Shuttered Sky

and yet something almost profane. The violation of a violation. He no longer knew what was right or wrong, all he knew was that somewhere out there the “Vec­tors,” as Okoya had called them, were using Lourdes toward a disas­trous end. He had to stop them, but how could he turn from this?

Dillon found no yardstick to measure his choices. Then he realized he didn’t have to; Tessic had mercifully left him with no choice. Be­cause nothing short of the world’s end would stop them from soaring across the Atlantic, toward places whose names had become synony­mous with death.

Treblinka . . . Buchenwald . . . Auschwitz. The death camps of Europe.

PART V -REVEILLE

The Old Woman of Majdanek pulled her broom across the weed-choked pavement of the square. Beyond the leaves and dust, there was never usually much to clean. Few of the candy wrappers or bottles that plagued other tourist spots littered the ground here. But then, the visitors here never came for their pleasure—either then, or now.

The snows were late this year. They would usually come in November, first dusting the concrete slabs of the square with a white quilt that would soon thicken into a pearlescent blanket, far too beautiful for a place such as this. A shroud of snow to hide a multitude of sins.

When the snows would come, the old woman would lay down her broom until the spring. There would be much to do then, for the square would be filled with the layers of fall leaves entombed in the drifts, now decayed into a sinewy mud that the rains would not wash away. For that she used a stiff whisk broom, spreading the mud out until it dried into a thin silt that she could sweep into the April winds. The dust and chaff would then be carried back to the town of Lublin and the forest beyond. She fancied herself an active partic­ipant in the cycle of life, and it was a comfort to her.

No one paid her for her labors in the square. She was not part of the grounds crew, and yet she predated anyone else who worked there. She was simply there, like the barracks and statues. Like the fences and the ashes, moving her broom across the square every morning her joints allowed.

Visitors would take notice of her on their way to view the memorial and the crematoria. They would snap pictures. She would neither pose for nor demur from their cameras. Occasionally people would approach her in the square to ask her why a woman of such advanced years would labor so to clean a vast concrete square. They would ask in many languages. Although she spoke only Polish, she understood the question in most languages now, and could answer in a few of them as well.

“You see that house there,” she would tell them, pointing to her small home just beyond the outer fence of the camp. “I lived there sixty years ago, watching from my backyard, and I did nothing. So now I sweep.”

A stroke of her broom for every time she closed her window to the stench of the smoke. For every time she pulled vegetables from her garden, and ignored the sounds from the death chambers. For every time she took Sunday com­munion, and went to bed in silence. For each of these things there was a stroke of her broom. And she could only hope that the millions who visited Majdanek would see the respect she now gave the dead . . . and perhaps they in turn might once again find the respect for her and her people that had also burned in the death camps of Poland.

The leaves of fall had gone through their spectrum of color, and now, brittle and brown in these early days of December, they longed for their grave of snow as they tumbled on the concrete, pulverizing as they cartwheeled in the wind. The sky was a cloud of gray, pulled from horizon to horizon like a faded linen. It was a snow-sky. But no matter. If it snowed, then it snowed. She would not leave her task this morning until the flurries multiplied into a true fall of snow. So she pushed her broom, churning up leaf fragments and bird droppings, pushing back the tide of disorder to the edges of the square. When the sun struck her cheek, she thought it was something imagined, until she looked to the southern sky.

A hole had opened in the clouds to the south.

An elliptical spot of blue opened before the sun, spreading wider. Her sight and hearing had peaked long ago, and it took a few minutes until she heard the heavy beating of blades against the air, and saw the approaching shapes that soon resolved themselves into three helicopters descending toward her. They were shiny and white—nothing like the military monstrosities she had seen before, They came down in the square, creating a down-draft that cleaned the square far better than her broom. But she held her ground, holding her kerchief on her head, and watching in the center of the square, beside the stone monument to the Holocaust. In all her years of tending to the square, she had never seen activity such as this. Instinctively she knew that she was about to be a witness to something wonderful, or something horrible—she did not know which.

An hour later, she found herself on her knees in the church she had fre­quented all her life, bowed in dire supplication, her broom abandoned forever in the square.

30. Majdanek

As the Shards stepped down from the helicopter in Majdanek, Dillon could feel their influence settling upon the stark place of death. The evil of so many years ago still lingered here like an oil slick, permeating the rocks, coating the leaves, worming into the lungs with every breath. Yet Dillon could swear the evil receded with their presence, leaving the Earth prepared to give back what it had stolen.

“We should not be here,” Winston said. He had been repeating it like a mantra since he regained consciousness and learned their desti­nation. “We should not be here at all.”

Back in the plane Dillon had stated the case quite simply. They were hijacked. They were captive, and that, if nothing else, made them obliged.

“Do you believe we should do this?” Tory had asked. “Instead of seeking out the Vectors?”

Dillon found himself borrowing some of Tessic’s faith for his own. “If there’s a God,” Dillon said, “then I refuse to believe Okoya is his messenger.”

Now, as they stood on the concrete square, a sense of foreboding took root. Up ahead stood a concrete dome that, for more than a generation, held a mound of ashes raked from the ovens when Maj­danek was liberated. Now those ashes were being hosed down into a silty mortar for them.

“Instant resurrection,” said Michael. “Just add water.”

“We should not be here,” said Winston.

Tessic led them as far as the dome’s entrance, where a team of triage workers waited—but Tessic and the workers remained outside, Tessic deeming the act of creation inviolate, not to be seen. And so Dillon, Tory, Winston, and Michael went in alone, while Tessic and his workers waited for a sign of the miracle.

* * *

Faith had brought Elon Tessic to this precarious pinnacle of his life, but to propel it to completion, that would take business acumen. This, he knew, was why he was chosen for the task. Who but one of the most successful businessmen in the world could orchestrate such an event? Everything was a clockwork now; a massive, interconnected machine fitted by Tessic, and powered by the divine gifts of Dillon Cole and his three friends. More than thirty thousand were in Tessic’s employ, clearing, building, setting the stage. Most workers knew noth­ing. They received their paychecks and went home, the knowledge that their families were fed was enough for them. Others knew bits and pieces—saw a corner of the grand design—but only Tessic saw how it all fit together, and as he watched his great machine of revival grind into motion, even he was stunned by how precisely the gears turned.

He had begun a year ago—the day after the Colorado River Back­wash—the event that introduced Dillon to the world. He knew Dillon could not have died, and, once he was found he maneuvered himself into a position as Dillon’s jailer. Then he put much of Poland’s builders to work, constructing the first of Tessic’s personal megapolis.