Death Draws Five

Chapter one

Turin, Italy: Cattedrale di San Giovanni

John Nighthawk had always been fascinated by churches. He’d been inside hundreds during his long life, from humble whitewashed clapboards in the Deep South to magnificent cathedrals in both the United States and Europe. As far as he was concerned, the humble and the grand both had their pluses and minuses. It was hard to experience a personal, intimate relationship with God in a cathedral. They were also usually extremely drafty. On the other hand, a cheap wooden shack didn’t quite capture the glory of God on high and they were also prone to falling down after a very few years. Surprisingly, though, decades of experience had taught Nighthawk that both kinds of houses of worship were relatively easy to break into.

“Cattedrale di San Giovanni,” the big man standing at Nighthawk’s right read from the Turin guidebook he’d taken from his hip pocket. He gestured at the structure across the plaza and then looked innocently at Nighthawk. “Isn’t Giovanni Italian for John?”

“That’s right,” said the other big man, who was standing at Nighthawk’s left.

The big man on Nighthawk’s right smiled. “Is this cathedral named after you, John? You’re probably old enough.”

There was quiet laughter from the other big man. The woman standing between them remained stone-faced, as always.

“Don’t blaspheme,” she said.

Nighthawk smiled and shook his head. “This church was erected in 1491. You don’t think I’m that old, do you?”

Speculation about Nighthawk’s age was something of an on-going joke with his team. It was impossible to pin down precisely, although he was certainly older than Usher and the others. A small black man with very dark skin, Nighthawk was about five foot five and maybe a hundred and forty pounds. At first glance his face appeared unlined. Close observation in good light, however, revealed a fine network of wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. The lines on his forehead also deepened to legibility when his face crinkled in laughter or a frown. He could have been a hard fifty or an easy-going sixty-five. His hair was still dark but his hands had the rough, gnarled look of someone who’d done physical labor for a good portion of their life. At least, his right hand did. His left was hidden by a black kidskin glove, despite the warmth of the early summer evening.

“Anyway,” Nighthawk added, “you’ve got the wrong John. This cathedral was dedicated to John the Baptist. And if you’re done playing tourist, Usher, you can put the guidebook away so we can get down to the job.”

Usher took Nighthawk’s rebuke good-naturedly and stuffed the guide back into his pocket. He was a big man, six four or so, and strong as an ox. Nighthawk knew that Usher was also the smartest member of the team. He was black, but light-skinned enough that there was a time when he could have passed for white, if he’d wanted to. If he could have gotten the kink out of his hair. Curtis Grubbs was the other big man. He was white, from somewhere in rural Alabama, but somewhat to Nighthawk’s amusement, was Usher’s sidekick and yes-man. He wasn’t quite as big as Usher, but he had a touch of the wild card and was as strong as two oxen. He followed orders if you gave them slowly and in great detail. The woman, Magda, was dark of hair, dark of eye, and dark of mind. She was from some European country that hadn’t been a country for very long. She spoke with a slight accent that made her voice husky and sexy. She was ruthless, quick, and dedicated. Sometimes too dedicated. She was a fanatic. She followed Nighthawk’s orders because he was in charge and also because she feared him, but he never knew when she’d get a wild notion to disobey a directive she reckoned blasphemous. He had to watch her constantly. Sometimes she was more trouble than she was worth, but, again, he had to remind himself who he was working for.

They’re a good team, Nighthawk thought. Maybe a little short on brains, but that was to be expected. He had also been offered the services of the Witnesses, but turned them down despite their potent ace powers. Their tendency to grandstand often turned them into liabilities. He’d also passed on Blood. He didn’t think a joker-ace who had to be led around on a leash so he wouldn’t molest stray pedestrians or passing cars would fit in on a mission where stealth was necessary.

It was past midnight, but there were still people on the street. Damn tourists, Nighthawk thought. It was unlikely to get much quieter, so he signaled Usher to move. The big man nodded and slipped quietly into the night. He crossed the Piazza Giovanni, keeping to the dark side of the street, blending naturally into the shadows like a big cat or a seasoned mercenary, which he’d been before signing with the Allumbrados as an obsequentus. Nighthawk figured that the big man had joined the Enlightened Ones for the pay. He had neither Grubbs’ naive credulousness, nor Magda’s vicious fanaticism.

Usher crossed the plaza in shadow, unobserved, and after ten or twelve seconds Grubbs followed him across the square. He was not as quiet or as inconspicuous as Usher, but he tried hard to emulate him. After both men had vanished in the night Magda followed at Nighthawk’s nod.

She was halfway across the plaza when a burst of sudden revelation struck Nighthawk like a thunderbolt. As always, it exploded across his brain almost too fast to grasp. The figures in it were dark and grainy like in an old time movie, and the poorly lit scene they played was open to several interpretations. But one thing was certain.

One of the team would die that night. Nighthawk couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t be him. Caught in the grip of awful fear, the old man looked across the plaza at the ancient cathedral, wondering if that night he would find the answer to the question that had haunted him for the last sixty years. The gloved fingers of his left hand closed around the old harmonica that he always carried, currently in his inside jacket pocket. It was his lucky piece as well as a reminder of past friends. He smiled to himself, but without humor.

“Maybe we find out tonight, Lightning,” he said quietly. “Maybe finally tonight.”

Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage

Peregrine tried to slam the newspaper down on the hotel suite desk, but since it was open it only fluttered limply. Still, Jerry got the message that she wasn’t happy.

“You could have been hurt!” she said angrily to John Fortune, who watched her glumly as she paced about the room. “Even killed!”

“There was no danger of that,” Jerry interjected.

Peregrine paused in her pacing and turned her eyes upon him. Suddenly he was glad that she hadn’t packed her titanium talons for the trip.

“You know that how?” she asked in a voice gone quietly silky. Through long experience in body-guarding John Fortune, Jerry knew that when she used that tone she was at her most dangerous. She looked at him with the eyes of a lioness sizing up an antelope for the kill. Even though she was in her late forties, Peregrine was still one of the most beautiful women Jerry had ever seen. Tall, lean, and athletic, her stunning wings matched a still stunning figure that had made only the slightest concession to age and gravity over the years.

