chance. And it's not just me.' Torino listened as Bazin told him how the garden had healed Kelly's broken wrist and corrected Nigel Hackett's and Zeb Quinn's eyesight. 'Drink the water. Eat the fruit. See for yourself.'
'I will,' Torino said. 'What else?'
'Speak to the nun. She knows most about this place. According to her, any living thing dies when it's taken out. Even the water goes stale.'
'It loses its power to heal outside the garden?'
'So she says.'
'How was Kelly going to heal his wife, then?'
'Last night I heard him and Zeb talking together. He showed her a strange rock that Sister Chantal gave him. It's in his backpack.' Bazin pointed into the caves. 'She got it from in there.'
Torino walked into the damp cave and his excitement increased. The pools, the waterfall and the tunnel of blood were exactly as they were in the Voynich. He peered into the gloom and saw white shapes flitting in the shadows. The Eves that Falcon spoke of in his manuscript and his testimony, he thought. As he had feared, this place presented problems for the Church as well as opportunities. He turned to the glowing tunnel and remembered the passage that described how the conquistadors had died.
Bazin pointed to the tunnel. 'When I came in here this morning Ross was up there.'
Torino didn't disguise his surprise. 'Up there? Are you sure?'
'I saw him climbing down. Said I wouldn't believe what he'd seen up there.'
Torino's eyes followed the glittering path until it disappeared and anticipation coursed through him. He approached the tunnel and studied the crystals encrusting the entrance. Then he bent down and put his hand into the rushing stream, noting the crystal rocks on its bed, the shards in the pools and the phosphorescent water flowing out of the cave into the lake. 'What did Dr Kelly see up there?'
'There wasn't time to ask him. But he said he was trying to find out what was behind this place's miraculous powers.'
'We know what's behind the garden's miraculous powers. God.' Torino thought of the mysterious radix in Father Orlando's testimony to the Inquisition. 'But it won't do any harm to understand the agent God might be using. I must talk with Dr Kelly and Sister Chantal. But first I want to make a few observations of my own.'
60
The next morning 'If we're trespassing, why don't they just kick us out?' Zeb demanded.
'I know,' said Hackett. 'They've no right to keep us here.'
'The Father General can't let us leave,' said Sister Chantal, bitterly. 'Not until he's decided what to do with this place – and us.'
Ross had slept fitfully, drifting into and out of consciousness. When he finally woke, the excruciating pain in his head had gone. The soldiers had corralled them within a copse of trees near to where Father Orlando's remains were buried. The trees and four boulders formed a natural enclosure, over which the soldiers had erected a tarpaulin. Within this makeshift pen, each had been laid out on the mossy ground, their ankles and wrists secured with plastic ties. The soldiers had fed them and allowed them to use the latrines they had dug in the corner of the garden, but there was no doubt that they were prisoners. When he opened his eyes Ross saw two soldiers unpacking and stacking an arsenal of weapons beneath another tarpaulin shelter.
'Christ, look at the stuff they've brought with them,' said Hackett, craning his neck for a clearer view.
'What are those things with fuel tanks attached to them?' asked Zeb.
'I think they're flame-throwers,' said Hackett. 'But what about those yellow parcels? One of their packs was full of them. Christ, what the hell did they expect to find here? They can't have thought we were that dangerous.'
'I don't think the weapons were meant for us,' said Ross, thinking of the Voynich and what had killed the conquistadors in the tunnel of blood.
'You okay? How's your head?' Zeb asked him.
'Fine.' Ross almost missed the pain. It had helped focus his rage and, right now, rage would have felt a hell of a lot better than despair.
'This place is amazing. Your swelling and bruising's already gone.' She cocked her head. 'There's Osvaldo – or whoever the hell the son-of-a-bitch really is. You sure he was the guy who hurt Lauren?'
Ross shifted as Mendoza stepped out of one of three tents by the lake. He felt his fury return. 'Positive.'
'The priest called him Marco – Marco Bazin,' said Hackett. 'The bastard's going through our backpacks now.'
As Ross lay on the ground, he thought of Lauren, helpless on her hospital bed. God, he missed her. He yearned to call his father and ask how she and the baby were. He had come so close to saving them; he had held their salvation in his hand. He no longer cared about the source or the caves. He only wanted Lauren back. As he watched Bazin retrieve the rock crystal and Father Orlando's damaged notebook, he stoked the rage burning within him. He still found it hard to believe Torino's duplicity: a so-called man of God offering him sympathy and requesting his wife's notes – in a hospital chapel of all places – after he had ordered the burglary responsible for Lauren's injuries. There was no way Ross was leaving this garden without the one thing he had come for: the means to save his family. If Torino wanted war, then so be it.
Bazin turned towards them, stepped over Hackett and pulled a knife from his belt.
'Come to stab us in the back again, have you?' said Hackett.
Bazin ignored him and turned to the soldiers. 'Gag them. The Father General doesn't want them communicating.' He knelt down and cut the plastic ties on Ross's and Sister Chantal's ankles. 'He wants you two to talk, though.' He grabbed their wrists and pulled them to their feet. 'Come.'
61
'Tell me something, Osvaldo,' Kelly demanded, as Bazin led them to Torino.
'My name is Marco.'
'Okay, Marco, my loyal and trustworthy friend, tell me how much Torino's paying you. How much does a lowlife bag of shit like you cost?'
The other man's tone infuriated Bazin. The scientist, an atheist who believed in nothing, had no right to assume he was superior to him. 'The Father General's paying me nothing. I'm doing this to cleanse my soul. This is God's work.'
'No,' said Sister Chantal. 'This may be the Father General's work but it is not God's.'
'What would you, a traitor to the Church, know about God's work?' said Bazin.
Kelly stared at him. 'You're doing this because you think it's right?' Bazin pushed him on, but Kelly hadn't finished. 'Remember our chat about deeds being everything? You said that only God and the Church can judge if a man's deeds are good or bad. Tell me one thing. How the fuck does your God justify you putting my wife into a coma?' He clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw muscles bunched. 'I can't believe Juarez died saving your life. His was worth infinitely more than yours. Christ, I can't believe I saved your fucking life. Instead of pulling you out of the bat shit I should have left you to your fellow cockroaches.'
Bazin burnt to make the geologist understand the righteousness of his deeds. 'You weren't supposed to be in the house, and I didn't mean to hurt your wife but the Superior General needed her files. She got in the way.'
'Really? And those men you killed on the boat? The ones you set up to join our gang, to spy on us? Did you intend to kill them?'
'No.'
'Christ,' said Kelly. 'In that case, I hope you do intend to kill me.'
Bazin sighed. 'No, my friend, you don't. I was once paid to kill. I was good at it, too. Some said I was the best. I've lost count of how many men I intended to kill but I know they're all dead.'
