Cathedral (35 page)

She kept crawling until her hand came into contact with cold, moist stone. She ran her fingers over the jagged surface, then higher up, and she felt the rounded contour of a massive column. Her hand slid down again, and she felt something soft and damp and drew away quickly. Cautiously she reached out again and touched the yielding, putty-like substance. She pulled a piece of it and brought it to her nose. "Oh, my God," she spoke under her breath. "Oh, you bastards. You really would do it."

Her knee bumped into something, and her hands reached down and felt the suitcase that they had carried down into the hole-a suitcase big enough to hold at least twenty kilos of plastic. Somewhere, probably on the other side of the staircase, was the other charge.

She wedged into the space ~etween the stairway wall and the column's footing and took the nylon from around her shoulders. She found a half brick and held it in her right hand.

Gallagher came closer, his flashlight focused on the ground in front of him. She could see in the light the marks she had made when she had to crawl through the earth.

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Gallagher's light swung up and focused on the column footing, then probed the space where she was hiding. He crawled closer and poked the light between the column and the wall.

For a long second the light rested directly on her face, and they stared at each other from less than a yard away. Gallagher's face registered complete surprise, she noticed. A stupid man.

She brought her hand down with the half brick in it and drove it between his eyes. The light fell to the floor, and she sprang out of her niche and wrapped the nylon garrote around his neck. I Gallagher thrashed over the earth floor like a wounded animal. Maureen hooked her legs around his torso and rode his back, holding the garrote like a set of reins, drawing it tightly around his neck with all the strength she could summon.

Gallagher weakened and fell forward on his chest, pinning her legs beneath hem. She pulled harder on the nylon, but there was too much give in it. She knew she was strangling him too slowly, causing him unnecessary suffering.

She heard the gurgling coming from deep in his throat.

Gallagher's head twisted around at an unbelievable angle, and his face stared up at her. The fallen flashlight cast a yellow beam over his face, and she saw his bulging eyes and thick protruding tongue. His skin was split where she had hit him with the brick, and his nose was broken and bleeding. 11eir eyes met for a brief second.

Gallagher's body went limp and lay motionless. Maureen sat on his back trying to catch her breath. She still felt life in his body, the shallow breathing, the twitching muscles and flesh against her buttocks. She began tightening the garrote, then suddenly pulled it from his neck and buried her face in her hands.

She heard voices coming around the crypt, then saw two lights not forty feet away. She quickly shut off the flashlight and threw it aside. Maureen felt her heart beating wildly again as she groped for the fallen pistol.

The beam rose and searched the ceiling. A voice-298

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Megan's-said, "Here's another missing bulb. Clever little bitch."

The other flashlight examined the ground. Hickey said, "Here are their tracks."

Maureen's hands touched Gallagher's body, and she felt him moving. She backed off.

Hickey called out, "Frank? Are you there?" His approaching light found Gallagher's body and rested on it.

Maureen crawled backward until she made contact with the base of the column. She turned and clawed at the plastic explosive, trying to pull it loose from the footing, feeling for the detonator that she knew was embedded somewhere.

The two beams of light came closer. Hickey shouted, "Maureen! You've done well, lass. But as you see, the hounds are onto the scent. We're going to begin probing fire if you don't give yourself up."

Maureen kept pulling at the plastic. She knew there would be no probing fire with plastic so close.

The sound of the two crawling people got closer. She looked back and saw two pools of light converging on Gallagher's body. Hickey and Megan were hovering over Gallagher now. Gallagher was trying to raise himself on all fours.

Megan said, "Here, I've found his light."

Hickey said, "Look for his gun."

Maureen gave one last pull at the plastic, then moved around the column until she ran into the foundation wall that separated her from the sacristy.

She put her right shoulder against the wall and crawled along it, feeling for an opening. Pipes and ducts penetrated the wall, but there was no space for her to pass through.

Hickey's voice called out again. "Maureen, my love, Frank is feeling a bit better. All is forgiven, darlin'. We owe you, lass. You've a good heart.

