The Atlantis revelation

21

It seemed to Serena that all of Paris had come to the church of Saint Roch to bid adieu to Mercedes Le Roche. Uniformed police held back the crowds lining Rue Saint-Honore while office workers and residents in the buildings above leaned out their windows. All were straining to glimpse the celebrities arriving beneath a giant screen and loudspeakers broadcasting the funeral ceremony live.

Benito nudged the limousine ever closer to the hive of paparazzi ahead. Serena felt uneasy as she sank back in her seat and into the soft gray trouser suit and black trench coat that the people from Chanel had requested she wear to the funeral. A few years ago the Vatican's public relations agency had made some sort of bizarre agreement granting Chanel the right to dress Serena for affairs of state. It was an arrangement that she had always found ways to ignore. But having already packed her bags-and globes-for sunny Rhodes and not the cool rain of Paris, she'd had to reluctantly oblige this time.

The idea of a funeral as a fashion show, however, made her ill.

"Her funeral has a budget bigger than all her documentaries put together," she said. "Hardly anyone here knew her, and even fewer cared."

"It's Papa Le Roche's rank in French society that has brought out all the movie stars and other celebrities who have come to offer him their condolences," Benito said. "That would include you and President Nicolas Sarkozy."

"Where are the 'least of these' that Jesus talked about, Benito?"

"Watching the television, signorina."

Hopeless, she thought. Not only was she upset about what had happened to Mercedes, she was worried sick about Conrad and whether she'd ever see him again. She was also worried that she'd fail in Rhodes tomorrow. In fact, looking at the circus outside, she wondered if she and the Church had failed the world already with their complicity in this stagecraft of death. But Papa Le Roche had personally requested her presence for the family, and this was another chance to size up Roman Midas before Rhodes. Surely the grieving boyfriend would be on hand to eulogize the lover he had so ruthlessly slain.

She decided she desperately needed some fresh air. Cracking open her window just a bit, she could hear the crowds actually applauding every time a rocker or fashion designer stepped out of a limousine. As if this were some kind of award show. Which in a sense it was, she supposed, for Papa Le Roche.

"Skip the main entrance," she ordered Benito. "Take me around to the side."

They drove past the mob, turned a corner, and passed through a side gate, pulling up behind a black Volvo hearse. The hatch was up, and Serena could see Mercedes's casket in the back before the driver with an earpiece shut the door. He was going to go around the block to the crowds at the main entrance, where pallbearers would bring the casket into the church.

She was greeted at the side door by a young priest, who escorted her inside to the sanctuary. She was seated in the front row alongside a grief-stricken Papa Le Roche, a rather smug Roman Midas, and an expressionless President Sarkozy and his beautiful wife, Carla Bruni.

Serena offered her condolences to Papa Le Roche, who thanked her profusely for coming. Sarkozy and Midas looked at each other awkwardly, as if to say that today was certainly an unscheduled stop on the way to the EU peace summit on Rhodes tomorrow. Serena knew that neither had anticipated seeing the other before then. But while Sarkozy looked like he would have preferred not to be seen so close to the former Russian oligarch boyfriend of a woman who had died so violently, Midas seemed to relish his photo op next to the French president and among European society.

It was the French first lady, however, whose curious gaze after their kiss-kiss had made Serena the most uncomfortable. For some odd reason, it had prompted her to recall that she was ten years junior to Carla, who herself had been ten years junior to Sarkozy's second wife and thirteen years younger than his first. Then Serena saw the gray trouser suit beneath Carla's open black trench coat and realized that they were wearing the same outfit. Somebody at Chanel clearly hadn't cross-checked the cosmic social calendar.

Not that it bothered Serena. She was a linguist first and foremost, a nun second, and a celebrity who could raise funds for humanitarian aid a distant third. But she did feel bad for Karl Lagerfeld, the designer. He was sitting four pews behind with a row full of fashion icons, and when she glanced back to offer him a tender smile, he looked positively panic-stricken.

As the church bells tolled, six pallbearers in black Pierre Cardin suits carried Mercedes's casket into the church. They laid it feet toward the altar and then opened it to reveal a luminous Mercedes, frozen in time, with a rosary in her hands and flowers all around.

