Towing Jehovah (40 page)

"Father Thomas, I want you to leave this meeting," growled Di Luca. "Right now."

"Go fry an egg," said the priest. "From the Church's perspective this corpse might be a white elephant, but for Captain Van Horne and myself it's a sacred trust!"

"Get out!"

"No!"

The cardinal grew suddenly mute, absorbed in rapping the ashtray against the table, a steady, frustrated
thonk-thonk-thonk.

"It's not a movie prop, is it?" said Peche.

"Not remotely," said O'Connor.

"Good God."

"Exactly," said Haycox.

Van Horne directed a wide, hostile smile toward Di Luca. "Step one: we steam over to our cargo. Step two: we lash Him to our stern. Step three: we restart the tow." He shifted his stare to Peche. "Assuming there are no objections . . ."

A sudden joy took hold of Thomas. How wonderful to be fighting, for once, on the same side as Van Horne.

"My mind's confused," asserted Peche, "but my heart, it knows how unforgivable it would be to burn this body."

Cornejo muttered, "If it's really what you say it is ... if it's really, really
that
..."

"Who are we to go against angels?" said Mangione.

The captain reached into the pocket of his shirt, drawing out Raphael's angel feather and pointing it toward the first mate.

"Marbles, I want you to place our radio shack under armed guard. Any attempt by Monsignor Di Luca to enter should be resisted. While we're at it, let's be sure to blackball Sparks here and her buddy Dr. Fowler."

"Aye," said Rafferty.

Bliss clutched her crystal pendant and sneered.

"I assume you realize that, as of this moment, you're all in a lot of trouble with the Vatican," said Di Luca.

"Rome receives regular dispatches from me. When I fail to report, they'll send another Gulf tanker after you. They'll send two—three—a whole armada."

"Never a dull moment," said Van Horne.

"You're making a tragic mistake, Captain. Worse than Matagorda Bay."

"I survived that. I'll survive this too." Van Horne aimed the feather directly at Dr. Carminati. "How soon before you lift the survivors out of here?"

"We expect the choppers in about twenty minutes. Give us an hour after that. I hope you realize I'm not about to join this outrageous mutiny of yours."

"Mutiny's
the word," said Di Luca.

Van Horne shifted the feather from the physician to the cardinal. "If I'm in rebellion against the Vatican, Eminence, then the Vatican's in rebellion against heaven." The captain closed his eyes. "I shall leave it for you to decide which is the more serious sin.”

The half-dozen vending machines in the
Maracaibo's
snack bar dispensed a wide variety of grotesqueries: Hostess Twinkies, Li'l Debbie Snack Cakes, Ring Dings—each item underscoring Oliver's creeping conviction that, with or without a Corpus Dei, Western civilization stood on the brink of collapse. Cassie occupied a contoured plastic chair adjacent to a small Formica table, nursing a Mountain Dew beneath the Lucite glow of the COLD DRINKS machine, an image that for Oliver recalled Degas's masterful
Glass of Absinthe.
To her right, PASTRY 'N SNACKS. To her left, CANDY 'N SWEETS. He approached HOT DRINKS, secured black coffee in a paper cup unaccountably decorated with playing cards, and joined her.

"I believe the Reenactment Society is going out of business," he said. "Midway finished it off."

"The past dies hard."

"I guess. Sure. You've always been a deeper thinker than me."

"It kicks and screams, but eventually it dies." Oliver jammed his thumb into the scalding coffee, savoring the penitential pain. "Hey, Cassandra, we've had some terrific times together, haven't we? Remember Denver?" In some ways that particular Enlightenment League escapade—a colorful protest against the gigantic plywood Ten Commandments that the Fraternal Order of Eagles had erected on the capitol lawn—had been the high point of their relationship. In the park across the street he and Cassie had raised an equally formidable sign labeled WHAT GOD REALLY SAID and featuring a
nouvelle
decalogue they'd coauthored two days earlier between episodes of rapturous sex (they were field-testing the Shostak Supreme) in her apartment. "I'll bet if we work at it, we can remember them all. 'Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, except for Roman Catholics if they don't get tacky about it'.''

"I don't want to talk about Denver," said Cassie.

" 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's manservant, nor his maidservant, nor question why thy neighbor has servants in the first place'.''

"Oliver, I'm in love with Anthony Van Horne."

And suddenly his hypothermia was back, stealing through his body organ by organ, turning them into frozen cuts of meat.

"Shit." Charlotte Corday after all, stabbing him, murdering him.

