The Thieves of Heaven (37 page)

“The hospital wouldn’t let me see her. She finally came home a month later. She was sitting in our parlor when I got home from soccer. The Pope was there. They quietly spoke together in Latin; his presence seemed to comfort her, at least for a short while. Her face, the parts of it that weren’t bandaged, was terribly bruised, and though her wounds were nearly healed, they still had that sick yellow tinge to them, still swollen, distorting her features. I can’t think of my mother now without seeing her like that. All she spoke about was forgiveness. That we must forgive the man who had done this to her if we were to survive, if we were to remain above the animals. No one would ever tell me what had happened. My dad became a shell. He seldom spoke. He was rarely home and when he was, he wouldn’t even stay in the same room as my mother.

“She slid into a fantasy world, took to wearing the long black habit she’d worn when she was a nun, even the veil and wimple upon her head. Whenever I was around, her smile was frozen, like it was painted on. My parents had become cold and detached from each other and from me. I tried to comfort them but they had retreated to the safety of their illusions.” He paused. “I never felt the warm embrace of my parents again.”

Simon cracked open another airline bottle of bourbon, poured it into his cup, and drained it. “One day, about six months after she returned, I came home early from school. I guess my mother didn’t hear me. She walked out of her room wrapped in only a towel, and when she saw me…I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. I finally understood why she had covered her body, why she wore her nun’s long dresses. It was to spare my heart. Her torso, her legs—they were grotesquely scarred; her skin had become the tapestry of something evil. My mother ran back into her room in shame, refusing to come out, no matter how I implored her. I ran and found my father in the local pub. I screamed at him until he told me the truth. The tears ran down his face as he described how something twisted and evil had risen up from the depths. That a man in a drunken stupor—a man whom my mother once loved—had violated her in ways I could never imagine. I remember feeling oddly detached at that moment: it was as if I was looking in on someone else’s life. I absorbed the words but I didn’t understand them until much later. How someone could be so ruthless, so heinous. This thing—this
animal
—had worn a mask….My mother never saw his face but she had known him nonetheless. Afterward, she refused to speak his name, saying it must be part of God’s plan and insisting that we couldn’t see His great design. The police said this monster had vanished. After revealing this to me, my father never came home again.”

Michael wanted to stop this torture. Telling his story was clearly killing Simon. But Michael couldn’t find the words; his throat was frozen in compassion.

“I spent the next four months tracking down the son of a bitch who destroyed my mother. Found him in his hole in Rome. Tied him up, tortured him till he told me why. He wanted to know the secrets, he said. He had recently discovered his god and he wanted to devote his life, the way my mother had devoted herself. Said he needed to know the secrets that would make his “god” great.

“When my mother wouldn’t answer his questions, he’d raped her. When she refused to talk, he used his knife on her over and over again, upside-down crosses—and still she never made a sound—so he burned it into her. Again and again, till she was covered in them. His god’s number: six-six-six.”

Michael sat there in total shock; he had seen horror in his lifetime but always from afar. But this…This was the first time he had seen how horror affected the ones closest to the victims, the ones left behind.

“The fact that the monster before me used to hold me in his arms as a child did not deter me. He was no longer my father, the man who had raised me, the only man my mother ever loved. He had become possessed by things I didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. All I knew was what he had done to my mother, the woman whom he had called his wife.

“They arrested me for his murder. I was only sixteen, the judge took pity, said I’d been driven temporarily insane. But I wasn’t insane.” For the first time that evening, Simon looked directly into Michael’s eyes: “I knew exactly what I was doing.

“I was nineteen when I got out of prison. My dad was dead, my mom…My mom had chosen a family over God and she’d been punished for it. When I entered prison, her mind shattered just as her family had. She wished only for escape from this world, so she could find peace in Heaven. She hung herself just before my release.

“Do you know that when you commit suicide, it’s an unforgivable sin? The Church refuses to bury you. My mother was buried in a pauper’s grave, without the Church’s blessing. After devoting her life to the Church, the Church denied her her eternal reward.

“I had nothing, nowhere to go, no family. Went to pick up my things from the place I’d once called home—”

“In Vatican City—” Michael said.

“The priests took pity on me,” Simon continued as if Michael had not spoken. “Asked me to stay with them, to seek comfort in God. But I sought my comfort elsewhere: I joined the Italian army, received special training. I had skills, the officers said, skills that could be honed razor-sharp. I traveled a bit in the name of peace but what I did was anything but peaceful. Each kill I made was like a cleansing of my mind, my soul. Every time I pulled the trigger or inserted the knife, I saw only my father’s face, not that of the real victim. My commanding officer said that I was killing to protect my country, but he was wrong: I was doing it to protect my sanity. After two years I felt no different; killing provided no release from the neverending nightmare of my mother’s scarred body and mind. I requested and received my discharge.”

The only sounds were of the jet’s droning whine. Michael sat riveted.

