The Book of Q

SPIRITUS
six

Pearse steadied himself, watching as Ivo sang. He heard nothing but a dull humming in his ears.

“So do I stretch out my two hands toward You,

All to be formed in the orbit of light.…”

Ivo turned to him; the boy was saying something. Pearse tried to hear, even as the walls seemed to constrict, the air heavier with each breath. Still, Ivo stared up at him.

“When I am sent to the contest with darkness

Knowing that You can assist me in sight….”

Pearse felt his hand press against the wall, the chill of the stone offering an instant of release. The tiny voice broke through: “… if you know it?”

Pearse drove his nails into the stone, the pain forcing air into his lungs. The walls began to retreat, another chance to hear the boy.

“Why don’t you sing if you know it?” Ivo repeated.

Pearse felt himself nod. The five-line entries. A child’s first prayer. So obvious.

From somewhere within the haze, he found the words. “‘The fragrance of life is always within me.’”

Ivo smiled and sang:

Ivo smiled and sang:

“O living water,

O child of light.

O name of glories

In truth do I find You.

In search of a truth.

That tells of Your might!”

Pearse joined in: “‘Eeema, Eeema, Ayo.’”

Salko sings it with me. Pearse crouched down, forcing himself to concentrate. “Salko taught you that song?”

Ivo nodded.

The confirmation was somehow more devastating than the initial shock.

“I know another one.” Ivo smiled. “Not as well. We sang it for Radisav. Salko says I have to learn it without a book. Do you want to hear it?”

There was nothing to do but nod.

Once more, the sweet soprano let forth: “‘It is from the perfect light, the true ascent that I am found….’” He hesitated. “‘That I am found …’”

“‘In those who seek me,’” Pearse continued, his own familiarity with the prayer a momentary diversion from his staggering disbelief.

“‘In those who seek me,’” Ivo repeated, nodding. “Right. You know it, too.”

Another nod.

“‘Acquainted with me, you come to yourselves,’” Ivo sang, “‘wrapped in the light to rise to the onions-’”

“‘Aeons,’” Pearse corrected, his head beginning to clear.

“‘Aeons,’” Ivo repeated. “That’s about all I know. What are aeons?”

“Emanations of the unknowable,” Pearse heard himself say, rote response from a mind not yet willing to confront what was standing in front of him. When he saw the look of confusion on Ivo’s face, he tried a smile. “I’m not really sure myself. So Mommy and Salko taught you those songs?”

Another look of confusion. “Mommy?” A quick smile, eyes wide. “They’re only for Salko and me. He says they’re our special secret. Did he teach them to you, too?”

Pearse had no response. There was too much racing through his head to process it all: Salko appearing out of the blue, handling the men at Kukes-no menace, no Vatican-the church bombings, the telephone call, the trace.

Pearse tried not to condemn himself for what now seemed such obvious stupidity.

But Salko, a part of this … and for how long? A picture of Slitna fixed in his mind. How could he accept that? How could he accept that Ivo …

He might have collapsed from the weight of the last half minute if not for Ivo staring at him, waiting for an answer. Another instant of brutality, this time dispensed at the hands of an innocent, Ivo’s gentle smile, his tiny hand clasped in Pearse’s. Songs, not prayers. Words, not ideology.

“Yes,” Pearse said. “Salko taught them to me, too.”

He had an overpowering desire to cradle Ivo, hold him to his chest, hide him from a threat he couldn’t possibly understand-its most tangible form wandering the village, looking for the boy.

Salko.

Crippling as the thought was, Pearse knew he needed to move. He needed to get them out of here.

He squeezed Ivo’s hand, picked him up, and headed for the stairs.

Halfway down the steps, Pearse realized the hohxa hadn’t been at the table. In fact, he hadn’t been anywhere. The same held true downstairs. Pearse quickly moved across the room. Setting Ivo down, he slowly opened the front door and saw the empty road leading up to the village. Stepping back into the shadows, he knelt in front of the boy.

“So you never talked to Mommy about those songs?” he asked, peering into the little eyes.

Ivo’s smile disappeared-a look of pure concentration. “No,” he finally said. “Salko said I couldn’t.”

The boy’s expression was more than enough to convince. Pearse nodded, a wink. “Then I’m sure you didn’t.”

Ivo’s smile returned.

“So now the three of us have a secret,” Pearse said as he picked Ivo up again. He moved to the door and slowly opened it.

Just as he was about to step outside, Ivo placed a hand on his cheek. “I’m glad you know the songs,” he said.

Pearse stopped. For a moment, everything beyond them seemed to disappear. “Me, too.” He then moved out through the door.

Less than ten feet up the main road, however, he suddenly realized he couldn’t chance running into Salko with Ivo in tow. There’d be no way to keep them all from getting into the car and driving off-no way to separate themselves from Salko. And whatever else might have been running through his head, Pearse knew he had to view Salko as nothing more than an immediate threat. There would be time enough to try to understand the implications later on.

Making sure the road remained empty, he moved back to the side of the house and set Ivo down.

“How about a little adventure?” Pearse said.

Ivo’s eyes lit up.

“And how about we make this one into a game?”

No less excited, Ivo asked, “What kind of game?”

“One where we surprise Salko.”

“Salko!” The raw enthusiasm of a seven-year-old bubbled to the surface; Ivo’s little hands pulled up to his mouth to stifle the near explosion of laughter. “That’d be great.”

Again, Pearse winked. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

Pearse knew the game was more for himself than for the boy. Leading on a UN guard, the man from the bus, or even the Austrian had been one thing. Salko knew him better than that. And, given his old friend’s apparent predilection for deception, Pearse also knew the Croat would sense something. Keeping his own focus on Ivo was Pearse’s only hope.

He took the boy’s hand and began to lead him down the hillside, behind the houses on the main road. Ivo skipped as he walked, every so often grabbing Pearse’s side when he began to lose his footing. They made their way through tiny gardens, a few clotheslines, one or two low stone walls, until they came to the back of a house Pearse guessed to be within striking distance of the van. He peeked around the corner. Close enough. No more than twenty yards from them, Petra stood by the van’s now-closed door, Salko at her side. The look on her face had grown to one of genuine panic.

He stepped back and crouched by Ivo. Any hint of anxiety quickly faded as he looked into the smiling eyes.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he whispered.

Again, Ivo’s hands drew up to his mouth, the anticipation almost too much.

“I’m going to go to the car and talk to Salko and Mommy. I want you to watch me. If you lie on your tummy and crawl to the corner of the wall, I think you can see the car.” Ivo dropped down and inched his way out. “Can you see the car from there?”

He looked back up at Pearse, giving him a big smile and a nod.

“Okay.” Pearse pulled him back, then looked directly into his eyes. “But you have to wait here until I give you the signal to come out.” He demonstrated with a big wave. “Only when you see me give the signal can you come out.” He waited for Ivo to nod. “And then I want you to run as fast and as quietly as you can up to the car.”

Again, Ivo nodded. “Boy, will Salko be surprised!”

“No sound. Otherwise, he’ll know.”

“No sound.”

Pearse winked, waited for Ivo to take his position, then backtracked behind two of the houses-he couldn’t chance them catching sight of Ivo, no matter how remote the possibility. Just before heading up to the main road, he glanced back; he could still see Ivo, prone on the ground, wirelike limbs outstretched, waiting. Pearse slipped around the side of the house and started up the road. As he passed the house where he had left Ivo, every instinct told him to check on the boy, but he knew he couldn’t. Petra’s voice was a welcome relief.

“Salko didn’t find him, either,” she said as she moved out to him. “He-”

“I found him,” said Pearse, drawing up to the van. Before either of them could ask, he continued. “He’s in the holy man’s hut. For some reason, he wanted to see the boy who died yesterday.”

It was clear from Petra’s reaction that this wasn’t the first time Ivo had shown such a morbid interest.

“The problem is,” Pearse continued, “our friend from dinner last night wasn’t that eager to let me in with the body still there. Something to do with Catholic priests and Muslim corpses. I wasn’t going to argue with him. He said you should come and get him.” He nodded to Salko.

Petra started to go; Pearse quickly grabbed her arm. “He said Salko. He was pretty adamant about it.”

“Janos can get that way,” said Mendravic with a nod. “I’m sorry if he-”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Pearse, aware that he was having trouble looking Mendravic in the eye. Instead, he looked at the ground and nodded.

Salko squeezed his neck. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He headed off down the road.

“You can let go of my arm now,” said Petra.

Pearse turned to watch Mendravic move past the houses.

“I said you can let go of my arm.”

When he was certain that Mendravic was out of earshot, Pearse released her, his eyes still on the retreating figure. “Get in the car,” he said under his breath.

“What?”

He turned to her. “Get in the car,” no kindness in his tone.

“Ian, what are you-”

“In thirty seconds, Ivo is going to come running out from behind that house. Get in the car.”

Petra tried to look past him to the house; Pearse took hold of her arm again. “Did you hear what I said?” The intensity in his stare was enough to hold her. “Get in the car.”

“What about Salko?”

“We’re not taking Salko. If you want Ivo, get in the car.” He paused. “You have to trust me.”

Whatever she saw in his eyes was enough to send her to the door on the passenger’s side. She opened it and sat.

Pearse turned back, to see Mendravic disappearing behind a curve in the road. He waited another five seconds, then turned and raised his hand high, waving it in a wide, sweeping motion. At once, the little figure of Ivo darted out from behind the house and began to race toward them, his tiny arms pumping away. Within seconds, he was in Pearse’s arms; another few, and he was on his mother’s lap. No time to explain. Pearse shut the door and moved around to the driver’s side.

He had just opened the door, when he looked back and saw Mendravic racing up the road, remarkable speed for a man his size. Only then did Pearse see the stooped figure of the hohxa twenty yards behind him.

The old man had found Mendravic, a warning from the Brotherhood, too late to stop them.

Pearse pulled the keys from his pocket and leapt into the front seat. Within seconds, he was grinding the car into gear, the sudden burst of movement drowning out the shouts from behind. A winded Mendravic appeared in the rearview mirror, the figure more and more distant, clear enough, though, to see a tiny phone being brought to his ear.

