Читать книгу The Secret Price of History - Gayle Ridinger - Страница 16

According to the police, Delia and Angie had no proof that their place had been burglarized. After all, nothing had been stolen. There was not ruling out a prank or a warning. At most, unlawful entry. Have a long hard think about your neighbours and acquaintances, the police advised. Any weirdos? Any neighbour with a grudge? Any teenaged candidates for first time delinquents who might have been looking for money but afraid to take anything else in case their parents find it? Careful not to slander anyone, however. There were the perimeters of criminal profiling to consider. And material evidence to find. The two came away dismayed.

Now it was seven pm. Fortunately, dinner had put Delia back in the mood for her usual Wednesday square-dancing night out, and Angie, with the house to herself, was on the computer; she was exploring the AP News Archive website for information not so much on Marc-Alexandre Brandeau but—as her mother suggested—on the Brandeau family.

She was finding that these Brandeaus were rather loved in the gossip world. Marc-Alexandre Brandeau's wife, dead now, twice showed up at the ER room with a black eye but refused to press charges. The same gossip magazine, reporting on her funeral, mentioned her drug treatment for depression, a period of internment, and a final phase of ecstatic religious manias during her chemo-therapy. The article came with photos of the Brandeau children. Eduard, the one who killed himself, had gone to volunteer in a cooperative in Africa and fallen in love with a local female doctor. He'd attempted to build a hospital for children with trachoma but, the article alleged, his father had refused to cover his debts, and Eduard had committed suicide. The caption about the daughter, Suzanne, read that she was an ambitious businesswoman who liked attending the big fashion shows. First-place trophies in shooting competitions and a couple of years in female-boxing. Participated once in the Paris-Dakar race. Rumors that she was bisexual. Finally, la pièce de résistance: the high school photo (sole existing) of the second son, Damien, who had vanished into thin air some years back. Excluded from the family business; father cut him off financially. Once a brilliant PhD student in History of Religion and Anthropology at Georgetown.

What?

Angie re-read the line a second time. She remembered Father Giovanni telling her about his ex-student. Damien Brandeau?

The phone rang. It was Stan. She told him she was on the computer without going into detail. He wanted to come by for the new World War II book her mom had checked out for him, forgetting that she was at square-dancing. "It's Wednesday, Stan, remember?" "Oh Jeez, that's right." Angie knew that he found it funny that she went to such things partnerless. Of course her mother just wanted to dance. (Not many like me, she's said to Angie. We'll see how you turn out.)

Ten minutes later, Stan phoned again and said in a different voice: "Are you still near a computer?"

"Uh-huh."

"Have a look at the latest news."

"Meaning?" She closed the AP Archive page.

"Meaning the murder in the mithraic temple."

An American had been murdered in Rome. The body had been discovered in an underground mithraic temple. The priest had been identified as Kevin O'Flanagan of Georgetown University.

Two coincidences too many.

The AP Rome release reported that Father Kevin had been tortured for hours beforehand and his body had a photocopied image of a gold medal nailed to the chest. Angie's face swooped to an inch of the screen. The image was not the best but could it be? Could it really be so like her medallion?

She was a fool for asking. That's one clear lion-man, and he's got the same radiating sun image behind him. She banged her fist on the desk.

"Angie?"

She didn't answer.

"Angie," Stan insisted.

"I feel HUNTED, ok?!"

Anger was better than fright.

"I can be right over. Or do you want me to call Delia?"

"No."

"Really?"

"Really."

They both breathed into the phone.

"No, listen, maybe I should call your mom," he said uncertainly.

Jesus, he was such a weak man under it all. Nice and thoughtful as you want, but weak when it came to action in emotional circumstances. She remembered how he'd collapsed when they pulled his little drowned daughter out of the pool, not intervening himself. Then at the funeral he hadn't done anything to prevent his wife—now his ex-wife—from thinking her mom was his mistress, but just let her mom get snubbed and stared at by one and all. No way was he going to help her deal with her fright in any significant way.

"Well, lock the door well, OK?"

"It's locked." For what it was worth after a burglary.

"Check it."

"Bye, Stan."

"I'll call you in an hour."

