Perfect People

71

Like many of its counterparts that were on the mainland peninsula of Mount Athos, the monastery of Perivoli Tis Panagias was a huge cluster of buildings in different architectural styles, contained within the outer monastic walls. In the middle ages, poor monks inhabited cells in the main building, while wealthier arrivals constructed their own houses, in their preferred building materials – mostly wood or stone – and colour schemes.

Staring down from his cell window into the cobbled courtyard that was dominated by the domed church, flanked on one side by a row of terraced houses that would not have looked out of place in San Francisco or in parts of Boston, and on the other by turreted and crenellated walls, Harald Gatward thought, as he did often during his hours of contemplation, that the place at night felt a little like a deserted studio lot.

Except it was never deserted. The spirit of God was always present, and the eyes of their beloved guardian angel, the Virgin Mary, ever vigilant.

Father Yanni permitted very few intrusions from the outside world to pass the monastery’s tall wooden gates. Pilgrims of course were welcome, in the monastic tradition of hospitality, but the Abbot recalled it had been twenty years, probably longer – he would have to check the registration book – since any pilgrim had made the twenty-kilometre boat trip from the mainland. Occasionally a cruise ship sailed past, or a yacht, but they always kept their distance, although more out of respect for the four unmarked submerged reefs than for the privacy of the monks, he suspected.

One intrusion was the laptop, which sat next to the Bible on the simple wooden table in Harald Gatward’s narrow cell. The Abbot had considered it a strange request, but who was he to refuse anything to the American who had been brought here by the Virgin Mary to save their monastery?

All other trappings of the modern world were housed in the village a short distance below the monastery walls. There the Disciples lived with their women. The Disciples were welcome to worship in the monastery’s church and to eat meals in silence alongside the Abbot and the four other monks in the magnificent refectory with its frescoed wall, but not the women. Out of respect to the customs of the monks, Gatward had never permitted women to enter these walls.

At midnight, as was his ritual, Harald Gatward broke off from his prayer vigil. He was well pleased with the work of his Disciples. Five sets of Satan’s Spawn were now exterminated. Three had made the world press, but the fourth, in a car crash in Italy, had passed unnoticed, as had the fifth, in a helicopter crash in Singapore. Even so, he had thought it prudent to call his Disciples home, let the heat die down.

Just one Disciple remained out in the field at this moment. He was good, this one, he had true passion. Soon it would be time to summon him home, and give him his reward: Lara, sweet girl, waiting down in the village, so patient, so devout.

There was an email sitting in his inbox from Timon Cort now.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Harald Gatward closed his eyes and asked the Virgin Mary to dictate his reply.