Visegrad … They’ll definitely be in Visegrad.

Salko’s prediction now all but a certainty.

White smoke.

The throng in St. Peter’s erupted, Kleist once more high above on his private perch. The spillover down the Via della Conciliazone reached almost to the river, over 100,000 bodies pressed against one another in anticipation of a single phrase: “Habemus Papam!” It would be severalminutes before the dean of the College of Cardinals would step out to the balcony, time enough for the masses to build themselves into a good lather. Kleist had to hope it was von Neurath who was waiting in the wings.

Once again, he pulled the small device from his pocket and flipped open the screen. He pressed a button. Dial tone. Within half a ring, the line picked up.

“Have the dogs cleared?” Kleist asked.

“Eight minutes.”

“I want the chessmen on the board until we have confirmation.”

“Understood.”

“Hold them until the king retreats. They move as a unit. The king stays on the board until the rest are back in the box.”

“Understood.”

Kleist paused. “Double the coverage on the Campane. No access to anyone, passes included.”

“Understood.”

He cut the line. He’d been the one to dub their quarry the “chessmen”-bishops, cardinals, it made little difference. Pawns this afternoon. Keeping them in the Palace until after the Pope’s address was simply the best way to buy himself a little extra time. The men at the arch? A chance to dilute the crew inside the hospice still further.

The dean emerged. An almost eerie silence fell over the 100,000 bodies.

“We have a Pope!” A thunderous roar exploded, the dean holding his hands high in an attempt to quiet the crowd. Even the microphone had no chance, the introduction of the supreme Pontiff lost to the constant clamor: “His Holiness, Pope Lucius the Fourth.”

Had anyone asked, von Neurath had actually considered the far more obscure Zephyrinus for several weeks. Not so much for anything Zephyrinus had done, but for his timing. Pope in 216. The year a child had been born near the city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris, the capital of Persia. His name, Mani. The Paraclete. The hope of the one true and holy church.

In the end, Lucius had won out. Harbinger of the light. Far more appropriate.

Kleist watched through binoculars as the former Erich Cardinal von Neurath-clad in the white soutane and skullcap, emblems of his office-stepped out onto the balcony, his arms already in the classic pose of pious authority. He swept the air in narrow circles as if he were somehow breathing in the scent of spirituality. The noise of the crowd managed to reach even greater decibels, waves of sound echoing throughout the colonnades, von Neurath already comfortable with his preening humility.

Kleist turned his attention to the arch. The two extra men had taken up their positions. Like all good Catholics, they were crossing themselves, waiting for their new Pope to begin the Apostolic Blessing.

Fourteen minutes, start to finish. That was what von Neurath had promised. After that, eight minutes for the cardinals to be led back to the Sanctae Marthae.

Kleist picked up the package and headed for the door. He was now on his own timetable. Four minutes to the hospice, twelve minutes to set the plastique, four minutes to return.

Which left him a two-minute grace period.

The Harbinger of the Light always liked to keep things as tight as possible.

“Where’s Salko?” Ivo said.

Once again, the seven-year-old was asking the most obvious question. And once again, Pearse was totally unprepared for it. Keeping his eyes on the road, he said, “Salko … is …”

“Staying in the village,” Petra cut in, pulling Ivo closer to her chest.

“What about the surprise?” he asked.

“What surprise?” she said.

“The one we’re going to play on him.”

Pearse heard the disappointment in his voice. “Actually, he-”

Before Pearse had finished, Ivo’s eyes lit up. “Oh!” he whispered. He turned to the glass partition and slid it back.

“Hello, Salko,” he shouted, straining against his mother so as to peer into the back of the van. “I know you’re back there.” He waited. “You thought you were going to get me because I thought I was surprising you.” He looked at Pearse, a big smile on his face. “You’re pretty good at this.” Before Pearse could answer, Ivo was back at the partition, howling away at the unseen Salko. “Hellooooo. I got you. You can come out now.”

Petra brought him back to her lap. “Sweetie, Salko isn’t there. I told you, he stayed in the village.”

Ivo broke free again, his head deep into the opening. “Come on. I know you’re here.” When it slowly sank in, Ivo became very quiet. “Why? Why isn’t he here?” He sat back on Petra’s lap and looked across at Pearse. “You said we’d surprise him. You said he’d be here.” Pearse could hear the first hint of genuine sadness in the little voice. “Why isn’t he here?”

“He had to stay in the village to help his friends,” said Petra, holding him closer.

“But why didn’t he say good-bye?” The words were now choked.

“It all happened very quickly, sweetie,” Petra said. “He didn’t even say good-bye to me. I think he needed to help his friends right away.”

“Why?”

Petra looked over at Pearse. “I don’t know. Sometimes Salko has to help his friends, and sometimes he has to leave without telling us.”

“But he didn’t leave.” He lifted a hand to stem the first tears. “We did.”

“I know, sweet pea. I know.” She cupped his head to hers. “But we’ll see him soon.”

“I didn’t say good-bye.” His words were now muffled in his mother’s neck. “I didn’t say good-bye.”

She began to rock him.

Ten minutes of silence passed before Pearse spoke.

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said.

Petra waited before answering. “Is he asleep?” she whispered.

Pearse glanced over at the little boy. The morning had obviously taken its toll. Pearse kept his voice low, as well. “Close enough.”

“Don’t ever use my son as a threat again,” she said.

The quiet severity of her tone stunned him. It took him a moment to respond. “What?”

“You said if I wanted to see him, I had to get in the car. Don’t ever do that again.”

Another few seconds to understand what she was saying. “No. I didn’t mean-”

“Yes, you did.” She let the words sink in before asking, “Now what’s going on? Why did we leave Salko back there?”

“It’s … complicated.”

“Try me.”

He waited. He had no idea how to make sense of the last twenty minutes; and as much as he wanted to trust Ivo, he had to make sure. “‘Sic tibi manus meae intendeo,’” he said.

“What?”

“‘Omnes fingi in gyro lucis.’”

“What are you saying? I told you, I’m no good with Latin. Stop it,” she demanded, her anger mounting.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No, and now you’re frightening me. Why did we leave Salko back there?”

He kept his eyes on the road. He was having trouble admitting it to himself. “Because he’s involved with this.”

“So are you,” her tone no less pointed then before.

“That’s not what I meant. He’s after the parchment. That’s why he showed up in Kukes.”

“A part of it?” The confusion momentarily softened her tone. “You’re telling me he’s a …” She couldn’t find the word.

“Manichaean,” Pearse said. “Yes.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Neither does Ivo being able to recite a seventeen-hundred-year-old prayer that very few people have ever even heard of. But he did.”

“Ivo?” Confusion turned to shock.

“‘So do I stretch out my two hands toward You, all to be formed in the orbit of light.’ In the Latin, ‘Sic tibi manus …’ He told me Salko taught it to him. It’s one of their secrets. He’s obviously very good at keeping them.”

Pearse knew exactly what she was feeling at that moment-disbelief, betrayal, an utter sense of helplessness. He knew because he was still feeling them himself.

“I can’t …” She continued to stare. “Ivo doesn’t … He barely knows any of the prayers at church.”

Pearse pointed to his pack by her feet. “Open it.”

“What?”

“Just open it.”

She hesitated, then reached across the sleeping child and picked up the pack.

“The little book with the rope tie,” he said. “It’s about fifteen pages in.”

She did as she was told. She flipped past Ribadeneyra’s brief history until she found the entries.

“There,” he said, quickly glancing over. “Try the fifth line, then the eleventh.”

She read. “I can’t believe Ivo knows this.”

“Then ask him. Wake him up.” Emerging from a series of back roads, they arrived at a deserted intersection, the first promise of paved surface. A sign for the main highway peeked out from behind a tuft of trees. Pearse headed west.

Petra stared at the page, then back at Pearse.

“Ask him,” he repeated.

She continued to stare. When she realized he wasn’t going to relent, she very gently placed a hand on Ivo’s cheek, bending close into his ear.

“Ivi, sweetie,” she whispered. “If you sleep now, you won’t sleep tonight.”

The boy breathed in heavily, a slight turning of his neck.

“Come on, sweetie. You have to get up.”

Another long breath as two tired eyes blinked in Pearse’s direction, a tiny hand to rub them as the boy straightened up.

“Are we going home?” The nap had done little to improve his mood.

Petra looked at Pearse. “I don’t know, sweetie.”

Pearse didn’t have an answer, either.

Holding the book at her side, she did her best with the Latin: “‘Sic tibi manus meae intendeo …’”

Ivo immediately sat up in her lap, quickly turning to his mother. His look of surprise was almost comical. Just as quickly, he turned to Pearse. “You told her,” he said, disappointment now verging on anger.

“No, she’s reading it.”

Ivo flipped around, only now seeing the book in her hand. “Let me see.”

“Be careful, sweetie. It’s very old.”

“I know, I know. Salko told me.” Ivo waited for his mother to bring the book closer. He then looked back at Pearse. “That’s not the book.”

“Let him see the words,” said Pearse.

Ivo turned. Petra pointed to the lines in the text.

“What are all the other words?” he asked.

“They’re … other songs,” Pearse answered. “They-” Cutting himself short, he quickly glanced over at Ivo. “What book did Salko tell you was old?” he asked.

“The book with the songs,” Ivo answered.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to write them down.”

“That’s only ‘Perfect Light.’ I have a whole book of the other ones.”

A child’s first prayer. Part of a prayer book. Of course. Eyes on the road again, he asked, “Does Salko have that book?”

Ivo shook his head. “No. He gave it to me. When I turned six. Everyone gets one when they turn six. You know that.”

“Right.” A Manichaean primer for initiates. What else could be more obvious? “And you still have the book?” Pearse asked.

Ivo nodded.

“What are you talking about?” asked Petra.

“Where’s the book now?” Pearse said, ignoring her.

“At home,” Ivo answered.

Pearse started nodding to himself.

“What?” asked Petra.

“It’s how he made sure,” he said to himself.

“What are you talking about?”

