Cathedral

He had no intention of telling the Mayor’s aide she was a bitch.

She walked toward him, reached out, and took the glass from his hand. She drank, then handed it back.

Langley thought, She did it again! There was something uncomfortably intimate and at the same time unnervingly aggressive about the proprietary attitude she had taken with him.

Roberta Spiegel walked toward the door. “Don’t do anything stupid like Schroeder did.”

He looked up at her with some surprise.

She said suddenly, “You married? Divorced … separated … single?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “Watch the store. See you later.” She left.

Langley looked at the lipstick mark on his glass and put it down. “Bitch.” He walked to the window.

Bellini had placed a set of field glasses on the sill. Langley picked them up and saw clearly the man standing in the belfry. If Bellini attacked, this young man would be one of the first to die. He wondered if the man knew that. Of course he did.

The man saw him and raised a pair of field glasses. They stared at each other for a few seconds. The young man held up his hand, a sort of greeting. The faces of all the IRA men Langley had ever known suddenly coalesced in this face—the young romantics, the old-guard IRA like Hickey, the dying Officials like Ferguson, the cold-blooded young Provos like most of them, and now the Fenians—crazier than the Provos—the worst of the worst…. All of them had started life, he was sure, as polite young men and women, dressed in little suits and dresses for Sunday Mass. Somewhere something went wrong. But maybe they would get most of the worst crazies in one sweep tonight. Nip it in the bud here. He damn well didn’t want to deal with them later.

Langley put down the glasses and turned from the window. He looked at his watch. Where the hell was Burke?

He had a sour feeling in his stomach. Transference. Somehow he felt he was in there with them.

Maureen watched the circle of light closing in on her and almost welcomed the light and Hickey’s cajoling voice after the sensory deprivation she had experienced.

Hickey called out again. “I know you’re frightened, Maureen. Just take a deep breath and call to us.”

She almost did, but something held her back. A series of confused thoughts ran through her mind—Brian, Harold Baxter, Whitehorn Abbey, Frank Gallagher’s ghostly face. She felt she was adrift in some foggy sea—with no anchor, misleading beacons, false harbors. She tried to shake off the lethargy and think clearly, tried to resolve her purpose, which was freedom. Freedom from Brian Flynn, freedom from all the people and things that had kept her feeling guilty and obligated all her life. Once you’re a hostage, you’re a hostage the rest of your life. She had been Brian’s hostage long before he put a gun to her head. She had been a hostage to her own insecurities and circumstances all her life. But now for the first time she felt less like a hostage and less like a traitor. She felt like a refugee from an insane world, a fugitive from a state of mind that was a prison far worse than Long Kesh. Once in, never out. Bullshit. She began crawling again, along the foundation wall.

Hickey called out, “Maureen, we see you moving. Don’t make us shoot.”

She called back, “I know you don’t have Gallagher’s gun, because I have it. Careful I don’t shoot you.” She heard them talking among themselves, then the flashlights went out. She smiled at how the simplest bluffs worked when people were frightened. She kept crawling.

The foundation curved, and she knew she was under the ambulatory now. Somewhere on the other side of the foundation were the fully excavated basements beneath the terraces outside that led back to the rectory.

Beneath the thin layer of soil the Manhattan bedrock rose and fell as she crawled. The ceiling was only about four feet high now, and she kept hitting her head on pipes and ducts. The ducts made a noise when she hit them and boomed like a drum in the cold, stagnant air.

Suddenly the flashlights came on again, some distance off. Megan’s voice called, “We found the gun, Maureen. Come toward the light or we shoot. Last chance.”

Maureen watched the beams of light searching for her. She didn’t know if they had Gallagher’s gun or not, but she knew she didn’t have it. She crawled on her stomach, commando style, pressing her face to the ground.

The lights began tightening around her. Hickey said, “I’m counting to ten. Then the armistice is over.” He counted.

Maureen stopped crawling and remained motionless, pressed against the wall. Blood and sweat ran over her face; her legs and arms were studded with pieces of embedded stone. She steadied her breathing and listened for a sound from the basement that was only feet away. She looked for a crack of light, felt for a draft that might be coming from the other side, then ran her hands over the stone foundation. Nothing. She began moving again.

Hickey’s voice called out, “Maureen, you’re a heartless girl, making an old man crawl in the damp like this. I’ll catch my death—let’s go back up and have some tea.”

The light beams were actually passing over her intermittently, and she froze when they did. They didn’t seem to be able to pick out her blackened features in the darkness. She noticed that the stone wall turned again, then ended. Brick wall ran from the stone at right angles, and she suspected the brick wall was not a stress-bearing foundation but a partition behind which the foundation had disappeared. She rose to a kneeling position, reached for the top of the wall, and discovered a small space near the concrete ceiling. She pressed her face to the space but saw no light, heard no noise, and felt no air. Yet she was certain she was close to finding a way out.

A voice called out. Gallagher’s. “Maureen, please don’t make us shoot you. I know you spared my life—come on, then, be a good woman and let’s all go back.”

Again she knew they wouldn’t shoot, if not because of the explosives then for fear of a ricochet among all this stone. She was suddenly angry at their small lies. What kind of idiot did they think she was? Hickey might be an old soldier, but Maureen knew more about war than Megan or Gallagher would live to learn. She wanted to scream an obscenity at them for their patronizing attitude. She moved along the wall and felt it curve farther inward. She judged from the configuration of the horseshoe-shaped ambulatory that she was now below the bride’s room or confessional. Suddenly her hand came into contact with dry wood. Her heart gave a small leap. She faced the wall and knelt in front of it. Her hands explored the wood, set flush into the brick. She felt a rusty latch and pulled on it. A pair of hinges squeaked sharply in the still air. The flashlight beams came toward her.

Hickey called to her. “You’re leading us a merry chase, young lady. I hope you don’t give your suitors as much trouble.”

Maureen said under her breath, “Go to hell, you old bag of bones.” She pulled slowly on the door. Cracks of light appeared around the edges, showing it to be about three feet square. She closed the door quickly, found a broken shard of brick, and threw it farther along the wall.

The light beams swung toward the noise. She pulled the door open a few inches and pushed her face to the small aperture. She blinked her eyes several times and focused on a fluorescent-lit hallway.

The hallway floor was about four feet below her—a beautiful floor, she thought, of white polished vinyl. The walls of the corridor were painted plasterboard; the ceiling a few feet above her head was white acoustical tile. A beautiful hallway, really. Tears ran down her face.

She swung the door fully open and rubbed her eyes, then pushed her hair away from her face. Something was wrong…. She put her hand out, and her fingers passed through a wire grill. A rat screen covered the opening.

CHAPTER 40

Burke walked into the Monsignor’s inner office and looked

at Langley, the sole person present, staring out the window. Burke said, “Everybody quit?”

Langley turned.

Burke said, “Where’s Schroeder?”

“Relieving himself … or throwing up, or something. Did you hear what happened—?”

“I was briefed. Damned fools in there are going to blow it. Everyone’s all right?”

“Cardinal said so. Also, you missed two good showdowns—Schroeder versus Spiegel and Schroeder versus Bellini. Poor Bert. He’s usually the fair-haired boy, too.” Langley paused. “I think he’s losing it.”

Burke nodded. “Do you think it’s him, or is it us … or is it that Flynn is that good?”