Cathedral (53 page)

. . . You wouldn't believe that men can make such noises. My God, it makes the blood run cold, Father, and turns the bowels to ice water."

Murphy continued to stare at the mines.

Flynn motioned overhead. "Look at these commanding views. . . . How in the world do they expect to succeed?" He led the priest to the small door in the corner of the transept and motioned Murphy to go first. They walked wordlessly up the spiral stairs and came out in the long triforiurn five stories above the main floor.

Abby Boland stood by the door, an M-16 rifle cradled in her arms. She had found a pair of overalls in a maintenance closet, and she wore them over her cheerleader's uniform. Flynn put his arm around her and walked her away from the priest as he explained the coming attack and went through her assignments. Flynn looked across the nave at George Sullivan, who was watching them. He took his arm from her shoulder and said, "If we don't stop them . . . and if you determine in your own mind that killing more of them won't help anything, then get into the bell tower . . . . Don't try to cross the choir loft to get to George . . . . Stay away from Leary and Megan. Understand?"

Her eyes darted to the choir loft, and she nodded.

Flynn continued. "Ibe attic will take a while to fall in, and the bombs won't damage the towers-they'll be the

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only things left standing. George will be all right in the south tower."

"George and I understood we'd not see each other again after this." She looked at Sullivan, who was still watching them.

"Good luck to you." Flynn moved toward the tower passage and left her with Father Murphy.

After a few minutes Murphy rejoined Flynn, and Flynn looked at his watch.

"We don't have a great deal of time, so keep thes6 things short."

"How do you know how much time you've got? Am I to understand that you know the details of this attack?" He looked at the sheaf of rolled papers in Flynn's hand.

Flynn tapped Murphy on the shoulder with the paper tube. "Each man has a price, as you know, and it often seems pitifully low, but did anyone ever consider that Judas Iscariot may have needed that silver?" He laughed and indicated the spiral stairs. They climbed three stories up into the tower, until they reached the level that passed beside the attic. Flynn opened a large wooden door, and they stepped onto a catwalk.

Murphy peered into the dimly fit expanse, then walked to a pile of chopped wood and votive candles. He turned back and stared at Flynn, who met his stare, and Murphy knew there was nothing to be said.

Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty moved out of the shadows and approached along a catwalk, their arms around each other. The expressions on their faces showed that they found the sight of Flynn and the priest to be ominous. They stopped some distance from the two men and looked at them, long plumes of breath coming from their mouths. Father Murphy was reminded of two lost souls who were not allowed to cross a threshold unless invited.

Flynn said, "The good Father wants to hear your sins."

Jean Kearney's face flushed. Nulty looked both embarrassed and frightened.

Flynn's eyebrows rose, and he let out a short laugh. He turned to the priest. "Seff-control is difficult in times like these."

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Murphy's face betrayed no anger or shock, but he let out a long, familiar sigh that Flynn thought must be part of the seminary training. Flynn motioned Murphy to stay where he was and strode across the catwalk. He handed Jean Kearney three sheets of paper and began briefing the two people. He concluded, "They'll come with the helicopters anytime after 5:15." He paused, then said, "Don't be afraid,"

Jean Kearney answered, "The only thing we're afraid of is being separated." Nulty nodded.

Flynn put his arms around their shoulders and moved with them toward the priest. "Make Father Murphy a happy man and let him save your souls from the fires of hell at least." Flynn moved toward the door, then called back to Murphy. "Don't undermine the troops'morale, and no lengthy penances."

Flynn reentered the tower and waited in the darkness of a large, opaque-windowed room. He looked at his watch. According to Schroeder there were twenty minutes left until the earliest time the attack might begin.

He sat down on the cold, dusty floor, suddenly filled with a sense of awe at what he had done. One of the largest civil disturbances in American history was about to end in the most massive police action ever seen on this continent-and a landmark was going to be deleted from the guidebooks. The name of Brian Flynn would enter history. Yet, he felt, all that was trivial compared to the fact that these men and women were willingly following him into death.