“Ribadeneyra picked that prayer to make sure that the person who figured out his puzzle was one of them. A Manichaean. Who else would know the child’s prayer? Who else would-” He suddenly slammed on the breaks. All three lurched forward.

“What are you doing?” she screamed, one hand around Ivo, the other strong-arming the dashboard.

“There are lots of prayers in that book, aren’t there, Ivo?”

The little boy didn’t seemed bothered in the least by the sudden stop. “Prayers and pictures and puzzles.” He turned to Petra. “Salko says when I learn enough of them, I can start doing the puzzles.”

Now it was her turn simply to nod.

“It’s something in that book,” Pearse said. “Otherwise, why use the prayer? Something only a Manichaean would know to look for. Something to explain the other Ribadeneyra entries.”

Forgetting Salko for the moment-and everything else that had happened in that last half hour-Pearse jammed the car into gear.

They’d be expecting them in Visegrad. Not Rogatica.

He checked his watch. With any luck, they’d be there by midafternoon.

Peretti heard the explosion, then felt the tremor. His hand immediately went to the wall, one or two picture frames tipping over on themselves from atop his bureau, a painting on the wall losing its nail. A second explosion. Then a third.

Pushing himself to the window, he peered out, the source of the eruption rising in flame no more than a hundred yards from him.

The Domus Sanctae Marthae.

Holy Mother of God.

Through the smoke and fire, he tried to locate the upper floors, now little more than jagged cavities of glass and stone. Inside the Vatican. Not possible. He crossed himself, a prayer for those inside.

The words were barely out of his mouth when he suddenly realized how close he had come to being one of them himself. The decision to return to his apartments had been a last-minute one; even then, it had taken a mighty harangue to convince the guards to let him go. The order had been for all the cardinals-all.

He reached for the phone, only to be drawn to the sight of the first survivors stumbling from the building, their clothes torn, limbs and faces darkened by residue or blood-he couldn’t tell which. There were more than five or six of them, each one falling to the ground, except for the last, who continued to wander aimlessly, lost in a concussed haze, strangely graceful amid the havoc. The others faded into the background as the pinballing man came into focus, unseen barriers sending him this way and that. It lasted less than four or five seconds; a guard arrived to gather him in, the man’s legs still churning even as he was helped to the ground.

Arbitrary movements, thought Peretti, disconnected-at least from the vantage point of reasoned thought. For the man himself, though, the actions had had meaning, purpose-understood only by a mind lost to the shock.

Just as the mayhem itself had meaning. The question was, Whose mind had inspired it?

He picked up the phone.

The door behind him suddenly flew open. Two men raced in, guns drawn.

“It’s all right,” Peretti said, recognizing them. “I’m fine.”

Both men holstered their guns. “We should take you to the Gabbia, Eminence, just in case.”

The Gabbia, short for Gabbia per Uccelli-the birdcage-had been a bomb shelter during the war, six floors below the library, now transformed into the Vatican’s safe house for just such occasions.

Peretti nodded. “I should make some calls first.”

The nearer of the two men took the phone. “There are over a hundred lines downstairs, Eminence. We should go now.”

Nodding, Peretti followed them out.

“You were lucky, Eminence,” said the man now trailing him. “They think over a hundred of the cardinals were inside when the bombs went off. Whoever did this knew exactly when to set them off.”

One more nod.

Who indeed.

Pearse sat in the car, hands clasped in his lap. Ivo was doing the same in the passenger seat. Neither had said a word for the last ten minutes.

He had parked in an alley almost a quarter of a mile from the apartment-on Petra’s instructions. Remarkable how quickly she had been able to take everything in stride, the freedom fighter once again in control. Or maybe it was simply a maternal instinct. No matter. She had been equally clear about who would be going for the book.

“You stay here.” A kiss for Ivo as she’d opened the door.

Pearse had started to follow, Petra quick to stop him. “I was talking to you. You don’t know the area. You don’t know the apartment. And if they are here, they know exactly what you look like.” Stepping outside, she’d turned to him, her voice with an intensity he hadn’t heard in years: “And don’t let Ivo out of your sight. Understand?”

The boy had obviously been through enough of these sorts of situations to know when to stay put.

A confirming nod from Pearse had sent her on her way.

That had been almost fifteen minutes ago.

Now, glancing over at his charge, Pearse couldn’t be sure just exactly which of his transgressions was prompting the silence: the flight from Salko, the absence of Petra. Most likely, it was the forced disclosure of the book’s location. Petra’s tone had been sufficient to unlock Ivo’s secret: a box hidden behind a loose slat in his closet. Salko had evidently helped him to make it.

“Do you think you might ever stop being mad at me?” Pearse finally asked.

Ivo crossed his hands at his chest.

“Can I take that as a maybe?”

The boy clenched his arms even tighter, a snort of air through his nose.

“Okay-a maybe, with a big hug and a very quiet sneeze. Am I getting close?” Silence.

“Don’t try to make me happy,” Ivo finally said.

“Okay.” Silence. “How about I try to make you orange?”

Ivo shot him a glance, his expression somewhere between anger and confusion. “Orange?”

“Well, you won’t let me apologize and make you happy, so I thought I could make you orange.”

Ivo’s arms loosened. “How do you make someone orange?”

“I have no idea. But at least it won’t be making you happy.”

Ivo stared at him for a few seconds, then turned away. “That’s silly. You don’t make any sense.”

“Then how about you let me say I’m sorry?”

Without looking at him, Ivo answered, “You shouldn’t have made me tell. It was my secret with Salko. And you shouldn’t have made us leave Salko. Salko wouldn’t have made me tell Mommy.”

“I know,” said Pearse, watching as Ivo began to play with a rip in the door’s vinyl.

“If it’s so important,” the boy said, “why didn’t you give Mommy your copy of the book?”

Even angry, Ivo was still a very clever little boy. “Well … because your book is special. It’s going to help us find another special book. And I know Salko wants us to find that other book.”

“Then why didn’t he tell you where my book was?”

Very clever.

“Because,” said Pearse, retrieving the Ribadeneyra volume from the dashboard, “he didn’t know I had this book.”

Ivo slowly turned to him. Only slightly less ruffled, he said, “The one Mommy read from.”

“Right,” said Pearse. “Do you want to take a look at it?”

“I saw it already. When Mommy had it.”

Pearse nodded slowly. “Okay. I was just wondering if you wanted to hold it. But if you don’t …”

Ivo stared at the book, then glanced up at Pearse. “I guess I could.” He took the book. “But don’t think this is making me happy. You still shouldn’t have made me tell.”

“Fair enough.”

For a seven-year-old, Ivo showed tremendous care with it, turning back the pages slowly and peering at the words with great concentration. If nothing else, Salko had taught him how to appreciate his past. His was a child’s Latin, enough to pronounce everything correctly, even if he didn’t understand most of what he was saying. He stopped at one point, eyes wide. He turned to Pearse, pointing to a word he recognized.

“Manichaeus,” he said

“Yes, Mani.” To hear Ivo say it with such reverence tore into him. “You know a lot about Mani, don’t you?” he asked.

“I guess. I know the stories from my book.”

“The stories about Mani.”

Ivo nodded.

“Have you read all of them?”

Another nod. Ivo placed the Ribadeneyra on the dashboard and began to count out on his fingers: “‘The Apostle of Light,’ ‘Shapur the King,’ ‘Sowing the Corn,’ ‘Kartir in Darkness,’ ‘Finding the Light.’”

Bible stories for the Brotherhood, thought Pearse. “Which is your favorite?” he asked.

“‘Kartir in Darkness.’”

“Why’s that?”

Ivo shrugged. “I don’t know. Because he gets swallowed up by the darkness at the end.”

“Kartir?”

Ivo nodded.

From what Pearse remembered, Kartir had been the rough equivalent of a Babylonian Pilate. He wondered how many thousands of other little boys had found Kartir’s demise so compelling.

A troubling thought as the door opened and Petra slid in next to Ivo. He was already on her lap, back pressed into her chest, by the time she pulled it shut. A quick kiss, then back to the vinyl.

“Any problems?” Pearse asked.

“They had a car outside. I took the basement route. Don’t worry, they didn’t see me.” She handed him the book. “And it wasn’t just a box. It was like a little shrine.” The anger in her voice was all too plain. “Statues, pictures…. I have no idea what they were for.” She let her head fall back against the partition, her eyes staring out the window, totally unaware of the effect her tone was having on Ivo. “How could he have done that?”

With tears in his eyes, Ivo looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Mommy. Salko said it was okay.”

She looked at him, at once squeezing her arms around him. “Oh, no, sweetie. I’m not angry with you. I’m not angry with you at all.” She kissed the top of his head.

Ivo’s tears slowed. “Are you angry with Salko?”

“Don’t worry about Salko, sweet pea. That’s nothing for you to think about.”

“Don’t be angry with Salko, Mommy.”

“Okay.” Another few kisses. “I won’t.” After a moment, she looked across at Pearse. “So, is it what you thought it was?”

He continued to stare at the two of them.

“What’s in the book, Ian?” she pressed.

He held her gaze, then turned to the book. “Right. The book.”

Its dimensions were that of a small laptop, though far thinner. Across the top-in Serbo-Croatian-ran the title, Verses for Children, nothing to hint at the Manichaean scriptures within. Opening it, Pearse realized the book had recently been rebound, the sheets inside far older than the cover. The title reappeared on the front page, this time in grander script, a sure sign of nineteenth-century publishing. Confirmation came at the bottom of the page, where the year 1866 was inked in thick lettering. Between title and year-in a single column-ran a list of perhaps eight handwritten names, each from a different pen. It was the last few that caught his attention: Alibeg Mendravic, Vlado Mendravic, Salko Mendravic, Ivo Corkan.

A Manichaean lineage brought to life in the scrawled signatures of four six-year-old boys.

Pearse didn’t know whether to be more concerned with the deep-rooted familial devotion or with the book’s obvious professional quality. This wasn’t something that had been produced in a back room by a bunch of zealots, a hundred or so copies to be distributed by hand. This was something far more serious, clearly published on a much larger scale. And if that was the case with the Serbo-Croatian edition, who was to say how many primers had been produced in German or in English? A far more daunting prospect.

