My Favorite Fantasy Story

STEALING GOD by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald Chosen by Katherine Kurtz

A great many readers of science fiction and fantasy are also fans of thrillers, mystery novels, and conspiracy theories. "Stealing God" combines some of the best elements of all these genres and then gives them its own unique twist, the while keeping tongue very firmly in cheek. (Imagine, if you will, Illuminatus meets Holy Blood, Holy Grail, in an idiom reminiscent of Raymond Chandler or one of the other classic detective writers.) It all begins with the theft of the Holy Grail. (Bet you didn't know that the Grail currently lives in New York, did you?)

The characters and premise are so much fun that I urged Doyle and Macdonald to expand the concept and consider doing a full novel (or two, or three!) about modern-day Templar operative Peter Crossman and his spunky sidekick, Sister Mary Magdalene of the Special Action Executive of the Poor Clares. The first book, they tell me, is already in the works.

In the meantime, however, "Stealing God" will have to serve as a tasty introduction to a most adroit partnership, whether it's Crossman and the delectable Sister MM or Doyle and Macdonald themselves. I, for one, can hardly wait for the next installment, whatever form it may take!

—Katherine Kurtz

I was working the security leak at Rennes-le-Château when the word came down. The Rennes flub was over a hundred years old, but the situation needed constant tending to keep people off the scent. That's the thing about botches. They never go away.

Now I had new orders. Drop whatever I was doing and get my young ass over to New York mosh-gosh. Roger that, color me gone. I was on the Concorde out of Paris before the hole in the air finished closing behind me in Languedoc.

With the Temple paying my way, cost wasn't a worry. I had enough other things to think about. The masters weren't bringing me across the Atlantic just to chew the fat. We had plenty of secure links. Whatever this was, it required my presence.

Sherlock Holmes said that it was a capital mistake to theorize before one had information. My old sergeant, back when I was learning the trade, told me to catch some sleep whenever I could. I dozed my way over the Atlantic and didn't wake up until we hit JFK.

Customs inspection was smooth and uneventful— I had only one piece of carry-on luggage, with nothing in it that the customs people might recognize as a weapon. I took the third cab in the rank outside the terminal and was on my way. First stop was at The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, to pay my respects to the Magdalene Chalice. My arrival would be noted there, and the contact would come soon.

Outside the museum I got another cab to Central Park West. I made my way to the Rambles, that part of the park where the city can't be seen and you can almost imagine yourself in the wilderness.

Sure enough, a man was waiting. He wore the signs, the air, and the majesty. I made a quiet obeisance, just to go by the book, and he responded. But I didn't need any of the signals in order to recognize one of the two masters.

There are only three and thirty of us in the inner Temple, plus the masters. We're the part of the Temple that's hidden from all the other Knights Templar: the secret from the holders of the secrets, the ace up the sleeve. All of us warriors, all of us priests. We serve, we obey. When needed, we kick ass.

"Hello," he said. "It's been years."

"Sure has, John," I replied. "What's up?"

We spoke in Latin, for the same reason the Church does. No matter where you are or where you're from, you can communicate.

"There's a problem," he said. "Over on the East Side."

The Grail. It had to be. "Instructions?"

"Go in, check it out, report back"

"Anything special I'm looking for?"

"No," he said. "Just be aware that the last three people who got those same orders haven't reported in yet."

We nodded to each other and parted. I walked south. There are a bunch of hotels along Central Park South, and I wanted to hit the bar in one of them and do some thinking. For Prester John to be away from Chatillon meant that things were more serious than I'd suspected.

I sat in the bar at the Saint Moritz, drinking Laphroaig neat the way God and Scotland made it, while I wondered what in the name of King Anfortas could be going on over at the UN, and how I was going to check. Halfway down the bar another man sat playing with the little puddle of water that had collected around the base of his frosty mug of beer. He was drinking one of those watery American brews with no flavor, no body, and no strength to recommend it, though it had apparently gotten him half plowed regardless. After a minute or two I realized what had drawn my attention: He was tracing designs in the water on the bar.

Designs I recognized. Runes.

Did they think I was blind, I wondered, or so ignorant that I wouldn't notice? But I didn't perceive any immediate danger, and a sudden departure would tip my hand to whoever was watching. Maybe this guy was just a random drunk who happened to know his mystic symbols.

Sure, and maybe random drunks had nailed three other knights.

