Cathedral Read online

  “Have you heard of Whitehorn Abbey outside of Belfast?”

  “I spent a night there once. Did you get a scare there, lad?” Hickey laughed.

  Flynn looked out over the Cathedral again, concentrating on the raised area of black and white marble called the altar sanctuary. In the middle of the sanctuary sat the altar, raised still higher on a broad marble plinth. The cold marble and bronze of the area was softened by fields of fresh green carnations, symbolizing, Flynn imagined, the green sod of Ireland, which would not have looked or smelled as nice on the altar.

  On both sides of the sanctuary were rows of wooden pews reserved for clergy. In the pews to the right sat Maureen, Baxter, and Father Murphy, all looking very still from this distance. Flynn placed his field glasses to his eyes and focused on Maureen again. She didn’t appear at all frightened, and he liked that. He noticed that her lips were moving as she stared straight ahead. Praying? No, not Maureen. Baxter’s lips were moving also. And Father Murphy’s. “They’re plotting dark things against us, John.”

  “Good,” said Hickey. “Maybe they’ll keep us entertained.”

  Flynn swung the field glasses to the left. Facing the hostages across the checkered marble floor sat the Cardinal on his elevated throne of red velvet, absolutely motionless. “No sanctuary in the sanctuary,” commented Flynn under his breath.

  Leary heard him and called out, “A sanctuary of sorts. If they leave that area, I’ll kill them.”

  Flynn leaned farther over the rail. Directly behind the altar were the sacristy stairs, not visible from the loft, where Pedar Fitzgerald, Megan’s brother, sat on the landing holding a submachine gun. Fitzgerald was a good man, a man who knew that those chained gates had to be protected at any cost. He had his sister’s courage without her savagery. “We still don’t know if there’s a way they can enter the crypt from an underground route and come up behind Pedar.”

  Hickey glanced again at the blueprints. “We’ll get the crypt keys and the keys to this whole place later and have a proper look around the real estate. We need time, Brian. Time to tighten our defense. Damn these blueprints, they’re not very detailed. And damn this church. It’s like a marble sieve with more holes in it than the story of the Resurrection.”

  “I hope the police don’t get hold of the architect.”

  “You should have kidnapped him last night along with Terri O’Neal,” Hickey said.

  “Too obvious. That would have put Intelligence onto something.”

  “Then you should have killed him and made it look like an accident.”

  Flynn shook his head. “One has to draw a line somewhere. Don’t you think so?”

  “You’re a lousy revolutionary. It’s a wonder you’ve come as far as you have.”

  “I’ve come farther than most. I’m here.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Major Bartholomew Martin put down his field glasses and let out a long breath. “Well, they’ve done it. No apparent casualties … except that fine horse.” He closed the window against the cold wind and sleet. “Burke almost got himself killed, however.”

  Kruger shrugged. It never paid to examine these things too closely.

  Major Martin put on his topcoat. “Sir Harold was a good sort. Played a good game of bridge. Anyway, you see, Flynn went back on his word. Now they’ll want to kill poor Harry as soon as things don’t go their way.”

  Kruger glanced out the window. “I think you planned on Baxter getting kidnapped.”

  Major Martin moved toward the door. “I planned nothing, Kruger. I only provided the opportunity and the wherewithal. Most of this is as much a surprise to me as it is to you and the police.” Martin looked at his watch. “My consulate will be looking for me, and your people will be looking for you. Remember, Kruger, the first requirement of a successful liar is a good memory. Don’t forget what you’re not supposed to know, and please remember the things you are supposed to know.” He pulled on his gloves as he left.

  Megan Fitzgerald motioned to the three men and two women with her and moved quickly toward the front of the Cathedral. The five of them followed her, burdened with suitcases, slung rifles, and rocket tubes. They entered the vestibule of the north tower, rode up the small elevator, and stepped off into the choir practice room in the tower. Megan moved into the choir loft.

  Jack Leary was standing at the end of the loft, some distance from Flynn and Hickey, establishing his fields of fire. Megan said curtly, “Leary, you understand your orders?”

