'No, that ain't it. We said, 'Somebody amongst us musta let the FBI put a bug up his rectum.''
'That's colorful, sir, but I'd be happy if this were the FBI.'
'Well, I was on the dark side back then. You better tell the Russian he don't have a round-trip ticket.'
'You've got his keys.'
Carrying a toolbox in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, the last of the storm-suited brothers shouldered through the front door. The Russian wasn't in the room.
As Brother Knuckles and I stepped out into the snow, Rodion Romanovich drove away in the first SUV, which was fully loaded with monks.
'I'll be damned.'
'Whoa. Careful with that, son.'
'He took both sets of keys off the peg,' I said.
Romanovich drove halfway back along the side of the church and then stopped, as though waiting for me to follow.
'This is bad,' I said.
'Maybe this is God at work, son, and you just can't see the good in it yet.'
'Is that confident faith talking, or is it the warm-and-fuzzy optimism of the mouse who saved the princess?'
'They're sort of one and the same, son. You want to drive?'
I handed him the keys to the second SUV. 'No. I just want to sit quietly and stew in my stupidity.'
CHAPTER 37
THE LINT-WHITE SKY SEEMED TO BRIGHTEN THE day less than did the blanketed land, as if the sun were dying and the earth were evolving into a new sun, though a cold one, that would illuminate little and warm nothing.
Brother Knuckles drove, following the devious faux librarian at a safe distance, and I rode shotgun without a shotgun. Eight brothers and their gear occupied the second, third, and fourth rows of seats in the extended SUV.
You might expect that a truckful of monks would be quiet, all the passengers in silent prayer or meditating on the state of their souls, or scheming each in his own way to conceal from humankind that the Church is an organization of extraterrestrials determined to rule the world through mind control, a dark truth known to Mr. Leonardo da Vinci, which we can prove by citing his most famous self-portrait, in which he depicted himself wearing a pyramid-shaped tinfoil hat.
Here in the early afternoon, the Lesser Silence should have been observed to the extent that work allowed, but the monks were voluble. They worried about their missing brother, Timothy, and were alarmed by the possibility that persons unknown intended to harm the children at the school. They sounded fearful, humbled, yet exhilarated that they might be called upon to be brave defenders of the innocent.
Brother Alfonse asked, 'Odd, are all of us going to die?'
'I hope none of us is going to die,' I replied.
'If all of us died, the sheriff would be disgraced.'
'I fail to understand,' said Brother Rupert, 'the moral calculus that all of us dying would be balanced by the sheriff's disgrace.'
'I assure you, Brother,' Alfonse said, 'I didn't mean to imply that mass death would be an acceptable price for the sheriff's defeat in the next election.'
Brother Quentin, who had been a police officer at one time, first a beat patrolman and then a robbery-and- homicide detective, said, 'Odd, who are these kid-killer wannabes?'
'We don't know for sure,' I said, turning in my seat to look back at him. 'But we know something's coming.'
'What's the evidence? Obviously something that's not concrete enough to impress the sheriff. Threatening phone calls, like that?'
'The phones have gone down,' I said evasively, 'so there won't be any threatening calls now.'
'Are you being evasive?' Brother Quentin asked.
'Yes, sir, I am.'
'You're terrible at being evasive.'
'Well, I do my best, sir.'
'We need to know the name of our enemy,' said Brother Quentin.
Brother Alfonse said, 'We know the name. His name is legion.'
'I don't mean our ultimate enemy,' said Quentin. 'Odd, we aren't going up against Satan with baseball bats, are we?'
'If it's Satan, I haven't noticed a sulfurous smell.'
'You're being evasive again.'
'Yes, sir.'
From the third row, Brother Augustine said, 'Why would you have to be evasive about whether or not it's Satan? We all know it's not Satan himself, it's got to be some anti-faith zealots or something, doesn't it?'
'Militant atheists,' said someone at the back of the vehicle.
Another fourth-row passenger chimed in: 'Islamofascists. The president of Iran said, 'The world will be cleaner when there's no one whose day of worship is Saturday. When they're all dead, we'll kill the Sunday crowd.''
Brother Knuckles, behind the wheel, said, 'No reason to work yourselves up about it. We get to the school- Abbot Bernard, he's gonna give you the straight poop, as far as we know it.'
Surprised, indicating the SUV ahead of us, I said, 'Is the abbot with them?'
Knuckles shrugged. 'He insisted, son. Maybe he don't weigh more than a wet cat, but he's a plus to the team. There's not a thing in this world could scare the abbot.'
I said, 'There might be a thing.'
From the second row, Brother Quentin put a hand on my shoulder, returning to his main issue with the persistence of a cop skilled at interrogation. 'All I'm saying, Odd, is we need to know the name of our enemy. We don't exactly have a crew of trained warriors here. When push comes to shove, if they don't know who they're supposed to be defending against, they'll get so jittery, they'll start swinging baseball bats at one another.'
Brother Augustine gently admonished, 'Do not underestimate us, Brother Quentin.'
'Maybe the abbot will bless the baseball bats,' said Brother Kevin from the third row.
Brother Rupert said, 'I doubt the abbot would think it proper to bless a baseball bat to ensure a game-winning home run, let alone to make it a more effective weapon for braining someone.'
'I certainly hope,' said Brother Kevin, 'we don't have to brain anyone. The thought sickens me.'
'Swing low,' Brother Knuckles advised, 'and take 'em out at the knees. Some guy with his knees all busted ain't an immediate threat, but the damage ain't permanent, neither. He's gonna heal back to normal. Mostly.'
'We have a profound moral dilemma here,' Brother Kevin said. 'We must, of course, protect the children, but busting knees is not by any stretch of theology a Christian response.'
'Christ,' Brother Augustine reminded him, 'physically threw the money changers out of the temple.'
'Indeed, but I've seen nowhere in Scripture where our Lord busted their knees in the process.'
Brother Alfonse said, 'Perhaps we really are all going to die.'
His hand still on my shoulder, Brother Quentin said, 'Something more than a threatening call has you alarmed. Maybe… did you find Brother Timothy? Did you, Odd? Dead or alive?'
At this point, I wasn't going to say that I had found him dead and alive, and that he had suddenly transformed from Tim to something not Tim. Instead, I replied, 'No, sir, not dead or alive.'
Quentin's eyes narrowed. 'You're being evasive again.'
'How could you possibly know, sir?'
'You've got a tell.'
'A what?'