“I made sure we kept far away from the tigers when we went backstage,” Jerry said quietly, but his words did little to mollify the angry ace.

“Tigers!” Peregrine spat, as if he’d said mosquitoes or something equally insignificant. “I would expect you to handle tigers.” Jerry’s chest expanded at the unanticipated praise. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed. “Maybe,” she added. She paced some more around the room, then stopped and looked at her son. He was still glum. Still handsome. Still normal looking, except for that orangish-yellowish glow that hovered around his head and the exposed skin of his hands and arms like halos. “But how do you know that simply using his power isn’t dangerous? He’s just a boy. I would expect him to be excited when he turned his card. But you should have known better.”

“Aw, Mom,” John Fortune said, “I had to go help Ralph. You should have seen him. The tiger had grabbed him by the neck and there was blood everywhere! He would’ve bled to death if I didn’t do anything. But I healed him. Ask Jerry. He was right there all the while, making sure nobody crowded us or anything. I just held Ralph and concentrated and he healed right up. It was easy.”

“No,” Jerry said, shaking his head, “your mother’s right. There’s no telling how dangerous using your power might be—”

“Listen to him,” Peregrine said.

“It’s not dangerous,” John Fortune said, his impatience showing in his tone. “I’m fine.”

Peregrine put the back of her hand against his forehead. “You feel warm to me.”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Could just be the effects of a speeded-up metabolism,” Jerry offered.

“Could be,” Peregrine said. Suddenly, she enwrapped her son in her arms and wings and held him to her tightly. She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. “If you only knew how worried I’ve been for you, all these years.”

“Aw, Mom,” John Fortune said, his head muffled against her chest. Jerry was envious. “I’m all right. I knew I would be. My card turned and now I’m an ace, just like you and my father. I mean, Fortunato.”

Peregrine nodded, unable to speak for a moment, as years of desperate worry seemed to squeeze out of her body. But some still remained.

“Promise me one thing,” she said as she still held him tightly. “Don’t use your power again until we get home and have you checked out at the Jokertown Clinic.”

“But what if I have to save someone—”

She pulled away, held him at arm’s length.

“John,” she said sternly, “you have your whole life ahead of you. You have years and years to save people. And listen to me. There’s a big lesson you have to learn right now.”

“What’s that?” the kid asked.

“No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much time and effort and sweat and blood you expend,” Peregrine said slowly, coming down hard on each and every word, “you can’t save everyone.”

The boy was silent for a long moment, as if digesting her words.

“All right,” John Fortune said quietly.

“Believe me,” Peregrine said.

Jerry nodded. “Believe her.”

He knew. Sometimes that was the hardest thing about being an ace of all.

Branson, Missouri: The Peaceable Kingdom

Billy Ray was in Loaves and Fishes, lingering over lunch and wishing he was anywhere in the world except here, when the kid tracked him down. Ray didn’t particularly look like an ace, let alone a dangerous one. He was an average-sized five ten, one hundred and seventy pounds. His suit was expensive and neat, without wrinkle, spot, or blemish. Though a couple of years on the wrong side of forty, he looked younger. His green eyes were sleepy-looking. His features were bland, if a little ill fitting. His broken-angled, rather prominent nose stood out from the rest of his face. He moved slowly, almost languidly. He was even more bored than he looked.

As the kid approached, Ray looked up from his plate piled high with beef ribs and chicken fried steak with gravy and biscuits, green beans, corn on the cob, and real scratch-made mashed potatoes, not from a box. He liked Loaves and Fishes because it was all you could eat, but lately he’d been losing interest in food as well as everything else. He knew what was wrong, but he knew also he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“Hi, Mr. Ray,” the kid said.

Ray sighed for about the billionth time and said, for about the billionth time, “I told you not to call me mister.”

“Okay, Billy.” Ray knew that wouldn’t last long. It never did. If the kid was anything, he was respectful. Alejandro Jesus y Maria C de Baca looked like he was about fourteen years old. Slight, slim, dark haired, dark eyed, always smiling, always cheerful, fresh out of spook school and so goddamned respectful that he sirred waiters. It was clear to Ray that Nephi Callendar, their boss at the Secret Service, had teamed them up specifically to annoy Ray.

“Say, mi—uh, Billy, President Barnett wants to see you, right away.”

Ray sighed. God, he hoped that it wasn’t for another prayer session. “Did he say why?”

The kid shook his head. “Nope. I was with him when he saw something in the paper that got him real excited, and he wanted to speak to you right away.”

Ray sighed again. He caught himself, realizing that he was doing entirely too much of that lately. He looked down at his lunch. He wasn’t hungry now, anyway.

“You want some lunch, kid?” Ray asked his colleague.

“I already ate, sir, uh, Billy. But it’d be a shame to waste all that food. I can box it up and drop it down at the homeless shelter after our shift.”

Ray nodded.

“You do that,” he said. He left Loaves and Fishes and strolled through Barnett’s vision of Heaven on Earth to his headquarters centrally located on the top floor of The Angels’ Bower hotel. He had to cut through the part of the park called New Jerusalem to reach it. As always, the Via Dolorosa was crowded with tourists, so Ray took the back way that looped around the rides, exhibits, and concessions. He went by the twenty-foot high statues of the Twelve, wondering, not for the first time, how they’d decided which apostle was bald, which one had a big honker, and where in the Hell Judas was. He could hear the faint screams of the faithful as the Rapture took them to Heaven and then dropped down to the Pit with a stomach-flipping hundred and eighty degree turn that piled on over three gees of acceleration as it fell forty stories straight down to Hell.

Roller coasters, Ray thought disgruntledly. Maybe he should take a ride. Put some excitement into his life.