  The sniper turned and stared at her.

  Megan stared back into his pale, watery eyes. Soft eyes, she thought, but she knew how they hardened as the rifle traveled up to his shoulder. Eyes that saw things not in fluid motion but in a series of still pictures, like a camera lens. She had watched him in practice many times. Perfect eye-hand coordination—“muscle memory” he had called it on the one occasion he had spoken to her. Muscle memory— a step below instinct, as though the brain wasn’t even involved in the process— optic nerves and motor nerves, bypassing the brain, controlled by some primitive bundle of fibers found only in the lower forms of life. The others stayed away from Leary, but Megan was fascinated by him. “Answer me, Leary. Do you know your orders, man?”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly as his eyes took in the young woman standing in front of him.

  Megan walked along the rail and came up beside Flynn and Hickey. She placed the field phone on the railing and looked at the outside telephone on the organ. “Call the police.”

  Flynn didn’t look up from the blueprints. “They’ll call us.”

  Hickey said to her, “I’d advise you not to upset Mr. Leary. He seems incapable of witty bantering, and he’d probably shoot you if he couldn’t think of anything to say.”

  Megan looked back at Leary, then said to Hickey, “We understand each other.”

  Hickey smiled. “Yes, I’ve noticed a silent communication between you—but what other type could there be with a man who has a vocabulary of fourteen words, eight of which have to do with rifles?”

  Megan turned and walked back to the entrance of the choir practice room where the others were waiting, and she led them up a spiral iron staircase. At a level above the choir practice room she found a door and kicked it open, motioning to Abby Boland. “Come with me,” she said.

  The long triforium stretched out along the north side of the Cathedral, an unlit gallery of dusty stone and airconditioning ducts. A flagpole of about twenty feet in length jutted out from the parapet over the nave, flying the white and yellow Papal flag.

  Megan turned to Abby Boland, who was dressed in the short skirt and blue blouse of a twirler from Mother Cabrini High School, a place neither of them had heard of until a week before. “This is your post,” said Megan. “Remember, the rocket is to use if you see a Saracen—or whatever they call them here—coming through your assigned door. The sniper rifle is for close-in defense, if they come through the tower door there—and for blowing your own brains out if you’ve a mind to. Any questions? No?” She looked the girl up and down. “You should have thought to bring some clothes with you. It’ll be cold up here tonight.” Megan returned to the tower.

  Abby Boland unslung her rifles and put them down beside the rocket. She slipped off her tight-fitting shoes, unbuttoned her constricting blouse, and sighted through the scope of the sniper rifle, then lowered it and looked around. It occurred to her that rather than freeing her husband, Jonathan, she might very well end up in jail herself, on this side of the Atlantic, too long a distance to intertwine their fingers through the mesh wire of Long Kesh. She might also end up dead, of course, which might be better for both of them.

  Megan Fitzgerald continued up the stairs of the bell tower and turned into a side passage. She found a pull chain and lit a small bulb revealing a section of the huge attic. Wooden catwalks ran over the plaster lathing of the vaulted ceiling below and stretched back into the darkness. The four people with her walked quickly over the catwalks, turning on lights
in the cold, musty attic.

  Megan could see the ten dormered hatches overhead that led to the slate roof above. On the floor, at intervals, were small winches that lowered the chandeliers to the floors below for maintenance. She turned and moved to the big arched window at the front peak of the attic. Stone tracery on the outside of the Cathedral partially blocked the view, and grime covered the small panes in front of her. She wiped a section with her hand and stared down into Fifth Avenue. The block in front of the Cathedral was nearly deserted, but the police had not yet cleared the crowds out of the intersections on either side. Falling sleet was visible against the streetlights, and ice covered the streets and sidewalks and collected on the shoulders of Atlas.

  Megan looked up at the International Building in Rockefeller Center directly across from her. The two side wings of the building were lower than the attic, and she could see people moving through the ice, people sitting huddled on the big concrete tubs that held bare plants and trees. The uniformed police had no rifles, and she knew that the Cathedral was not yet surrounded by the SWAT teams euphemistically called the Emergency Services Division in New York. She saw no soldiers, either, and remembered that Americans rarely called on them.

