The reckoning, p.1
The Reckoning, page 1
THE RECKONING
By Thomas F. Monteleone
A Gordian Knot Thriller
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2013 / Thomas F. Monteleone
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Author
Tom Monteleone has been a professional writer since 1972, and four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. He has published more than 100 short stories in numerous magazines and anthologies. His stories have been nominated for many awards, and have appeared in lots of best-of-the-year compilations. He is the editor of seven anthologies, including the highly acclaimed Borderlands series edited with his wife, Elizabeth. Borderlands 5 won a Bram Stoker Award in 2003.
He has written for the stage and television, having scripts produced for American Playhouse (which won him the Bronze Award at the International TV and Film Festival of New York and the Gabriel Award), George A. Romero’s Tales from the Darkside, and a series on Fox TV entitled Night Visions.
Of his thirty-six books, his novel, The Blood of the Lamb received the 1993 Bram Stoker Award, and The New York Times Notable Book of the Year Award. His four collections of selected short fiction are Dark Stars and Other Illuminations, Rough Beasts and Other Mutations, The Little Brown Book of Bizarre Stories, and Fearful Symmetries (2004), which won the 2004 Bram Stoker Award. His novels, The Resurrectionist and Night of Broken Souls, global thrillers from Warner Books, received rave reviews and have been optioned for films. His omnibus volume of essays about the book and film industries entitled The Mothers And Fathers Italian Association was published by Borderlands Press (www.borderlandspress.com) and won the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for Non-Fiction. He is also the author of the bestseller, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel. His books and stories have been translated into twelve foreign languages.
Book List
Novels
Between Floors
Eyes of the Virgin
Fantasma
Guardian
Lyrica: A Novel of Horror and Desire
Night of Broken Souls
Night Things
Night Train
Ozymandias
Seeds of Change
Serpentine
The Blood of the Lamb
The Crooked House
The Magnificent Gallery
The Reckoning
The Resurrectionist
The Secret Sea
The Time Connection
The Time-Swept City
Collections
Dark Stars and Other Illuminations
Fearful Symmetries
Rough Beasts and Other Mutations
The Little Brown Book of Bizarre Stories
Borderlands series
Borderlands
Borderlands 2
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 4
Borderlands 5
Dragonstar series
Day of the Dragonstar
Night of the Dragonstar
Dragonstar Destiny
Non-Fiction
The Arts and Beyond: Visions of Man’s Aesthetic Future
The Mothers and Fathers Italian Association
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel
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This one is for
Olivia,
and all the softballs and Barbie dolls,
and dreams forever bright.
Daddy loves you.
THE RECKONING
The New York Times (AP) Scientists at the California Institute for Solar Research in Mojave Center have reported observations of unusual and erratic patterns of solar flare activity. “We have never seen anything remotely like this,” said Dr. Patrick G. Karger of CISR. “The data indicate our sun is undergoing some very basic changes. All stars evolve through several major identifiable stages, and it is possible that our own star—the sun—is entering a new stage in its lifespan.” When asked what this meant for Earth and its inhabitants, Dr. Karger was initially hesitant to speculate, but eventually admitted that “it is possible the sun could produce a ‘flare event’ of sufficient size to reduce the earth to a forgotten cinder.”
Part One
The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.
—John, Revelation, 1:20
PROLOGUE
Excerpted from the editorial page of The Catholic Review,
Baltimore, Maryland, May 15, 2000.
In the year since Peter Carenza has taken up Vatican residency as Pope Peter II, it seems the story of his life has been told countless times in every publication and media show on the planet. We have all read, seen, or heard how he was raised in a church orphanage, became a parish priest in Brooklyn, began performing miracles witnessed by thousands, and escaped assassination at the Los Angeles Palladium Convocation.
But little more has actually been revealed, and there are some of us in the Church who are beginning to wonder exactly who our new pope is.
His unanimous election by the College of Cardinals marked a stunning change in tradition, as Carenza was the first pope to originate from the United States. This fact in itself may not be all that remarkable, but the millennial cult who call themselves “the Nostradamani” believe it to be a signal that the end of the world is imminent (because Nostradamus predicted in one of his quatrains that the “last pope” would come from the New World).
Many, within and without the Church, believe Peter Carenza is the kind of charismatic and revolutionary leader necessary to keep an aging theocratic institution like the Roman Catholic Church vibrant in the twenty-first century. There are, however, hints and rumblings from corners of the Vatican that Peter is constructing an agenda of cataclysmic change—a strategy that might ultimately destroy the mother church.
