“I’ve been having night sweats, then I developed this rash.  I didn’t run off to Frisco to get laid, Dad.  I went to a clinic there that knows about...these things.”

The Senador said nothing.  A tomblike silence descended on the great room.  Emilio could hear the susurrant flow through the air conditioning vents, the subliminal rumble of the ocean beyond the windows, and nothing more.  He realized the Senador must be holding his breath.  The light had dawned.

Charlie looked up at his father.  “I’ve got AIDS, Dad.”

Madre.  Emilio turned.

“Wh-what?”  The Senador was suddenly as pale as his son.  “That c-can’t be t-true!”

He was stuttering.  Not once in all his years with him had Emilio heard that man stutter.

Charlie was nodding.  “The doctors and the blood tests confirmed what I’ve guessed for some time.  I’ve just been too frightened to take the final step and hear someone tell me I’ve got it.”

“Th-there’s got to be some mistake!”

“No mistake, Dad.  This was an AIDS clinic.  They’re experts.  I’m not just HIV positive.  I’ve got AIDS.”

“But didn’t you use protection?  Take precautions?”

Charlie looked down again.  “Yeah.  Sure.  Most of the time.”

“Most of the time...”  The Senador’s voice sounded hollow, distant.  “Charlie...what on earth...?”

“It doesn’t matter, Dad.  I’ve got it.  I’m a dead man.”

“No, you’re not!” the Senador cried, new life in his voice as he shot from his seat.  “Don’t you say that!  You’re going to live!”

“I don’t think so, Dad.”

“You will!  I won’t let you die!  I’ll get you the best medical care.  And we’ll pray.  You’ll see, Charlie.  With God’s help you’ll come through this.  You’ll be a new man when it’s over.  You’ll pass through the flame and be cleansed, not just of your illness, but of your sinfulness as well.  You’re about to be born again, Charlie.  I can feel it!”

Emilio turned away and softly took the stairs down to his quarters.  He fought the urge to run.  Emilio did not share the Senador’s faith in the power of prayer over AIDS.  In fact, Emilio could not remember finding prayer useful for much of anything, especially in his line of work.  Rather than listen to the Senador rattle on about it, he wished to wash his hands.  He’d touched Charlie today.  He’d driven Charlie all the way back from San Francisco, sitting with him for hours in the same car, breathing his air.

When he reached the bottom floor, he broke into a trot toward his quarters.  He wanted more than to wash his hands.  He wanted a shower.

‡

The Greenbriar—east of Gibraltar

“A woman on board,” Captain Liam Harrity muttered as he thumbed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.  “What utter foolishness is this?  Next they’ll be after telling me the ship can fly.”

Gibraltar lay three leagues ahead, its massive shadow looming fifteen degrees to starboard against the hazy stars.  Lights dotted the shores to either side as the Greenbriar prepared to squeeze between two continents and brave the Atlantic beyond.  A smooth, quiet, routine trip so far.

Except for this woman talk.

Harrity leaned against the Greenbriar’s stern rail and stared at the glowing windows in the superstructure amidships.  A good old ship, the Greenbriar.  A small freighter by almost any standards, but quick.  A tramp merchant ship, with no fixed route or schedule, picking up whatever was ready to be moved, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the UK and all points between, no questions asked.  Harrity had been in this game a long time, much of it spent on the Greenbriar, and this was the first time any of his crew had talked about seeing a woman wandering the decks.

Not that there weren’t enough places to hide one, mind you.  Small though the ship might be, she had plenty of nooks and crannies for a stowaway.

But in all his years helming the Greenbriar, Harrity had never had a stowaway—at least that he knew of—and he wasn’t about to start now.  Like having a prowler in your house.  You simply didn’t allow it.

Maguire had started the talk that first night out of Haifa.  Harrity’s thought at the time was that Dennis had been nipping at the Jameson’s a little earlier than usual.  He’d let it go and not given it another thought until two nights ago when Cleary said he’d seen a woman on the aft deck as they were passing through the Malta Channel.

A temperate man, Cleary.  Not the sort who’d be after seeing things that weren’t there.

So Harrity himself was keeping watch on the aft deck these past two nights.  And so far no woman.

He turned his back to the wind and struck a wooden match against the stern rail.  As he puffed his pipe to life, relishing the first aromatic lungfuls, a deep serenity stole over him.  The phosphorescent flashes churning in the wake, the balmy, briny air, the stars overhead, lighting the surface of the Mediterranean as it stretched long and wide and smooth to the horizon.  Life was good.

He sensed movement to his left, turned, and fumbled to catch his pipe as it dropped from his shocked-open mouth.

She stood there, beside him, not two feet away.  A woman…at the rail, staring into the east, back along the route they’d sailed.  She was wearing a loose robe of some sort, pulled up around her head.  Its cowl hid her features.  Now he knew why Maguire had thought she’d been wrapped in a blanket.

He shook off the initial shock and stuck his pipe bit between his teeth.  He should have been angry—furious, for sure—but he could find no hostility within him.  Only wonder at how she’d come up behind him without him hearing her.

“And who would you be now?”

The woman continued her silent stare off the stern.

“What are you after doing on me ship?”

Slowly she turned toward him.  He could not make out her features in the shadow of the cowl, but he felt her eyes on him.  And the weight of her stare was a gentle hand caressing the surface of his mind, erasing all questions.

She turned and walked away.  Or was she walking?  She seemed to glide along the deck.  Harrity had an urge to follow her but his legs seemed so heavy, his shoes felt riveted to the deck.  He could only stand and watch as she followed the rail along the starboard side to the superstructure where she was swallowed by the deeper shadows.

And then she was gone and he could move again.  He sucked on his pipe but the bowl was cold.  And so was he.  Suddenly the deck of the Greenbriar was a lonely place.

‡

Cashelbanagh, Ireland

Like everyone else, Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio had heard the endless talk about the green of the Irish countryside, but not until he was actually driving along the roads south of Shannon Airport did he realize how firmly based in fact all that talk had been.  He gazed through the open rear window at the passing fields.  This land was green.  In all his fifty-six years he could not remember seeing a green like this.

“Your country is most beautiful, Michael” he said.  His English was good, but he knew there was no hiding his Neapolitan upbringing.

Michael the driver—the good folk of Cashelbanagh had sent one of their number to fetch the Monsignor from the airport—glanced over his shoulder with a broad, yellow-toothed smile.

“Aye, that it is, Monsignor.  But wait till you see Cashelbanagh.  The picture-perfect Irish village.  As a matter of fact, if you’re after looking up ‘Irish village’ in the dictionary, sure enough it’ll be saying Cashelbanagh.  Perfect place for a miracle.”

“It is much farther?”

“Only a wee bit down the road.  And wait till you see the reception committee they’ll be having for you.”

Vincenzo wished he’d come here sooner.  He liked these people and the green of this land enthralled him.  But the way things were looking lately, he wouldn’t get a chance for a return visit.