Obviously, the Manichaeans hadn’t spent the last seventeen hundred years simply waiting for the return of their Paraclete.

“I wrote my name,” said Ivo, his little finger reaching over to the page, tracing the lettering. “That’s Salko, and Salko’s dad, and his dad. It goes back a long way.” He looked at Pearse. “You have one with your dad, right?”

Pearse felt that now-familiar ache, his own failure for having allowed Ivo to become a part of this. Or was it merely jealousy, Salko’s bond with the boy made clear in the caress of a tiny hand?

“Right,” he answered distractedly, flipping to the next page as quickly as he could.

The table of contents stared back, a list of stories and prayers, each with its first line printed just below the title. Not surprisingly, the only one he recognized was the Ribadeneyra prayer, appropriately titled, “The Awakening.” The title Treasure of Life appeared next to it in parenthesis. He scanned the rest of the page. Each entry sported a parenthetical of its own, several of the titles appearing again and again: Pragmateia, Shahpuhrakan, Book of Giants, Living Gospel, and, most popular, Kephalaia. It didn’t take long to realize that these were the sources for the various verses. Texts thought lost for centuries alive within the pages of a child’s prayer book.

He flipped to “The Awakening.”

As with the “Perfect Light” scroll, tiny sketches of men with daggers and lions on the prowl littered the text. He was about to ask Ivo what they meant, when his eyes stopped on a drawing halfway down the page. At first, he thought it was simply one more triangle-half black, half empty-the ever-present symbol in Manichaean literature. Looking closer, he realized it was far more. Words filled both sides:

Those in the “light” represented the good-the prophets, fruit, wisdom, gnosis. Those in the “darkness,” evil-brothers in conflict, meat, sin, nothingness. A child’s guide to the two realms of the universe.

What Pearse saw, however, astounded him. Half of the words in the triangle coincided exactly with the phrases from the Ribadeneyra entries. It was only their location that puzzled him.

“Hand me my pack,” he said to Petra, his eyes still glued to the page. Ivo quickly leaned forward and picked up the pack; he wasn’t quite strong enough to lift it, Petra lending a hand as he brought it to Pearse’s lap. Staring a few moments longer at the page, Pearse then placed the open book on the dashboard and pulled the papers from inside the pack.

It took him less than five minutes to write out the answers he had deciphered from the one-line through the four-line entries, along with the unsolved five-line verse as Ribadeneyra had written it. He lettered the five separate sections A through E, each with its corresponding line entry. Staring down at the finished copy, he began to see where the Spaniard had been leading him all along.

1. Visegrad A-1 2. Near the awakening A-2 3. Rises A-3 4. When light and darkness meet A-4 5. So do I stretch out my two hands toward You A-5 6. Esau B-1 7. Near the sin of Jacob B-2 8. Becoming B-3 9. Noble bridge B-4 10. All to be formed in the orbit of light B-5 11. Wisdom and piety C-1 12. Over the herbs C-2 13. Opens C-3 14. The Inn C-4 15. When I am sent to the contest with darkness C-5 16. Gnosis strikes wine D-1 17. Floating above D-2 18. Enoch D-3 19. The hills make ascent D-4 20. Knowing that You can assist me in sight D-5 21. Treasure E-1 22. Revealed E-2 23. The enlightener speaks E-3 24. To his disciples E-4 25. The fragrance of life is always within me E-5

The first series was clear enough. “Visegrad, near the awakening, rises when light and darkness meet.” The light and darkness were meeting in the triangle; the triangle was near “The Awakening” in the prayer book; and Visegrad was “rising” from it. Ergo: The triangle somehow represented Visegrad.

Now to the geography of the town. Pearse noticed that the first two or three lines of each set pinpointed different areas in the triangle.

“Esau near the sin of Jacob”-Esau, Peccatum, Jacobus: lower right.

“Wisdom and piety over the herbs”-Sapientia, Pietas, Olera: middle and lower left.

And finally, “Gnosis strikes wine floating above Enoch”-Gnosis, Vinum, Enoch: upper left and right.

Three sides of the triangle.

The last line of each set held the ultimate key. Esau on the lower right became the “noble bridge.” Wisdom on the middle left opened “the inn.” And Gnosis up top defined “the hills.” Three landmarks within Visegrad. Three points of a triangle.

Even without reading the last set, Pearse knew exactly where the “Hodoporia” lay hidden on the map. Where else could it be but with Mani at its center? The treasure revealed in “the enlightener.”

His disciple? The one to solve the mystery.

Like all good Manichaeans, Ribadeneyra had chosen his landmarks well. The bridge, though bombed in the recent war, remained roughly intact. The hills were the hills. The only question was, Where was the inn? Without that third point in the triangle, it would be impossible to locate the center.

“Where can I find an old map of Visegrad?” he asked, tracing the triangle from Ivo’s book onto a separate sheet.

“How old?” Petra asked.

“Sixteenth, seventeenth century.”

She watched him as he continued to draw. “Now where did I leave my sixteenth-, seventeenth-century map of Visegrad?”

Not bothering to look up, he said, “I’m serious.”

“A four-hundred-year-old map? I have no idea. Maybe at the city hall. Why?”

“Because I need to know where something called ‘the inn’ would have been in 1521.”

“At the entry to the old marketplace,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Where the road to Mejdan starts to climb.”

“I said I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Now, he looked up.

“I promise,” she said.

“How do you know where-”

“Because anyone who grew up in this part of the world knows the story of the old inn. It’s one of the first things you learn in school.”

“In school?”

She turned to Ivo and began to sing: “‘The boy from the hills, when he grew to a man-’”

“‘Was known to the world as the Grand Mehmed Pasha,’” Ivo continued with a wide smile. “‘He gave us the bridge near the mighty Stone Han, from Rade the Mason of the great Turkish Empire.’”

Pearse stared at both of them. “What are you talking about?”

Ivo giggled; Petra smiled. She sang again: “‘So went the wood and the hay and stables, the inn tumbled down by the Grand Mehmed Pasha.’”

“‘Say good-bye to the wood and the hay and the stables,’” sang Ivo. “‘Make way for the Han of the Grand Mehmed Pasha.’”

“The Grand who?” Pearse asked.

“Mehmed Pasha of Sokolovici,” she said in her best kindergarten-teacher voice. “He was one of Suleiman’s viziers.” When she saw no change in Pearse’s expression, she said, “A local boy who made good. Around 1570, he decided he wanted to bring civilization to Bosnia, so he built the bridge, and, with it, the Stone Han-‘the great caravanserai.’ Hence the song.”

“And what does that have to do with the inn?”

“The inn stood on the spot where they built the Stone Han,” she explained.

Pearse began to nod slowly. “But first he tore down the wood and the hay-”

“‘Tumbled down,’” said Ivo.

“Right. ‘Tumbled down.’ Sorry, Ivi.” He waited for a nod. He then turned back to Petra. “And the old inn would have been there fifty years before this pasha decided to be so magnanimous?”

“Well, no one’s really sure when the old inn was built,” she said, “but the legend goes back to at least the early 1400s. That’s why it was such a big deal when he ‘tumbled it down.’”

“So anyone who came through Visegrad, say in 1521, would have known about the old inn?”

“Absolutely.”

Pearse thought to himself for a moment. “Would you be able to pick out the spot where the old inn would have been on a current map of the city?”

“Sure.”

He handed her the pages, the book, and the pack.

Half a minute later, they were on the road to Visegrad.

There was something distinctly non-Vatican about the rooms buried under the library, a coldness in gray steel to repel even a spiritual fire. Peretti had never been to the Gabbia before, the place an odd mixture of 1950s nuclear-provisioned and 1990s high-tech-obsessed. Doors several feet thick separated one room from the next, each fitted with an air-lock device, what he could only describe as an iron steering wheel wedged in at the center. They were archaic contrivances, however, when compared to the electronic gizmos that lined the walls, the oncespacious bunker now turned into very cramped quarters. Living areas had become computer rooms, open-atria communications centers.

A base from which to maintain the faith, even in the face of Cold War annihilation.

The only space that retained any link with the city above was the chapel, two stories high, squeezed in at the back of the complex: marble panels camouflaged the steel walls and floors; the flicker of chandeliers replaced the hum of fluorescent lights; paintings hung above the altar-Peretti recognized a Filippo Lippi-a gentle reminder of what they were here to protect; and, along the nave, twin rows of richly grained pews extended to the back wall.

All of them empty save for the nine shaken cardinals sitting alone in silent prayer.

Peretti glanced at the bent figures. They were, for the most part, i vecchii, “the old ones,” cardinals beyond eighty, who no longer voted in the conclave but whose spiritual presence remained essential. It was their age that had saved them, too slow to get back to the Sanctae Marthae in time for the explosions. Little consolation in that. The oldest was Virgilio Cardinal Dezza, long ago Archbishop of Ferrara, a tiny rail of a man with a full head of white hair. Peretti had talked with him just this morning, nothing about the vote (of course), but about the beauty of the Sistine. Dezza had admitted he had always had a certain soft spot for the pagan sibyls on the ceiling-a thought that perhaps Michelangelo had painted them with a little more care, just to get a jab in at old Julius II. It had made him laugh; Peretti had laughed, as well.

Now, Dezza seemed a broken man.

Peretti dipped his fingers in the holy water, crossed himself, and knelt in the aisle. He then made his way to Dezza’s side. The old man’s eyes were closed. Peretti closed his as well and began to pray.

When he opened them, Dezza was looking up at him, a pained smile on his lips.

“Peretti.” He placed a hand on his knee. “You weren’t …” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought. “Thanks be to God. It’s a terrible thing. Terrible.”

Peretti nodded.

“And the rest of it,” the old man continued. “Is it a sign? Hail and fire, mixed with blood, falling to the earth. Is He coming?”

Dezza had reached that point in life where tragedy could be understood only as omen. Not unusual for men so long devoted to the church. “Terrorists, Eminence,” Peretti said. He had known Dezza for too many years-first as bishop, then as cardinal-not to call him by anything but his title. “They were bound to find their way into the Vatican at some point.”