No, more likely he was a Golden Dawner or a Luciferian. Probably a Luciferian. Lucies have a special relationship with the Grail, or they think they do. I tipped up the last drops of Laphroaig, harsh on my tongue like a slurry of ground glass and peat moss, called for another shot, and drank half of it. The money lying by the shot glass would pay for my drink. I left the bar, left the hotel, turned east, and started walking. Leaving good booze unfinished is a venial sin, but that way it'd look like I'd just stepped over to the men's room and was coming back soon— good for a head start.

Halfway down the block I spotted a convenient bunch of construction barriers. I ducked behind them, and as soon as I was out of sight from the street, my left hand darted into my bag. A couple of seconds to work the charm and I stepped out onto the sidewalk, Tarnkappe fully charged and ready in my hand. My bag remained behind, looking for anyone without True Sight like a rotting sack of garbage.

There are only three Tarnkappen in the world, and I had one of them. Something like that can come in handy in my line of work, and it was about to come in handy again. I walked slowly until I was sure that anyone following me from the Saint Moritz was on my tail. Then I cruised eastward, window-shopping. Windows make great mirrors to show what's behind you— and sure enough, here came my runic friend, Mr. Beer.

I turned a few random corners to make certain he was following, then got into a crowd and slipped on the Kappe. A few seconds later, after a bit of fancy footwork to make sure that my location and method weren't revealed by a trail of people tripping over nothing, I leaned against the side of a building and watched to see what would happen next.

Mr. Beer was confused, all right. He cast up and down the street a bit, but pretty soon he figured out that he'd botched the job. He stepped into a phone booth, then punched in a string and spoke a couple of words. His face was at the wrong angle for lipreading, but I could guess what he was saying: "I lost him."

Maybe I couldn't see what he was saying, but I'd managed to get the number he'd dialed. The whole time he was on the phone, I was on the other side of the street with a small pair of binoculars. He hadn't shielded the button pad with his hand. Half trained— a Lucie, for sure.

I trailed him until he went into a hotel and up to a room. Then I slipped the Kappe into my back pocket and followed that up by slipping a few quick questions to people who didn't even know afterward that they'd been questioned. Before long I knew that Beer's name was Max Lang, that he spoke with a foreign accent, that he'd been there for one week and planned to stay for another, and that he tipped well.

I left him in the hotel. The trail had taken me to the Waldorf-Astoria in midtown. Might as well head over to the United Nations building. It was still early, with lots of light in the sky and lots of people on the sidewalk. I kept my eyes open, but I didn't pick up a tail.

I turned the problem over in my mind. Max Lang couldn't have found his way out of a paper bag if you gave him a map and printed instructions. So how did he find me in the bar? And how did he come to know the Therion rune sequence?

The UN building stands towering over FDR Drive, along the East River. Security there is tight by American standards, which means laughable for any place else in the world. Inside the building I knew which way to go, and I had passes that were as good as genuine to get me anywhere I needed.

I stood for a moment just inside the metal detectors at the front doors, feeling with my senses. Was there something wrong in the building? Nothing big enough to show up without a divination, and I doubted that the guards would let me get away with performing one here, even if they weren't bent to the left— and with three knights missing already, only a fool wouldn't assume that the guards were bent. Prester John doesn't use fools. I headed for the Meditation Room.

The Meditation Room was right where I'd left it last time I'd been in town. No obvious problems. I went in. Everything was still in place. There was the mural in the front of the room, with its abstract picture of the sun, half dark, and half light. Cathar symbolism, and Manichean before that. We kept the picture up there to remind the Cathars how wrong they'd been. And there was the Grail— a natural lodestone, cut and polished into a gleaming rectangular block.

Wolfram von Eschenbach let the cat out of the bag when he wrote Parzival, back in the twelve hundreds. Somehow he'd gotten the straight word on what the grail looked like. According to the Luciferians, who claim to know the inside story, the Grail had been the central stone in Lucifer's crown, back before he had a couple of really bad days and got his dumb ass tossed out of Heaven. When Lucifer landed in Hell, they say, the Grail landed on Earth.

What was true was that the Grail had banged around the Middle East for quite a while— capstone of the Great Pyramid, cornerstone of the Temple of Solomon, that sort of thing. Back during the Crusades we'd been given the keeping of it. We never could hide the fact that there was a Grail, or that it was holy, but for a long time we tried to get people to go looking for dinnerware. Then someone talked. Somewhere, somehow, there was a leak. And blunders, like I said, never go away.

So far, though, everything looked all peachy-keen and peaceful at the United Nations. The room, the mural, the big chunk of polished rock. I pulled out a little pocket compass. Yep, that was still a lodestone over there.