It was, he had to admit, his own fault. He’d smart-assed his way here, calling his boss “Nehi” one time too many. Before the ink had dried on his orders he’d found himself, accompanied by the kid, exiled to the suburbs of Branson-fucking-Missouri to wet nurse an ex-President as he whiled away the years running his crazy-ass theme park in the middle of redneck Heaven. Of course, by law every ex-President was accorded Secret Service protection, but the odds of Barnett being stalked by an assassin in the Peaceable Kingdom were about as great as him running a Pagans Get-In-Free weekend special.

It was a Hell of a way to wrap up his career, but not entirely unexpected. Ray had ruffled too many feathers along the way, and not just by being a smart ass. He’d played a major role in breaking the Card Shark conspiracy and saving Jerusalem—the real one, not Barnett’s Disneyfied version—from getting a-bombed to Hell, but it had cost him not only April Harvest, the only woman he’d ever come close to loving, but also a meaningful career in the government. As it turned out, the government had been riddled with Card Sharks, and no one was exactly pleased that Ray helped expose that little fact. Sometimes Ray wondered if they’d rooted them all out. Probably not. Probably some unexposed Sharks were still pulling strings. And that had been the problem. Ray had embarrassed the string-pullers and decision-makers, the powers behind the throne and the voices in charge. Publicly he was a hero. Privately he was just another wild carder who knew too much. A wild carder with a reputation for flying off the handle and running his mouth when peeved.

That explained the next seven years spent in the shit holes of the world, but at least the tedium of those years had been broken up by episodes of real excitement. Among other things, he’d helped the Muhajadeen against the Soviets, and when the Soviet Union went to pieces he helped the people of Afghanistan against the Muhajadeen. He served a tour in Peru, teaching the Shining Path the real meaning of fear. He was on the team of international aces who went into Baghdad and snatched the tin-plated dictator Saddam Hussein, catching him cowering in his gold-fixtured bathtub, after Saddam had kicked the U.N. weapon inspectors out of his crappy excuse for a country.

Ray hadn’t minded the lack of recognition or applause. He’d spent seven years doing what he did best, kicking ass if occasionally forgetting to take down names. But now, he was rotting in paradise.

He breezed into Barnett’s office. Sally Lou, Barnett’s blonde receptionist, looked up from her magazine. She was sleek and sexy looking, and Ray suspected that Barnett had hired her for something other than her typing skills. She could have put some of that long-sought excitement back into his life, but it seemed to Ray that as far as she was concerned, he was just another one of the hired help.

“The President—”

“Yeah, I know.” He waved as he strode by. He paused at Barnett’s door, nodding at the Secret Service guys standing to either side of it, nats in dark suits and sunglasses, for Christ’s sake, knocked once and went on in before its occupant could reply. What more could they do to him for being a smart ass? Send him to Antarctica? Even that would be an improvement over his current situation.

“You wanted to see me?” Ray asked, stopping before the big desk and the man behind it, who was reading a newspaper spread out on its teak surface.

Barnett smiled. “Yes, I did,” he said.

Leo Barnett was still a handsome man, even after serving eight years as President of the United States. He was tall and still slim even though he was pushing sixty, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and dimpled as a baby’s butt. Ray couldn’t help but wonder how he did it. Ray had been with the Justice Department for almost twenty-five years. He’d spent a good portion of that time body-guarding presidents and presidential candidates, and he’d noticed early on that the presidency, even just running for the office, tended to wear a man down. It put bags under his eyes, creases in his face, and dye in his hair. Not Barnett, though. He looked as wrinkle-free today as he did the day he ascended to the office. Ray wondered what his secret was.

“Have you seen the papers today, Billy?” Barnett asked, slapping the open newspaper with an immaculately manicured hand.

Ray shook his head. He didn’t bother reading the news. He was more used to making it.

“It seems as if a new ace has joined our constellation of heroes.”

“Is that so?” Ray asked with a modicum of interest.

“Indeed it is,” Barnett said, and looked down at the paper spread out in front of him and began to read. “...‘Ralph Holstedt, partner and star performer in the famous Siegfried and Ralph magic act featuring white tigers and other dangerous beasts was severely mauled during yesterday’s matinee performance when a half-grown male tiger playfully grabbed him by the throat and dragged him from the stage. Fortunately for the performer, John Fortune, son of the beauteous ace Peregrine and the mysterious Fortunato, who has spent the last sixteen years in seclusion in Japan, was in attendance and for the first time publicly revealed his own ace. Fortune, who to all accounts was glowing a mysterious but pleasing shade of orange-yellow, took the performer in his arms and almost instantly healed the wound threatening the magician’s life. The newly-revealed ace, a good-looking boy in his mid-teens, politely refused all requests for interviews and was seen leaving in the company of a man who witnesses said bore an uncanny resemblance to 1940’s actor Alan Ladd.’” Barnett looked up at Ray. “What do you think of that?”

Ray shrugged. “I think that Ralph was one lucky tiger-lover.”

Barnett sat back in his chair, nodding. “Yes. But doesn’t it strike you that someone else in that scenario was fairly blessed in the luck department?”

“John Fortune,” Ray said. He knew what the odds of drawing an ace were as well as anybody. “Of course.”

“Exactly,” Barnett said, as if Ray just answered the million-dollar question.

Ray shrugged again. He didn’t see the point.

“These are troubling days, Billy,” Barnett said. “Some say,” his voice dropped dramatically, “the End Days.”

Oh shit, Ray thought. It didn’t take Barnett long to drag religion into even the most mundane conversation. Ray himself wasn’t much of a believer in anything. But Barnett could make almost anything sound reasonable when he was orating. After all, he’d been elected President of the United States. Twice.

“But it’s 2003,” Ray said. “If you’re talking about the, uh, millennium, surely that passed—”

Barnett shook his head.

”Actually it’s just around the corner, my boy,” Barnett said. “Time-keeping was not an exact science when the Bible was written two thousand years ago. Records were not precise. The calendar as we know it is a relatively modern invention. Anyway, you’d expect an error of a year or two to crop up over a couple of millennia, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose,” Ray said, noncommittally. He still had no clue as to what in the Hell this had to do with a kid saving some Vegas magician from his over-grown kitty cat.

