The God Machine (37 page)

“They've been ordered to
watch
us, not
stop
us. That's what Lyman said, anyway. And besides, what other choice do we have? We can't just stay here. I don't know what else to do, Joseph,” she said, shaking her head. “Got a better idea?”

Koster looked down at the monitor. Then he shrugged. “How about dinner?”

B
Y THE TIME THE CRATE FINALLY MADE IT UPSTAIRS TO THE
archbishop's apartment, Michael Rose was not happy. He felt like he was coming right out of his skin, like an overripe fruit. He stood on the balcony, looking out at the East River, as three men in green overalls unpacked the portrait within.

Archbishop Lacey was too anxious, too nervous to leave the workmen alone at their labors. He stood beside the crate, nursing a large Scotch. “Are you sure I can't get you a drink?” the archbishop called out again.

Michael turned. He picked at the skin of his chin. “No, thank you,” he said. “I don't drink.” The cost of the portrait had been far greater than either of them had anticipated. If things didn't pan out, the archbishop would have a lot of explaining to do. As would he. Not that his father would listen.

“No, of course not,” said Lacey.

“What does that mean?” Michael stepped through the sliding door and reentered the living room.

The archbishop looked up with alarm. “Nothing. Nothing at all. How about a cream soda, then?”

“I'll be right back.” Michael moved toward the bathroom.

It was at the end of the hall, near the entrance. He closed the door behind him and locked it. Then he checked the lock once again. He looked like hell, he thought, as he turned and caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He leaned close to the glass. He examined his thinning blond hair. He poked at the circles under his eyes. He looked puffy and bloated, and, for a moment, he thought he saw his skin start to melt off his face, start to slip off his skull, hair and all, like a waxwork left out in the sun.

Michael picked up a hand towel and started to clean off the countertop. When he was sure it was dry, he pulled out the vial from his jacket, flipped it open and poured out a small pile of crank. He took out his wallet and cut a line with a credit card. Then he rolled up a twenty-dollar bill. He leaned over and snorted the line.

The back of his head seemed to shear off into space. He bent over, leaned forward, his hands on the counter. The pain in his nose was intense. It seemed to wind its way back through his nostrils like some insect. It crawled through his head, pinching nerves with its mandibles. Then, the feeling was replaced by a wash of pure pleasure, a tsunami of synapses firing. He opened his eyes. His skin slowly settled on the frame of his face. He sighed. He stared into the reflection of his transparent blue eyes. A small drop of blood had appeared at the tip of his nose. A tear. From his heart. He watched as it gathered momentum, as it balled up and fell, flattening out in the well of the sink.

Michael stared at the droplet of blood as it made its circuitous way toward the drain. He leaned over and slipped off his right shoe and his sock. He dipped his
right index finger into the sink, directly into the blood. He rubbed it against the lobe of his right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and finally on the big toe of his foot. When he had finished, he stared at himself once again in the mirror. Then, he got to his knees.

“Father,” he said. “Please forgive me.” He started to weep, quietly at first, then in great choking sobs. He clawed at the side of the tub. He pressed his face to the porcelain, felt the frigid solidity. Then he twisted around with a groan. He lunged for the toilet, and barely had time to bring his face over the lip of the seat when he vomited. The stream seemed to go on forever. He coughed and he heaved; he spat in the bowl. He wiped his wet lips with the back of his hand.

“Michael? Michael, are you all right?”

Rose flushed the toilet. He plucked off a few sheets of toilet paper and cleaned his face. Then he climbed to his feet. He slipped on his sock and his shoe. “I'm fine,” he replied, as he straightened his tie. “Have they finished?” He opened the door.

Archbishop Lacey was standing outside in the corridor, looking anxious. “Just now,” he said. “I was waiting for you.”

The painting was unwrapped, leaning up against the rear of the sofa, still surrounded by packing material. Michael's breath caught in his throat when he saw it. The girl in the portrait… She seemed to be staring right through him. All the pain and anxiety he had felt in the bathroom was suddenly gone. This mysterious beauty, he knew, and what lay hidden behind her, would be his only redemption.

Archbishop Lacey picked up the portrait. He carried it to the desk in the corner. He raised it aloft so that the reading lamp shone through the canvas.

Michael joined him. He leaned over the desk and studied the portrait, the felicitous brushstrokes, the
moody black background. “Bring the light closer,” he said.

Lacey did so. And then, as if it were some sort of parlor trick, the lines became visible. That terrible pattern. That insidious design. Right there, in the painted doorway, lost in the shadows. A shudder crawled up Rose's spine like a cockroach.

“Is it there?” Lacey demanded. “For God's sake, Rose, tell me! Can you see anything?”

Michael straightened. “Our informant was telling the truth,” he replied.

“Then we have all three pieces! The map is complete. Do you know what this means?”

Michael looked down at the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, at that mischievous smile on her face. She
knew
. She knew
everything
. “It means Koster and Sajan are expendable.”