One more test. I opened the little gold case in my pants pocket and slipped out a consecrated Host. I palmed it, then walked past the Grail on my way out of the room. My hand brushed the polished stone as I went by. Then I was out of the room, heading for the main doors and the street.

I raised my hand to straighten my hair, and as my hand passed my lips, I took the Host. Then I knew there was something really, desperately wrong. No taste of blood.

Hosts bleed when they touch the Holy Grail. Don't ask me how; I'm not enough of a mystic to answer. But I do know why— Godhood in the presence of Itself makes for interesting physical manifestations.

There was a stone back there in the meditation room. But either it wasn't the real Grail, or it wasn't holy anymore.

Whoever did this was far more powerful than I'd imagined. They either had to smuggle a six-and-a-half-ton block of rock into the UN, and smuggle another six-and-a-half-ton block of rock out of there without anyone noticing, or they had to defile something that had never been defiled— not even on Friday the 13th, when some men with real power and knowledge had given it their best shot and come away with nothing but their own sins to show for the effort.

I had to report back. Prester John needed to know about this as soon as possible.

That was when they hit me, just as I stepped out onto the street. I felt a light impact on the side of my neck, like a mosquito. I slapped at it by reflex, but before my hand got there, my knees were already buckling. Two men moved in on either side of me, supporting me. My eyes were open, and I could see and remember, but my arms and legs weren't responding anymore.

"Come on," the man on my right said. "You're going for a little ride."

They walked me across the plaza, three men holding hands. No one looked twice. You see some funny things in New York.

They put me in the back of a limo. Another man was behind the wheel, waiting for them. The door shut and we pulled away from the curb. The guy on my right pushed my head down so I wasn't visible from outside, which meant I couldn't see where they were taking me, either.

We crossed a bridge— I could hear it humming in the tires— then slowed to join other traffic. I pulled inside myself and looked for where the poison was in my body. It was potent, but there couldn't be much of it. I could handle not-much.

With enough concentration some people can slow their heartbeat down to where doctors can't detect it. Other people can slow their breathing to where they can make a coffinful of air last a week. I concentrated on finding all the molecules of poison in my bloodstream and making Maxwell's Demon shunt them off to somewhere harmless.

Little finger of my left hand, say. Let it concentrate there and not get out.

The car was slowing again. Stopping. Too soon. I hadn't gotten all the poison localized yet.

They pulled me out of the backseat. We were on a dock, probably on Long Island. No one else was in sight. I could see now what was going to happen: Into the water, the current carries me away, I'm too weak to swim, I drown. The poison is too dilute, or it breaks down, or its masked by the by-products of decomposition and the toxicological examination doesn't find it at the autopsy.

They weren't asking any questions. Instead, we went out to the end of the pier, them walking and me being walked. Two of them held me out over the water while the third— the one who'd been the driver— spoke.

"We do not slay thee. Thy blood is not on us. We desire no earthly thing: Go to God with all ye possess. Sink ye or swim ye, thou art nothing more to us."

A roaring sounded in my ears, and I was falling forward. Water, cold and salt, rushed into my nose and mouth.

Human bodies float in salt water. Concentrate on moving the poison. Give me enough control that I can float on my back… I was sinking. The light was growing dim. I concentrated on lowering my need for oxygen, lowering my heartbeat, lowering everything.

Move the poison. Don't use air. Float.

Then it was working. I could feel strength and control return to my arms and legs. I was deep underwater. I opened my eyes and looked around. I saw shadow and pilings not too far away: the bottom of the pier.

Swim that way— slowly— keep the poison in the left little finger. Don't use air. Then float up.

I didn't dare gasp for breath when I got to the surface. For all I knew, my assailants were still up there waiting. Slowly, quietly, I allowed my lungs to empty, then fill again. I hooked my left arm around the nearest piling, then reached down with my right hand and undid a shoelace. I hoped I wouldn't lose the shoe.

Using the lace, I tied a tourniquet around my left little finger— now the drug couldn't get out— and reached down again to my belt. The buckle hid a small push-dagger, made of carbonite so metal detectors wouldn't pick it up. Don't let the material fool you; it's hard and sharp. I cut the end of my little finger, held the knife between my teeth, and squeezed out the poisoned blood. The blood came out thick and dark, trailing away in the water like a streamer of red. Then I unloosed the tourniquet and it was time to go.