Abruptly he pivoted around, drew his pistol, and knocked out a pane of thick glass, then looked out at the night. A cold wind blew feathery clouds across a brilliant blue, moonlit sky. Up the Avenue dozens of flags bung from protruding staffs, swaying stiff and frozen in the wind.

The sidewalks were covered with ice and broken glass, sparkling in the light. Spring, he thought. "Dear God, I'll not see the spring."

Father Murphy cleared his throat, and Flynn spun 444

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around. Their eyes met, and Flynn rose quickly. "That was fast."

Flynn began the climb up the winding stairs that gave way to a series of ladders. Murphy followed cautiously. He'd never been this high in either tower, and despite the circumstances he was eager in a boyish sort of way to see the bells.

They climbed into the lowest bell room, where Donald Mullins crouched behind the stonework that separated two louvers. He wore a flak jacket, and his face and hands were blackened with soot from a burned cork whose odor still hung in the cold room.

Father Murphy looked at the ripped louvers with obvious displeasure and then stared up at the bells hanging from their cross-beams. Flynn said nothing but looked out into the Avenue. Everything appeared as before, but in some vague, undefined way it was not. He said to Mullins, "Can you telIT'

Mullins nodded. "When?"

"Soon." Flynn gave him two sheets of paper. "They've got to blind the eyes that watch them before the rest of the attack can proceed. It's all there in the order of battle."

Mullins ran a flashlight over the neatly typed pages, only vaguely interested in how Flynn came to have them. "My name here is Towerman North.

Sounds Re a bloody English lord or something." He laughed, then read, "If Towerman North cannot be put out with sniper fire, then high explosive and/or gas grenades will be fired into bell room with launchers. Helicopter machine gunners will be called in if Towerman North is still not neutralized . . . ... He looked up. "Neutralized . . . God, how they've butchered the language here. . . ."

Flynn saw that Mullins's smile was strained. Flynn said, "Try to keep us informed on the field phone. . . . Keep the receiver off the cradle so we can hear what's happening. . . .

Mullins pictured himself thrashing around on the floor, small animal noises coming from his mouth into the open receiver.

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Flynn went on, "If you survive the snipers, you'll survive the explosion and the fire."

"That barely compensates me for freezing half to death."

Flynn moved to the west opening and stared down at the green and gold harp flag, glazed with ice, and ran his hand over it. He looked out at Rockefeller Center. Hundreds of windows were still lit with bright fluorescent light, and figures passed back and forth. He took Mullins's field glasses and watched. A man was eating a sandwich. A young woman laughed on the telephone. Two uniformed policemen drank from cups.

Someone with field glasses waved to him. He handed the glasses back. "I never hated them before . . ."

Mullins nodded. "It's so maddeningly commonplace . . . but I've gotten used to it." Mullins turned to Father Murphy. "So, it's that time, is it?"

"Apparently it is."

Mullins came close to Murphy. "Priests, doctors, and undertakers give me worse chills than ever a north wind did."

Father Murphy said nothing.

Mullins's eyes stared off at some indeterminate place and time. He spoke in a barely audible voice. "You're from the north, and you've heard the caoine-the funeral cry of the peasants. It's meant to imitate the wail of a chorus of banshees. The priests know this but never seem to object."

He glanced at Murphy. "Irish priests are very tolerant of these things.

Well, I've heard the actual banshees' wail, Father, whistling through the louvers all night . . . even when the wind was still."

"You've heard nothing of the sort,"

Mullins laughed. "But I have. I have. And I've seen the coach-a-bower.

Immense it was and black-polished, riding over these rooftops, a red coffin mounted atop it, and a headless Dullaban madly whipping a team of headless horses . . . and the coach drew past this window, Father, and the coachman threw in my face a basin of cold blood."

Murphy shook his head.

Mullins smiled. "Well . . . I fancy myself a poet, you see . . . and I've license to hear things. . . .

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Murphy looked at him with some interest. "A poet ...