She was feeling rather numb now herself. But she wasn't paralyzed; she could still find her way to picking up the phone and calling Father Giovanni. She assumed that a priest wasn't likely to be in front of a television or computer at 10 pm; she might even be waking him up—you didn't call university professors at this hour. But she didn't care. She informed him of Father Kevin's murder.

"Oh my, my," the priest exclaimed, adding something in Italian. "When did it happen?"

"Today. Or last night."

"My friend," he was saying.

"In a mithraeum."

"In a mithraeum." He gave the word no special emphasis.

"Um...I'm really sorry," she repeated awkwardly. She was not very good at this and she was concerned about that photo. "What exactly was Father Kevin assigned to do in Rome?"

"Research on Proto-Christianity," he said in a small sad voice.

"So Proto-Christianity can kill you?"

"As a subject…it comes close to, and sometimes spills over into, the esoteric."

What does this mean?

"Father Giovanni, I personally think that Father Kevin was killed for something he already knew about before he left. It appears that a photo of a medallion—my medallion—was pinned to his body. I think that whoever murdered him tried to kill me first."

"That is an anguishing thought." He sounded stupefied.

"Would you be willing to show me Father Kevin's office?

"Naturally."

A few minutes before 11 am the next morning, Angie arrived back in front of Father Giovanni's office door at Georgetown. She hadn't slept much and wanted to gather her thoughts before knocking. After responding to Stan's check-up call last night, she'd waited up for her mother in front of the computer, stubbornly hitting the search key for 'Kevin O'Flanagan Georgetown University' over and over and finding the same ten listings; even when she added a term—'died', 'born', 'family—hoping to enter a new virtual galaxy—she remained on this side of the unyielding barrier. Her frustration had been such that she picked at her arm scab a bit, something she knew better than to do. Her mom returned then, fortunately. Delia sat sweaty in a kitchen chair, still dressed in her gingham dance dress, while Angie told her all that had happened in the last three hours.

Her reaction was: "I know I didn't like them but maybe it's time to go back to the police." Angie was incredulous. "Those two guys in Gettysburg?"

The police indeed. And she still felt that way this morning.

At 11, she stood up. Noiselessly she thought, and yet Father Giovanni opened the door immediately, as if aware of her presence. "Please come in."

"Thank you, Professor."

He shut the door after her and made no small talk. "I am greatly horrified by Kevin's death. One hopes in his guardian spirit." With that, he gestured at a strange bronze work on a book shelf—a winged disc encircling a man's upper body. "It's Zoroastrian. Faravahar. And previous to that name, Khvarenah. A sort of Grace granted to the benefactors of the world. To good kings, but also worthy heroes. Like Kevin." He uttered his friend's name with emotion and bowed his head. A pause followed. Perhaps he was praying, she wasn't sure. When at last he raised his big magnified eyes from behind his glasses, he said, "I have been meditating on your medallion because I understand that it can only be worrying you. Your medallion seemed a mix of Mithraic symbols and secret markings to me when I saw it. Presuming that the photo in Rome is the same or similar, I suppose we should bear in mind that there are a good number of secret or semi-secret societies that have survived over the centuries. The Masons, the Templars, the Knights of Malta. Most of these have evolved from war orders to charity organizations, like the Knights of Malta. But others, like the Circumcellions, say, might—who knows?—still be active today."

Why make a conjecture like that? The doubt crossed her mind that he was toying with her. And why didn't he seem as upset by his friend's death as he said he was? Of course he was a priest. They had powerful thoughts for making themselves feel better. But could his deep faith really account for such contained grief?

"And these Circumcellions?" she pursued.

"The terrorist monks of early Christianity."

"Meaning?"

"Sorry, it's a term I use in my seminar class. Students your age are quite taken with them. You see, for the first five centuries of Christianity, Ms. Cebrelli, competing groups battled it out over all sorts of doctrinal and political issues. The Circumcellions were a suicide cult in Northern Africa. Their religious practice consisted of delivering random beatings to strangers along the road, with the purpose of goading the strangers into killing them. If that didn't work, they just threw themselves off a cliff instead. You see, they decided that martyrdom was the ultimate Christian value and so they whacked their victims around in the hopes of provoking their own martyrdom…Sound a bit familiar, doesn't it?"