The foot of the pier was set in a cement wall about seven feet high, but the wall was old and crumbling. I got a fingerhold, then a foothold. At last I was out of the water. I crawled up until I was lying on top of the wall, under the decking of the pier. Anyone looking for me would have to be in the water to see me. I stayed there, waiting and listening, for a hundred heartbeats, then two hundred, and heard nothing but waves lapping up against the wall.

A sound. A board creaked on the dock. They'd left someone behind, all right— someone waiting like I was, only not so quietly.

But those cowboys had been a little slack. Either they'd trusted their drug too much, or else it was really important to their ritual that I keep all my possessions. The end result was the same; I hadn't been searched. When I reached a hand down to my pocket, the Tarnkappe was still where I'd stuffed it when I'd gotten done with Max Lang.

A visit to Lang looked like it was in the cards. Later. There were other things to do first.

I put on the Kappe, then crawled out of my hiding place and up onto the shore. There he was, out on the pier: a man in a business suit, carrying a Ruger mini-14 at high port. I sat on the shore, hoping I'd dry out enough so that water drops splashing on the pavement wouldn't give me away. Or chattering teeth— the sun was heading down and it was going to get cold pretty soon for a man in wet clothes.

Whatever those lads had hit me with, it'd left me with the beginning of a king-of-hell headache. I ignored the discomfort and concentrated on the man on the pier. Who was he? I'd never seen him before.

I heard the second man coming before I saw him, tramping heavy-footed down the road to the pier. He walked out and greeted the first. This time I could read their lips: "Time to go… there's a meeting… yes, we both have to be there… forget him, he's gone."

They walked back off the pier and I swung in behind them, letting the sound of their footfalls cover mine.

They had a car parked up the way— not the one that had brought me here. This one had two bucket seats up in front and nothing behind. They got inside; I got up on the back bumper and leaned forward across the trunk, holding on with arms spread wide. The car pulled away. All I had to do now was stay on board until they got to wherever they were going. That, and hope the Tarnkappe didn't come off at highway speeds.

The first sign we came to told me that I was NOW LEAVING BABYLON, NEW YORK. Babylon. Figures. Nothing happens by chance, not when you have the Grail involved. It all means something. The trick is finding out what.

This pair wasn't real gabby. I'd hoped to do some more lipreading in the rearview mirror, but as far as I could tell they drove back to the Big Apple in stony silence. They took the Midtown Tunnel back in, then local streets to somewhere on the East Side around 70th street. That was where I had my next bit of bad luck.

Out on the highway, the Tarnkappe had stuck on my head like glue. But here in the concrete canyons, a side gust took it away and there I was in plain view on the back deck. All I could do was roll off and scuttle for safety between the rushing cars, while taxis screamed at me and bicycle messengers tried to leave tire stripes up my back.

I made it to the other side of the street. The Tarnkappe was gone, blown who-knows-where by the wind, and I couldn't make myself conspicuous by doubling back to look for it. A quick stroll around the corner, down one subway entrance and up another, and I was as safe as I could hope to be with my shoes squishing seawater.

I started out at a New Yorker's street pace for the spot where I'd ditched my bag. By now the sun was down for real and the neon darkness was coming up: a bad time of day for strangers to go wandering around Central Park. Me, I kind of hoped someone would try for a mugging. I had a foul mood to work off, and smashing someone's face in the name of righteousness would just about do the trick.

Nobody tried anything, and my bag was waiting where I'd left it. I changed clothes right there in the alley, and debated reporting in. But someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make me vanish, and I wanted the secret of my survival to be shared by the minimum number.

Sure, I had my orders. But blind obedience isn't what the Temple needs from the thirty and three. Distasteful as I found the possibility, I had to consider whether I'd been sold out from inside. If so, then reporting in would be a very bad idea.

Maybe those other three knights had figured things out the same way. They could be lying low and saying nothing until the situation clarified. But I didn't think it was likely. Odds were that they were sweating it out in Purgatory right now— like I'd be, if I didn't start taking precautions.

I began by using the kit in my bag to make a few changes to my appearance. No sense having everyone who's already seen me recognize me the next time I showed up. Meanwhile, it was dinner time, which meant there was a good chance that my Mr. Lang would be away from his room. A search might show me something useful. And when he got back from dinner, I wanted to ask him some questions.

The rooms at his hotel had those new-style keycards with the magnetic strip. Some people think the keycards are secure, and they'll probably stop the teenagers who bought a Teach Yourself Locksmithing course out of the back of a comic book. The one on Lang's room didn't even slow me down.

Lang wasn't out, after all. He was in the room, but I wasn't going to get any answers out of him without a Ouija board. He was naked, lying on his back in the bathtub. Someone had been there before me— someone with a sharp knife and a sick imagination.