Barnett nodded. “Of course. Hell, nobody took notes on the year when they wrote down the Bible. Nobody even cared. Besides—the signs are the important things, and all signs say that Apocalypse is approaching.”

“What signs? Tiger attacks in Vegas?”

Barnett frowned, the twinkle suddenly gone from his baby blue eyes.

“The prophecies, my boy. The continued existence of Israel, the nation whose existence you helped preserve, and don’t think I’ve forgotten that, is but one of them. But let’s not get bogged down in detail now.” Barnett opened the middle draw in his desk. He took out an impressively thick manuscript. “Here. I wrote a book about it. Not intended for everyone of course. Wouldn’t want a panic among the general populace. But give it a study, my boy. You’ll see. It’s all very convincing.” Barnett handed the volume to Ray. It was heavy. “This is strictly for people within my organization, I guess you’d call it.”

Ray looked up from the thick manuscript to Leo Barnett. “Organization?” he asked warily.

“A think-tank I founded after I had the honor of serving as President of this great nation. The Millenarians. We believe that the time of the Apocalypse is at hand.”

“That’s a bad thing, isn’t it?” Ray asked doubtfully.

“Not at all, Billy, not at all.” Barnett explained. “Though many people believe that. Apocalypse means simply ‘unveiling’ or ‘revelation.’ It is the time when the truth will be revealed for all to see. When the Lord Jesus will return to this earth to usher in a thousand years of peace and prosperity for those who believe in his name.”

Ray’s expression was unchanged.

“Well, read my manuscript,” Barnett said. “It explains everything.”

“All right,” Ray said as sincerely as he could.

Barnett frowned.

Apparently, Ray thought, I don’t sound quite as sincere as I think I do.

“We need a man of your talents, Billy,” Barnett said earnestly, turning up the wattage of his charm. “To guard me and, um, other figures important to the Parousia—that’s the founding of Jesus’ kingdom on earth, which will usher in the thousand years of peace and prosperity of the millennium.”

“I thought you said that the End Days were approaching. Doesn’t that mean like, the end of the world?”

“It does,” Barnett said seriously. “But only after the thousand year peace of the Millennium. And only, of course, if we triumph in the upcoming conflict. We have foes, Billy. Powerful foes. Some might say satanically powerful foes.”

Here we go, Ray thought. He knew this just wasn’t going to be a simple little story. “I’m already guarding you,” Ray pointed out. “Exactly who are these others who need guarding?”

“Christ,” Barnett said.

Ray waited a beat, but Barnett added nothing to what Ray initially thought was an uncharacteristic expletive.

“Christ,” Ray repeated. “You mean, Jesus Christ?”

“Jesus Christ,” Barnett confirmed. “The Second Coming of the Son of God is upon us.”

“Well,” Ray asked, “where is he?”

Barnett cleared his throat. “Apparently,” he said, “in Las Vegas.”

“You don’t mean John Fortune?”

Barnett nodded earnestly. “I do. You have to trust me on this, Billy. Years of study have led me to this conclusion. His act of healing this, uh, animal tamer, is only the final indication of his real identity.”

“And you’re sure of this?” Ray asked.

Barnett pursed his lips. “Sure? Well—reasonably. And we’re not the only ones who think so.”

“No?”

Barnett nodded. “There are others who have come to a, well, similar conclusion abut the boy’s importance. But they want to harm him. He has to be protected from them.”

“But—”

“No, Billy,” Barnett shook his head. “If you truly want to serve me—and the Lord—you must go to Vegas, get the boy, and bring him back here where we can protect him from these others.”

“Who are they?” Ray asked.

“The Allumbrados,” Barnett said, almost spitting as he pronounced the name. It sounded fairly sinister to Ray.

“So, you want me to go to Vegas, pick up the boy, and bring him here for safekeeping?” he recapitulated.

Barnett nodded. “Yes.”

Ray suppressed a smile. “If you say the boy needs help, then that’s good enough for me,” he said.

Barnett beamed. “The Lord will reward you,” he said.

I’m so out of here, Ray thought.

New York City: Waldorf-Astoria Parking Garage

The Midnight Angel lurked in a dark alley overlooking the entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria’s underground car park, a troubled expression on her face.

She didn’t care for New York City. It was much too big and loud and fast. It smelled funny and sounded worse. She felt claustrophobic on its busy streets, hemmed in by the towering concrete and steel cliffs. She’d been born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and though—contrary to her mother’s advice—she’d willfully deserted the town of her birth to seek her fortune in the wider world, she still wasn’t accustomed to many aspects of that world.

She also didn’t much care for skulking. Skulking in shadows didn’t match her sensibilities. She was much too forthright to skulk. There was no room for deception and lies in her make-up, for such were the tools of Satan. But what could she do? The Hand had sent her on a mission where subtlety was necessary. She’d told him that she was not the person for this job, as she found it difficult to blend into even familiar surroundings. At five eleven and a tautly-muscled one forty-five, she was long-legged, wide-hipped, and big-bosomed. If things had been otherwise, she’d have borne many babies and raised them in the way of the Lord. But that life was closed to her. Her body, as suitable for childbearing as it was, was to her ever-lasting shame also cursed with the mark of the wild card. She carried the stain of the alien beast. Her mother had drummed into her early on that she must find another way to serve the Lord. Of course, the Angel was not following the path that her mother had mapped out for her, but her body, curse that it was, was also her blessing. God had burdened her with it, but it was a burden she bore meekly in his service.

The Hand had made her see that. She’d been with him for a year, and the Angel burned with an almost sinful pride that he trusted her so much that he’d sent her on such an important mission. To know that The Right Hand of God held her in such high regard made her little short of ecstatic. It’d be better if he didn’t look at her with such fire in his eyes and lust in his heart, but she forgave him. Even though he was The Hand he was still only a man and, therefore, a weak sinner. Anyway, it was her fault. She tempted him with her body, though the Lord knew she didn’t mean to.

