Although I wouldn't have thought the Russian could be a medicine for melancholy, he suddenly proved to be an effective mood-elevator.
'What did your father do, sir?' I asked.
'He prepared people for death, Mr. Thomas.'
Heretofore, I had not seen Sister Angela nonplussed.
'So it's a family trade, sir. Why do you so directly call your mother an assassin?'
'Because, you see, technically an assassin is one who proceeds only against highly placed political targets.'
'Whereas a mortician is not as choosy.'
'A mortician is not indiscriminate, either, Mr. Thomas.'
If Sister Angela didn't regularly attend tennis matches as a spectator, she would have a sore neck in the morning.
'Sir, I'll bet your father was also a chess master.'
'He won only a single national championship.'
'Too busy with his career as a mortician.'
'No. Unfortunately, a five-year prison sentence fell at that very point at which he was at his most competitive as a chessman.'
'Bummer.'
As Romanovich gave me the laminated photo-ID card with embedded holographs, which he had taken from his wallet, he said to Sister Angela, 'All of that was in the old Soviet, and I have confessed it and atoned. I have long been on the side of truth and justice.'
Reading from the card, I said, 'National Security Agency.'
'That is correct, Mr. Thomas. After watching you with Jacob and with this girl here, I have decided to take you into my confidence.'
'We must be careful, Sister,' I warned. 'He may only mean that he is a confidence man.'
She nodded but seemed no less perplexed.
'We need to talk somewhere more private,' Romanovich said.
Returning his NSA credentials, I said, 'I want a few words with the girl.'
As once more I sat on the floor near Christmas, she looked up from her book and said, 'I like cats, too, b-b-but they aren't dogs.'
'They sure aren't,' I agreed. 'I've never seen a group of cats strong enough to pull a dogsled.'
Picturing cats in the traces of a sled, she giggled.
'And you'll never get a cat to chase a tennis ball.'
'Never,' she agreed.
'And dogs never have mouse breath.'
'Yuck. Mouse breath.'
'Christmas, do you really want to work with dogs one day?'
'I really do. I know I could do a lot with dogs.'
'You have to keep up rehab, get back as much strength in your arm and leg as you can.'
'Gonna get it all b back.'
'That's the spirit.'
'You gotta retrain the b-b-brain.'
'I'm going to stay in touch with you, Christmas. And when you're grown up and ready to be on your own, I have a friend who will make sure you'll have a job doing something wonderful with dogs, if that's still what you want.'
Her eyes widened. 'Something wonderful-like what?'
'That'll be for you to decide. While you're getting stronger and growing up, you think about what would be the most wonderful job you could do with dogs-and that will be it.'
'I had a good dog. His name was F-Farley. He tried to save me, but Jason shot him, too.'
She spoke about the horror with more dispassion than I could have done, and in fact I felt that I would not maintain my composure if she said another word about it.
'One day, you'll have all the dogs you want. You can live in a sea of happy fur.'
Although she couldn't go directly from Farley to a giggle, she smiled. 'A sea of happy fur,' she said, savoring the sound of it, and her smile sustained.
I held out my hand. 'Do we have a deal?'
Solemnly, she thought about it, and then she nodded and took my hand. 'Deal.'
'You're a very tough negotiator, Christmas.'
(If 1V
I am?
'I'm exhausted. You have worn me down. I am bleary and dopey and pooped. My feet are tired, my hands are tired, even my hair is tired. I need to go and have a long nap, and I really, really need to eat some pudding.'
She giggled. 'Pudding?'
'You've been such a tough negotiator, you've so exhausted me that I can't even chew. My teeth are tired. In fact my teeth are already asleep. I can only eat pudding.'
Grinning, she said, 'You're silly.'
'It's been said of me before,' I assured her.
Because we needed to talk in a place where bodachs were unlikely to enter, Sister Angela led Romanovich and me to the pharmacy, where Sister Corrine was dispensing evening medicines into small paper cups on which she had written the names of her patients. She agreed to give us privacy.
When the door closed behind Sister Corrine, the mother superior said, 'All right. Who is Jacob's father, and why is he so important?'
Romanovich and I looked at each other, and we spoke as one: 'John Heineman.'
'Brother John?' she asked dubiously. 'Our patron? Who gave up all his wealth?'
I said, 'You haven't seen the uberskeleton, ma'am. Once you've seen the uberskeleton, you pretty much know it couldn't be anyone else but Brother John. He wants his son dead, and maybe all of them, all the children here.'
CHAPTER 46
RODION ROMANOVICH HAD SOME CREDIBILITY with me because of his National Security Agency ID and because he was droll. Maybe it was the effect of rogue molecules of tranquilizers in the medicinally scented air of the pharmacy, but minute by minute, I grew more willing to trust him.
According to the Hoosier, twenty-five years before we had come under siege in this blizzard, John Heineman's fiancee, Jennifer Calvino, had given birth to their child, Jacob. No one knows if she had availed herself of a sonogram or other testing, but in any case, she had carried the child to term.
Twenty-six, already a physicist of significant accomplishments, Heineman had not reacted well to her pregnancy, had felt trapped by it. Upon his first sight of Jacob, he denied fatherhood, withdrew his proposal of marriage, cut Jennifer Calvino out of his life, and gave her no more thought than he would have given a basal-cell carcinoma once it had been surgically removed from his skin.
Although even at that time, Heineman had been a man of some means, Jennifer asked him for nothing. His hostility to his deformed son had been so intense that Jennifer decided Jacob would be both happier and safer if he had no contact with his father.
Mother and son did not have an easy life, but she was devoted to him, and in her care, he thrived. When Jacob was thirteen, his mother died, after arranging for his lifelong institutional care through a church charity.
Over the years, Heineman became famous and wealthy. When his research, as widely reported, drove him to the conclusion that the subatomic structure of the universe suggested indisputable design, he had reexamined his life and, in something like penitence, had given away his fortune and retreated to a monastery.
'A changed man,' said Sister Angela. 'In contrition for how he treated Jennifer and Jacob, he gave up