The old man looked at him. “But it isn’t just here, Giacomo. It isn’t just the Vatican, is it?”

Peretti wasn’t sure what to make of the expression-a genuine terror or a hint of senility-peering up at him. “The church is strong,” he said. “There are others who will take their places.”

Confusion crossed the old man’s face. “Take their places?” he said. “Even if they’re rebuilt, who will have the courage to step inside one?”

Peretti stared at him for several seconds. “What are you talking about, Eminence?”

“The churches, Giacomo. The churches.”

“What churches?”

“The ones they destroyed,” he said. “Hundreds of them.”

Again, Peretti stared at the old man. “What are you talking about?”

“In the room with the screens,” Dezza said. “It’s all in the room with the screens. The church in flames. Hail and fire, mixed with blood. Hail and fire.” His focus was back on the altar, his hands clasped in prayer. He closed his eyes, the conversation all but forgotten.

Peretti stood, a quick devotion, then back into the maze of corridors that made up the Gabbia. Three minutes later, he found his way into “the room with the screens.” Thirty or so televisions filled the far wall, each one tuned to a different channel. The pictures were all too similar. Destruction on a massive scale. Stepping farther into the room, he saw von Neurath sitting on a sofa, a group of young priests in chairs around him, each one either jotting furiously on a pad or talking on the phone. It was clear who was dictating their every move. Every so often, von Neurath looked up to catch a report on one of the news programs. Otherwise, his energy remained focused on his entourage. It was during one of his quick glances up that he noticed Peretti in the corner.

He turned to him at once.

“Cardinal Peretti,” he said. “They told me you were safe. Thank God you’re alive.”

Peretti remained by the door. “Yes, Holiness.”

“A terrible tragedy, Giacomo. You and I were very lucky.”

When he spoke, Peretti’s words carried no emotion. “Then there must be a reason why He spared us, Holiness.”

The two men continued to stare at each other. “Yes,” von Neurath said finally. “There must.” He turned to the screens. “And then this,” he said. “It’s all quite unbelievable.”

“Yes, Holiness.”

“I thought we had enough trouble with the bank,” von Neurath added, passing a few notes to one of his lackeys. “But I see I was wrong.”

“Trouble at the bank?” Peretti asked, his tone more confirmation than surprise.

“You haven’t heard?” Von Neurath looked up, waiting for a response. When Peretti shook his head, he continued. “Not surprising. I found out myself less than an hour ago.” He turned again to the notes. “It looks as if one of our analysts has placed the bank in a rather precarious position with a group of Syrian investors. It’s Ambrosiano all over again, except this time there’s talk of terrorist funding. I’m not really sure of the details.”

“Remarkable timing, Holiness.”

“Yes. Yes, it is. And they say all of this might be only the beginning.”

“They, Holiness?”

Again von Neurath stopped and turned to Peretti. Pointing to the screens, he said, “They, my son. A thousand churches bombed, every continent, every denomination.”

It was the last word that struck him. “Denomination?” Peretti asked.

“It’s the Protestants as well, Giacomo. And the Greeks and the Russians.” He began to scribble something on a pad. “It seems as if it’s an all-out war on Christianity.”

Peretti waited before responding. “Do they say from where, Holiness?”

“An old enemy,” von Neurath replied, handing a sheet to the man seated across from him. “From the East. Given this new wave of fundamentalism, I suppose it was bound to happen at some point.”

“I see.” Peretti stared up at the screens. It was more than just destruction he saw. Groups had already begun to rally, outraged men and women waiting to unleash their venom, not a pastor or priest in sight to calm them. Blood lust left to run wild. He turned to von Neurath. “Then we must do what we can to ensure that our church remains strong, Holiness.”

Again, von Neurath looked over at him. “Yes. We must.”

An explosion on one of the screens drew the attention of everyone in the room. Peretti took it as his cue to leave.

He let himself stand in the corridor for a moment, the enormity of what he had just seen and heard quickly relegated to the back of his mind. An all-out war on Christianity. Orchestrated from within the Vatican? If so, it meant that the last place he should be was inside its walls. Peretti headed for the entrance.

A pair of guards stood silently by the door, a third at a desk, all three with guns at the ready. Peretti approached the man at the desk. The guard recognized him at once and stood.

“Is something wrong, Eminence?”

Peretti shook his head quickly. “No, but I need to leave the Gabbia for a few minutes.”

“That’s not possible, Eminence. It’s still not safe.”

“Then when will it be safe?”

The question seemed to fluster the man momentarily. “I … would imagine once the City has been secured, Eminence.”

“And how long do we think that will take?”

Again, the guard had no answer.

Before he could respond, Peretti continued. “Because if it’s later than tonight’s first Mass, then we have a problem. His Holiness has asked me to retrieve a certain book from the library. For the Investiture of Office.” Peretti was making it up as he went. Von Neurath had become Pope the moment he’d answered the cardinal dean’s question, “Volo aut nolo?” with a resounding “Yes.” That he’d have to wait a few days to have the woollen pallium bestowed on him made no difference whatsoever. Chances were, though, that a young Vatican guard knew none of that. “His Holiness must be ordained as quickly as possible, especially given the situation. It’s a simple task, but we will need that book.”

“Of course. I can send one of my men-”

“Will he know where to find the Ritus Inaugurationis Feudalis Praedicationis?” Not that there was an actual Investiture Proclamation lying around the library-not that such a proclamation even existed-but it sounded reasonable enough.

“Well … if someone tells him where it is.”

“That wouldn’t make any difference. It can’t be handled by anyone but a cardinal. Am I now making myself clear?”

“No. I mean, yes, of course, Eminence.” The man glanced at the two other guards. Both stared straight ahead. No help there. He looked back at Peretti. “You mean he isn’t Pope yet?”

Peretti waited, then responded. “I can stand here and have this conversation with you for as long as you like. But at some point, you’re going to have to open that door and let me get the Ritus.”

“But His Holiness-I mean His Eminence …” The guard leaned over the table; in a whisper, he said, “Cardinal von Neurath said that no one was to leave. He gave an express order.”

Peretti leaned in, as well. “Well, until he’s Pope, that order carries no more weight than my own, now does it?”

The guard needed a moment for that one. With a newfound resilience, he walked to the door, punched a few numbers into a keypad, and watched as the air lock released. “You,” he said to the man nearest him. “Go with His Eminence. Gun cocked at all times. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

The guard turned back to Peretti. “And if you could, Eminence, come back as quickly as possible.”

“Of course,” said Peretti. “I want to keep myself as safe as I can.”

The bookshop had all the tourist trappings: picture books on the bridge, postcards, even a few coffee mugs. Ivo had been particularly interested in a scale model of the bridge, the dust on the box saying more about the region’s recent history than any number of news stories could have. The man at the cash register had virtually beamed at the sight of the three of them perusing the stacks, less enthusiastic when Petra had pulled a map from one of the shelves and moved them to the back of the store. No need to be by the windows. Not that she expected Salko’s friends to be prowling the outskirts of town-less so a bookstore-but she’d done too much to make their arrival as inconspicuous as possible to jeopardize those efforts now.

They had stopped in Ustipraca-a town halfway between Rogatica and Visegrad-Petra friendly enough with the shopkeepers to rummage for something a little more provincial: long skirt and kerchief for her, coat, brimless cap, and a new pair of boots for him, along with a bundle of cloth put together to look like an infant in her arms. Three became four with a small blanket and a few pages of newspaper crumpled up inside. Most bizarre was her insistence that Ivo don a girl’s long skirt and kerchief of his own. He’d giggled his way through it all, Pearse thinking it a bit much, until he’d looked at all of them in a mirror. By then, she’d applied some stipple from a child’s makeup kit to his face, five days’ growth of beard to add to the image of the nondescript Bosnian family. Pearse had had trouble recognizing them himself.

Now, gazing at a map of the town, and acutely aware of the few other customers in the shop, he was grateful for the camouflage.

“There,” whispered Petra, pointing to a spot on the map. “The old inn would have been there.”

Pearse pulled a sheet from his jacket and placed it above the map. Tracing the inn, bridge, and hills, he marked an X for Mani’s location in the original triangle. He then peeled the page back.

“That can’t be right,” he said as he stared down at the area.

“That’s where the inn-”

“It puts him in the middle of the river,” he said, trying it again so as to make sure he hadn’t miscalculated.

“Let me see,” she said, taking the map.

Pulling the tracing away, Pearse pinpointed the three landmarks. “There, there, and there,” he said. “Which puts Mani there,” he added, his finger in the middle of the Drina.

“That can’t be right.”

“I just said that.”

Her eyes still on the page, she asked, “Which are your three landmarks?”

Trying not to show his frustration, he said, “The bridge, the hills, and your inn, which obviously wasn’t where you thought it was.”

When she looked up, the expression on her face only served to annoy him further.

“What?” he said.

“I’ll give you the inn and the hills, but you’ve got the wrong bridge.”

“What?”

“1521, Ian. The great bridge wasn’t built until fifty years later. Remember the song?”

Pearse didn’t answer.

“It’s the bridge over the Rzav River, not the Drina,” she said. “That’s the one your Manichaean was referring to.” She placed her finger on the map. “The Rzav is the other river in town, which happens to be there.”

Pearse brought the tracing up to the map. Angling it so as to accommodate the new landmark, he saw where Mani’s X had come to rest. Nowhere near the Drina. Luckily, there was only one site of interest in the vicinity, the name all too obvious as Pearse thought about it.

“‘Izvor za Spanski,’” he read. “Ribadeneyra was obviously more homesick than he let on.” He turned to Petra. “What’s a Spanish fountain doing in Visegrad?”

She looked more closely at the map. “It’s in the Cetvrt za Jevrejin, the old Jewish Quarter.”

Pearse began to nod. “Makes sense. A lot of Jews came east after the Spanish Expulsion. It’s the right time frame. They must have built it as some sort of memorial.”

Before he could ask, she said, “About fifteen minutes from here.”

He carried Ivo, she the “baby,” the streets relatively quiet for the late afternoon. The farther on they walked into town, however, the more the place began to fill, stores reopening after the protracted midday nap, more bodies on the streets to make Pearse feel a bit more comfortable.

