The Messiah Choice (1985) (39 page)

"But Security—"

"—Will be preoccupied and harried during that period. This is a chance to act boldly, audaciously, decisively—as they do. To give them a taste of their own medicine and their own fears. Who knows who we might get strictly at random? Sir Reginald? The Dark Man?"

"Angelique," said Greg hollowly.

"What can I say except that we will save her immortal soul by doing so? Don't fear death quite so much, my friend. Angelique didn't, which is why the Dark Man found something far more terrible. Greater love has no man but to lay down his life for his friend. Even greater, I think, for strangers. Is living in the fascistic Orwellian world they will create for the West better than death or is it merely a slower, more miserable, more prolonged death horror? Knowing that their inevitable goal is a massive nuclear exchange with the East? Even the most conservative of governments and the most paranoid do not want nuclear war today even as they build bigger and better weapons.
They want it,
and if you want it and gain control you shall have it."

"It could backfire and tip our hand to no profit," he said. "We might not get anybody important or insure anything, but alert them. They'll put everything on hold and scour the island."

"Pip is rigging a dead man switch for the triggering mechanism. If it sounds as if anyone is even coming close ahead of the deadline it will be triggered, and if they shoot him, as is most likely no matter what powers we talk about, he releases the switch and it blows. No, his period of danger is between set-up and detonation time."

"You're talking like you expect to be there."

He sighed. "My boy, I have
always
expected to be there. I am seventy-two, but I climbed a mountain in Wales as late as last year. My heart and mind are sound and I'm in excellent shape.

Now Pip, of course, will be the trigger man for the bomb."

"Now wait a minute!"

"No, no, hear me out! He knows what he's doing. He's an expert and he's designed this thing.

There's none else nearly as qualified. What you don't know is that he's got a cancer. A bad one, in the brain and inoperable, with a good deal of it running around his body and settling elsewhere.

He is in constant pain, and had methodically prepared for his own suicide before it grew so bad and he so weak that he'd be in bed. He doesn't believe in God or the afterlife, but he does believe in miracles and this is his. His whole life he's sent young men and women out to die, or ordered the deaths of others. His whole life has been spent in the dark corners. He never married, and he lives only for that, but it was taken away several years ago in a scandal involving some of his superiors as well as a strong and unrealistic idealistic streak on the part of the last Labour government. The very existence of the bomb we're using is an act of treason, since it's one of many that he and several colleagues saved and hid with RAF connivance when the stages of Britain's unilateral nuclear disarmament policy were announced by the Prime Minister. That's how he got it."

MacDonald was stunned. "I—I didn't know."

"You see, it's his one last act, his one spectacular way out. He'll save the world, and, more important,
he'll do it personally,
not sit back and order others to do so."

"But we're talking about a climb up a sheer rock face of almost four hundred and fifty meters!

He can't possibly make it!"

"He'll make it because he wants to more than he wants anything else in the world."

"But—you! You were just telling me how healthy you were!''

"I am indeed. For me it is a different thing. I might live another ten or twenty mostly useless years watching everything fall apart. I might go tomorrow, of course—only God knows that for sure. But, my boy, I have spent my entire life in the service of God and His holy Church. I have fought a lifelong, devoted war in His name—and I've been losing. All my life I've wondered, after every failure, every setback, why God called me to this profession. I've felt like Job. Call it madness if you wish, or conceit, but I feel that all of that was preparation for this. I am called to do battle with Satan himself. No greater glory could a man of my faith ask. More, I'm the only one that understands them as they really are, and, as a result, I'm the only one who can fight them on spiritual grounds. No one, but no one, will deny me this. If I am forbidden to go, I will get a boat and sail right into Port Kathleen myself. I know—I'm sounding less like a doddering old fool and more like a fanatic."

"Yes," MacDonald agreed, not at all reticent to say so. "Well and good, my boy, because no matter what their high-tech pyrotechnics and black magical parlor tricks,
so are they. So are
they.
"

MacDonald sat back and sighed. "I need a drink," he said. "That and a change of subject for the moment."

"The first is easily remedied. The pitcher there has sangria and there are two glasses sitting inside each other next to your chair. As for the second—what do you think of Maria now?"

He poured one and took a good swallow. It tasted fine, and he had no idea of the power of it, although he knew that the Bishop liked his drinks strong. "I—I don't know. It's really sad, somehow."

"Why? With all that paraphernalia, she feels like the woman she is inside, and she needs to be.

Without it, she's a defenseless little kid with no future, so she might as well
be
that kid."

"Well, what else can she do?"

"No matter what she looks like, she's another Angelique. She's really a mature woman and she desperately needs to be treated like one in all respects. Most of all, she needs to be trusted again, particularly by you. She is as in love with you now as she was before all this. She needs your trust and your love, and she'll follow you anywhere, even die for you."

"Well, she may have to adjust otherwise. You and I know, Bishop, that if this thing is to be pulled off I'm going to have to be there. I'm going to have to be the one to keep everybody else from tripping sound alarms and getting on camera. Nobody else, except maybe Maria, has the—

wait
a minute! You aren't suggesting that she go along?"

"I'm suggesting that she be told nothing or even have intimated to her anything about the bomb.

Pip will be secure, and so will I. That other team, however, is valuable. I think she ought to be offered a chance to participate, to redeem herself, with the full understanding that she is going to die up there."

"You'd put that much trust in her—after all this?"

"I would. Treat her as she wants to be treated. Give her everything she wants—and I say this as a man of God, I hope. In the end, it will come down to Maria or you. You can supervise—and survive to continue the fight if we all fail. You don't have to go, Greg—if she does. I'll take the responsibility."

He sat back and sighed.
Damn!
"Who else are you including in your suicide pact?"

"No more than two or three others. King's base has already got them picked, if they agree.