“I returned to my mother’s apartment in the Vatican. Several priests with whom my mother had been close sought me out. They wanted to know if they could assist me in any way. They knew full well what I had done, not only to my father but while I was in the army. They felt responsible for me, in light of the Church abandoning my mother to an unsanctified grave. They forgave me my sins and saw me often. These priests became the only friends I had. They provided me work and a home and the closest thing that I would ever have to a family.

“These priests had worked with my mother for many years and were part of a small group of clerics that answered only to the Pope. Though not publicized, there had been an increase of crimes and violations against the Church. Not only crimes of greed and hate, but crimes meant to destroy Catholicism. These priests approached me with an offer that they warned would require a lifetime of devotion. It was a path that, they cautioned, I could never leave, but one for which I was uniquely qualified. I agreed to pledge myself under one condition: special dispensation for my mother….

“She received her proper burial. In the Church. A private ceremony, performed by the Pope himself.”

Simon turned to Michael; he was no longer looking inward, reliving his tormented life. He was facing the world, facing Michael. Although he had revealed himself to be vulnerable and pitiful, he was now back to the man that Michael had first encountered in his apartment: resolute, determined, and hard. “In my new job, I was permitted to perform whatever service was required to do my job, to protect the Church.

“I became the keeper of the secrets, Michael. The guardian of all the things you don’t want to know.”

The plane cut through the night sky, its black shadow riding the waves of the inky moonlit ocean below. It would be dawn soon. The whine of the engines sang like sirens in the darkened cabin. Simon was fast asleep, exhausted, perhaps, from reliving his tormented past. Michael, on the other hand, was wide awake, afraid of the dreams that would rise up from the horrors he’d just seen through Simon’s eyes. How could anyone possibly remain sane with such a devastating childhood? But at last he had a deeper understanding of the sleeping man beside him. His suspicions about Simon’s ability to kill had been confirmed. The balance of Simon’s mind was another matter. Michael had pondered the man’s grip on reality and now, judging by not only his actions and history but his parents’ mental instability, the possibility of the man being insane was vastly probable.

Michael looked out at the black sea, her depth and mystery, thinking of the dangers hidden just below her shiny beautiful surface. It reminded him of Finster. He opened the compartment above him in search of a blanket. Finding none, he satisfied himself with his jacket. He huddled in his seat, wrapping the sport jacket tightly around himself; he could still catch a hint of Mary’s perfume on it. As his mind wandered to her smile, he felt something in the pocket. He pulled out an envelope and tore it open.

Dearest Michael,

For years, this has protected me and kept me safe. I know you found it foolish at times and downright exasperating when we made love. But now I ask that you keep it with you at all times. It has delivered me through many a troubled day. I ask only that you wear it now so it may deliver you home to me safe and sound. Wear it not as a representation of your faith but as a reminder of my unwavering faith in you.

I love you with all my heart—

M.

Mary must have slipped the note in the pocket of the jacket while he had stepped out to make a call and fetch her some ice water. Even in her illness she had found the strength to continue the gestures he loved so much.

Michael poured the contents of the envelope into his hand. And it all came flooding forth as he stared at his palm, all of the emotion, all of the pain of the past month. Tears stung his cheeks. He took a quiet comfort in his grief, something he hadn’t allowed himself until this moment, hoping that it would help clear his mind for what lay ahead.

Finally—not out of the fear that Simon had instilled in him this night; not out of a newfound devotion to God and religion, but because of his belief in Mary—he slipped her golden cross around his neck as a reminder of his promise to return to her. He grasped the religious object in his hand as he had seen Mary do so many times before, then released it, letting the cold metal dangle against his chest, the irony of the moment fully in his mind. Without saying a word, Mary somehow knew what he was facing. She had sent her belief in her husband with the cross that now hung around his neck. She had uttered no words of protest or anger at being abandoned by him. She had given him only one simple sentence that would support him in whatever he must do: that she had always had faith in him. She was the single reason why he was heading across the world to enter what he could only imagine to be the manifestation of Hell.

Chapter 20

T
he 747 skidded down the runway, slicing
through the dense morning mist of the Berlin Tegel Airport. The summer morning reflected like crystals off the dew-covered grass surrounding the tarmac. The sun had risen out of the ocean that morning, relit for a new day, chasing the shadows of the waves like a waking child shakes off a nightmare. It had been a night where many feelings long ago driven deep down into his soul had resurfaced, reminding Simon of who he was, of what he had become. And while he had longed for the sunrise, it didn’t hold the cleansing effect that he usually experienced and, today more than any other day, had hoped for. He knew the nightmares would begin again soon. And when they did, they would be coming in the light.

He and Michael cleared customs without incident. To Michael’s surprise, Simon spoke fluent German, explaining to the customs agent that he and Michael were there on a trip of both business and pleasure; they had nothing to declare. He requested that they be hurried through, as they had an appointment to keep.