I dipped my finger in the little bottle of chrism I carry in my tote and made a quick cross on his forehead.

"For thy sins I grant thee absolution," I muttered— wherever he'd gone, he needed all the help he could get. Lucies aren't famed for their high salvation rate.

Then I searched the room, even though whoever had taken care of Lang would have done that job once already. Aside from the mess in the bathtub, the contents of the hotel room didn't have much to say about anything, except maybe the banality of evil: no address books; no letters or memos; no telltale impressions on the memo pad. Nothing of any interest at all.

Then I found something, taped to the back of a drawer. My unknown searcher had missed it. Or maybe he'd left it behind, having no use for it— he hadn't used bullets on Lang, only the knife. But there it was, a Colt Commander, a big mean .45 automatic.

I checked it over. Five rounds in the magazine, one up the spout. Weapon cocked, safety off. I lowered the hammer to half-cock and took the Colt with me, stuffing it in my waistband in the back, under the sport coat I was wearing. That lump of cold metal made me feel a lot better about the rest of the evening.

One more thing to do: I picked up the room phone, got an outside line, and punched in the number Lang had called that afternoon. After two rings, someone picked it up.

"International Research," said a female voice.

"This is Max," I said, my voice as muffled as I could make it. "I'm in trouble."

Then I hung up.

Before I left the room, I opened the curtains all the way. Then I eased myself out of the hotel and over to a vantage point across the street, where a water tower on a lower building gave me a view of the room I'd just left. The bad guys who'd tried to drown me hadn't taken my pocket binoculars, either. Those were good optics— when I used the binocs to look across the street, it was like I was standing in the hotel room.

I waited. The wind was cold, and a little after one in the morning it started to rain. It was just past 4 AM, at that hour before dawn when sick men die, when I spotted something happening.

Across the street the door eased open, then drifted shut. A woman walked into the room. She was tall, slender, and stacked. Black lace-up boots, tight black jeans, tight black sweater. Single strand of pearls. Red hair, long enough to sit on, loose down her back. A black raincoat hung over her right arm. She was wearing black leather gloves. In he left hand she had a H&K nine-millimeter. Color coordinated: The artillery was black, too.

She did a walk-through of the room. Nothing hurried. I watched her long enough that I could recognize her again, and then I was sliding down from my perch. The lady had carried a raincoat. If she planned to go out into the weather, I was going to find out where she was headed. My guess was that she was from International Research, whoever they really were.

I was betting that she'd come out the main door. So I did a slow walk up and down the street, one sidewalk and then the other, before I spotted her through the glass in the lobby, putting on that coat. Then she was out the revolving door and away.

One nice thing about New York is that it's possible to follow someone on foot. The car situation is so crazy that no one brings a private vehicle onto the island if they can help it. She might still call a cab, but if she did, so could I. I've never yet in my career told a cabbie to "Follow that car," but there's a first time for everything.

I wasn't going to get the chance tonight. A limo was cruising up the street at walking speed, coming up behind the lady in black. I recognized it. The boys who grabbed me yesterday had used that car or one just like it to carry me out to Babylon for sacrifice.

The car stopped and the two clowns in the back got out. They looked like the same pair of devout souls who'd invited me to a total-immersion baptism. It was time for me to join the fun. I angled across the rain-soaked street, pulling that big-ass Colt into my hand as I went.

The two goons had caught up with the lady, but she wasn't going as quietly as I had the day before. Maybe they'd missed with their drugged dart— she was muffled to the nose in her raincoat, with the collar turned up. Or maybe they wanted her talkative when they got wherever they were going. No matter. They were distracted, and the driver was watching the show.

I came up beside the window out of his blind spot. Using the .45 as a pair of knucks, I punched right through the glass into the back of his head. Then I pulled the door open and him out with it, spilling him onto his back in the street. I kicked him once on the point of the chin while he lay there.

"For these and all thy sins I absolve thee," I muttered, making a cross over him with the Colt.

The whole thing hadn't taken more than a couple of seconds, and now it was time to go help the lady. Generally speaking I'm not the kind of knight who goes around rescuing damsels in distress— but I wanted to talk with this one, and keeping her alive was the only way to go.

I used the roof of the car as a vaulting horse and landed feet first on top of one of the goons, bringing him down with me in a tangle of arms and legs. It took me a second to extricate myself, with elbows, knees, and the heavy automatic smashing into my man along the way. He got in a couple of good licks, then gave up all interest and started holding what was left of his nuts.

