The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 44

THE POPE LEANED in close to the computer screen, unwilling to miss even the slightest nuance of the young blond girl’s movements. Though his vision was nearly as sharp as it had been forty years ago when he first came to the Vatican, he wished there were some way of seeing the clip on a larger screen.

As if he’d read the Pontiff’s mind, Cardinal Morisco tilted his head toward the large plasma screen that hung incongruously on the wall between a pair of sixteenth-century portraits depicting two of the current Pope’s earlier predecessors. “Perhaps if I connected the computer to the big monitor…?” he asked softly.

His Holiness nodded, then waited impatiently as the connection was made and the clip began again.

All too soon, it ended.

“Play it again,” he commanded.

Morisco tapped a few keys on the laptop keyboard, and the video began playing for the fourth time, the second time on the big monitor.

The Pope gazed in rapt fascination. The younger priest — the one with the knowledge of the ancient rite — appeared to know exactly what he was doing.

And he appeared to know exactly what proof the Pope needed to see in order to satisfy himself that the young priest truly had full control of the evil in the young girl. As the Pope watched, the priest played the demon like a master puppeteer manipulating a marionette, calling it forth and suppressing it at will, making it flow to the fore then ebb away again like waves on a beach.

But it wasn’t a beach upon which the evil played — it was on the soul of the girl in whom it resided, and every one of the demon’s tortures were reflected in the child’s face as her features twisted from placid innocent beauty into the unmistakable snarl of the devil himself, only to return to innocence as the young priest suppressed the evil.

Again and again it happened, taking on an almost hypnotic rhythm.

“Sound!” the Pope whispered. “I want sound!”

“I’m sorry, Holiness,” Morisco said as the clip once more came to an end. “There is no sound.”

“Play it again.”

This time, the Pope watched the faces of those attending the ritual: the old nun, the elderly priest, and the young, dark-haired priest who was conducting the ritual.

They were the same three he’d seen in the previous video — the one with the dark-haired girl — and he was certain their expressions were genuine.

Genuine anticipation as the ritual began.

Genuine terror when the evil showed its face.

Genuine anxiety as the young priest battled for control of the evil.

And, most important of all, genuine relief when the evil had been tamed.

These were not actors. The Pope himself had studied the records of all three of these servants of the Church, and their lifelong devotion to Christ could not be questioned.

Beyond that, there was the face of evil itself. The Pope had seen it before, too many times, and recognized it instantly. There was no mistaking its vileness, nor any way of faking its presence when it was not there.

Yes, this young priest knew what he was doing: he was able to invoke the devil himself from the soul of an innocent.

“I must see this for myself,” the Pope finally said, turning to Morisco. “We shall go to Boston.”