Читать книгу Mask of the Andes - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 10

Chapter Three

1

McKenna woke with an erection. He lay in bed debating whether to douse it with prayer or cold water; but less than a minute after getting out of bed the freezing morning air had reduced him to flaccid modesty again. He dressed quickly, knelt down and hurriedly said his prayers; he was running late for Mass. ‘And, Father, keep me from such thoughts as I dreamed last night.…’

When Alejandro Ruiz had learned that his brother had invited McKenna to say first Mass at the cathedral, he had sent a message that McKenna was to stay overnight at the Ruiz house instead of returning to the mission after the party. McKenna had been thankful for the suggestion; he had not relished the idea of the twelve-mile drive in from the lake at five o’clock in the morning. At that time the campesinos were bringing in their trucks to the market, hurtling along the narrow roads without brakes or lights; the drivers themselves would be half-asleep and each journey completed safely was a miracle. McKenna was not a cowardly man, but he believed in percentages; sooner or later one of those trucks would wipe his Jeep right off the road if he kept thumbing his nose at the odds. If he was going to be a martyr and die in the cause of the Faith, he wanted to go out with more style than that.

He went quietly downstairs, carrying his small suitcase. That had been another present from his mother, an expensive Mark Cross piece of leather goods that his mother had brought back from New York, where she had gone to attend the funeral of Cardinal Spellman, a prelate whom she had never met but who she thought should have been Pope: she believed it inevitable and right that an American must one day be Pope. McKenna had done his best to scuff up the suitcase before arriving in Bolivia, but he had been very conscious of the sardonic glances cast at the suitcase by the priests at the mission up in La Paz where he had stayed for his first week.

The butler, unrecognizable in a black cardigan, a cast-off of his master’s that hung on his thin frame like a poncho, was already up. He let McKenna out the front door, then crossed the courtyard to open the big gates. McKenna drove the Jeep out, then pulled up sharply as he saw someone come out the front door and run across the courtyard after him. It was Carmel, dressed in slacks and a mink coat. Oh God, he thought, hasn’t our family ever heard of sackcloth?

‘I’ve decided to come to Mass. Okay?’

‘Of course,’ he said, and felt a sudden warmth that threw off the chill of the morning. ‘It’ll make it a personal Mass for me.’