It was how Martin Strand and all those who preceded him on the cross had lost their lives.
It all made perfectly logical, sound religious sense to everyone in the room-all Father Luc Sante's converts to this extreme devotion. It was, after all, a cult built on the faith they could hasten Christ's return in the new millennium. At the urging of his followers, Luc Sante stopped the crucifixion process long enough for the branding. “Heat the iron and get the oil,” he told his followers, who now went about doing so.
Jessica wondered now what she had gotten herself into: She was about to have her tongue branded, and to become the next crucifixion victim.
TWENTY-TWO
While I see many hoof marks going in, 1 see none coming out.
Between St. Albans and the Clapper bridge, Inspector Richard Sharpe had radioed in for a quick, factual background check on Dr. Donald Wentworth Tatham, asking dispatch to contact him immediately with where exacdy Tatham hailed from. It was just a hunch, but it scored big, for the man had originally hailed from Bury St. Edmunds. Sharpe had run the background check on a hunch and out of habit. As a Scodand Yard inspector, he had learned always to know with whom you were dealing, and he passed this advice along to Stuart, who, now, trudging through the muck of this underground world, asked Sharpe one pointed question: “What else do you know of this chap at the RIBA who walked you to a dead end in the canal?”
“Are you asking whether or not Tatham knew it would be a dead end before we began?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Worth a look to see if he's any record when we get back, if we ever find our way out of here.”
“A computer search should reveal if he's had any prior arrests or any problems in the past.”
Inspector Richard Sharpe, having now litde doubt that something strange was afoot, and that it centered around Luc Sante and St. Albans, felt extreme fear and frustration at having been unable to locate Jessica for the past several hours. He hoped and prayed that this search would not again become just another termination, another dead end. They trudged onward along the unfamiliar, bleak avenue that Tatham had called a useless waste of time.
It was but a thread to go on.
They concentrated their search here. Sharpe raced ahead of the others, Copperwaite having radioed for assistance. Sharpe found himself now in a winding corridor out of a nightmare, and from it radiated any number of mine shafts. The array of choices proved both frustrating and cruel. He must slow down, weigh each detail, and give orders to the men, give each his own detail. He did so, finishing by ordering them to “Report back to Copperwaite and me, should you locate anything the least suspicious. Do not attempt anything alone.”
“Stuart, you stay with me. You other men are to remain in pairs, taking each tunnel,” Richard ordered the others. Sharpe then watched the others disappear. He and Copperwaite now stood alone, their flashlights the only light here. “We'll take this avenue, Stuart.”
“Lead on,” came Copperwaite's ready reply. Once again alone with one another, the two Scotland Yard investigators felt the darkness claw at them, gaining in power like ink over ink with each step forward in this pit, when Sharpe suddenly stopped. Holding up a hand, he cocked his head to one side.
Copperwaite, too, suddenly made out the sounds of people ahead. Next they saw light, faint at first but growing as they inched forward. They doused their own lights.
Sharpe's ears detected clear, animate sounds and words now, voices chanting Mihi beata mater over and over, welling up like the sound of uneasy ghosts. Placing a forefinger to his lips, Sharpe called for silence and caution. “Careful. They're just ahead. We've hit some sort of pay dirt,” Richard assured Copperwaite. “Go find the others. Bring reinforcements.”
Copperwaite spoke under his breath, trying to keep their presence a secret, saying, “But Richard, I-”
“Do it! Do it, now,” whispered Sharpe. Stuart Copperwaite sighed and nodded before racing off after the other men. Sharpe condnued, guided by the sound of the voices. Soon, he located a stone stairwell that must be the way taken by the Crucifier and any victims he or they might have forced down into these awful catacombs-like the bowels of an ancient Stonehenge, an underground cathedral.
Sharpe thought of Jessica at the lab, about the CID building, at St. Albans, at her hotel, at his apartment, and his anxiety rose like a knife in his throat. He sensed Jessica near; sensed her, this very moment, in grave danger.
Now, Sharpe heard Jessica's voice, shouting and in pain, saying something about rituals. Now he knew most certainly that Jessica stood in harm's way, and he knew she was just beyond the next catacomb, just beyond the light, filtering from ahead, beyond his sight and reach, but the tunnel split again, two separate directions here, and he could not be sure which led to Jessica.
Richard heard raised voices now, angry voices. They chanted, “Brand her, brand her, brand her. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater. Mihi beata mater.”
“Hold her wrists! Hold her dght! Control her!”
“Hold her hand still, so that I can stake it!” shouted another frustrated voice, one with a distinctly familiar ring, not Luc Sante's.
Frustrated and angry at the turn of events, Richard Sharpe again raced ahead of the others, taking the left tunnel in a headlong effort to save Jessica. He feared her in pain, a pain that might turn to a death at any time. He felt an intense hatred now for Luc Sante, wishing to mete out some pain to the Jesuit madman of twisted holiness. Obviously, Luc Sante had an agenda only Father Luc Sante fully comprehended.
Sharpe raced until he came to the end of a tunnel closed off by a grate, and staring through the grate, he could see the ritual in progress before his eyes. He saw Luc Sante conducting, and he saw Jessica with her hands staked, her feet tied, and that she hung naked from a cross. His heart filled with the horror before his eyes.
The men nearest Jessica had dropped their cowls, and Sharpe recognized Tatham of the RIBA, a Dr. Kahili, Burtie Burton's shrink whom Sharpe had spoken to, and beside Kahili stood Dr. Karl Schuller. Sharpe could hardly believe what his eyes imparted. His mind worked to make sense of it all.
Those nearest Jessica prepared now to bathe her in an oil and blood mixture, the blood taken from a cut made in her right side. Others near her prepared to brand her tongue with a hot poker.
Sharpe screamed and kicked out at the grate separating him from these demons, the clattering noise riveting everyone's attention from Jessica to the intruder.
Luc Sante, using Jessica's Browning, fired and struck Richard a grazing blow to the temple just as Sharpe leaped down from the overhead tunnel. The gunshot knocked Sharpe back, while Luc Sante, over the noise, cursed, “The sancdty of our home is invaded, defiled!”
Sharpe fired back with little aiming. His army training as a sharpshooter took over. His single bullet created a neat, round hole in the old man's chest. Father Luc Sante sank to his knees, dying and pleading rhetorically, “Who will save… Savior know to… if I am not… here? Where will… I am, be? You fools… have destroyed any chance of… Second Coming.”
Luc Sante's body went into spasms, his chest constricting, his throat filling with blood that he now gurgled and choked on. He amounted to a lump of robes now on the coal-smeared, ancient floor.
“He's… Father's dead!” moaned one of the Houghton sisters who'd raced to the old man to tend his wound.
The others followed suit, falling to their knees over their leader. Schuller, finding the gun there, lifted it and found himself staring at the bore hole to Sharpe's weapon. Sharpe stood in the flickering light like some mad devil, bleeding profusely from his temple where Luc Sante's bullet had ripped a course through his skin and hair.
Other police and inspectors, along with Copperwaite, now rushed in to see Dr. Karl Schuller drop the gun, drop to his knees, and crumble under the weight of having lost all hope for the chance to be one of the Chosen to cross over. In the end even Jessica, sdll in her drugged condidon, saw the pitiful rabble of religious zealots for what they were. How all had been willing to step forward for the opportunity to create a moment in which the