The archbishop laughed. “That, too. But there's more. I'm afraid that I haven't told you quite everything. About these schematics. And the Gospel of Judas. It corroborates the worst fears of our spy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's a story you may find hard to believe, one which the Catholic Church has been following since the time of the Twelve. I'm afraid that there's far more at stake here than you realize. You'd better sit down.”

S
AJAN PICKED A LITTLE BISTRO NEAR THE
P
ONT
S
AINT
-L
OUIS
. At first Koster insisted they try to find something more elegant. He wasn't in Paris that often, after all. But Sajan was concerned about traveling too far. And besides, she told him, it was hard to have a bad meal in Paris.

Koster ordered skate and
pommes frites
and Sajan a couscous with lamb. They sat outside on the sidewalk, under a large blue-and-white umbrella, and watched the world pass by. The waiter returned with a bottle of Beaujolais-Villages. It was fresh and bright, with ripe, supple crushed-strawberry flavors. They had consumed half the bottle before the food even arrived.

The more he drank, the less he thought about the map. And, frankly, he preferred it that way. Koster was tired of thinking about it. He had thought that finding and putting all three pieces together would have settled the thing. They would finally know where the Gospel of Judas was located. It was so damned frustrating. And Sajan was right. The more he considered it, the more certain he was. If they were ever going to be safe, they
had to find the Gospel of Judas. It was their only insurance against those who pursued them.

Koster sipped his wine and watched as Sajan ate her couscous and lamb. She sliced the meat off the bones with precision, like a surgeon. She took such delicate bites. You could tell she had grown up in Europe by the way she used her knife and her fork. She never switched hands. Just like him. And he thought about how similar they were, despite their more obvious differences. Both had grown up overseas, moving about with their families from one place to the next. It was this which had fostered their love for the security of numbers, for the rigor and rapture of science. Neither of them had an old schoolyard to which to return. No old neighborhood. It was too hard to forge lasting friendships on the fly. But numbers had an exquisite exactitude. Numbers manifested their permanence in their very abstraction. They were better than friends; they were loyal and true.

Koster watched as Sajan took another sip of her wine. She wiped her lips with her napkin, and he turned his attention away, away from the curve of her eyebrows and the color of her almond-shaped eyes.

Instead, he took another bite of his fish. It was salty yet tender and sweet, grilled to perfection. It seemed to melt in his mouth. But no matter what he did, he couldn't distract himself from the truth that was bubbling up deep inside of him, no matter how much he tried to suppress it. Why else had he insisted on keeping the map? It wasn't just his masculine pride. He was falling in love with Savita. There. He had admitted it. At least to himself. It was true. He was falling in love with this remarkable woman. And this notion, instead of filling him with a rapturous feeling, only filled him with dread.

Was he holding the map to protect her? Or was it
because—if he handed it over to her—she'd no longer have a reason to stay?

“I think I know why Franklin was so obsessed about Franky.” Sajan leaned back in her chair. “I'm talking about ghosts, Joseph. The things from the past that still haunt us. You and I, we're the same.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“We've both lost children. And people we loved. People close to us. They were so much a part of our lives, and then they were suddenly gone. But you feel them still, don't you, Joseph? Like phantom limbs. They're still a part of you. I don't know what I'm saying.” She laughed. “It must be the wine. I generally don't drink quite this much.”

“It's okay.”

“Is it?” She looked at him closely. “Anyway, I think I know why Franklin felt like he did. It was really troubling me, so I read up on this part of his story. When he was younger, in Boston, his brother, James—to whom Franklin was apprenticed—got into a spirited debate with the elders of the city over the value of inoculating for smallpox. James had just launched the first newspaper in the colonies, the
Courant
, and he was itching for a way to take on the established authority. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong side of the debate.”

“He came out against smallpox inoculation?”

“A 1677 outbreak had wiped out twelve percent of Boston's population. In 1702, after losing three of his own children, a guy named Cotton Mather began studying the disease. One of his slaves had been inoculated in Africa and he showed Mather the scar. Other slaves corroborated the procedure. None had ever contracted the illness. James Franklin, eager to sell papers, stirred up the debate. He derided the practice. As in many things, Benjamin didn't agree with his brother, and he mentions nothing about this in his autobiography, which would
seem to indicate he was ashamed of his brother's position. But he said nothing. He still set the type that precipitated the controversy. Years later, he became a vocal supporter of Mather, and a friend. Right before Franky's birth, Franklin editorialized in his
Gazette
in favor of inoculations, publishing supporting statistics. The truth was, he had planned to have Franky inoculated. He just got delayed.”

“Why?”

“The boy had been ill with the flux. Franklin was scared. He was worried what the procedure would do to him. A short while later, Franky contracted the smallpox and died.”

“And Franklin blamed himself.”

“He must have. He talks of him constantly in the journal. ‘Soon,’ he says. ‘I'll be with you soon.’ He loved Franky unabashedly. And he was never as close with his bastard son, William, or Sally, his daughter. It's like he shut himself off from those feelings.”

Koster pushed his plate back from the lip of the table. He took another sip of his wine. Then he downed the whole glass.