They'll be here drifting in, one at a time, starting tomorrow."

"More geriatric wonders?"

"No. But each has their own reasons for wanting to do this, and they all know it's certain death.

They'll do."

He stared for a moment at the old man. "You're some strange kind of priest," he said at last.

"Yes, I know. It's been my own cross to bear."

MacDonald sat back and finished the drink. He didn't care how strong it was; he needed something stronger. "Look—I never bargained for all this. If I hadn't been handy and convenient when they polished off Sir Robert, I wouldn't even know any of this was happening. I don't mind risking my life, but suicide is not part of my make-up."

"Pip intends to commit suicide and yet make his death count for something. The others—they have their reasons, I think, but they aren't suicidal any more than I am. Not even Jesus wanted to go to the cross in the end. You're far too young to remember the Second World War, but none of our brave lads wanted to die. Still, when you stand there and see your own capital burning, when you hear the screams of trapped women and children and can do nothing to save them from the roaring fires, when you see the horrors of the concentration camp, the ovens, the piles of bones, the gold melted from the fillings of victims, you know that if you do not face down evil, no matter what the cost to you, you deserve just what you see. You are most fortunate, my boy. God has mercifully given you a supporting role in which sacrifice is not a requirement. No one is blaming you. If this cup could be taken from my hands I would relinquish it, but it can not.

Now—go. We have much to do, and the clock is ticking."

MacDonald got up and walked slowly back into the house where Maria was waiting to be led like a lamb to the slaughter, if only he would act his part.

14

BEST LAID PLANS

Bishop Whitely introduced them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but their nationalities were, respectively, Sikh, Lebanese, and Nigerian. Most surprising to MacDonald was the fact that the Lebanese was a Christian and a woman. The Nigerian was a Moslem, and Sikh's flowing beard and turban marked not only his nationality but his faith as well.

They sat around the living room in the warm, comfortable island resort nation of Aruba and MacDonald could not think of a less likely looking group in a more incongruous place. He wished he knew why these three, particularly the darkly attractive woman, had volunteered for such a mission, knowing only that it was against some great evil and would cost them their lives.

With them, too, were Whitely, Frawley, and Maria.

"We have only ten days to work this all out," Frawley told them. "There can be only a small amount of practice, and I'm sure that they have agents here and possibly already know that we are gathered together. There's no way to keep it secret here, I fear, but I believe they will allow us to keep going. It's in character for them to let the enemy try, so when he fails he will know it. You should know that because there is, I believe, not the slightest chance of any of us coming out of this alive, win or lose. Still, the armies of the world are at
their
beck and call, not ours. Only a very small, expert force, will be able to get onto that island and do damage. I say this because this is your last chance to back out. Replacements are still possible, but not after this afternoon. After this, you will know too much. After this, anyone who backs out, or hesitates, will be killed. There is no other way around it. The enemy can hear and see far more than we can, though they lack, I hope, the details of the plan. Therefore, anyone who still wishes to back out now should do so at this time. I will ask you one at a time. Shadrach?"

"It is my moral imperative to go, for I understand the nature of the enemy you fight," said the Sikh, in Indian-accented English. "I wish you to understand that the Indian government years ago wiped out my entire family in their
pogrom,
yet I did not lose my faith. It sustained me, as I sought to discover the reason for such events. It is because of this, I feel, that I was spared. I am ready to join them, but my death must have meaning. I will go."

The Bishop and the Rook nodded absently to themselves. "Very well," said Frawley, "you are in and welcome. We need you desperately, for you are our mountaineer. The bravery and greatness of your people's fighting skills are well known and taken for granted. Meshach?"

This was the dark Lebanese woman. "I will go. Since they butchered my children I have been nothing but a madwoman, a killing machine, but it is endless. It will be good to have meaning, to have an end."

"Excellent. One of your experience will be invaluable. Abednego?"

The dark Nigerian in tennis whites shrugged. "It seems we are in a confessional stage. I leave that to the others. I am a professional without ties whom Allah has called to this purpose. I will do the job. The rest is in the hands of Allah."

Frawley nodded. "My Lord Bishop, I'm not too keen on taking you along on this, although I understand that some were not too keen on me so I have to reserve judgment. You are determined?"

Bishop Whitely nodded soberly. "I am."

"All right, then. You all know, or should know, that is unlikely that I will see another Chrismas, nor do I want to. It's a good thing this is in ten days, for if it were thirty, as much as we need the time, I might not be able to manage it. I will manage it now, though. And that leaves us with our two younger folks here. I ask the newcomers not to judge the young lady. She is older, I suspect, than the three of you and a victim of their powers."

Maria smiled, welcoming that. She had dressed informally for this, but had kept her made up face and manner.

MacDonald had swallowed both his pride and his inhibitions and had spent most of the previous evening with her, mostly, as Whitely had suggested, making her feel like an adult woman. Nothing serious—he'd arranged a candlelight dinner for the two of them at a small private beach house, including champagne, and they had just talked and then walked on the beach, discussing everything but the situation at hand or her own limitations, and he'd found, just as he had with Angelique, that it was possible for him to remember who and what she really was and look beyond the physical. Ultimately, when they had returned to the house, he had told her that they were going back, and soon, and that they needed guides for the island itself.

"You're going with them?" she'd asked him.

"I may have to. There's no one else who knows the island as well in our group."

"And—it's one way, isn't it? They'll either kill or capture everybody in the end no matter how much damage you do.''

"Yes," he'd admitted.

"Then I'll be the guide. I'm small, light, and I know the places you never found. I—appreciate tonight, more than you can ever know, but I don't have any future. I have nothing to live for, really, and I'd love to get back at them. You— they'll be looking for you, expecting you. What they'll do to you will make what they did to Angelique and me seem like nothing. You can have a future."