were housed by Kartli at his expense, they were only too happy to oblige his habit, especially since the habit so eloquently expressed his devoutness.
At seven minutes after midnight, he opened the door to the confessional, settled himself on the narrow seat.s Through the latticework of the carved wooden screen the profile of the priest was visible. He recognized Father Shota, one of his favorites. This pleased him. He and Father Shota had spent many hours talking of the history of their religion.
The Apostle Andrew, the brother of St. Peter, had come to Georgia to preach the Gospel, bringing with him the Holy Mother's Uncreated Icon-not created by the hand of man, an icon of divine origins. From that time forward, Mary became Georgia's protector. Over the intervening centuries the Georgian Orthodox religion had been heavily influenced by the Christians of the Byzantine Empire, so it was fitting to Mikhail Kartli, an ardent student of history, that he had brought the religion back home, completing the circle, the end returned to the beginning.
'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,' he began.
And Father Shota replied, 'Behold, my child, Christ stands here invisibly receiving your confession. Do not be ashamed and do not fear, and do not withhold anything from me; but without doubt tell all you have done and receive forgiveness from the Lord Jesus Christ. Lo, His holy image is before us-'
Without warning, the latticework screen shattered inward. Kartli, struck in the face by shards of wood, raised his arms defensively, and so received the priest into his hands as the man crashed through the aperture.
'Father Shota!' he cried.
Eyelids fluttering spastically, the priest tried to answer, but pink bubbles foamed in his open mouth. Kartli felt the slow creep of blood, warm and viscid, smelled the nauseating sweet-coppery odor. Cradling the priest's head and shoulders, searching desperately for the strength of vital signs, he was unprepared as the door to his side of the confessional flew open.
With barely a chance to turn his head, Kartli had a momentary impression, blurred and imprecise, of a grinning face. With a swift and vicious thrust, his maimed right hand was pinned to the back of the confessional by a spike impaled through the center of his palm. Oblivious to the pain, he tried to use his left hand to strike out at his attacker, but burdened with Father Shota's weight, he was essentially helpless.
Damon Cornadoro produced his push-dagger and grabbed a fistful of Father Shota's hair.
'No!' Kartli cried. 'For the love of God, spare him!'
'Spare him? Why? He was the one who betrayed you. He told me where you'd be tonight.' With the sickening precision of a surgeon Cornadoro slashed the edge of the push-dagger across the priest's throat. Putting his knee into the small of the corpse's back, he used Shota to pin the Georgian firmly in place. The priest's head lolled at an unnatural angle, his expression was one of terrified astonishment.
'How easily lies come to you, Georgian.' Cornadoro leaned in. 'Did you think I wouldn't find out?'
Kartli stared at him, stony, utterly silent. The initial shock was over: the barbarism could not affect him-he'd seen worse in his day-but the loss, he knew, would stay with him a long time.
'Don't you want to know how I found out?'
Kartli spat into the hateful face. He knew how to handle death-lovers, God knew he'd had enough experience. Show them fear and they lapped it up like cream. Cornadoro's mouth twitched in a parody of a smile.
There was something distinctly unsavory about the grin; with a repellent shock Kartli recognized the taint of lechery.
'It was Irema. Yes, yes. Your lovely daughter, your jewel.' Cornadoro's head was inches from Kartli's face; his intimate tone brought home as nothing else could the stark horror of his words. 'Her small breasts high on her chest, the dark nipples…'
Kartli convulsed, struggling against the pressure exerted against him. 'You lying piece of filth!'
'The oval birthmark just over her left hipbone-like a tattoo, better even-very sexy, if you think like I do.'
Kartli erupted, his eyes standing out, his face flushed with blood. 'I'll kill you!'
'And the best part, Georgian, is how she fucks.'
Cornadoro did everything but lick his chops. Dizzied, Kartli could feel the other's lust, the unequivocal affirmation, the lethal power of his words.
'Like an animal, wrapping her legs around me, begging for it over and over again. I swear she could drain a warhorse.'
Kartli shouted as his ancient ancestors had surely shouted on the bloody fields of battle. With his left hand, he grabbed the end of the spike protruding from his palm and wrenched it free. Blood spurted, but he was beyond caring, beyond feeling anything. An animal himself, he was taken by blind rage. Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice of warning, of prudence sounded like an echo from another age, but it was quickly drowned out by the martial drumbeat of his blood.
'That's right,' Cornadoro half sang in counterpoint to the threat of the spike. 'That's right, come on.'
The point of the spike pierced the muscle of Cornadoro's shoulder. The Georgian was powerful, stronger than Cornadoro had expected. Kartli tried to twist the spike, to sink it deeper, to open the meat of Cornadoro's shoulder. Cornadoro struck the Georgian's ear so hard his head bounced. Even in the strongest of constitutions such a concussive blow stopped thought and action in its tracks. Cornadoro tried to rip the spike away while Kartli's eyes showed white and he fought to stay conscious.
Running on instinct, on the need for survival, the Georgian lifted his knee from between the corpse's legs, buried it in Cornadoro's groin.
The Georgian drove the spike downward. Taking the brunt of it on his biceps, Cornadoro chopped down with the heavy, callused edge of his hand against the side of Kartli's neck, into the carotid artery. He applied pressure that ran all the way up from his feet, wrenching away the spike, reversing it, driving it into the Georgian's chest just beneath the breastbone. Kartli's eyes opened wide. He did not utter a sound, though Cornadoro knew he must have been in excruciating pain. His will to live was, even in Cornadoro's experience, extraordinary. A last gift was in order, a lifting of a mystery.
'I know what you're thinking, Georgian,' Cornadoro said. 'But it isn't religion or politics or nationalism that drives me.'
'You're nothing, less than nothing because you have no belief, no faith, no soul.' Mikhail Kartli's voice was a hoarse whisper. 'With you it's all about commerce.'
Cornadoro laughed, suddenly delighted. 'On the contrary, as I told you when we first met, it's about the information. Secrets, the unknowable made known; everyone becomes vulnerable.'
Kartli's fingers squeezed Cornadoro's neck, the last, desperate struggle, the terminal fight for survival, and with an almost superhuman effort he nearly managed to drive Cornadoro into unconsciousness. But the pressure on his carotid had weakened him past a vital threshold, cutting off blood and oxygen to his brain long enough to impair his coordination and reaction time. With a grunt, Cornadoro reasserted control, a control that, for Mikhail Kartli, would never cease.
'I have made you vulnerable, Georgian.' Cornadoro clamped one hand at the nape of the other's neck. 'I have defiled your daughter. You were dead two hours ago.'
With his usual surgeon's precision, he swiped the push-dagger in a shallow arc that opened the Georgian's throat. Cornadoro studied Kartli's face as if he could in some way absorb the spark of life as it went out of the eyes. Then he wiped the push-dagger on Kartli's trousers and turned away. By the time he removed himself from the confessional, he had already forgotten both his victims.
Chapter 28
As the pope breathed shallowly in his holy sickbed, as Cardinal Canesi paced the Vatican hospital corridor, continued to burn up the cell airwaves with threats and false promises to every Turkish priest he could track down, Bravo and Adem Khalif set out for the Sumela Monastery. Dawn, once a promising broken-shell pink on the eastern