Come on, now. Let's all go back upstairs and have a nice wash and a cup of tea."

Maureen watched as one, then two, then three flashlights started to reach out toward her.

Hickey said, "Maureen, we've found Frank's gun, so we know you're not armed. The game is over. You've done

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well. You've nothing to be ashamed of. Frank owes you his life, and there'll be no retributions, Maureen. Just call out to Us and we'll come take you back. YoWve our word you won't be harmed."

Maureen huddled against the foundation wall. She knew Hickey was speaking the truth. Gallagher owed her. They wouldn't harm her while Gallagher was still alive; that was one of the rules. The old rules, Hickey's rules, her rules. She wondered about someone like Megan, though.

Her instincts told her that it was over-that she should give up while the offered amnesty was still in effect. She was tired, cold, aching. The flashlights came closer. She opened her mouth to speak.

300

Inspector Langley was reading Monsignor Downes's appointment book. "I think the good Rector entertained the Fenians on more than one occasion.

. . . Unwittingly, of course."

Schroeder looked at Langley. It would never have occurred to him to snoop through another man's papers. That's why he had been such a bad detective. Langley, on the other hand, would pick the Mayor's pocket out of idle curiosity. Schroeder said acidly, "You mean you don't suspect Monsignor Downes?"

Langley smiled. "I didn't say that."

Bellini turned from the window and looked at Scbroeder. "You didn't have to eat so much shit, did you? I mean that business about rolling over and all that other stuff."

Schroeder felt his fright turning to anger. "For Christ's sake, it's only a ploy. You've heard me use it a dozen times."

"Yeah, but this time you meant it."

"Go to hell."

Bellini seemed to be struggling with something. He leaned forward with his hands on Schroeder's desk and spoke softly. "I'm scared, too. Do you think I want to send my men in there? Christ Almighty, Bert, I'm going in, too. I have a wife and kids. But Jesus, man, every hour that you bullshit with them is another hour for them to get their defenses tightened. Every hour shortens the time until dawn, when I have to attack. And I won't hit them at dawn in a last desperate move to save the hostages and the Ca-301

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thedral, because they know I have to move at dawn if they don't have what they want."

Schroeder kept his eyes fixed on Bellini's but didn't reply.

Bellini went on, his voice becoming more strident. "As long as you keep telling the big shots you can do it, they're going to jerk me around. Admit you're not going to pull it off and let me . . . let me know in my own mind

. . . that I have to go in." He said almost in a whisper, "I don't like sweating it out like this, Bert. . . . My men don't like this. . . . I have to know."

Schroeder spoke mechanically. "I'm taking it a step at a time. Standard procedures. Stabilize the situation, keep them talking, calm them down, get an extension of the ,deadline-"

Bellini slammed his hand on the desk, and everyone sat up quickly. "Even if you could get an extension of the deadline, how long would it be for? An hour? Two hours? Then I have to move in the daylight-while you stand here at the window smoking a cigar, watching us get massacred!"

' Schroeder stood and his face twitched. He tried to stop himself from speaking, but the words came out. "If you have to go in, I'll be right next to you, Bellini."

A twisted smile passed over Bellini's face. He turned to Langley and Spiegel, then looked back at Schroeder. "You're on, Captain." He turned and walked out of the room.

Langley watched the door close, then said, "That was stupid, Bert."

Schroeder found his hands and legs were shaking, and he sat down, then rose abruptly. He spoke in a husky voice. "Watch the phone. I have to go out for a minute-men's room." He walked quickly to the door.

Spiegel said, "I took some cheap shots at him, too."

Langley looked away.

She said, "Tell me what a bitch I am."

He walked to the sideboard and poured a glass of sherry.

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He had no intention of telling the Mayor's aide she was a bitch.

She walked toward him, reached out, and took the glass from his hand. She drank, then handed it back.

Langley thought, She did it again! There was something uncomfortably intimate and at the same time unnervingly aggressive about the proprietary attitude she had taken with him.

Roberta Spiegel walked toward the door. "Don't do anything stupid like Schroeder did."