  She turned back to the attic. The four people had opened the suitcases and deposited piles of votive candles at intervals along the catwalks. Megan called out to Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty. “Find the fire axes, chop wood from the catwalks, and build pyres around the candles. Cut the fire hoses up here and string the wire for the field telephone. Be quick about it. Mullins and Devane, grab an ax and come with me.”

  Megan Fitzgerald retraced her steps out of the attic, followed by the two men who had posed as BSS Security, Donald Mullins and Rory Devane. She continued her climb up to the bell tower. Mullins carried a roll of communication wire, which he played out behind him. Devane carried the weapons and axes.

  * * *

  Arthur Nulty offered Jean Kearney a cigarette. He looked over her Kelly-green Aer Lingus stewardess uniform. “You look very sexy, lass. Would it be a sacrilege to do it up here, do you think?”

  “We’ll not have time for that.”

  “Time is all we’ve got up here. God, but it’s cold. We’ll need some warming and there’s no spirits allowed, so that leaves …”

  “We’ll see. Jesus, Arthur, if your wife—what happens to us if we get her out of Armagh?”

  Arthur Nulty let go of her arm and looked away. “Well … now … let’s take things one a time.” He picked up an ax and swung it, shattering a wooden railing, then ripped the railing from its post and threw it atop a pile of votive candles. “Whole place is wood up here. Never thought I’d be burning a church. If Father Flannery could see me now.” He took another swing with the ax. “Jesus, I hope it doesn’t come to that. They’ll give in before they see this Cathedral burned. In twenty-four hours your brothers will be in Dublin. Your old dad will be pleased, Jean. He thought he’d never see the boys again.” He threw a post on the woodpile. “She called them pyres, Megan did. Doesn’t she know that pyres refer only to places to burn corpses?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Patrick Burke posted patrolmen at each of the Cathedral’s portals with the warning that the doors were mined, then came back to the front of the Cathedral and approached a parked patrol car. “Any commo yet?”

  The patrolman shook his head. “No, sir. What’s going on in there?”

  “There are armed gunmen inside, so keep pushing the crowd back. Tell the officer in charge to begin a cordon operation.”

  “Yes, sir.” The patrol car moved away through the nearly deserted Avenue.

  Burke remounted the steps and saw Police Officer Betty Foster kneeling in the ice beside her horse.

  She looked up at him. “You still here?” She looked back at the horse. “I have to get the saddle.” She unhooked the girth. “What the hell’s going on in there?” She tugged at the saddle. “You almost got me killed.”

  He helped her pull at the saddle, but it wouldn’t come loose. “Leave this here.”

  “I can’t. It’s police property.”

  “There’s police property strewn up and down Fifth Avenue.” He let go of the saddle and looked at the bell tower. “There’ll be people in these towers soon, if they’re not there already. Get this later when they recover the horse.”

  She straightened up. “Poor Commissioner. Both of them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Police Commissioner Dwyer died of a heart attack—at the reviewing stands.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Burke heard a noise from the bell tower overhead and pulled Betty Foster under the alcove of the front door. “Somebody’s up there.”

  “Are you staying here?”

  “Until things get straightened out.”

  She looked at him and said, “Are you brave, Lieutenant Burke?”

  “No. Just stupid.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She laughed. “God, I thought I was going to pass out when I saw that nun—I guess it wasn’t a nun—”

  “Not likely.”

  “That woman, pointing a gun at us.”

  “You did fine.”

  “Did I? I guess I did.” She paused and looked around. “I’m going to be on duty for a long time. I have to go back to Varick Street and get remounted.”

  “Remounted?” A bizarre sexual image flashed through his mind. “Oh. Right. Keep close to the wall. I don’t know if those people up in the tower are looking for blue targets, but it’s better to assume they are.”