The Angel tensed as a long black limo pulled up to the entrance of the hotel’s underground parking lot. The car had Vatican diplomatic plates. It had to be the one she’d been expecting. She waited until it entered the building’s dark bowels, and then followed. There was no booth attendant this late at night, only an automatic ticket dispenser. She slipped under the wooden arm that bared entrance to the urban cave stinking of oil, gas fumes, and waste, praying to the Lord for strength and cunning.

God knows she needed it. She was on the track of the Allumbrados and she knew that her quest was dangerous. The Hand had sent others to investigate them who had simply disappeared after relaying the most uncertain, though provocative hints that the Enlightened Ones, as they styled themselves, were preparing for action.

The Hand knew that something big was imminent. He knew the general warning signs as well as the Allumbrados did, though as Papists their knowledge had to be imperfect. The Allumbrado conspiracy, however, had thrust its roots deep into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. They could call on the vast powers and riches of that ancient institution whereas The Hand had only himself and his loyal minions, such as the Angel, to rely upon. Not that the Allumbrados had defiled everyone in the Church, of course. Most Papists were not satanic. They were just misguided.

The Angel, keeping to the darkness that enveloped the parking structure like a choking shroud, suddenly caught her breath. The limo’s dome light winked on as the driver opened the door and scurried around to let out his passengers.

The first to emerge was a patrician-looking man in his late sixties, but still tall, handsome, and distinguished, with a head of thick, white hair. He wore the black, scarlet-trimmed regalia of a Cardinal of the Papist church. It was, the Angel realized, just as The Hand had feared. Cardinal Romulus Contarini had come to America. He was a Dominican, of course. His sect had had an intimate connection with the Holy Office (A very bland name for something as terrible as the Inquisition, she thought) for a very long time. Contarini led the section of the vast and shadowy Vatican bureaucracy which dealt with theological purity. He was the highest-ranking member of the Allumbrados that The Hand’s agents could uncover. Before he’d suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, The Hand’s man in the Vatican had said that the Cardinal was possibly headed for the United States. This was obvious confirmation of the news he’d probably given his life to deliver.

Contarini was not alone. Three men got out of the limo with him. One was short, chubby, and bearded. He looked soft and jolly, like everyone’s favorite uncle. The other two had such similar facial features that they were probably brothers. But one was tall and strong looking while the other was thin, round-shouldered, and slumping. The tall, strong-looking one was possibly the most attractive man the Angel had ever seen. Her heart caught at the angelic handsome-ness of his face, which was white as unflawed marble. His eyes were as blue as Heaven, his hair a golden torrent with wave and thickness to rival her own. His lips...

She could almost taste them in her sudden desire. They were full, sensuously curved, and red as a woman’s. But his features were masculine, with a broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw. His short-sleeved shirt exposed arms muscled like a blacksmith’s.

The Angel felt herself breathing heavier and then suddenly the silent parking garage echoed with the trilling opening notes to the “Ode to Joy.” She had forgotten to turn off her cell phone, and it rang at the worst possible time. Her hand fell to her side pocket, grabbed the instrument and silenced it.

Perhaps, she thought, they hadn’t heard.

The men stopped on their way to the elevator. The Cardinal looked impatient, but the jolly little man gazed into the darkness where the Angel lurked, holding her breath. His cheery blue eyes suddenly focused with a startling intensity.

“Someone’s out there,” she heard him say in a British accented voice.

“Witness—” the Cardinal said.

The two men, different, yet alike enough in features to be brothers, looked at each other. The tall, handsome one said, “Check it out,” and the other, grumbling to himself under his breath, moved off toward the darkness where the Angel hid.

Turin, Italy: Cattedrale di San Giovanni

The cathedral’s two-story exterior was white marble, a little worse for age and blackened by five centuries of urban pollution. The detached bell tower on the cathedral’s left was constructed of darker, less noble material—simple brick—and was also some two hundred years younger. The intricate dome of the Capella della Sindone, a few decades older than the tower, loomed behind the cathedral. Their target was in the chapel.

Nighthawk waited in the shadows until the others had crossed the almost empty piazza. Traffic was sporadic, but there were still a few pedestrians wandering about, and Nighthawk had not reached his advanced age by being reckless. He waited until Usher and Grubbs had entered the cathedral through the middle of the three doors in its front façade—Usher pausing only the briefest of moments to force the cheap padlock that tried to deny him entry—and then he crossed the dark piazza in an unhurried stride as Magda surreptitiously joined her teammates inside San Giovanni.

It was dark inside the cathedral. The interior was lit only by some still-burning votive candles and a dim nightlight or two scattered like far-away stars among the massive columns of the gothic-style nave.

“We need the stairs at the end of the presbytery,” Nighthawk said in a quiet voice which a trick of acoustics turned into a reverberating whisper.

Usher thumbed on a pencil-thin flashlight and slashed it around the darkness.

“This way,” he whispered in an imitation of Nighthawk, grinning at the echoing sibilance of his own words.

They followed Usher down the aisle, past the rows of empty pews to the high altar set upon a dais in the rear of the nave. Two stairways flanked the altar. They were black marble, which contrasted vividly with the soft pastels of the cathedral’s painted interior. The stairs spiraled upwards into a small antechamber from where Nighthawk and his team could see inside the chapel’s central room.

The Capella della Sindone was the masterpiece of the baroque architect Guarino Guarini. It was a perfectly round chamber of black marble roofed by an intricately decorated six-tiered dome that was said to enclose a bit of Heaven in its complexly ornamented cupola. Nighthawk could feel its holiness in his soul. He gazed upward, as if expecting to see cherubim and seraphim dancing like flights of fireflies through the enshrouding shadows.