It was when they reached the old marketplace that he recognized the first of the outsiders, men flaunting their conspicuousness-receivers with wires attached to their ears, handheld radios, not to mention the telltale dark suits of Vatican security. None of them seemed to notice the stares from the locals.

Pearse started to turn down a side street so as to avoid them, when he felt Petra slip her arm through his. She began to lead him directly toward one of the Vatican men.

Instinctively, he began to tug her back the other way. Almost at once, he stopped, aware that the movement would only draw more attention.

A numbing sensation began to course through his legs and torso as they drew closer to the man. In that instant, he knew only the betrayal: I’m no good with Latin … You’re frightening me. He had shown her where the “Hodoporia” was. There was no need to keep up the pretense any longer, no need to lead him around by the nose. Of course she had known what Salko was teaching her son. Of course she had been a part of it all along. How could I have been so stupid?

They were within a few feet of the man, Pearse ready for the final Judas kiss, when Petra simply glanced at the man, then continued moving on. With his heart pounding, Pearse moved on, as well.

“It’s only if you look like you’re trying to avoid them that they’ll notice you,” she said when they were out of earshot. “They’re not looking for a family of four with a seven-year-old girl, remember? If we’d gone down that side street, we’d be running for our lives right now.”

The best Pearse could do was nod.

He was still breathing heavily when she led them up into an area of town where the houses were packed in tighter together, narrow streets making it difficult for the sun to break through.

“I though for a minute back there-”

“I know,” she answered without looking at him. “Remember, you have to trust me.”

The moment in the village repaid in full.

They walked along the cobbled shadows for several minutes until she turned down a short alley-no sign of the Vatican faithful this far off the beaten path. Following the curve of the passageway, they came into a small courtyard of dirt and grass.

“‘Izvor za Spanski,’” she said.

Pearse stood there, staring at the small fountain at its center. All was forgiven.

The square itself was perhaps thirty yards in either direction, the buildings along the perimeter sagging under the weight of ancient stone and wood. No more than four stories high, they looked to be resting against one another, squeezing out what little support they could as they peered out into the courtyard. Two trees stood at the opposite corners, wide branches filled with leaves to blanket the square in even deeper shadow. A group of children was playing soccer in front of one of the more ancient houses, its decay helped along by the constant thumping of the ball. None of them seemed to notice as the small family neared the fountain.

Drawing to within ten feet of it, Pearse stopped again. He was hoping that, with the “Hodoporia” so close at hand, he might reclaim that same sense of wonder he had known at Photinus; instead, all he felt was a strange kind of ambivalence. Not that he was any less drawn to the promise of clarity, but somehow it seemed tied to a part of himself that sought release in isolation. And that no longer made any sense to him.

He placed Ivo on the ground, took his hand, and together they began to circle the fountain. A second memory of Photinus fixed in his mind-Gennadios scooping handful after handful of water to his soaked neck-a thought that perhaps Ribadeneyra had chosen the fountain not for its reminiscence of home but for its uncanny resemblance to the one on Athos. The only significant difference was that this one hadn’t seen water in quite some time: cracks lined the inner pool; once-green algae deposits had turned an inky black; and, at the top, where the Photinus spout had sported a monk in prayer, here the figure was a man looking back over his shoulder. Pearse noticed that, at one point, the water had streamed from the top of his head, a fitting stain now on his cheek, perhaps the last tears for a country he had been forced to leave behind.

Pearse couldn’t help but wonder if he might be looking up at old Ribadeneyra himself.

Compelling as it was, there was nothing to indicate where a Manichaean might have chosen to hide his stash in the stone. And given its contents, Pearse couldn’t imagine that the Spaniard had picked a spot anywhere near the water. He crouched down and began to examine the underside of the fountain. Ivo did the same.

“What are we looking for?” the boy asked, forced to bring his skirt up over his knees so as to avoid tripping over it.

“Not really sure,” said Pearse.

Ivo nodded and continued to scrutinize the stones.

“It might be something you’ve seen in your book,” Pearse said, busy with his own investigation.

Again, Ivo nodded, now on hands and knees, crawling in the opposite direction around the fountain.

“He’s getting filthy,” said Petra.

As one, Ivo and Pearse looked up at her, the expressions of annoyance identical.

“Wonderful,” she said as she sat on the fountain’s ledge. “Now I get it in stereo.”

Crawling to within a few feet of her, Pearse located the date of the fountain’s completion: 1521. Ribadeneyra had evidently been here for its construction, further confirmation that they were in the right place. He was just moving past her when Ivo popped his head up from the other side.

“I found it! I found it!” His reaction was enough to warrant a momentary break in the soccer match.

Pearse jumped up and moved around to him. “Great, great … but remember, we have to be quiet.”

“But I found it,” Ivo answered, no less excited.

Again, Pearse crouched down. Immediately, he understood why Ivo had called him over. Where the rest of the stones along the fountain’s base were rectangular, Ivo had found one made up of two distinct triangular pieces. More than that, each triangle had a lighter and darker side, hardly visible from a distance, but there nonetheless.

Not only had Ribadeneyra been around for its construction, he’d obviously taken part in the stonework. Pearse glanced up at the figure again. They really were a very clever bunch.

“Excellent,” he said, shooting a finger at Ivo and winking. Ivo’s eyes lit up; he returned the gesture, then gave a little giggle as he looked over at his mother.

“See, I told you Americans do that.”

“Yes, you did,” she said, then looked at Pearse in mock appreciation.

Her reaction was lost on him as he was already busy with the stone. Placing his hand on it, he tried to move it. No chance. He pulled back and stared at the surrounding area. Ivo immediately placed his hand on the stone and pressed against it. He, too, shook his head and pulled back.

“What do you think?” said Pearse, still trying to locate something else on the stone face that might hint at a way through. No acrostics, no levers.

Ivo shrugged and again pressed at the stone. “It’s pretty hard.”

“Yup,” Pearse said, his eyes wandering along the strips of mortar. “Pretty hard.” He began to feel around the surrounding stones. Not so much as a crack. Remarkable craftsmanship, he thought, except that, as he now stared at it from ground level, Pearse saw that the fountain leaned a few inches to one side. Or if not leaned, then at least sat on an uneven foundation. The closer in he looked, however, the more it struck him that the stones had just settled over time. Which meant that whatever Ribadeneyra had left for the “disciple” to discover might simply have gotten buried as sections of the fountain had sunk deeper into the ground.

Taking that as his cue, Pearse began to run his fingers along the spot where stone met dirt, the soil coming away with a bit of effort. Within a minute, he’d created a little gully, enough to use a small rock for digging. Ivo, of course, had begun to help with a rock of his own. Meanwhile, Petra was keeping an eye on the passageway into the courtyard; she was also monitoring the soccer players, each of whom was becoming more and more interested in the group by the fountain.

“You have an audience,” she said to Pearse under her breath.

He glanced over at the children, then turned back. “Hopefully, it’ll be a short show.”

A few more inches, and he began to make out tiny markings chiseled into the stone. Brushing aside the excess dirt-but with no angle to read it-he began to trace his fingers across the symbols. It took him nearly a minute to figure out what they were. Letters. Four of them. Greek-???? “earth.”

Not terribly helpful, but at least it was a start. Another few inches, and a second word. This one, three letters. His old friend??? “light.”

Pearse realized that Ribadeneyra had returned to the original “Perfect Light” scroll for his final message. Once again, everything was flipped on its head. Earth above light, the mundane over the sacred. And, as with everything having to do with the Manichaeans, he was meant to take it literally. The earth was covering the light.

He continued to dig.

By now, the soccer quartet had moved closer, still keeping their distance, though with the ball wedged under an arm, the sure sign that their interests had shifted. The biggest of them, a girl of maybe twelve, tried to peer past Pearse to see what he was doing. “Did you lose something?” she asked.

Pearse looked over his shoulder, then at Petra. Before he could come up with an answer, she said, “My husband’s a stonemason. He wants to see what kind of stones were used on the fountain.”

The girl nodded and continued to stare. After another few minutes, she asked, “Is there something special about our fountain?”

“It’s very old,” said Pearse, repositioning himself so as to dig wider and deeper. “Strong stone.”

Again the girl nodded. It seemed enough to satisfy her curiosity. The children returned to the wall, the digging once again accompanied by the thump-thumping of the ball.

“Did you hear that, Ivo?” Pearse said, pulling up another handful of loosened soil. “I’m Rade the Mason of the great Turkish Empire.”

Ivo giggled, more eager to get his hands as mud-filled as possible than to remove the dirt. “‘So went the wood and the hay and stables,’” he sang, “‘the inn tumbled down by the Grand Mehmed Pasha.’”

“‘Say good-bye to the wood and the hay and the stables,’” Pearse answered, “‘when the inn tumbles down-’”

“Noooo.” Ivo laughed. “You got it wrong.” And then in a tone he could have borrowed only from his mother, he said dismissively, “You Americans.”

Pearse stopped digging. He began to laugh as he looked up at Petra. “I wonder where he heard that?”

She couldn’t help but smile. “I wonder.” She reached over and planted a kiss on Ivo’s head, a quick muddy paw up to discourage her.

“Mommy, we’re digging. You can’t interrupt our job. Me and Ian. It’s very important.”

“I know. Very important.” Another kiss.

“Mommy!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll let you get back to your job.” She glanced at Pearse, then turned to the courtyard entryway.

How different from the last time he’d tried to unearth the “Hodoporia,” thought Pearse. No children’s songs or soccer balls. No Petra in the Vault of the Paraclete. The change in venue seemed somehow appropriate, less of Mani and more of the stonemason. Or carpenter. Either would have done.

The hole was nearly a foot deep when he uncovered what felt like an iron bar sticking out from the base of the fountain. He traced it to the wall. There, he discovered a small indentation in the stone, one that extended some four inches up, and which was exactly the same width as the bar. It was caked with mud. He chiseled into the dirt and found that the slot went deep enough into the stone for him to place his fingers fully inside of it. More than that, he found that the bar continued on through the slot, into a hollow in the belly of the fountain.