  She hesitated. “See you later.” She moved out of the alcove, keeping close to the wall. She called back, “I didn’t just come back for the saddle. I wanted to see if you were all right.”

  Burke watched her round the corner of the tower. This morning neither he nor Betty Foster would have given each other a second glance. Now, however, they had things going for them—riots, gunpowder, horses—great stimulants, powerful aphrodisiacs. He looked at his watch. This lull would not last much longer.

  Megan Fitzgerald climbed into the bell room and stood catching her breath as she looked around the cold room, peering into the weak light cast by the single bulb. She saw Flynn’s radio jamming device on a crossbeam from which hung three huge bells, each with a turning wheel and a pull strap. Gusts of cold March wind blew in from the eight sets of copper louvers in the octagon-shaped tower room. The sound of police bullhorns and sirens was carried up into the eighteen-story-high room.

  Megan grabbed a steel-cut fire ax from Rory Devane, turned suddenly, and swung it at one of the sets of louvers, ripping them open and letting in the lights of the city. Mullins set to work on the other seven louvers, cutting them out of their stone casements as Devane knelt on the floor and connected a field telephone.

  Megan turned to Mullins, who had moved to the window overlooking Fifth Avenue. “Remember, Mullins, report anything unusual. Keep a sharp eye for helicopters. No shooting without orders.”

  Mullins looked out at Rockefeller Center. People were pressed to the windows opposite him, and, on the roofs below, people were pointing up at the ripped louvers. A police spotlight in the street came on, and its white beam circled and came to rest on the opening where Mullins stood. He moved back and blinked his eyes. “I’d like to put that spot out.”

  Megan nodded. “Might as well set them straight now.”

  Mullins leaned out of the opening and squinted into his sniper scope. He saw figures moving around at the periphery of the spotlight. He took a long breath, steadied his aim, then squeezed the trigger. The sound of the rifle exploded in the bell room, and Mullins saw the red tracer round streak down into the intersection. The spotlight suddenly lost its beam, fading from white to red to black. A hollow popping sound drifted into the bell room, followed by sounds of shouting. Mullins stepped back behind the stonework and blew his nose into a handkerchief. “Cold up here.”

  Devane sat on the floor and cranked the field phone. “Attic, this is bell tower. Can y
ou hear me?”

  The voice of Jean Kearney came back clearly. “Hear you, bell tower. What was that noise?”

  Devane answered. “Mullins put out a spot. No problem.”

  “Roger. Stand by for commo check with choir loft. Choir loft, can you hear bell tower and attic?”

  John Hickey’s voice came over the line. “Hear you both. Commo established. Who the hell authorized you to shoot at a spotlight?”

  Megan grabbed the field phone from Devane. “I did.”

  Hickey’s voice had an edge of sarcasm and annoyance. “Ah, Megan, that was a rhetorical question, lass. I knew the answer to that. Watch yourself today.”

  Megan dropped the field phone on the floor and looked down at Devane. “Go on down and string the wire from the choir loft to the south tower, then knock out the louvers and take your post there.”

  Devane picked up a roll of communication wire and the fire ax and climbed down out of the bell room.

  Megan moved from opening to opening. The walls of the Cathedral were bathed in blue luminescence from the Cathedral’s floodlights in the gardens. To the north the massive fifty-one-story Olympic Tower reflected the Cathedral from its glass sides. To the east the Waldorf-Astoria’s windows were lit against the black sky, and to the south the Cathedral’s twin tower rose up, partially blocking the view of Saks Fifth Avenue. Police stood on the Saks roof, milling around, flapping their arms against the cold. In all the surrounding streets the crowd was being forced back block by block, and the deserted area around the Cathedral grew in size.

  Megan looked back at Mullins, who was blowing into his hands. His young face was red with cold, and tinges of blue showed on his lips. She moved to the ladder in the middle of the floor. “Keep alert.”

  He watched Megan disappear down the ladder and suddenly felt lonely. “Bitch.” She was not much older than he, but her movements, her voice, were those of an older woman. She had lost her youth in everything but her face and body.