The tribute to Mercedes began with video clips of her childhood, followed by clips from her first documentary for French television. Several speakers read poems, and one played a vulgar song that was a favorite of hers. Then Midas rose to speak to his dearly departed.

Looking at Mercedes, he said, "You were a flower who faded too soon from this earth. But your sweet aroma will linger forever."

Serena wanted to gag. The duet of mourner and mourned did not go down well with her. She'd never liked eulogies staged during de facto state funerals, anyway. Especially when the deceased wasn't much of an angel or terribly sorry about it.

But what was she supposed to do? Stand up before all the bereaved, who right now were calculating their own odds of entering the pearly gates, and speak the truth, however awful, about Mercedes? Or was she supposed to bow to social convention and assure everyone in earshot that Mercedes was in heaven? Surely anybody who knew her, even her father, doubted it. She herself doubted that eulogies even belonged in church. After all, this was supposed to be a place where self-confessed sinners gathered in the holy presence of God. Not a stage for them to pat each other on the back for their illusory virtues.

What she especially didn't like was the feeling that none of them should have been there that day. Not the French president. Not her. Not Midas. And certainly not Mercedes. She wasn't supposed to die. None of this was supposed to have happened. But it did. Why?

Conrad. He'd happened. He had shown up at the Bilderberg party and put all the wheels in motion. He had turned her life upside down, like he always did, and it was never going to be put right until he and she were right.

It was her turn to speak.

She got up and placed a wheat sheaf on the coffin and repeated the eternal rest prayer. It was the most honest thing she could say. Not in French but in Latin, the way Mercedes likely would have wanted to tweak her proud nationalist papa, who liked to believe that Jesus was really a Gaul and not a Jew and that French was the language of angels.

Requiem?ternam dona ei Domine; et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.

What Serena was saying was: "Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace. Amen." She could tell that the dignitaries in the front pew didn't understand, although they pretended they did. But several mourners in the fashion row nodded enthusiastically.

Father Letteron, wearing white and violet vestments, conducted the funeral Mass. There were flowers and candles all around. When it was over, Serena watched the shroud-draped coffin float out of the church before the hundreds of onlookers and cameras. Following behind was Father Letteron, who sang the antiphon "In Paradisum," a prayer that the holy angels would bear the immortal soul of Mercedes Le Roche to paradise.

If that meant television ratings, then perhaps Mercedes had indeed finally found her heaven.

The show inside over, Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy once again gave their condolences to Mercedes's father and then wordlessly marched outside to the waiting world. Midas took Papa Le Roche's arm and guided him out of the church. The rest of the mourners exited wherever they'd be sure to be photographed by the media.

Serena stood alone in the first pew, the hypocrisy of the world around her-and her place in it-feeling like a punch to her gut. She took a deep breath and stepped into the aisle only to be blocked by a young French aide. He looked red-faced with shame.

"I beg your forgiveness, Sister Serghetti," he said in French.

"Is there a problem?"

He hemmed and hawed. "I don't know how to say this."

Serena's patience had worn thin over the course of the funeral. "Spit it out."

"The first lady requests that you mourn a little longer in private," the Frenchman said, barely able to form the words. "She fears there might be, eh, speculation in the press that you have, eh, upstaged her in some way with your youth and beauty."

Holy Mother of God, she thought. But then she quickly confessed her angry, inner burst to God and forced an understanding smile to the aide. She could only imagine how many times each day this poor messenger got shot while bearing his little tidings of great vanity. And this was the church where Napoleon had mowed down royalist insurgents on the front steps.

"Quite all right," she said. "I'll just exit discreetly from the side."

He made the sign of the cross and bowed his head. "Thank you."

She did her best to make it to Benito and the car outside. She had to put Paris behind her and press on to Rhodes. But halfway out, her sadness and rage at the events of the morning began to overwhelm her, and she stopped to compose herself at the free-standing holy water stoup by the side door.

As she dipped the tips of her fingers into the marble basin and crossed herself, she could see her pale reflection in the water. Suddenly, the side door flew open, and she looked up to see a camera flash in her face.