He had simply cleaned out the groove along which the bar could be moved.

His first inclination was to pull up. After all, what else would the slot be there for? Then again, these were the Manichaeans. Up meant down. Even so, he reached in and tried pulling up. It wouldn’t budge. After the third attempt, he decided to continue digging below the bar. There, too, he found a groove, the continuation of the slot heading straight down. Reaching underneath the iron handle, he did his best to clear it out. With enough room to get his fingers around the handle, and with the now eight-inch groove unblocked, he turned to Ivo. “Okay, watch out,” he said, repositioning himself so as to gain as much leverage as he could. Ivo moved to the side.

Going with his first instincts, Pearse put his full weight onto the bar and began to push down. It took several seconds of constant pressure to make it move, but when it did, he realized why the slot ran in both directions: the handle inched downward on an angle toward the wall. The other end of the bar-the one extending into the hollow-was moving up, filling in the upper groove like a counterweight. He had no idea how the mechanism worked, nor did he care as he saw the lower of the two triangular pieces begin to dislodge from its partner. It was forming a gap in the fountain’s base.

“Look! Look!” said Ivo.

Pearse nodded and again pushed down with all his weight. Another quarter of an inch.

Ivo brought his hands to his face, his muddy little fingers shaking with anticipation. Petra did her best to keep them out of his mouth. Ivo at once latched onto her arms, eyes fixed on the stone, his feet hopping every time there was even a hint of movement. “Look, Mommy! Look!”

“I see it, sweetie.” She tried to rub the mud from his hands with her own.

On the fourth try, the stone finally gave way, the bar rotating flat into the slot. Pearse pulled his arm up from the hole and sat, a little winded from the exertion. As he looked into Ivo’s eyes, he felt a faint tremor of anticipation, a distant echo of what he had known in Photinus.

The “Hodoporia” was here.

He reached his hand into the gap and blindly groped his way through. There was an odd feel to the air, somehow heavier, yet with none of the dampness he expected. The few times his fingers rubbed against the stone, there, too, he was surprised by the texture, dry and cold, flawlessly smooth, no signs of decay. He attributed it to the strange mechanism, the bar and counterweight evidently having produced an almost perfectly insulated space. With his arm halfway down the opening, he hit on something metallic with rough iron edges, the feel of tiny bolts running under his fingertips. Another box.

Ambivalence or not, his heart kicked into high gear.

He reached his fingers around the side of the box and began to lift. He half-expected it to be tied down, one more trick to unravel before bringing it into the light. Instead, it came up easily. Angling it through the opening, he set it down at his side.

The box was identical to the one Ribadeneyra had used on Athos. Same size, same meaningless latch. Pearse looked up at Ivo and Petra.

“Well, here it is,” he said. Channeling his nervous energy, he reached back into the hole and pulled up on the bar. The two stones came back together. He then began to push the dirt back in.

Ivo quickly knelt down, the same chocolate-hopeful expression spread across his face as he offered to help. “It’s pretty old, isn’t it?” he said.

“Pretty old,” answered Pearse, tamping down the last of the soil. He brushed away as much of the dirt on his hands as he could, then picked up the box and sat on the lip of the fountain. Ivo stood and edged in close to his side, his eyes transfixed on the prize now in Pearse’s lap.

The mud was still thick under his nails as Pearse struggled with the latch. It finally gave way, the same velvet and gold coins waiting inside. This time, though, the glass dome was considerably bigger. It had to be; a scroll, not a booklet, lay underneath. Like its “Perfect Light” counterpart, it was bound in leather, two tie-strings holding it together. He was about to separate the dome from the velvet, when he saw the state of his hands. He turned to Petra.

“I probably shouldn’t touch it,” he said. “You’re going to have to open it up.”

She hesitated.

“I could do it,” piped in Ivo, ready to grab the dome.

Petra moved in quickly. “That’s okay, sweetie.” She reached over and placed the box on her lap. With a nod of encouragement from Pearse, she gently pulled the dome from its sealant. She looked at him.

“Go ahead,” he said, a strange tingling now in his throat.

She placed her hand on the scroll and immediately pulled it away. “It’s … oily.”

The moisture of the leather … Pearse could only marvel at Ribadeneyra’s ingenuity. He’d created enough of a vacuum both inside the fountain and the dome to keep the scroll in relatively good condition.

“That’s a good thing,” he said. “Try untying the straps. Gently.”

She started to touch them, then stopped. “You’re sure you don’t want to do this yourself?”

He smiled. “Did I leave my sink next to your sixteenth-century map?”

“I just think-wouldn’t it be smarter if you did this?”

As much as he now desperately wanted to hold it, he knew he couldn’t take the risk of harming the scroll. “I think we should see what’s inside.”

Again she hesitated. “All right.” She deftly inched the knot apart, then laid the strands at the side.

“Now peel back the binding. If you feel anything start to give, stop.”

She did as she was told, rolling back the first inch of leather. A strip of vellum appeared, straw-colored, gritty even to look at. She turned to Pearse. He nodded; she rolled back a bit more.

The edge of a separate sheet of parchment, distinct from the scroll itself, suddenly appeared between leather and vellum.

“What do I do with that?” she asked.

For a brief moment, Pearse entertained the frightening thought that perhaps they’d uncovered the next clue on the wild-goose chase. Unwilling to indulge it for more than a few seconds, he said, “Just keep rolling it back.”

Another few turns, and she had unrolled enough so that the separate sheet could be pulled out easily. With a little encouragement she did just that, holding it out in front of him so he could read it.

“It’s from Ribadeneyra,” he said as he read the Latin. “April 1521. ‘Take the gold … leave the scroll’”-his eyes racing along-“‘let this be an act of contrition….’” More nodding as he explained. “It’s the same thing he did on Photinus. Except this time he finishes up the story.” Paraphrasing as he went, Pearse read, “He got here in 1520…. He knew he wasn’t well…. Mani found him this spot to die…. ‘Praise be to Mani,’ so forth and so on.” He nodded for her to flip the sheet over. “That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“It says he helped design the fountain. He even laid some of the stonework….” Reading several lines, Pearse said nothing, his eyebrows arching as he scanned the text. “Wow.

That’s why,” he finally said. “That’s why what?” she asked.

“You really were very clever, weren’t you?” he said to the sheet, disregarding her question. “A Manichaean through and through.”

“What?” she asked again.

He looked over at her. “Ribadeneyra. He explains why we found those pieces of parchment eight years ago in Slitna.” Before she could ask, he continued. “According to this, before he died, he sent a handful of men out with packets of pressed vellum, each filled with messages written in Eastern Syriac, not Latin. Something about the purity of the original tongue.”

“Eastern what?”

“It’s not important. The point is, the men were told to hide the pieces in churches throughout Europe. That’s what we found. Each of the packets had a clue to where the ‘Perfect Light’ scroll was hidden. In other words, he basically had them replant the clues that he’d found himself during his twenty-year search. He’d already reburied the ‘Perfect Light’ scroll back in Istanbul before heading west, and he was banking on the fact that someone, at some point in time-depending on Mani’s will-would piece the packets together and find his way to the ‘Perfect Light.’”

“The scroll your monk friend gave you in Rome.”

“Cesare. Exactly. His friend, a man named Ruini, actually found the ‘Perfect Light’ scroll in Istanbul. He then gave it to Cesare, who gave it to me. The ‘Perfect Light’ was what lead me to Photinus, where, instead of finding the real prize, I found Ribadeneyra’s own little book-the one with all the cryptograms-which was simply meant to add one more step to the hunt for the ever-elusive ‘Hagia Hodoporia.’”

“This,” she said, holding up the recently unearthed scroll.

“Right. Before he died, Ribadeneyra hid the ‘Hodoporia’ inside this fountain, and then sent his last helper back to Photinus to hide the little book of cryptograms in the Vault of the Paraclete. End of story.”

“Cautious man,” she said.

“Or terribly devout. The two seem to go hand in hand with these people. At least when they’re dealing with their ‘Hodoporia.’”

She thought about it, then said, “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that you happened to be there when one of those packets was found outside of Slitna, and now you’re here?”

Pearse looked up from the page. It took him a moment to respond. “We gave those pages to Salko, didn’t we?”

She nodded.

Again, he waited. He turned to her. “I can’t worry about that now. I need to find out what this thing is. There’s a woman in Rome who’s depending on that.”

She placed the sheet back in the box, then looked at him. “Things have gotten a little more complicated, I think.” She held his gaze, then looked past him to Ivo, whose head was resting up against Pearse’s shoulder. “How are you doing, sweetie? You holding up okay?”

Ivo nodded quickly. He then looked at Pearse. “How are you doing, Ian?”

“Fine, Ivi. Fine.”

Ivo pulled in even closer, and, in a whisper, said, “Can I have one of those gold coins?”

Pearse smiled. “Sure. Take as many as you want.”

Petra reached into the box and handed him several of the coins. “Why don’t you go play with them over there, sweetie. We still need to read some more of this.”

Ivo skipped off, hands cupped around the coins. He picked a spot about twenty feet from them and sat down.

Petra continued to watch him. “Much more complicated.”

Pearse watched the boy, as well. And he nodded.

Without warning the sound of an explosion rocked the courtyard, followed by a violent tremor. Ivo quickly got to his feet. At the same instant, the children playing soccer darted into the middle of the courtyard and lay flat on the ground. Within seconds, others were emerging from the buildings-the old and the young-the courtyard’s center their focus, as well. Petra handed Pearse the box and ran toward Ivo, who had already run out into the open area and was now lying facedown with the rest. Pearse followed, all of them flat on the ground when the sound of sirens began to blare.

“That didn’t sound like an artillery shot,” he said.

“It wasn’t,” she answered.

“Then why are we all lying out in the open like this?”

She looked over at him. “Because some habits die hard, Ian.”

He remembered his days in Slitna, the first rule of survival: get out of the buildings. He peered around at the old women and children, all of them facedown in the grass and dirt. Slowly, the heads began to rise. Each one listened intently for the sound of another blast. As the minutes passed and the sirens grew louder, they began to get to their feet. En masse, they headed for the passageway.

