Large snowflakes began to fall. Alyson threw herself on the ground and covered her head with her hands. "Oh, my God!" she screamed. "They had guns!"
Annja let out the breath she had not realized she was holding in a long, shuddering sigh. Trish came up beside her and rested her right elbow on Annja's shoulder. Her pistol dangled from her hand.
"Wow," she said, as if that summed it all up.
"What was that?" Yvonne asked. "What was it?"Thankfully she was pointing her own handgun toward the clouds, now bluish-black. The sun had vanished from sight, leaving a lemon glow around the Jemez peaks.
"A bird?" Annja said. Her voice sounded like a croak to her. "Eagles have surprisingly wide wingspans."
"Do eagles have red freakin' eyes?" Yvonne screamed.
Annja shrugged. "Maybe the sunlight, reflected – "
She gave it up. Shedidn't believe it. Much as she wanted to.
"What's with all the swamp gas?" Trish asked, taking her arm down and putting her pistol back wherever it came from. "That show you're on, I figured you'd be, you know, on the other side and all."
"I'm kind of the reality anchor. You're a scientist, Trish. What else could it be?" Annja asked.
"I've also been hiking the Southwest most of my life. Be real, Annja. That was an eagle like I'm Mary-Kate Olsen," Trish replied.
"What was it, then?"
Trish shook her head. "I'm afraid to find out." She didn't sound as if she was kidding.
Down the hill, Alyson screamed, "Don't touch me!" and rolled frantically away from Leland when he knelt next to her to see what was wrong. He held the Marlin pointed skyward in one hand.
Yvonne had regained control of herself and zipped her Glock back into her pack. Aside from high color in her cinnamon cheeks and slightly flared nostrils she didn't look as if much out of the ordinary had happened. It made Annja wonder. Outsiders told strange stories of happenings where Yvonne came from, way up in the Blood of Christ Mountains.
"What's wrong with her?" Yvonne asked with a sidewise nod of her head at Alyson.
"Easterner," Trish said.
Chapter 2
Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland
The wind from the glacier gorge whipped mist into the fat man's bearded face like ice-laden fronds. Far beneath him the famed cataract vomited its clouds of spray and roared ceaselessly. The sky above was crowded with clouds, their gray, gravid bellies hanging almost close enough to touch. A storm is coming, the man thought. How very appropriate.
Monsignor Paolo Benigni checked the Rolex watch strapped to his wrist. Next to the black of his overcoat, his skin looked bluish-white.
"Where isthe man?" he said in irritation. "It's almost time, and I see no sign of him."
The railed scenic viewpoint overlooking the Reichenbach Falls was deserted except for the fat man and his two younger, much larger companions. October's arrival a few days earlier had brought the annual closing of the funicular that carried tourists from the valley floor to just below the mighty falls themselves. A safe distance back from the sheer cliffs, the hotel in the village was temporarily closed for renovation.
Actually, it had closed at the special request of a man whose influence reached to the core of the Vatican itself. The public was scarcely aware of the name of Monsignor Benigni. But people who counted – the people who really ran the world – knew his name very well indeed.
To his intense annoyance he found himself compelled to meet here with an impudent bastard – a mere priest. A priest without a flock and a damned black Jesuit on top of that. Yet Benigni knew this disciple of the long-dead Basque madman Loyola had an unmistakable influence of his own that was scarcely less shadowy, or pervasive, than the monsignor's own.
Well, Benigni thought, today we shall settle that account. There were many in the Vatican who would thank him for his resolution of this turbulent priest.
"Monsignor," Volker, the German bodyguard, said, peering over the railing above the precipice. He had a lantern jaw fringed with blue-black beard. His pinstriped suit was tailored so immaculately no seam showed the least sign of strain around his vast powerlifter's bulk. Not even at the left armpit, where a Walther P-99 was nestled in a shoulder holster.
"What is it?" Benigni said.
"Perhaps you should come see, Excellence."
Grimacing and puffing in annoyance, the monsignor waddled to the edge. His face sank deep into his own neatly bearded chins as he leaned over slightly, all he could readily manage.
A path wound up the cold granite cliff from the notch where white waters arced down to the River Inn far below. Seemingly out of the falls' very spray came a solitary figure, trotting up the steps with a vigor Benigni would have had trouble matching when he was young and slim, trotting down. The figure wore a long black coat. The head of silver-gray hair was bare.
"That's doing it the hard way," Benigni's other bodyguard said. Semo, the Samoan, was even bigger and broader than Volker, with a mass of crinkly black hair held back from his great tanned face in a braid.
"The fool," Benigni murmured. "Still, if he wishes to exhaust himself in this manner, let him. He will have ample time to rest, soon enough."
As his guards laughed appreciatively, the monsignor pushed away from the white-painted steel rail with a ringed and exquisitely manicured pale hand. The height and sheerness of the drop made him queasy. All this cavorting about in nature was foreign to his constitution. He should be ensconced in a leather chair in some five-star hotel, basking in the warmth of a fire and a snifter of brandy.
As if to emphasize the inconvenience and discomfort to which he subjected himself – for the good of the church, of course – a snowflake struck his cheek and clung. Its cold seemed to bite like some horrid insect. Then he thought about what the immediate future held in store for the vexatious Father Robert Godin, Societas Iesu, who was responsible for dragging him out in this frightful weather. He smiled with lips moist, full and reddish-purple within his goatee.
Godin trotted onto the top of the cliff and slowed to a walk while approaching the waiting trio. He had his hands in the pockets of his black trenchcoat. His breathing seemed normal and his step springy. The monsignor might have suspected the man had a pact with the Devil – but he knew better.
"Monsignor," the new arrival said. He spoke Italian with a hint of a French accent. Benigni felt sure it was an affectation. He knew the Jesuit was as proud of his coarse Antwerp dock-rat beginnings as he was of the unspeakably brutal nature of his early career, before he had entered the bosom of the church.
Benigni smiled. He was not one to lecture another on the sin of pride. To his mind, of all the sins it was, frankly, among the least interesting. Besides, it never did any good to lecture Jesuits.
"Father," he said with false heartiness, extending a hand. Godin shook it. Although he exerted no more than brief, firm pressure it was like shaking hands with a vise.
With the ease of long practice Benigni masked his irritation. As an assistant chamberlain of the Vatican, Benigni was entitled to have his ring kissed. He was also accustomed to it. But the Jesuit has never been born who would bend the knee to less than a red hat, he told himself. And Benigni had purposely avoided becoming a cardinal. Dressing all in scarlet made it harder to operate properly in the shadows, where his most important work was done.