over.”

She nodded and gave him a look of understanding.

Flynn was silent a moment, then asked, “Is the priest a friend of yours?”

Burke replied, “They’re all friends of mine.”

“Really?” He came closer to the gate. “Are you wired, Burke? Do I have to go through the debugging routine?”

“I’m clean. The cart is clean. I don’t want to be overheard either.” Burke came up the seven steps and was acutely aware of the psychological disadvantage of standing on a step eight inches below Flynn. “And the food’s not drugged.”

Flynn nodded. “No, not with hostages. Makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?”

Maureen suddenly grabbed the bars and spoke hurriedly. “His real name is Brian Flynn. He has only about twelve gunmen—”

Flynn pulled the pistol from his waistband and pressed it hard against her neck. “Don’t be a hero, Maureen. It isn’t required. Is it, Lieutenant?”

Burke kept his hands in full view. “Easy now. Nice and easy. Miss Malone, don’t say anything else. That’s right.”

Flynn spoke to her through clenched teeth. “That’s good advice, lass. You don’t want to jeopardize others, such as Lieutenant Burke, who’s already heard too much.” He looked at Burke. “She’s impulsive and hasn’t learned the difference between bravery and recklessness. That’s my fault, I’m afraid.” He grabbed her arm with his free hand and pulled her away from the gate. “Leave.”

Maureen looked at Burke and said, “I’ve made a confession to Father Murphy, and I’m not afraid to die. We’ll all make our confessions soon. Don’t give in to these bastards.”

Burke looked at her and nodded. “I understand.”

She smiled, turned, and mounted the steps to the altar.

Flynn held the pistol at his side and watched her go. He seemed to be thinking, then said, “All right, how much do I owe you?”