An intricate baroque altar of black marble ornamented with detailed bronze friezes, sat atop three marble steps under the center of the soaring dome. The altar was surrounded by what looked like golden bars, but according to the guidebook the apparently metal bars were actually only gilt wood. Four marble angels holding unlit silver lamps clustered protectively around the altar like holy guardians. A reliquary, an iron box covered in intricate silver facings and spangled with precious stones, sat atop the altar’s highest point, protected by a gilded iron fence.

“There,” Nighthawk said quietly, gesturing at the reliquary.

Grubbs grinned. “Like taking candy from a baby,” he said.

He went up the marble dais, brushing away the gilt wood fence contemptuously as if it wasn’t even there. One of the guardian angels stood close enough to give him a boost up the altar. He clambered up to the altar’s pinnacle and braced himself to get a good grip on the gilded iron bars caging the reliquary. He pulled hard and a length of grillwork broke away with a loud screech.

Nighthawk glanced around the darkened room. It was probable that the chapel had a security system of some kind, but they’d been unable to discover any details concerning it. A brotherhood called the Savoias was charged with protecting it since an anti-religious fanatic had tried to burn it down a couple of years before.

“Careful,” Nighthawk hissed.

“Don’t worry,” Grubbs said in a too-loud voice. He reached out and lifted the reliquary effortlessly, though it must have weighed several hundred pounds. He held it over his head triumphantly. “The Mandylion is ours!” he said ecstatically, and John’s revelation suddenly came true as a single shot rang out from somewhere in the shadows and struck Grubbs right in the middle of his chest.

Grubbs’ expression changed only slightly, crossing that thin line from ecstatic to pained, and he slipped from his perch atop the altar, falling heavily against one of the statues that decorated the altar’s middle tier like a tiny bridegroom on an overly-ornate wedding cake. The reliquary slipped from his fingers, bumped the same statue and bounced with a thunderous boom onto the marble altar, then rolled downward and crashed through the remnants of the gilt guardrail.

The reverberations from the single shot still echoed across the chapel as Magda and Usher both fired into the darkness from where the bullet came. Nighthawk moved in the shadows, black in black, and reached the dying man at the base of the altar. Grubbs was numb and confused, but he felt and clearly recognized the sharp talons of death crawling up his body as organs shut down and blood flowed like a river from the hole punched out through his back. The dying man spoke despite all his terror and confusion.

“John!”

“Hush,” Nighthawk said in a soft whisper.

“John, what happened!”

“Time to sleep, boy,” the old man told him. “Time to rest.” He took his glove off, reached out and touched Grubbs’ left cheek and stopped his heart.

He had only a moment in which to act. Grubbs’ soul was leaving his body, taking with it the energy that would have powered his life to its natural conclusion if he hadn’t stopped a bullet some forty-odd years ahead of schedule. Nighthawk stripped it of that energy, leaving it weak and uncertain.

Nighthawk had no concrete knowledge, but little hope for the nature of the ultimate destination of Grubbs’ soul. But Grubbs’ fate was out of his hands. He had to concentrate on the situation unfolding around them, or there was little doubt that they’d all be joining Grubbs on that Hell-bound train before the night was over.

They hadn’t expected an armed and trigger-happy guard. This was, after all, sacred ground. But times were different. Terrorists were ready, willing, and able to strike anytime, anywhere, and the Capella della Sindone had been attacked in the past. Clearly, Nighthawk realized, they had underestimated the strength of the Savoias’ resolve and willingness to shed blood in protection of their sacred charge.

“Usher,” he said in a calm but strong voice, “retrieve the reliquary. Magda—keep up the suppressive fire.”

He caught a glimpse of her teeth shining in a feral smile. She was a fanatic. She had no more regard for the lives of the Savoias’ than if they were animals. Nighthawk did. In a strange sense, they were all part of the same brotherhood, though it was a truism that families often fought bloody battles amongst themselves.

She ripped the darkness with automatic fire as Usher scuttled forward to retrieve the reliquary. Bullets flew. They whined off marble surfaces, smashed through stained glass, and even bit through flesh here and there. Three members of the Savoias fell as Magda screamed in some Slavic tongue that Nighthawk didn’t recognize. He reached out eagerly with his mind. Two were dying, dissipating their precious energy into the void. He held himself back. He couldn’t get greedy and slow of thought and action. He needed his wits about him if he was to lead his team to safety. He could already feel Grubbs’ energy crackling though his system like logs added to the furnace of the engine that drove his body. He smiled. He didn’t feel a day over eighty. They had to get back to the Holy See where they had diplomatic immunity from most conceivable crimes, and even from some inconceivable ones. From there they would take the Mandylion over the ocean, back to New York, where the others waited.

For a few moments it was tricky. Nighthawk didn’t like blind firefights where anything could happen. But he felt no sign of a coming revelation, and again, he was right.

Usher retrieved the chest. Nighthawk and Magda laid down suppressive gunfire, and no one came out of the chapel after them. After that it was only a matter of keeping quiet. Of keeping to the darkness and avoiding the growing search. Their car was ready. They made it past the roadblocks before they could be set up.

They reached Rome at dawn and Nighthawk took the reliquary into the Vatican before the rest of the tiny city-state was even waking up. Only then could Nighthawk relax. He’d gotten the Mandylion, the actual burial cloth, the Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, into the hands of the Allumbrados. That was the hard part. The rest, getting it to New York and the Brothers who waited there, would be easy.

The mission was practically over. It had cost the life of one of his team members and an uncounted number of Savoias, but it had been worth it. Returning Jesus Christ to the world would be worth it all.

New York City: Waldorf-Astoria parking garage

“Save my soul from evil, Lord,” the Midnight Angel murmured, “and heal this warrior’s heart.”

She stood up, leaning over the driver’s side door of the vehicle next to her. It was an SUV, big, shiny, and new looking. She wondered at the idiocy of a city dweller buying a vehicle like this. Was it excessive pride? Envy? Of course, maybe she was guilty of immoderate judgement herself. This was a hotel parking lot, after all. Maybe the SUV’s owner lived in the country somewhere and actually needed it.