Meanwhile the lady in black was doing the best she could. But her little nine-millimeter was caught under the raincoat, and the man who had her was too strong. He'd thrown an arm around her neck in the classic choke come-along and was dragging her into the backseat. Maybe he hadn't noticed that the driver wasn't there anymore.

I took him in the back of the skull with the butt of the Colt Commander. He slipped to the ground to join his moaning pal.

"Come on!" I yelled at the lady. "Let's get out of here!"

"Where to?" she gasped.

"Into the car."

I slid behind the wheel— the keys were still in the ignition and the engine was turning over— and slammed the driver's-side door. The lady didn't argue. She got in beside me and closed the other door, and I took off from the curb.

I made a left turn across traffic into a side street, and said, "Where to, sister?"

"Who are you?"

Rather than give her an answer, I said, "The cops are gonna be all over this block in a couple of minutes— I saw the doorman go running inside like a man with 911 on his mind. You got a safe place to go?"

She gave an address down in SoHo. I drove to the address, ditched the car, and went with her up to an apartment: third floor of a brownstone, three rooms and a kitchen. I hoped she was in a rent-controlled building, or this place would be costing her a pretty penny.

The apartment was almost empty: nothing but a coffee-maker in the kitchen, a couple of sofas, and a bed, all visible from right inside the front door.

"Take a seat," she said. "I'll make coffee."

She stripped off her coat and turned to hang it on a peg by the door. When she turned back, the little nine-millimeter was pointing right between my eyes. I'd stuffed the .45 into my waistband in back again, to keep her from getting nervous. Her get nervous? That was a laugh.

"You've missed three recognition signals," she said. "You aren't from Section. So how's about you tell me who you are?"

"People call me Crossman," I said. "Peter Crossman."

"Is that your real name?"

"No, but it'll do. I'm the connection for midtown. You want coke, you call me."

"Your kind isn't known for making citizen arrests," she said. The muzzle of the nine-millimeter never wavered, even though from the way her chest was going up and down she had to be nervous about something. "What did you think you were up to tonight?"

"Someone who doesn't work for me using muscle in my territory, that interests me. Let one bunch get away with it, pretty soon it's all over town that Crossman's gone soft, and they're all trying to move in. Can't let that happen."

"So—" she started, but never finished. A knock sounded on the door.

"Maggie," came a voice from outside. "Maggie, I know you're in there. Open up."

She made the little pistol vanish. "Come on in— it isn't locked."

The door swung open, and I got a sinking feeling in my guts. The Mutt and Jeff act waiting on the landing were the same pair who'd given me the ride back to town the day before. The watchers from the dock in Babylon. I didn't think they recognized me— the Tarnkappe had kept me invisible at first, and then I'd changed my face. I was glad now that I'd taken the precaution.

They came in. They were wrapped in dripping raincoats— no way of telling what kind of firepower they were carrying underneath, but it would take 'em a while to pull anything clear. The first guy, the short one, nodded over at me. "Who's the meat?"

"A guy named Crossman," Maggie said. "He's some kind of drug lord. Showed up tonight and pulled my buns out of a bad situation while you two were sucking down cold ones in some bar."

"Get rid of him," the second guy said.

"No, I think I want him to stay." She looked at me. "You do want to stay, don't you? I'll let you buy me a drink after all this is over."

"Yeah," I said. "I want to stay."

That was the truth. This whole affair was getting more interesting by the minute. And as for buying that drink— I couldn't help wondering what sort of temptation she had in mind for me to resist.

She started to say something else, and that was when the door to the apartment flew open again. This time it was the two guys from the street— the ones who had tried to stuff Maggie into their car, the same ones who'd grabbed me outside the UN. One of them was carrying a Remington Model 870. The other was lugging a Stoner. They both looked pissed off.

They didn't bother with the formalities.

"One of you bastards," the guy with the Stoner said, "knows something we want to know. So we aren't going to kill you now. But we have other ways of finding out, so don't think we'll hesitate to shoot you if we have to. So. Who's going to tell me: Where's the Holy Grail?"

"It's in Logres, asshole," said Maggie's shorter guy.

The new arrival with the riot gun butt-stroked him across the room. He went down hard.

"I sure hope he wasn't the only guy who knew," Remington said, "or the rest of you are going to have a really rough time. Who wants to give us a serious answer?"

Maggie was standing beside and a little behind me. I felt something soft and warm pressing into my hand while everyone else was looking at the guy on the floor. It felt like a leather bag with marbles inside. I took it and made it vanish into my front pants pocket.