Pearse, Petra, and Ivo fell in behind, close enough to hear snippets of conversations, the word crkva the most frequent.

Pearse leaned into Petra as they walked. “What church are they talking about?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

The maze of alleyways took them back toward the marketplace, more and more people on the streets as they neared the open area. Pearse felt the heat of the explosion before he saw it, that once-familiar tang of gasoline and sulfur. With the rest, he stopped at the edge of the marketplace, far enough out, though, to see a building rising in flames no more than a hundred yards from them.

The scene was mayhem, people lying in the street, two cars on their sides, undercarriages on fire. Storefront glass lay scattered everywhere; a few larger shards had landed with such force that they looked liked great crystal teeth imbedded in the pavement. Nothing was more harrowing, though, than the sight of the bloodied survivors screaming their way down the street, one woman carrying a child who was clearly no longer alive. Others had raced out to help them, some from an unseen ambulance corps, still more from the growing crowds, the area a haze of zigzagging bodies.

Pearse pushed his way through, unaware that he was still toting the iron box in his hands. He never felt the tug from Petra as he raced out and headed for the first person he could reach.

She was a woman in her twenties, seated almost serenely on the ground, staring mindlessly at her leg. Somehow, something metal had twisted its way into her calf. Pearse pulled off his coat and draped it around her shoulders; she didn’t seem to notice he was there. He looked up to see if there was anyone even remotely medical nearby, but there were too many people to make out anything clearly.

“And the fish,” she said, now looking up at him. “Before he runs out of it.”

Pearse looked down. There was hardly any focus in her eyes. He nodded. “You’re going to be fine,” he said.

He noticed an area across the way where they were beginning to bring the wounded. He looked back at the woman. “I’m going to pick you up now. Is that all right?”

The woman said nothing.

As carefully as he could, he placed one arm under her leg, the other around her back, and began to lift. At once, she started screaming. Moving as quickly as he could across the street, he arrived at the makeshift triage area, a voice somewhere in front of him telling him where to put her. Pearse set her down.

“That’s great. Thank you. Now you need to clear this area,” the man said. “No more heroics today.”

Pearse began to answer, but the man was gone.

It was then that he realized he had left the box in the middle of the street. He spun around to try to find it, only to see Petra and Ivo standing with it. She no longer had the “baby”; Ivo had lost his kerchief. More than that, his skirt remained up around his waist, his muddied pants in full view. Pearse started toward them. He was barely out into the street when he saw a man in a dark suit converging on them.

Pearse began to run. Ducking through the mayhem, he watched as Petra began to make her way into the crowds at the edge of the marketplace, the black box in hand. It was clear from her body language that she was fully aware of the man trailing after her. She and Ivo slipped into the mass of people, the man-speaking into a radio-ten yards behind them. Within seconds, he, too, was moving through the crowds. Pearse fell in behind all three.

At once, he realized Petra was trying to use the crowd to get herself around the perimeter of the marketplace. With Ivo in tow, though, she had no hope of losing the man; the spacing between them began to close. Pearse drew nearer as well, the man so intent on his prey that he never considered the possibility that he might have a tail of his own. Only once did Petra look back, Pearse certain that she had seen him. He wasn’t sure if it would make a difference, but at least now she knew he was there. How long Ivo could keep up with her was another question entirely.

When she broke away and headed down a side street, Pearse guessed she was banking on his help.

Out in the open again, the gaps separating all of them widened, the man unwilling as yet to move in for the kill. It might have had something to do with his radio, thought Pearse. He watched as the man began to shake it rather than speak into it. The explosion had created a communications overload. Maybe it was interfering with the Vatican frequency? No backup. No reason to draw in too close. Whatever the cause, the man was holding back as he placed the radio in his pocket.

Pearse made sure to keep his distance as well, hugging to the sides of buildings, once or twice losing sight of Petra, who continued, with Ivo, to duck and weave through the alleys and streets. Everything was deserted, anyone who had ventured out by now at the marketplace, the sounds of it all receding farther and farther into the background. Pearse heard nothing but the near-silent patter of steps up ahead of him. He kept his focus on the man, not knowing if he should run at him or stay back. A fumbled attack would only leave Petra and Ivo more vulnerable. He had to trust that she knew what she was doing.

Entering a part of town he thought he recognized, Pearse saw her glance back again. It was clear she had meant for the man to see her looking at him. Pearse, as well. She immediately darted down another side street. Pearse watched as the man pulled a gun from his jacket and followed.

It was now or never. Still close to the buildings, he waited for the man to make the turn. He then sprinted out after him, careening around the corner.

In an instant, Pearse saw what Petra had contrived. She was standing twenty feet from the man, Ivo tucked in behind her, the box held out at arm’s length. The man had stopped, the gun aimed at her.

But it was only for an instant. Before the man could react, Pearse came crashing into his back, the collision propelling them both to the ground. Still on top of him, Pearse drove his fist into the man’s neck, rote responses from a part of his mind he hadn’t tapped into for years. With his other hand, he grabbed the man’s hair and pummeled his skull into the cobblestone, the second thrust enough to leave the body limp.

Trying to catch his breath, Pearse rolled off the man and stared up at the sky.

Only then did he hear the screams from Ivo. He immediately flipped over and saw Petra sitting up against one of the buildings, Ivo clutching at her, his face contorted in tears.

Pearse struggled to his feet. He raced toward them. Dropping down at her side, he saw her hands holding an area to the left side of her abdomen. They were stained red.

“It’s okay, Ivi. It’s okay. It’s not so bad,” she said breathing through the pain. She looked up at Pearse. “It went off when you jumped him.”

Pearse hadn’t even heard the gun discharge. All thought seemed to vanish. He pulled off his shirt and placed it over the wound. “We need to get you to-”

“I know.”

“I need to find a car.”

Petra nodded her head toward the next street. “It’s down there.”

Pearse looked up. That’s why it all looked so familiar. That’s why she had brought them back here. He jumped to his feet and started running. “Stay with Mommy, Ivo. I’ll be right back.”

He tore down the side street, the van no more than thirty yards from him. Two minutes later, he was lifting her from the pavement, laying her flat in the back of the van. Ivo climbed in by her side.

“So that’s how you take out a catcher?” she said, the look of pain no less intense on her face.

“Something like that.” He found a blanket and placed it under her head.

“Did he drop the ball?”

Pearse looked into her eyes, his hand brushing back the hair from her forehead. “Yeah. He dropped it.”

She tried to smile. “The main road. Take a right. The hospital’s about a half mile down.”

Pearse shut the back door, picked up the box, and got in behind the wheel. He slid open the partition. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

As he pulled the car around, he heard Ivo singing to her, his tiny voice echoing from the back.

No one had bothered to ask about a bullet wound. The hospital had been too overrun to quibble about the details. They had been nice enough to find him a shirt.

It was two hours since they’d taken Petra-Pearse and Ivo left to sit with the rest of the shell-shocked, waiting for word. Ivo, cradled on his lap, had alternated between sleep and tears, his first half hour without her almost frantic. He had started by punching at Pearse, blaming him for everything, until his little body had given out. The first nap, followed by complete disorientation, more hysteria, a second breaking point, then a third. Finally, he had simply sat, eyes staring out blankly. Pearse had tried to talk to him, but it had made no difference.

One constant: the ball he clutched in his hand.

From conversations around him, Pearse had discovered that the explosion hadn’t destroyed a church; it had blown up the Velika Dzamija, the Great Mosque. Unjust retribution, he had been told. Only when he’d moved to the television in the corner of the waiting area had he understood what they’d meant. The three churches yesterday had been just the beginning. News reports brought him up-to-date on the atrocities occurring across Europe and beyond. And, of course, the Vatican. The mosque had simply been one instance of Christian backlash-at least that was the way Bosnian television was interpreting it. They were expecting a good deal more. The Middle East was already up in arms about the accusations. The Vatican was calling for all Christians-all-to come together in peace. The battle lines were being drawn.

And all to bring about the one true and holy church. The thought sickened him.

A doctor approached. “You brought in the woman with the abdominal wound?” he asked.

Pearse stood, petrified by what he might hear next.

“She’ll be fine,” he said. “The bullet went straight through her side, no vital organs, but she obviously needs to stay with us for a day or so. You can see her now.”

Pearse picked up Ivo and followed the doctor along a series of corridors before coming to a room with eight beds. Petra lay in the one nearest the window. The doctor nodded toward her, then headed out. Before Pearse could take a step, Ivo had dropped down and was racing to her side. He lay his head next to hers on the pillow.

She looked remarkably serene given what she had just been through.

“Hey, Ivi,” she said, still well drugged. She brought her hand up and began to stroke his hair. “Mommy’s going to be okay.”

Pearse pulled a chair over and sat down. He didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve had worse,” she said, her smile weak, Ivo now clutching at her arm.

“I didn’t think the gun-”

“Neither did I,” she said. “Just unlucky.” She stared over at him. “I guess you could tell me you’re sorry.” Again the smile.

“I guess I could.”

Ivo started to cry.

“Mommy’s okay, sweet pea. We’re just going to have to be here for a few days. The doctor says you can sleep right next to me. They’re going to bring in a cot, and blankets. How about that?”

Ivo kissed her cheek. “Okay.”

She looked back at Pearse. She took his hand.

Gazing down at her, he realized how scared he had actually been. To lose her again.

“No cot for you,” she said.

“I need to stay.”

“No, you need to go.” She waited. “I want my son back, Ian. No more little shrines. If what’s in the box can do that, then you have to go and do that. Okay?”

Pearse looked into her eyes. “I need you to know-”

“I do. I know.”

For several minutes, neither said a word.

“Ivi and I will be just fine here, won’t we?”

Ivo pressed his head closer into her.

Again, Pearse said nothing. He leaned over and kissed her. Pulling back, he ran his fingers along her cheek.

Finally, he stood and looked over at Ivo, happily tucked into his mother’s neck.

“I’ll see you soon, little man.”

Without moving, Ivo looked up at him.

“Keep an eye on Mommy for me, okay?”

Ivo smiled.

What more did he need than that?