He looked up at her with some surprise.

She said suddenly, "You married? Divorced . . . separated . . . single?"

"Yes."

She laughed. "Watch the store. See you later." She left.

Langley looked at the lipstick mark on his glass and put it down.

"Bitch." He walked to the window.

Bellini had placed a set of field glasses on the sill. Langley picked them up and saw clearly the man standing in the belfry. If Bellini attacked, this young man would be one of the first to die. He wondered if the man knew that. Of course he did.

The man saw him and raised a pair of field glasses. They stared at each other for a few seconds. The young man held up his hand, a sort of greeting. The faces of all the IRA men Langley had ever known suddenly coalesced in this face-the young romantics, the old-guard IRA like Hickey, the dying Officials like Ferguson, the cold-blooded young Provos like most of them, and now the Fenianscrazier than the Provos-the worst of the worst. . . . All of them had started life, he was sure, as polite young men and women, dressed in little suits and dresses for Sunday Mass.

Somewhere something went wrong. But maybe they would get most of the worst crazies in one sweep tonight. Nip it in the bud here. He damn well didn't want to deal with them later.

Langley put down the glasses and turned from the window. He looked at his watch. Where the hell was Burke?

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He had a sour feeling in his stomach. Transference. Somehow he felt he was in there with them.

Maureen watched the circle of light closing in on her and almost welcomed the light and Hickey's cajoling voice after the sensory deprivation she had experienced.

Hickey called out again. "I know you're frightened, Maureen. Just take a deep breath and call to us."

She almost did, but something held her back. A series of confused thoughts ran through her mind-Brian, Harold Baxter, Whitehorn Abbey, Frank Gallagher's ghostly face. She felt she was adrift in some foggy sea-with no anchor, misleading beacons, false harbors. She tried to shake off the lethargy and think clearly, tried to resolve her purpose, which was freedom. Freedom from Brian Flynn, freedom from all the people and things that had kept her feeling guilty and obligated all her life. Once you're a hostage, you're a hostage the rest of your life. She had been Brian's hostage long before he put a gun to her head. She had been a hostage to her own insecurities and circumstances all her life. But now for the first time she felt less like a hostage and less like a traitor.

She felt like a refugee from an insane world, a fugitive from a state of mind that was a prison far worse than Long Kesh. Once in, never out.

Bullshit. She began crawling again, along the foundation wall.

Hickey called out, "Maureen, we see you moving. Don't make us shoot."

She called back, "I know you don't have Gallagher's gun, because I have it. Careful I don't shoot you." She heard them talking among themselves, then the flashlights went out. She smiled at how the simplest bluffs worked when people were frightened. She kept crawling.

The foundation curved, and she knew she was under the ambulatory now.

Somewhere on the other side of the foundation were the fully excavated basements beneath the terraces outside that led back to the rectory.

Beneath the thin layer of soil the Manhattan bedrock rose and fell as she crawled. The ceiling was only about

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four feet high now, and she kept hitting her head on pipes and ducts. The ducts made a noise when she hit them and boomed like a drum in the cold, stagnant air.

Suddenly the flashlights came on again, some distance off. Megan's voice called, "We found the gun, Maureen. Come toward the light or we shoot. Last chance."

Maureen watched the beams of light searching for her. She didn't know if they had Gallagher's gun or not, but she knew she didn't have it. She crawled on her stomach, commando style, pressing her face to the ground.

The lights began tightening around her. Hickey said, "I'm counting to ten.

Then the armistice is over." He counted.

Maureen stopped crawling and remained motionless, pressed against the wall.

Blood and sweat ran over her face; her legs and arms were studded with pieces of embedded stone. She steadied her breathing and listened for a sound from the basement that was only feet away. She looked for a crack of light, felt for a draft that might be coming from the other side, then ran her hands over the stone foundation. Nothing. She began moving again.

Hickey's voice called out, "Maureen, you're a heartless girl, making an old man crawl in the damp like this. I'll catch my death-let's go back up and have some tea."