Stoner looked at me— maybe he'd seen me move. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

I shook my head a fraction of an inch one way and then the other. "I don't think so."

I wasn't as scared as I hoped I looked, but things weren't shaping up too good. The new guys hadn't disarmed anyone yet, and neither weapon was pointing right at me, but with my piece tucked into my waistband in back, I wouldn't have put a lot of money on getting it clear before they could turn me into Swiss cheese with ketchup. Besides, I wanted these gents alive. Someone knew where the Grail was, and all of these jokers looked like they knew more than I did.

"Lay off," Maggie said. "This one's your basic crook I picked up. You don't want him, you want me."

Whatever they were after, odds were it was in that little sack— at least Maggie thought it was. But I knew better. You don't carry a six-point-five-ton block of lodestone around in a leather drawstring bag.

"Yeah, sister, we want you," Remington said. "What were you doing at the Waldorf tonight?"

"Visiting a friend. Got a problem with that?" She'd drifted a little away from me. Maybe no one remembered she'd ever gotten close.

"Do you have it?"

"No. It isn't here."

Even the guys with the long guns were treating Maggie with respect— she must rate in someone's organization, I thought. Meanwhile, she was getting close to the light switch. I kept watch out of the corner of my eye, ready to make my move when she made hers.

"Where is it?" Remington said again.

She drifted another step sideways. "Do you know the stoneyard for St. John the Divine?"

Then her elbow smashed backward against the switch and the lights went out. I leaped over the sofa in a flat dive, rolled, and came up crouching in the corner near the window, with my back to the wall and the .45 in a two-hand grip in front of me.

I heard a nine-millimeter go popping off where Maggie had been standing, and an answering roar from the Remington— both of them laid over the stitching sound of the Stoner firing full auto.

That about did it for my ears. Too much gunfire and you're hearing bells ring an hour later. Of course, now the bad guys couldn't hear me, either. But my eyes were adjusting to the dark, and anyone standing up in front of the windows would be silhouetted against the skyglow.

I started duckwalking in the direction of the door, keeping my head low. My foot hit something hard. I reached down with my right hand, my left holding the .45 steady in front of me. It was the Stoner. The barrel was warm, which was more than you could say about the hand that held it. No pulse in the radial artery. I mouthed an absolution and continued moving along the wall.

Over by the window, another shadow was moving— a male, standing, with the distinctive shape of a pump-action in his hands. The weapon was swinging in slow arcs across the room. It stopped— he'd seen something. He started raising the shotgun to his shoulder.

I drew a careful bead on him. "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord," I muttered, and pulled the trigger.

Then I was rolling away, because a scattergun like the Remington doesn't need much aiming. But I needn't have worried— I saw his shadow drop in that boneless way people get when they're shot. A .45 yields a 98 percent one-shot kill rate. If I hit him… well, I don't miss often.

I fetched up against someone very soft and very warm— Maggie, waiting in the shadows by the other corner. She reached up and flipped the lights back on.

I stood flattened against the wall and looked around. Stone and Remington had both bought their parts of the farm. Maggie's two prettyboys were hugging the carpet and playing possum— at least they'd been smart enough not to be targets.

The tall one got to his feet.

"You found it?" he said to Maggie. "Come on, let's get over there."

"It isn't so far," Maggie said. "In fact it's—"

"Shut up," I said. "These two jokers aren't on your team."

"What do you mean?"

She was bringing the nine-mike-mike to bear on me. I pointed my own weapon at the floor, so she wouldn't get the wrong idea and make a hasty move, and nodded at the pair of corpses.

"How do you think the Bobbsey Twins over there found this place?" I asked. "They sure didn't follow us. I bet these two guys brought 'em along, and were going to play good cop/bad cop with us."

"But—" Maggie began.

"He's right, you know," the shorter one said. He produced an Uzi and brought it up to cover us. "Put down your weapons."

There comes a time when you know you've lost. I dropped my piece. Maggie did the same. The guy with the Uzi nodded at his buddy.

"Fred, pick them up."

The tall one— Fred, I guess his name was— stepped forward and bent over to pick up the handguns.

Shorty was still talking to Maggie. "The Grail isn't at St. John the Divine. We already checked. So I'm afraid I'll have to search you— several times, in a variety of positions. Unless you tell me where the Grail is right now. The truth and no tricks."

Maggie shook her head. "I don't think so."

"A pity," said Shorty. "You'll still be a Bride of Christ— you just won't be a virgin Bride of Christ— and you'll wind up telling me anyway."