She told herself she was not going to be bullied into saying something about Islamist extremists. She glanced at his room, not knowing what to take as significant, and thinking that it was time to get to the purpose of her visit.

"Does—did—Father Kevin have his office right next to yours, Professor?"

"That's right. And I promised you a look. Come, then."

In the hall, Father Tomasz walked by them, offering Angie a tight smile of recognition to an underling. The two men merely nodded at each other. She wondered if Tomasz knew about Father Kevin's death yet.

The dead priest's office was the antithesis of Father Giovanni's crammed den. It was not only bare but felt chilly and unused. On the desk there was a pencil can and a writing pad but no computer. A single Russian icon of a Madonna, gold on wood, was propped up on a shelf of the bookcase, along with a surprisingly small number of books. There was a brown plant with a tall stalk in a floor vase, which looked as if it hadn't been watered for ages. The personal touches were limited to the map of Ireland tacked up on the wall and, thrown over the desk chair, a dirty towel on which there was a drawing of Ireland and a geographical breakdown of Irish last names. Walking to the center of the room, Angie noticed a few framed photos on a small shelf by the window: in one there was a soccer team all wearing green jerseys (The Irish national?), and the others were of the same woman—a youngish looking brunette with short hair. There was Father Kevin with her in a European city that might have been St. Petersburg. Then Father Kevin with the same woman by the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Angie felt puzzled. Nothing about what she saw jived with what she'd thought would be in this room. She'd imagined a place that would convey a sense of Father Kevin to her, the man who had pleaded the cause of tribal priests fighting AIDS in Africa.

Instead, there was just this stopping place, this nearly anonymous watering hole.

Father Giovanni cleared his throat. "Finished, Ms. Cebrelli?"

"Not really," she replied bluntly. "Just how many hours a day did Father Kevin spend in this room? And was there some reason for doing his research elsewhere? I mean, was it on something dangerous?"

"This was his office to use as he wanted. No, I don't believe his research was dangerous."

"This wasn't his office. It's obvious that he just stopped off here every so often. Look at the dust on the desk top. No one has propped his elbows on this desk for at least a week…And no one has watered this plant for even longer."

"I'm not able to tell you more…" Father Giovanni replied, with no inkling of regret or promise.

Why was he doing this? Frustrated, she asked, "Have the police been by yet?" She could only hope that the DC cops were better than the ones from Gettysburg.

"Not yet."

She returned to the shelf with the photos of the woman and studied them at length.

"Is she his sister?"

"No, she isn't." Father Giovanni opened one of the desk drawers, took out a business card and handed it to her.

"Brenda knows," he said. He blinked away sudden grief. "It's hard for her," he added protectively.

Brenda Sherwin is visibly pregnant—arched back and all. She is not a young mother-to-be and her eyes are red from crying. One hand rests on top of her swell of belly as if protecting the small being inside. Despite the tragedy, however, she is approachable, willing to engage in conversation, perhaps even needing to. And this gentle-looking, puffy-faced, yet elegantly dressed art gallery owner warmly takes Angie's arm and draws her into the entrance way of her lovely townhouse. Angie likes her but is still confused as to who she is in relation to Kevin.

"I appreciate your coming all the way down here on Connecticut Avenue. And please do call me Brenda." She leads Angie into a beautiful and comfortable living room (all vibrant shades of red and Turkish throw pillows). "You told me on the phone about encountering Kevin in Giovanni's office on campus. I said that he was quite taken with your medallion. What I want to say now is that afterwards, Kevin came h…home in a very agitated state about it."

The slight pause and the word 'home' establish many things; also, Angie thinks, Brenda's voice is one of a woman who wants to do right by a person she loves. She wonders about their formal relationship. Can—could—Brenda and Father Kevin be married? Maybe some priests, in some places, have a right to? Despite her not liking priests, she approves.

Her hostess eases herself onto the couch. "I can't...I can't go to Rome. Kevin's brother from Ireland will claim his body," she reveals forlornly.

