Relic of Time (3 page)

Penitents sat on benches, sliding along toward their turn in the confessional. Lloyd sat and closed his eyes, wanting to be just another pilgrim, another sinner, one of the vast army of believers who throughout the ages had lifted their hearts in joy and sorrow to the one who created them from nothing.

Some commotion began at the front of the church. There were shouts, screaming. And then gunfire. Lloyd sat frozen on his bench. What in the name of God was going on? Pilgrims were scattering from behind the altar and then a ladder was lifted, more gunfire sounded, and, incredibly, the image disappeared. Guards had arrived and there was more gunfire. Some terrible desecration was in progress. Lloyd rose to his feet and ran toward the front of the church. Whatever was happening had to be stopped.

He was almost to the altar when a gunman with something pulled over his face emerged, followed by others like himself carrying something. The first man came running toward Lloyd and he planted himself in the aisle. The masked man turned his weapon on him.

The first shot missed him, and there was a scream at the back of the church. The second shot ripped into his chest. He was shot again as he fell, and then once more. But he was beyond feeling by then.

PART I

Holy Heist

CHAPTER ONE

Latin Americans, believers and nonbelievers alike, were stunned by the news that the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe had been stolen from its shrine in Mexico City. The borders between their various countries hark back to colonial times, but the Spanish and Portuguese had long since intermarried with the native Indian population. In the wake of the sacrilegious theft, the whole of Latin America experienced an almost mystic sense of solidarity. The Virgin who had appeared to Juan Diego was
theirs
. Her image appeared in haciendas and in hovels. The Mother of God figured in the furtive devotions even of unbelievers; everyone rendered fearful by natural disaster or turbulence at high altitudes, if only in his heart, prayed the familiar words:
Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosostros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra morte.
The outrage in Mexico City made it seem that their most powerful advocate with Her Son had been taken from them. Who in the name of God was responsible for such a sacrilege?

In the days following the theft—and the incidental deaths of some half dozen pilgrims caught between the small band of thieves and the ineffectual basilica guards pursuing them—there came a series of denials of responsibility from various groups that might reasonably have fallen under suspicion.

A political explanation seemed ruled out. Members of every party went to the shrine and advanced across the plaza on their knees, many clutching unfamiliar rosaries in their manicured hands.

The nativist groups that sought to reassert the claims of lost Mayan and Incan civilizations? They issued emotional denials and vowed to sacrifice the perpetrators in the ancient way when they were apprehended.

In the silence of those first days, the question in everyone's mind was, why? Why would anyone commit such a sacrilege?

Missionaries from the north who had been evangelizing zealously to wean the people from their superstitious religion (and meeting with surprising success, not least because they tried to fuse evangelical Protestantism with the simple devotions of the natives—many chapels were named after saints, and not a few bore the name of Nuestra Madre de Guadalupe) became the object of dark suspicions. These were somewhat allayed when evangelical missionaries and their flocks joined the great processions that wound through the cities of the south, led by a bishop in towns where there was a bishop, the monstrance containing the Eucharist carried aloft, banners with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe fluttering overhead while bands played music that was not even remotely liturgical. All this in public reparation to the Virgin for the terrible deed that had been done.

Not many years before, in Mexico, priests had been hunted down and killed in a political effort to expunge the faith of the people and replace it with Marxism. Even after the persecutions ceased, it remained illegal for priests to appear in clerical garb. Now, in this hour of crisis, clad in glorious vestments, they led the procession through the streets as if the whole of Mexico City had become a cathedral.

On the fourth day the terrible, infuriating revelation came, and offended piety gave way to rage. The Rough Riders, a militant group that had joined the Minutemen and others who had gathered on the southern border of the United States to do what the Border Patrol was either unwilling or unable to do—stop the flow of illegal immigration from the south—announced that the sacred image was in its possession.

Theophilus Grady, head of the Rough Riders, called a press conference in El Paso to make his announcement. In jodhpurs, shiny knee-high boots, and a Sam Brown belt, with pistols on his hips, a black tie under the brown collar of his shirt, and a huge mustache beneath his meaty nose, Grady stared out at the assembled journalists through his steel-rimmed glasses.

“Four days ago a brave band of Rough Riders took custody of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the shrine in Mexico City.”