Time will tell.
CHAPTER ONE
Marion Windsor—Vatican City
August 1, 2000
“The pope is getting married.”
Peter Carenza’s words so stunned Marion Windsor she was not at first certain she’d heard him correctly.
She had been seated by an open window overlooking the Vatican Gardens, a welcome spring breeze weaving through her hair, when he made the announcement. Across the vast drawing room, dwarfed by high rococo ceilings and massive tapestries, sat the Holy Father, Peter Carenza, at a polished marble table. Surrounded by stacks of leather-bound books and piles of paper, he smiled at her like an impish little boy.
It was a smile she had grown to dislike.
“Married?” said Marion, getting up from the window seat and approaching him. “Peter—”
“Not just the pope. Not just me. Any clergy. I’m going to make a papal proclamation: Marriage by clerics is now permissible. And of course, the only thing to do is set a good example. I’ll do that by marrying you.”
A year ago, the idea of marrying Peter Carenza would have rocked her into a passionate fantasy. But Peter had been a different person back then—and so had Marion Windsor. Ever since meeting him, she had essentially sacrificed herself to him and his mission. She had given up her own aspirations, her career, her needs to follow him, to do whatever he needed.
She’d followed him, all right, all the way to Rome.
And for a while, it had worked—for the first time in her life, Marion had believed she was fulfilled. The miracles by Peter’s hand that she’d witnessed had renewed her faith in God, and perhaps more importantly, in herself. Believing that she and Peter were doing God’s work, she felt spiritually recharged. She knew that there was a greater purpose to existence than merely surviving the material world. For the first time in her life, she had been truly content—not merely happy, but actually at peace with herself.
She had more than fallen in love with Peter Carenza; she had been transformed by experiencing the power of his personal aura, basking in his invisible gracelike rays. She’d felt an excitement and a sense of fulfillment her own accomplishments, significant though they were, had never delivered.
Lately she’d found herself thinking of her Ohio childhood and her past with a wistfulness tinged with wisdom’s bitter spice. She’d grown up in a house where her father dominated everyone with the threat of physical punishment and opinions based on prejudice, misinformation, and plain ignorance. Marion and her brothers lived in an atmosphere of constant upheaval, unpredictable as the weather and far more damaging. She remembered the day that should have been the start of a summer job at a dentist’s office. Fifteen years old, wearing a navy blue jumper and a white blouse, she looked like a parochial school girl. But her father thought her hem was far too short. He announced, loudly, that she could n’t go to work “looking like a whore”—and in fact, she couldn’t go to work at all. He called the dentist and told him his daughter was turning down the job. Marion never forgot the humiliation of that day, and years later, when she’d been accepted to college, she never told him, never asked him for help with tuition, nothing. “Women don’t belong in college getting as smart as men,” had been one of Sam Windsor’s favorite expressions at the Dayton welding supply factory where he worked. He had been very surprised to see her walking down the stairs in early September wearing a navy blue jumper with the hem thigh-high, and carrying a small suitcase. Although the symbolism had been lost on him, he demanded to know where she thought she was going. Marion informed her father that his daughter had been accepted to Syracuse University, that she had a tuition loan from the bank, a job at the college library, and a bus ticket that would take her to the dormitories. She also told him she wouldn’t be coming back to his little bungalow. She’d shipped most of her belongings ahead. Ever.
And she never did.
But she did return to her hometown—for his funeral. And she’d done that mostly to appease her brothers and her mother, because Marion had made it quite clear to everyone, especially herself, that she did not need to expiate any guilt over her treatment of her father in life … or death. Never again, she’d vowed, would she live under the uncontrolled power of an irrational person.
So how did she allow herself to become so subjugated to Peter Carenza?
Since coming to Rome with Peter the previous year, she’d been a virtual prisoner of the Palace Vatican.
All right, she thought, maybe not a prisoner, but most certainly not much more than a concubine. She couldn’t imagine why Peter would feel it necessary actually to marry her.
But then, Peter had become so unpredictable. Marion studied him for a moment. His dark eyes and chiseled features would always make him physically attractive, but there was an aspect of his demeanor that had caused Marion sometimes to distrust him, fear him, even despise him.
And yet, he exhibited some kind of weirdly seductive power over her and everyone else with whom he interacted. No one could loathe Peter Carenza for very long, it seemed.
“I’ve done lots of thinking and some research on the issue. And the statistics tell a pretty sorry story,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.