Angie doesn't know how to respond to that. Brenda, indicating that she'd like her to sit in the nearby armchair, continues, "Kevin told me about something that had resurfaced again after many years. He was very worried that it might end up in the wrong hands. I'm not sure now if he meant the medallion or something connected with it. I had leg cramps that evening, very painful, and as Kevin was massaging them, he went on about 'a key' to something. Then he stayed up nearly all night reading and checking books—I remember seeing him at it on my trips to the bathroom. In the morning he phoned our friend Arjan, who is based in Holland at present. He's an expert in art archaeology and also in the art of Early Christianity. Arjan said that he is in contact with someone who lives in Northern Italy under a false name, someone who restores churches or something like that, who as a super-expert should be able to provide more information about this 'key.' Then they talked about the mithraic temples in Rome and Arjan even gave him some names and phone numbers of priests and guardians who could open them for him. I was present for the entire phone call."

Angie is a careful listener this afternoon. "Sorry," she says politely, "but what is 'the key'?"

"Key to interpretation."

"And the false name?"

"Honey, people can do that without being criminals. A desire for a completely new life. Happens all the time. People go to India, move to an island, volunteer to help build a church in the middle of a jungle. At least in my generation."

Because Brenda almost smiles, Angie is not prepared for the next thing she says.

"I don't know who would have wanted to harm Kevin, but being an exceptional man, he was a target for any wacko. He was born into a poor family in Ireland—so poor that they had to send him to a seminary not just to educate him but to be sure he got fed. In general Kevin was an excellent student, but over time, well, let's say that he began to think for himself— too independently for the highly conservative and traditional Ireland of back then. He got deeply interested in such non-orthodox subjects as the start of Christianity and its original doctrine. He even maintained that the Bible derived from the Veda, an ancient Indian text, and not from God and the prophets. And so two years ago the Church authorities sent him here to Washington. Where he wasn't so much in the limelight. Where certain questions get discussed. Not officially, but in any case in small, select circles…"

Her deep sigh signals how resistant she is despite everything. She is like a pane of glass with an immense crack running through a vital inner layer and yet still holding together.

"You said that Kevin was up all night with his books and that in the morning he phoned Holland. What about that afternoon?"

"He was with me. I had to go for an ultrasound and he came with me... I believe the thought of his child was always a comfort to him."

That the baby is Kevin's is official now.

"Then he took a little nap, after which we went and opened the art gallery together. After a few hours, he went home, but I still had things to do and stayed on. The next morning—at dawn—I drove him to the airport."

"So you're saying that he saw practically nobody."

"No, no-one. If you're wondering if he might have phoned someone when he was home alone and I was still at the gallery, I must say I doubt it…" She claps her knees. "Can I offer you something to drink?"

"No thanks."

"Well, a tour of the house, then. I know you want to see Kevin's study."

Everywhere Brenda touches curios, small sculptures, an odd bronze work, with the trained eye, heart, and mind of an art lover who can see and feel all. Angie is relieved to see that Kevin's home study, a small narrow blue room, looks lived-in.

"I don't really think there's anything here that can help us solve the mystery of Kevin's death," Brenda is saying. "There are no relevant notes—I've checked. And I also looked at the websites that Kevin opened that last night. Just stuff about history, much of it in ancient Greek." She opens a desk drawer and takes out an address book. "Here," she adds, flipping through the pages. "I will give you Arjan's number. Tell him you got it from me."

They walk back along the carpeted central hallway filled mostly with modern paintings.

"I keep searching for a reason," Brenda says.

"Have you talked with Father Giovanni about this? They were close, weren't they?"

"Very much so. He protected Kevin. His refusal to publish Kevin's last article might even have been a form of protection."

"Did any one hate Kevin's ideas—like some Theo-con extremist?"

"He never mentioned a specific threat to me. Of course, we belonged to an advocacy group pushing for allowing priests to marry, but our life was quiet and we practiced discretion. All religions the world over have become more rigid in their doctrine over the last few years, including Christianity. Kevin would joke that if they could, they would very willingly burn him at the stake. But this was just for my ears. He wasn't serious. " Quickly wiping her eyes with the back of both her hands, Brenda adds, "I'd like to give you, Angie, a copy of Kevin's article."