"I don't know where it is," Maggie said.

"Then all my work will be for nothing," Shorty said, but he was grinning as he said it.

"Please," I said, trying to make my voice sound like I was scared witless. "I don't know what any of this is about. Please let me go—"

"Shut him up," Shorty said.

At least I'd gotten his eyes on me instead of Maggie. And Fred was coming up, his pistol in one hand, mine in the other. That's when I kicked him, a reaping circular kick, taking him in the throat. It raised him to his feet and set him stumbling backward.

Shorty fired— but someone should have taught him how to shoot. His round missed me, thought I could feel the wind of it past my cheek and the answering spatter of plaster from the wall. I dove forward, spearing Fred in the belly with my head. Shorty's second shot took his partner between the shoulder blades as Fred was driven backward into him.

Then all three of us went down, and a moment later it was over. I rolled onto my back. Maggie was standing over me.

"You've been hit."

"I don't think so." But when I looked down at myself, sure enough here was blood pouring out, soaking the pocket where I'd put her bag— and where I kept my supply of Hosts. The Hosts were bleeding.

At that moment I knew. And looking into her eyes, I could tell she knew, too.

"It really was the Grail," she said.

"Looks like. Let's get out of here before the cops show up."

"Where to?"

"I'll introduce you to a man," I said. "You'll like him."

We left. The first police car arrived, lights flashing, when we were halfway down the block.

As dawn was breaking over a soggy New York morning, I was in the Rambles again. Prester John was waiting.

"Here it is," I said, tossing the sack to him. He opened the bag and rolled out the gemstones inside it.

"Yes," he said. "The substance is here, though the accidents have changed." The accidents. I should have thought of that back at the UN, when the Host that touched the meditation stone didn't bleed. A wafer, when its transubstantiated, still has the outward appearance— the accidents— of a flat bit of unleavened bread, while it's substance is the body of Christ. In the same way, the Grail's substance— whatever it is that makes it truly the Grail— now had the accidents of a handful of precious stones.

John looked back up at me, his hand clenching around the Grail. "Who's your friend?"

"Sister Mary Magdalene," she said. "From the Special Action Executive of the Poor Clares. I presume you're with the Temple?"

Prester John inclined his head.

"Pleased to meet you," she said. "We'd heard that there was some hanky-panky going on, especially when the Cathar Liberation Army started moving people into town."

"I can fill in the rest," I said. "Maggie's group was infiltrated by the Cathars, just before they got sold out themselves by the Luciferians. That's where Max Lang fits in. The Lucies had been contracted to grab the Grail because they were the only ones besides us who could handle it. Lang carried a bag of jewels in— swapped the substance of the jewels into the lodestone and the substance of the Grail into the jewels— and walked out. That gave them the Grail, but once the Lucies had it, they didn't want to turn it over, at least not to the Cathars. You remember what kind of mess there was last time they owned it."

"As if you can speak of anyone owning the Grail," Prester John said. "You're right: Lang must have transubstantiated the Grail into this little sack of jewels, and left the stone in the Meditation Room transubstantiated into a hunk of rock."

It all made sense. It also explained how the Lucies had smuggled six and a half tons of lodestone into and out of the UN— they hadn't. Nobody had carried anything through security that was bigger and heavier than a bag of marbles.

Prester John was shaking his head thoughtfully. "I wonder what made them think they could get away with it?"

"Maybe there's some truth to those stories about Lucifer's crown," I said. "The Lucies sure think so. And the Cathars knew they'd never get close working on their own, so they hired the Luciferians to do the dirty work for them. Then Lang got cold feet. Maybe he saw a vision or something. It's been known to happen. He was working up his nerve to return the Grail when he got hit."

"Lang had swallowed the stones," Maggie said. "I got 'em back. We'd been running electronic intelligence ops on the Lucies for a while. We intercepted one call yesterday afternoon that alerted us, and another call last evening from the hotel. That's when I got sent in. He was messed up enough when I got there that nobody's going to notice a few cuts more."

"Who was it who nailed him?" Prester John said.

"The Cathars," I said. "They'd figured out by then that he was trying to double-cross them."

"Any thoughts on how to get the Grail back to its rightful shape and rightful place?" John said. "We'll have to set new wards, too, so this won't happen again."

"That's your problem," I said. "Maybe you could hire the Lucies yourself. Me, I've got a social engagement. I promised Maggie a drink and I'm going to find her one."

"Hang on," Prester John said. "You're a priest. She's a nun. You can't go on a date."

"Don't worry," I said. "I won't get into the habit."