“What? What did you say?”
He spoke as he combed through his dark hair with his fingers. “The Church is losing its power because young men aren’t going into the seminaries.”
“I know. You said—”
“And who can blame them?” he said, getting up and walking to one of the high windows, then turning to face her. “Anyone who’d choose to be a Catholic priest these days—he’d have to be crazy, or numb from the waist down.”
“You did it yourself, Peter,” said Marion with unmasked sarcasm. “Were you either of those things?”
He glared at her for an instant. He didn’t like being challenged. “It was different with me, and you know it! Francesco had me raised in a Catholic orphanage. I’d been groomed for the priesthood since I was a little boy! It’s not the same when you’ve been part of somebody’s else grandiose scheme.”
He was right, but she needed to push him. Part of her had never submitted to him, just as a part of her wished he might someday return to being the man she’d fallen in love with.
But that man had been a parish priest. She’d fallen in love with a priest. She’d become so complacent that only rarely did that simple truth shock her. When it did, Marion was forced to ask herself what she was doing and how she’d become the pope’s public relations agent … and his mistress.
Peter stared at her with an expression that made no effort to conceal his irritation. Maybe a question would refocus him.
“When do you plan to announce your decision?”
He shrugged, walked toward her. Anyone paying attention to his movements would learn much about him. Catlike in his supple, muscular control, Peter walked with a hint of a swagger, barely concealing his arrogance and his outrageous confidence. He moved as though there should always be a dashing cape swirling in his wake. When he entered a room, even if it was a place he’d never been, he imparted the impression of having always possessed it. Words like presence, charisma, and power were used to describe him so often that they made Marion want to vomit.
“Marion, don’t humor me, or try to distract me with hollow questions.” He grinned darkly. “You don’t really care, do you?”
“It concerns me,” she said. “Of course I care.”
She could see his mood changing as he moved to take her into his arms.
“Well, it’s interesting you phrased things that way. I’ve been concerned with the reality of the act. I think we should make a big deal out of it. Start the publicity machinery this week by leaking to the usual conduits.”
Peter teasingly kissed her at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, a move that never failed to send shivers all over her. The bastard.
“Leaking what?” said Marion, acquiescing to his embrace.
“That the pope’s going to issue a monumental proclamation! That it will rock the Church to its foundations! I don’t know, make it sound good—as ominous and dramatic as possible without giving anything away. Then, sometime next month, we do it.”
Releasing her, Peter walked back to his cluttered tabletop. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that said, “I Saw the Sistine Chapel.” He clearly enjoyed going against the traditions of the Church even though he dressed so casually only in the privacy of their suites. Peter was far too smart to alienate his colleagues and associates with matters ultimately trivial. He chose his battles carefully and was far more comfortable confronting the College of Cardinals on the weightier issues of Church dogma than arguing the appropriate attire of the pontiff.
“So what do you think?” He looked at her and grinned, as if to tell her he didn’t actually care what she might think of his plans but expected to be amused at her response.
“I think you’re asking for trouble,” she said, somewhat impulsively.
“From whom?”
“There’s a lot of tradition in the Church. You’re planning to rip out the heart of what’s set it apart from all the other Christian faiths,” she said. “The Cardinals will have coronaries.”
“Then we’ll get some new ones,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sure you will.”
Peter smiled. “I realize the traditionalists will have to put on a public face of disapproval, and it will be the rare member of the old guard who stands up and admits he likes it, but secretly, they’ll all be dancing the happy dance!”
He chuckled, apparently amused at the image of the old men in their red robes jumping around with rhythmic glee.
“What about the people? The regular Sunday church goers?”
Peter smiled dismissively. “You mean the ones who used to sit there and listen to everything in Latin? They don’t really care. They proved time and again they’ll ultimately go along with whatever the Church wants to do.” Peter chuckled and gestured toward his chest. “Which means they’ll do whatever I want.”
“How magnanimous.” she said.
“So where’s the ‘trouble’?”
Marion looked away for a moment, searching for the courage to say what she was really thinking.
“Well, I didn’t just mean any of them—I meant me,” she said. “Trouble from me.”
Peter could not hide his surprise. Quickly, he masked the emotion with another smile, but Marion knew she’d reached him.
“From you?” He said it slowly, in a soft, almost playful way, but she knew him well enough to know that he was growing more angry with each passing moment. “Now what, exactly, does that mean, Marion? Just what kind of ‘trouble’ do you think you’re capable of giving me?”