"Aye." A faint smile played over his blue lips, but his voice was melancholy. "And some time ago I fell in love with Leanhaun Shee, the Gaelic muse who gives us inspiration. She lives on mortal life, as you may know, in return for her favor. That's why Gaelic poets die young, Father Do you believe thatT'

Murphy said, "They die young because they eat badly, drink too much, and don't dress well in winter. They die young because unlike most civilized poets they run off to fight in ill-conceived wars. Do you want to make your conf essionT'

Mullins knelt and took the priest's hands.

Flynn climbed down to the room below. A strong gust of wind came through the shattered windows and picked up clouds of ancient dust that had been undisturbed for a century.

Father Murphy came down the ladder. "This'~-he motioned toward the broken windows-"this was the only thing that bothered him. . . . I suppose I shouldn't tell you that. . . ."

Flynn almost laughed. "Well, one man's prank may be another's most tormenting sin, and vice versa." He jumped onto the ladder and descended to the spiral stairs, Father Murphy following. They cam e out of the tower into the subdued lighting and warmer air of the choir loft.

As Father Murphy moved along the rail he felt that someone was watching him. He looked into the choir pews that rose upward from the keyboard, and let out a startled gasp.

A figure stood above them, motionless in the shadows, dressed in a hooded monk's robe. A hideous, inhuman face peered out from the recesses of the cowl, and it was several seconds before Father Murphy recognized it as the face of a leopard.

Leary's voice came out of the immobile face. "Scare you, priest?"

Murphy regained his composure.

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Flynn said, "A bit of greasepaint would have done, Mr. Leary."

Leary laughed, an odd shrill laugh for a man with so deep a voice.

Megan rose from between the pews, dressed in a black cassock, her face covered with swirls of dull-colored camouflage paint, expertly applied, thought Flynn, by another hand.

She moved into the center aisle, and Flynn saw that it was an altar boy's robe and that it revealed her bare forearms, He saw also that her legs and feet were bare. He studied Megan's face and found that the paint did not make her features so impenetrable that he could not see the same signs he had seen in Jean Kearney. He said, "With death so near, Megan, I can hardly blame you."

She thrust her chin out in a defiant gesture.

"Well, if nothing else good comes of this, you've at least found your perfect mate."

Father Murphy listened without understanding at first, then drew in a sharp breath.

Megan said to Flynn, "Is my brother dead?"

Flynn nodded.

Her face remained strangely impassive. She motioned toward Leary as she fixed her deep green eyes on Flynn. "We won't let you surrender. There will be no compromises."

Flynn's voice was sharp. "I don't need either of you to explain my duty or my destiny."

Leary spoke. "When are they coming? How are they coming?"

Flynn told them. He said to Leary, "This may be your richest harvest."

"Long after you're all dead," said Leary, "I'll still be shooting."

Flynn stared up into the dark eyes that were as fixed as the mask around them. "Then what?"

Leary said nothing.

"I find it difficult, Mr. Leary, to believe you're prepared to die with us."

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Megan answered, "He's as dedicated as you are. If we have to die, we'll die here together."

Flynn thought not. He had an impulse to warn Megan, but he didn't know what to warn her about, and it didn't seem to matter any longer. He said to her, "Good-bye, Megan. Good luck."

She moved back into the pews, beside Leary.

Murphy looked at the two robed figures. They stared back at him. He suspected they would snuff out his life from their dark perch with no more hesitation than a man swatting an insect. Yet . . . "I have to ask."

Flynn said, "Go abead-make a fool of yourself again."

Murphy turned to him. "You're the fool who brought them here."

Megan and Leary seemed to sense what the discussion was about. Megan called out in a mocking voice, "Come up here, Father. Let us tell you our sins." Leary laughed, and Megan went on, "Keep you up nights, Father, and turn your face as scarlet as a cardinal's hat. You've never heard sins like ours." She laughed, and Flynn realized he bad never heard the sound of her laugh.

Flynn took the priest's arm again and moved him into the south tower without resistance. They climbed the stairs and passed through a door into the long southwest triforium.

George Sullivan stood at the parapet staring down at the north transept door. Sullivan's kilts and tunic, thought Flynn, were incongruous with his black automatic rifle and ammunition pouches. Flynn called to him,