"Van Horne? Van Horne's the
enemy,
for Christ's sake." He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Have you . . . slept with him?"

"Yes."

"More than once?"

"Yes."

"What brand of condom?"

"Any answer to that question would be the wrong one."

Oliver licked his smarting thumb. "Has he asked you to marry him?"

"No."

"Good."

"I'm planning to ask
him,"
she said.

"What do you see in a man like that? He's no rationalist, he's not one of us!" In a move Oliver found at once intensely pleasurable and cruelly patronizing, Cassie stroked his forearm.

"I'm sorry. I'm truly, truly sorry . . ."

"Know what I think? I think you've been seduced by the mystique of the sea. Hey, look, if this is the life you crave, fine, I'll buy you a boat. You want a sloop, Cassandra? A cabin cruiser? We'll sail to Tahiti, lie on the beach, paint pictures of the natives, the whole Gauguin bit."

"Oliver, it's over."

"It isn't."

"It is."

For the next minute neither of them spoke, their silence broken only by an occasional mechanical grunt from a vending machine. Oliver fixed on PERSONAL CARE, desirous of its wares, the Tylenol to assuage his headache, the Alka-Seltzer to settle his stomach, the Wilcox nail file to slit his wrists, the Shostak Supersensitives to facilitate his raging wish to have sex with Cassie one last time.

“ 'Thou shalt not kill,' " he said. "Remember what we did with 'Thou shalt not kill'?" No.

"Me neither."

"Oliver . . ."

"My mind's a blank." A dull, metallic thumping filled the air. The Iceland choppers, Oliver realized, landing on the
Maracaibo's
helipads. "Are you
certain
you can't remember?"

"I guess I've—I've . . . I'm not exactly sure what I mean. Blasphemy doesn't move me the way it used to."

"Come with me to Reykjavik, okay? You can catch a plane to Halifax tonight, a connecting flight to New York in the morning. With luck you'll be back teaching by Wednesday."

"Oliver, you're grasping at straws."

"Come with me."

“I can't.”

“You can.”

"No."

Oliver snapped his fingers. " 'Thou shalt not kill,' " he said, fighting tears, " 'except for communists, whom thou shalt kill with impunity'.''

September 16.

I assume you're grateful I rescued you, Popeye. Truth to tell, I'm glad to be here too. A lot of captains have gone down with their ships over the years, and I don't envy a single one of them. Rafferty's worried that the target on the twelve-mile scope might be just another iceberg, but I'd know those holy contours anywhere. Assuming the chains are still in place, the best procedure will probably be to sling the ends around the Maracaibo's deck island and wire the lead links together. If the load's too much, of course, it'll tear the island loose and pull it overboard, dumping us all into the sea. To earn a living, some men merely have to haul oil.

At 2015 the last of the Reykjavik choppers took off, bearing away Pembroke, Flume, and Oliver Shostak, along with those two fake ensigns who piloted the PBY. I had a notion to seek old Oliver out before he left, identify myself, and introduce his front teeth to the pit of his stomach, but then I decided stealing his girlfriend is revenge enough. Still, I'll never fully understand what he and Cassie have against our cargo. It seems to me a person ought to be thankful to his Creator. For now, though, none of my personal philosophical opinions matter. I've come to bury God, not to praise Him. I'll give the
Val
till dawn. If she's not gone by then, I'll fire off an Aspide and put her out of her misery. After that I'll be sorely tempted to hunt down Spruance's carrier and send
her
to the bottom as well. But I'll resist, Popeye. Such vindictiveness would be wrong. "Once enthralled by the Idea of the Corpse," Ockham tells me, "a person must remain eternally vigilant, forever seeking the moral law within." Under the midnight sun, despair acquires the intensity of sex, insomnia the vehemence of art. To the sailor who finds himself sleepless in the Arctic, wind has never felt sharper, salt air more pungent, a gannet's cry more piercing. As Anthony Van Horne wandered the central catwalk of the
Carpco Maracaibo

—icicles dangling everywhere, icebergs growling on all sides—he felt as if he'd become the hero of some vivid Scandinavian myth. He half expected to see the Midgard serpent cruising through the pink sea, swimming in circles around the dying
Valparaíso,
teeth flashing, eyes aflame, waiting for Ragnarok.

The old man lay on the fo'c'sle deck, wrapped in a canvas seabag like a statue of a Civil War general about to be unveiled.

"When you consider how much TNT and testosterone were on the scene this morning," said Cassie, tapping the corpse's head with her boot, "it's amazing only four people got killed." She smiled weakly.