This was the first sentence on the sheet of paper he held. Before he could go on, pandemonium broke out, and questions were hurled at him. Grady waited calmly, then raised his hand. When something like silence was restored, he resumed his statement.

“The United States has been under invasion along our southern border for years. The people have repeatedly expressed their desire that our politicians fulfill their constitutional obligation and put an end to this. All they have received in reply are words, empty words. There has been official collusion with this influx of illegals. They are accorded the benefits and privileges of citizens even though their illegal status is acknowledged. It is acknowledged and dismissed. Giant corporations and industrial farmers, small businesses, too, and the wealthy who employ and exploit them clearly favor this constant and unauthorized flow of cheap labor across our border. We Rough Riders and others have done what we could to put spine into the Border Patrol. No wonder they are demoralized. Two members of that patrol have been tried and sent to prison for doing their job. The time has come for decisive action. We will hold the image we have taken hostage until the Mexican government, and other governments, especially our own, put a stop to this invasion.”

Throughout the tumultuous question period, Grady alone retained his calm, treating the members of the media as children, hostile children.

He told them that the image was in a secure place, that no harm or damage would come to it. But it would be retained until . . .

He was unruffled when he was told that by taking responsibility for what had happened in Mexico City, he was taking responsibility for those who had been killed during the theft of the image. He dismissed this as the collateral damage inevitable in war.

“And this is war, ladies and gentlemen. A country that is invaded is
eo ipso
at war with the invader.”

His calmness infuriated his audience. Who, he was asked, had appointed him protector of the border?

“Who appointed the Minutemen? I use the phrase historically, not for our companions on the border.”

When Grady left the press conference he was whisked away in a car to a waiting helicopter and disappeared to no one knew where. The camps of the Rough Riders along the border were gone. There remained only the Minutemen and others to confront the rage that boiled up from the south. Immigrants had always approached the border stealthily and stolen across to economic opportunity unobserved. Now armed bands approached the border and gunfire was exchanged. Paul Pulaski, head of one branch of the Minutemen, said that he and his followers would hold the border against these now armed invaders until federal troops arrived.

But would federal troops be sent?

From the White House came yet another condemnation of vigilante groups. An apology was sent to the Mexican government. It was returned. Only the restoration of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to her shrine could pave the way for diplomacy.

Senators vied with one another in expressing at great length their condemnation of what had happened. In the well of the House it was suggested that if troops were sent to the border it should be to round up the vigilantes.

The cardinal archbishop of Washington spoke to a disinterested group at the National Press Club about the Church's teaching on just war. He did everything but apply the teaching clearly to what was happening on the southern border of the country.

A day after Theophilus Grady's press conference, things took a turn for the worse. The volunteers along the border found that they were under fire from the rear as well as from across the border. Miguel Arroyo, founder of Justicia y Paz, announced that he had authorized volunteer formations to come to the aid of their erstwhile countrymen who were pinned down by rifle and mortar fire along the border. Soon something very much like civil war raged. Men streamed to the scene of action, either to support the beleaguered Minutemen or to attack them from the rear. A dozen Border Patrol posts were taken over by vigilantes without resistance, perhaps with something of relief.

Neither Mexican nor American troops were involved in the border war, both governments issuing promises of non-involvement.

It occurred to cynics that the governments, by professing neutrality in the war that raged on their common border, assumed that the combatants would take care of the problem by wiping one another out. And the casualties grew. Medics and nurses were soon among the vigilantes, tending to the wounded. What the bloody skirmishes were for became problematical. The vigilantes were doing what they had long vowed to do, protect the border with force, but the bands from the south had no clear objective until Latinos already in the States came to their support. Talk began of a Republic of California. Arroyo piously promised to show leniency toward the illegal aliens currently firing on those who were once again his countrymen.

Meanwhile the mass of Latin Americans wanted only the return of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to her shrine.

“Get it!”

The president had listened impatiently to their reports, asked what could be done, and then interrupted with that curt command.

“Get it and get it back to them.” He hurried, bandy-legged, from the room, his right arm out from his body and slightly bent, as if he were about to draw.

Vincent Traeger rose with the others and they left silently. Down by the gate in the media encampment, among cameras, bleachers, and umbrellas, reporters huddled in the rain. Traeger and the others went down the walk and through the gate and some minutes later were in the car and on their way.