She had, she suddenly recalled, little time for moralizing.

She punched through the window effortlessly, her arm protected by a leather gauntlet and full body, form-fitting leather jumpsuit. A burglar alarm clanged raucously as she quickly leaned in through the shattered window and slipped the transmission into neutral. She shoved the SUV, sending it skittering toward the Allumbrado, who had halted his approach when the alarm started to scream.

The Angel peered out from behind the car in the next parking slot—it was a late model Ford of some sort, and she approved much more of its lack of ostentation and relative utility than she did of the conspicuous and consumptive SUV—and watched as the Allumbrado, suddenly frowning, make a complicated set of hand gestures as the SUV bore down on him.

He finished with his left hand clenched into a fist, held chest high. His right hand was next to it, palm open. He pushed that hand out, extending his right arm fast, like he was throwing some kind of open-handed punch at the SUV, which was now almost upon him.

A wall of force met the SUV head-on. Its front end crumpled as if it had hit an invisible fence and it rebounded backwards right at the Angel as a sudden wind buffeted her, stirring her long, thick hair in its passing.

Her heart pounded with desire. She wanted nothing more than to stay and fight this man, but she knew that there was a chance, however slim, that he and his companions might overpower her and prevent her from getting her message to The Hand. She scuttled back among the parked cars as her opponent threw another force wave in her general direction, setting off numerous car alarms as the vehicles in the wave’s pathway rocked as if in an earthquake.

The message was foremost in her mind as she slipped away in the darkness.

The Cardinal has come. And he has brought aces with him.

But also, not so far buried, was an image of the man who accompanied the Cardinal. The handsome, strong-looking one.

There, she thought, was a proper foe.

Or perhaps, something else entirely.

Hokkaido, Japan

It was two in the morning, about an hour and a half before the unsui would strike the sounding board with his wooden mallet, waking everyone for the start of the long monastery day, but Fortunato was already awake.

He’d been having trouble sleeping lately. Not even lengthy recitation of the Heart Sutra, which by virtue of its hypnotic repetitiveness was supposed to pacify the chanter by affording him a glimpse into his true nature, could lull him to sleep. It never had, and Fortunato was beginning to suspect it never would. He was having trouble sleeping because he was beginning to suspect that he had made a mistake.

I’m sixty-two years old, Fortunato thought.

The zendo, the hall where the monks practiced zazen and which also doubled as their sleeping quarters, was pitch dark. It was silent but for the various rustlings, snortings, and snorings of the other fifty-some monks who slept fitfully or soundly on their tatami.

He envied them their slumber.

He realized that part of his problem was physical. After sixteen years of a fairly rigorous vegetarian diet, Fortunato was even leaner than he’d been as a pleasure-loving ace in New York City. The temple’s harsh physical discipline helped keep him fit, but he’d developed arthritis a couple of years back, presumably from sleeping on a hard, cold floor on only a thin straw mat wrapped in a single blanket. It had settled in his neck and shoulders and was getting worse with every passing month. Now he was even occasionally feeling biting pain in his long, thin, fingers. Pain was something to be endured as part of monastic life, as there were few drugs in the monastery’s frugal medicine cabinet, except for aspirin for fevers and colds, tiger balm for sore muscles and joints, and Preparation H for the hemorrhoids brought on by hours and hours of sitting on a hard floor in the lotus position.

Worse yet, the brief Hokkaido summer had barely started and the season would turn again all too soon. Fortunato did not look forward to the change. In Hokkaido the winter came early and lingered long. The winter winds were razor sharp and the snowfall was measured in feet, not inches. He had a single quilted blanket from which the mice had already been stealing stuffing. He couldn’t in all good conscience blame them for taking the cotton batting to line their nests against the terrible cold.

Lately Fortunato had been beginning to suspect that this portion of his life, the ascetic self-denial of pleasure, was as much of a dead end as his earlier years spent reveling in Tantric sex, drugs, and the sheer gusto of life as one of the most powerful aces in the world, a life he’d turned his back on in a quest to find his true nature in the way of a Zen monk.

Dogen, his Zen roshi and head of the small monastery, had told him when he’d first asked to join, “If you want to live in the world you must admit your power. If you want to feed your spirit you must leave the world.”

Only, Fortunato thought as he lay staring into the indecipherable darkness, his spirit was as hungry as ever. Have I actually progressed down the Tao this last decade and a half, he wondered, or become petrified, congealed in an unbreakable lump of amber closed off from the world? Is that what I’d really wanted?

He wondered why.

There was a sudden disturbance in the zendo, as a fully-dressed figure made his way among the sleeping monks. Fortunato recognized Dogen’s secretary and chief assistant. Fortunato had disliked the man ever since he’d entered the monastery, and the feeling was mutual. He had a sour look on his face, as if he’d been up all night sucking lemons, as he nudged Fortunato with his tabi-covered foot.

“Wake up,” he said in a voice loud enough so that those next to Fortunato stirred, grumbling in their sleep. “Dogen wants to see you.”

Fortunato didn’t question him, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of offering useless answers. He rose silently on stiff joints, and followed him out of the room. They went wordlessly down dark and silent corridors, Fortunato wondering what Dogen wanted at such an unlikely hour. This wasn’t the first time he’d been summoned to the abbot’s private quarters. He’d gone there plenty of times for instruction, to receive a new koan to meditate upon, or even for conversation about his varied experiences in the outside world. He’d even been summoned into the abbot’s presence once or twice for disciplinary measures.

But, Fortunato reflected, not for the latter reason for years. The last time had been after Tachyon’s visit. Fortunato had gone over the wall after the little alien Fauntleroy had left and spent a week drunk in the village at the base of the mountain. But those days had passed. He couldn’t even begin to guess why Dogen wanted to see him now.

Dogen nodded as his assistant led Fortunato to the open doorway of his small, austere office.

“Leave us,” he said as Fortunato stared at the man sitting uncomfortably cross-legged on the mat before Dogen’s low desk. The man smiled up at him like they were long-lost friends.

