Cathedral

fleeing worshipers.

Megan dropped to one knee and steadied her aim with both hands.

Patrick Burke shouted to the policewoman, “Up the steps! Up to the front door!”

Betty Foster spurred the horse up the steps where they curved around to Fifty-first Street, and moved diagonally through the crowd toward the center doors.

Burke saw the last of the worshipers flee through the doors, and the horse broke into the open space between them and the portals. The policewoman reined the horse around and kicked its flanks. “Come on, Commissioner! Up! Up!”

Burke drew his service revolver and shouted, “Draw your piece! Through the doors!”

Betty Foster held the reins with her left hand and drew her revolver.

A few yards from the portals the big bronze ceremonial doors—sixteen feet across, nearly two stories high, and weighing ten thousand pounds apiece— began closing. Burke knew they were pushed by unseen persons standing behind them. The dimly lit vestibule came into sight, and he saw a nun kneeling there. Behind her, the vast, deserted Cathedral stretched back a hundred yards, through a forest of stone columns, to the raised altar sanctuary where Burke could see people standing. A figure in bright red stood out against the white marble.

The doors were half closed now, and the horse’s head was a yard from the opening. Burke know they were going to make it. And then … what?

Suddenly the image of the kneeling nun filled his brain, and his eyes focused on her again. From her extended arm Burke saw a flash of light, then heard a loud, echoing sound followed by a sharp crack.

The horse’s front legs buckled, and the animal pitched forward. Burke was aware of Betty Foster flying into the air, then felt himself falling forward. His face struck the granite step a foot from the doors. He crawled toward the small opening, but the bronze doors came together and shut in his face. He heard, above all the noise around him, the sound of the floor bolts sliding home.

Burke rolled onto his back and sat up. He turned to the policewoman, who was lying on the steps, blood running from her forehead. As he watched, she sat up slowly.

Burke stood and offered her his hand, but she got to her feet without his aid and looked down at her mount. A small wound on Commissioner’s chest ran with blood; frothy blood trickled from the horse’s open mouth and steamed in a puddle as it collected on the cold stone. The horse tried to stand but fell clumsily back onto its side. Betty Foster fired into his head. After putting her hand to the horse’s nostrils to make certain he was dead, she holstered her revolver. She looked up at Burke, then back at her horse. Walking slowly down the steps, she disappeared into the staring crowd.

Burke looked out into the Avenue. Rotating beacons from the police cars cast swirling red and white light on the chaotic scene and across the facades of the surrounding buildings. Occasionally, above the general bedlam, Burke could hear a window smash, a whistle blow, a scream ring out.

He turned around and stared at the Cathedral. Taped to one of the bronze ceremonial doors, over the face of St. Elizabeth Seton, was a piece of cardboard with handlettering on it. He stepped closer to read it in the fading light.

THIS CATHEDRAL IS UNDER THE CONTROL

OF THE IRISH FENIAN ARMY

It was signed, FINN MACCUMAIL.

Book IV

The Cathedral: Siege

Friendship, joy and peace! If the outside world only realized the wonders of this Cathedral, there would never be a vacant pew.

—Parishioner

CHAPTER 15

Patrick Burke stood at the front doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, his hands in his pockets and a cigarette in his mouth. Lightly falling sleet melted on the flanks of the dead horse and ran in rivulets onto the icy stone steps.

The crowds in the surrounding streets were not completely under control, but the police had rerouted the remainder of the marching units west to Sixth Avenue. Burke could hear drums and bagpipes above the roar of the mob. The two hundred and twenty-third St. Patrick’s Day Parade would go on until the last marcher arrived at Eighty-fourth Street, even if it meant marching through Central Park to get there.

Automobile horns were blaring incessantly, and police whistles and sirens cut through the windy March dusk. What a fucking mess. Burke wondered if anyone out there knew that the Cathedral was under the control of gunmen. He looked at his watch—not yet five thirty. The six o’clock news would begin early and not end until this ended.

Burke turned and examined the bronze ceremonial doors, then put his shoulder to one of them and pushed. The door moved slightly, then sprang back, closing. From behind the doors Burke heard a shrill alarm. “Smart sons of bitches.” It wasn’t going to be easy to get the Cathedral away from Finn MacCumail. He heard a muffled voice call out from behind the door. “Get away! We’re putting mines on the doors!”

Burke moved back and stared up at the massive doors, noticing them for the first time in twenty years. On a righthand panel a bronze relief of St. Patrick stared down at him, a crooked staff in one hand, a serpent in the other. To the saint’s right was a Celtic harp, to his left the mythical phoenix, appropriated from the pagans, rising to renewed life from its own ashes. Burke turned slowly and started walking down the steps. “Okay, Finn or Flynn, or whatever you call yourself—you may have gotten in standing tall, but you won’t be leaving that way.”

Brian Flynn stood at the railing of the choir loft and looked out over the vast Cathedral spread out over an area larger than a football field. Seventy towering stained-glass windows glowed with the outside lights of the city like dripping jewels, and dozens of hanging chandeliers cast a soft luminescence over the dark wooden pews. Rows of gray granite pillars reached up to the vaulted ceiling like the upraised arms of the faithful supporting the house of God. Flynn turned to John Hickey. “It would take some doing to level this place.”

“Leave it to me, Brian.”

Flynn said, “The first priority of the police is that mob out there. We’ve bought some time to set up our defense.” Flynn raised a pair of field glassess and looked at Maureen. Even at this distance he saw that her face was red, and her jaw was set in a hard line. He focused on Megan who had assembled three men and two women and was making an inspection of the perimeter walls. She had taken off the nun’s wimple, revealing long red hair that fell to her shoulders. She walked quickly, now peeling off her nun’s habit and throwing the black and white garments carelessly onto the floor until she was clad in only jeans and a T-shirt, which had a big red apple on it and the words I Love New York. She stopped by the north transept doors and looked up at the southeast triforium as she called out, “Gallagher!”

Frank Gallagher, dressed in the morning coat and striped pants of a parade marshal, leaned over the balcony parapet and pointed his sniper rifle at her, taking aim through the scope. He shouted back, “Check!”

Megan moved on.

Flynn unrolled a set of blueprints and rested them on the rail of the choir loft. He tapped the plans of the Cathedral with his open hand and said, as though the realization had just come to him, “We took it.”

Hickey nodded and stroked his wispy beard. “Aye, but can we keep it? Can we hold it with a dozen people against twenty thousand policemen?”

Flynn turned to Jack Leary standing near the organ keyboard beside him. “Can we hold it, Jack?”

Leary nodded slowly. “Twenty thousand, or twenty, they can only come in a few at a time.” He patted his modified M-14 rifle with attached scope. “Anyone who survives the mines on the doors will be dead before he gets three paces.”