She scurries down the hall to Kevin's study and retrieves a brown envelope which she sticks in Angie's hands. A bit breathless from her hurrying, she asks, "What's your next move?"

The question puts Angie one step further away from the twenty-one-year-old Substitute Weather Girl she was two weeks ago. "First, I'm going to phone your friend Arjan."

"Of course. And then?"

"I'll let you know, Brenda."

On the bus across town to the garage where she's parked her car, she opens the envelope and reads snatches of Father Kevin's unpublished article.

"The rule prohibiting priests from marrying once they had been ordained was drawn up during the Council of Nice in 325. Despite pressure from the Bishop of Rome (later Pope) to require already married priests to leave their wives, the Council's decision went in the completely opposite direction: married priests were required to keep their wives with them…

"The necessity of having unmarried clergy had much to do with the widespread fear during the Middle Ages that the inheritances traditionally left to the Church would be threatened should there be heirs to contend with…"

It is a love letter.

These lines contain the intimate justification—using the stones and arrows of history, and the words and ideas of long-dead religious heretics—of what they, Kevin and Brenda, had done as man and woman, as a priest and his love. A union like theirs had been right for a while in the Catholic Church and could return to being right again.

Kevin and Brenda together. For just a moment, her eyes shut there on the bus. Ok, she believes them, it's imaginable. She even envies them their intimacy, in spite of the hard road they had, going against the rules like that. She herself hasn't had a boyfriend since she left George Mason, and even then it wasn't a real boyfriend but just a guy two years older than her with whom she had sex sometimes. She had a first love in high school, whom she'd broken up with but couldn't quite shake off, for he still sent her postcards when he took a trip somewhere, with the stamp upside-down, which had been their way of saying I-love-you. It was actually a bit pathetic.

The bus gets bogged down in one of the traffic circles. She glances at the sweaty-looking people, most in business suits, going into coffee shops and restaurants, wondering if there really could be dangerous self-appointed guardians of official doctrine hiding out somewhere. Somehow she couldn't believe it was a plausible reason for why Kevin was killed.

At home she checks the AP website. The wire reports are now calling it 'the Chinese bear case' because Kevin was tortured the way bears are tortured. They are still, however, using the same two images as before—the cage emptied of Kevin's body and the blurry photocopied photo of her medallion.

Do the Italian police have this photo now?

And if she went over there to Europe?

Would Stan give her the money to go? Her mother obviously can't afford it.

The phone rings. Her mother. She is going to be a half hour late and asks her to boil some potatoes to go with the corn on the cob and chicken breasts. Angie puts the pot in the sink and opens the faucet. The phone rings again.

"Hello, Angie? This is Brenda Sherwin."

"Hello Brenda."

"Am I disturbing you? Are you getting dinner?"

"No, no." She shuts off the tap.

"Have you by any chance spoken with Arjan yet?"

"Yes, I have. Five minutes ago," she lies.

Something made those words well up from deep inside her. She has never consciously heeded any such inner voice before, not while speaking to someone anyway. If she'd had known to listen to this voice, she'd be ready to graduate from college by now.

"Was he—helpful? Sorry, but I keep fretting about it. I believe I should do more but you know, the baby's due and--."

"Of course, Brenda."

"But he was upset of course."

"Very upset, Brenda."

"And...there were things he told you?"

"Well, he wants to tell me. In person. Of course, it's just happened now and I'm looking at flights...which are expensive."

"Come back to my house tomorrow, Angie, I want to see you."

"See me...a second time?"

"I want to give you a check, Angie." And then, timidly, "It's not doing enough, is it?"

"Why do you want to give me a check?" Angie asks softly.

"I don't want you getting into any trouble."

"I'm just going to talk to Arjan."

Brenda cries at that. At length she is able to say, "You're doing what I should do but can't. You're going in my place."

It is true. Only Angie can go off to Europe in her place to follow the police investigation to find Kevin's murderer. Brenda can't travel in her state, and Angie, as the sole other victim, is the only possible substitute. She wants to tell Brenda, You may be saving my life, but it feels out of place to stress that. It's Kevin that counts tonight.

"All right, Brenda."

She lets the gallery owner do what her heart desires. She goes and collects the check.