“Hey, Fortunato,” Digger Downs said. “Long time, no see.”

Fortunato looked from the star reporter of Aces! magazine back to Dogen, mystified.

“Indeed,” he said, and entered the room, bowing to the abbot. He looked back at Downs. Downs was a small, lean, brown-haired, brown-eyed man pushing a well-preserved fifty. Fortunato hadn’t seen him since he’d entered the monastery. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by,” Digger said with a smile much too bright for so early in the morning.

“You were in the neighborhood at two o’clock in the morning?” Fortunato asked in disbelief.

“Well,” Digger allowed. “It did take me awhile to get here from Tokyo. I left as soon as the news broke. I wanted to be the first to get your reaction, and,” he added with some satisfaction, “it looks as if I am.”

Fortunato sighed and closed his eyes. He had no reason to like Digger Downs. The man was, at best, an obnoxious pest. But over the years he’d tried to learn how to put such feelings away. He opened his eyes to see Dogen observing him with silent reproof. His master knew that he was letting himself get caught up in a swirl of unpleasant emotion. Yet again.

“Digger,” Fortunato said patiently, “pretend that this is an isolated monastery on a secluded mountain top in far north Japan.”

“Man, I don’t have to pretend,” Digger said. “It was Hell getting here.”

“We don’t get much news about the outside world.”

“Excellent!” Digger beamed. “Then I can get your exclusive reaction to the news regarding your son.”

“My son?” Fortunato asked. Suddenly, his stomach felt as if it had dropped out of his abdomen. He had never seen his son. The last time he’d seen Peregrine, weeks before entering the monastery, she’d been heavy with their child. Up until then he hadn’t even known that she was pregnant. He’d told her that he’d be there for her and the child. And then he’d gone into the monastery. Not even Tachyon, who’d come in person begging for his help, not even the telegram announcing the death of his mother, had induced him to leave his sanctuary.

And now...

He looked at Digger. The man was smiling, but that didn’t mean he was the bearer of good news. He cared for the story, not the implications the story might have for those caught up in it. It seemed unlikely that he’d travel all this way to impart good news... whatever that could possibly be.

Fortunato had a sudden premonition that had nothing to do with the powers he’d left behind so long ago, but had everything to do with being a wild carder. And the parent of one.

“Has,” his voice suddenly went raspy and he swallowed hard, “has his card turned?”

Downs nodded. “Yes—and,” he added quickly as he saw the expression on Fortunato’s face, “don’t worry. The boy lucked out. He turned over an ace.”

“An ace!” Fortunato felt a sudden rush of relief underlain with pride he quickly realized was unjustified. The boy had come unscathed through the most dangerous moment in a wild carder’s life. The expression of the virus was the ultimate crapshoot against horribly-stacked odds. Everything after that was just living. But the boy had had to experience it without Fortunato’s help. Not, he realized, that he could have done anything but watch the boy die if he’d pulled a Black Queen. But still...

“Yeah,” Downs continued, “and he immediately used a healing power of some sort to save the life of a Las Vegas performer who’d been mauled by a tiger.”

“Tiger?” Fortunato asked, having trouble focusing on what the reporter was saying.

“It’s big news,” Downs said. “Flashed all over the world. I’d like to get our interview in the can, because half the media in Japan is hot on my trail. Not to mention the plane-loads of reporters from other countries heading here to get your reaction to the story. But, “ he added triumphantly, “as usual, I’ve scooped them all. Lucky for me I just happened to be on Tokyo to interview the new ace, Iron Chef—”

“Plane loads?” Fortunato interrupted.

Downs nodded. “Of course. Like I said, big story. Beautiful ace mother, mysterious ace father. Kid beats the odds, becoming a hero overnight—”

Fortunato looked at Dogen, who looked back calmly.

“This is a monastery,” Fortunato said to Downs. “They can’t swarm all over it with their camera crews, mobbing the place. Think of the disruption it would cause.”

Downs shrugged. “Think you can stop them?”

“I—” Fortunato knew the answer as well as the reporter did. He looked again at Dogen. “I can’t allow the entire monastery to be disrupted because of my presence. What should we do?”

“What we must,” the ageless abbot said calmly.

Fortunato nodded. There was only one solution to the problem. “Then I must take the cause of disruption elsewhere. I must leave the monastery.”

“Leave?” Downs asked, suddenly frowning. “You’re not going to leave before I can interview you?”

Fortunato looked at him. “I don’t care about your interview,” he said. He paused, frowning. “But I have nowhere to go.”

It was true. He’d turned his back on his own country, his own society, his own identity as the most powerful ace of his time, to make this monastery his home. But the rest of Japan was as foreign as the far side of the moon.

“Go?” Downs asked. He suddenly snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Come back to America! On me. Well, on Aces! anyway. It’ll be great.” His eyes focused outward as if reading an imaginary headline. “PRODIGAL SON RETURNS. Or something like that. It’ll play great with the kid becoming an ace and all!”

Fortunato frowned. It didn’t exactly sound appealing. Besides, there was as little for him in America as there was in Japan. His mother was dead. His girls were all gone. There was nothing but Peregrine, married to another man these fifteen years or more. And his son...

He looked at Dogen, who smiled his gentle smile.

“Perhaps Mr. Downs is right. You can’t deny that lately you’ve been restless. Perhaps it is time that you walk in the world again, to get a fresh perspective on what you’ve given up and what you have now.”

Fortunato smiled wryly. There was no way to hide anything from Dogen. The old man knew Fortunato’s mind perhaps better than the ace did himself.

“Perhaps you’re right.” Fortunato said.

“Right? Of course he’s right,” Downs said, looking from one to the other and smiling broadly. “Cripes, what a story! I can see it on the cover of Aces!: “Fortunato’s Return to America.”

“Do you think anyone will care?” Fortunato asked thoughtfully.

“They will when I get done with it,” Downs promised.

Fortunato, though, wasn’t so sure.