"How are you?"

"Tired," he said, unhitching the binoculars from around his neck. "Cold."

"Me too."

"We've been avoiding each other."

"True," she said. "Will my guilt ever go away?"

"You're asking the wrong man."

"Fucking Gulf tanker. I mean, who'd have figured on a
Gulf tanker
showing up?" Bulky in their down parkas, graceless in their fur-lined boots, they pressed together like two bonded grizzly bears finding each other after a long hibernation.

"I hope you're not too sad," said Cassie, extending her sealskin mitten and gesturing toward the seabag.

"Reminds me of the time I got shot by a pirate in Guayaquil," said Anthony. "The pain didn't arrive all at once. I'm still waiting for something to hit."

"Grief?"

"Something. We had a few minutes together at the end."

"Did you talk about Matagorda Bay?"

"The man was on a morphine trip—hopeless. But even if he'd understood, he couldn't have helped me. The job's not done. The tomb's still empty."

"Lianne tells me the Vatican wants the corpse cremated."

"Did she also tell you we're forging ahead tomorrow?"

"To Kvitoya?"

"Yep."

"Wish you'd reconsider," said Cassie evenly. An oddly appealing, peculiarly sensual anger distorted her face. "The angels are dead. Your father's dead. God's dead. There's nobody left to impress."

"I'm left."

"Shit."

"Cassie, friend, wouldn't you say things have taken a pretty odd turn when the Holy Catholic Church and the Central Park West Enlightenment League want exactly the same thing?"

"I can live with that. Burn the sucker, honey. The world's women will thank you for it."

"I gave Raphael my word."

"The way I heard it," said Cassie, "Rome will dispatch more Gulf tankers if you don't play ball. Surely you don't want to be torpedoed again."

"No, Doc, I don't want that." Swerving toward the wreck, Anthony raised the binoculars and focused.

"Of course, I could always send the Pope a fax saying the body's been torched."

"You could . . ."

"But I won't," said Anthony crisply. "There's been enough deception on this voyage." Black waves washed across the
Valparaíso's
weather deck, hurling chunks of pack ice against the superstructure.

"Doc, I'll make you a deal. If a Vatican armada intercepts us between here and Svalbard, I'll surrender our cargo without a fight."

"No showdowns?"

"No showdowns."

Cassie moved her mouth, working the frozen muscles into a smile. "I'll believe that when I see it." With a deep gurgle and an unearthly groan, the
Valparaíso
began to spin, north to east to south to west, round and round, her bow falling sharply, stirring the Greenland Current into a frothy whirlpool as her ten-ton rudder, Ferris wheel-size propellers, and mammoth keel rose into the air. Level by level, companionway by companionway, the superstructure descended—cabins, galleys, wardroom, wheelhouse, stacks, mast, Vatican flag—sliding into the maelstrom as if into the mouth of some unimaginable grouper, portholes blazing brightly even after they slipped beneath the waves.

"Farewell, old friend." Anthony lifted his hand to his brow and fired off a forceful salute. "I'll miss you," he called across the ice-choked sea. The gannets screeched, the wind howled, the watery jaws whooshed closed. "You were the best of them all," the captain told his ship as she began her final voyage, a slow, inexorable drop from the frothy surface of the Norwegian Sea to the inky blackness of the Mohns Trench, five thousand fathoms down.

Child

THE DIVINE FACE was still smoldering when the
Maracaibo
arrived on the scene, smoke wafting off His cheeks in thick black tendrils and drifting northwest toward Jan Mayen Island. Thousands of whisker stubs speckled the charred, exposed flesh of His lantern jaw, encircling the frosted lips and frozen smile, angling upward like the skeletal remains of a forest fire. God, Anthony saw, had become as beardless as he himself.

Despite the surplus of officers and seamen, it took the
Maracaibo's
company all day to dredge up the severed chains, belt them around the superstructure, and splice the raw ends together. "Slow ahead," Anthony ordered. The chains tightened, grinding against the deckhouse walls, but the foundation held fast, and the Corpus Dei moved forward. At 1830 hours the captain gave the all-ahead-full, gulped down his four hundred and twenty-sixth cup of coffee since New York, and set his course for the Pole. Anthony did not like the
Carpco Maracaibo.
It was all he could do to squeeze five knots out of her; even if the burdensome oil in her hold magically disappeared, he doubted she'd give him more than six. She had no soul, this tanker. The archangels had truly known what they were doing when they picked the
Valparaíso.