Gypsies

He put his hand on Karen’s shoulder. He said, “You understand why I did it?”

She knew instantly what he meant by that. The fear, she thought, the not-talking… and the beatings.

She nodded once, uncomfortably.

Willis said, “But that’s worth jack shit, right? Understanding doesn’t make it better—right?”

She regarded him in his checkerboard winter jacket and his hunting cap, his gray Marine-cut sideburns and his stubbled cheeks.

“No,” she said sadly. “It doesn’t.”

Willis said, “I wish you luck.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“If I could help—” But he wasn’t moving. He was just standing there. His hands were limp and motionless.

Karen climbed in the car up front with Laura, and rolled up the window and did not look back. She did not want Daddy to see her, because she was crying, and how had that happened? What sense did that make?

4

Willis stood a long time watching the car disappear up the road.

There was a raw wind coming from the north down the valley of the Polger and his cheeks were red and burning, but Willis didn’t care. He watched the car vanish around the corner from Montpelier onto Riverside, and stood a long time after that, hand up to shield his eyes against the sun, staring down these old row houses toward the far brown ribbon of the Mon.

He was surprised when he felt Jea

“Come in and warm up,” she said.

Her voice was kind. But the cold air lingered, the rooms were all too big, and the shadows were crowded with voices and time.

Interlude

NOVUS ORDO

1

Cardinal Palestrina was introduced to the upper echelons of the Washington diplomatic community, a few of whom were aware of his task here: the German envoy Max Vierheller and a man named Korchnoi from the Court of the Tsar.

Korchnoi drew him aside at a party at a Republican senator’s Virginia estate: led him out to a glassed veranda and lectured him as snow fell beyond the perimeter of the hothouse plants.

“Of course you know,” the Russian legate said in English, “it’s not simply a matter of this weapon or that weapon.” He gestured effusively with a goblet of Aztec wine. “What the Americans are offering is their involvement in the war. Does it really matter what gift they choose to signify it? It’s ceremony. Theater. The important thing is the prospect of an alliance between Rome and America. The infidels are terrified of it.”

“Until recently,” Cardinal Palestrina observed, “the Americans were the infidels.”

“Hardly,” Korchnoi said. “Heretics perhaps. A mongrel nation of Freemasons and Protestants—isn’t that what the clerics say? But the industrial power, the wealth, the military strength… these are things you can see for yourself.”

“Clearly,” Palestrina admitted. “I have no objection to the alliance. Nor does Rome—the Vatican and the Senate are agreed on that. But there’s more at stake than the fortunes of an alliance. You must have read De Officiis Civitatum. Adrian is a realistic pontiff but hardly a pragmatist. If we lend ecclesiastical approval to this project in particular—”

“Pardon me,” Korchnoi said, “but you begin to sound like an ideologue … a Jesuit.”

No, Cardinal Palestrina thought. The Jesuits had a rather more hard-nosed view of political reality. What I am, he thought, is a provincial bishop caught up in affairs beyond his station. I should never have gone to Rome. He might have been happy in some rural parish, vineyards and simple farmers and so on. He might have kept his scholarship down to a less conspicuous level. It was the unwise love of wisdom that had drawn him into ecclesiastical politics in the first place: a sin of pride or hubris.

Cardinal Palestrina was powerfully homesick.

“ Rome and America,” Korchnoi said, his eyes begi

In the morning Palestrina registered a Marconi message at the Vatican Consulate—essentially, that he had arrived and that the intelligence branch of the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs had been largely correct in its surmises—and then hired a taxi to carry him to the DRI.

He despised this building. He had official identification now, a photocard clasped to his clothing. He walked from the front gate through the snow to the i

“Is Walker still in the building?”

“For a time,” Neuma

“A few more questions.”

“Well, if it’s necessary. We’re happy to cooperate, Your Eminence, as long as circumstances allow. But do understand, we’re approaching something of a cusp with this effort. Can you find the interrogation room by yourself?”

“No,” Palestrina confessed. Humiliating but true.

“I’ll take you there,” Neuma

Once again, Cardinal Palestrina joined the Gray Man in this cold and windowless cubicle. Walker regarded him with blank expectation.

Palestrina extracted a notebook from his robes. He had jotted down some of the questions he meant to ask. Too, the notebook gave him something to do with his hands … an excuse for avoiding Walker’s eyes.

He felt the hard contour of the chair beneath him. He felt an unpleasant churning in his stomach.

He began, “I want to make sure I have a fair and accurate understanding of what you’ve told me. I apologize if I repeat myself. You were one of three original, ah, products of this research?”

“There were three of us,” Walker agreed.

“And the other two escaped.”

“Yes.”

“They bore children.” “Yes.”

“You killed those two, but the children survived.”

The question seemed to trouble Walker. “The killing,” he said, “was a mistake. I’ve admitted to that. I was punished for it. I had sorcels to bring back Julia and William, but it was the children we were most interested in. But the children weren’t there! And William wouldn’t say where they’d hidden them! So I reached out …”

The Gray Man faltered.

Cardinal Palestrina said, “You killed them both— with your own hands?”

“I sent them home,” Walker said primly. “Certain parts of them. But of course you can’t be in two places at once.” He shook his head. “It was very bloody.”

Cardinal Palestrina closed his eyes briefly.

He said, “You were instructed to do this?”

“No,” Walker said. “I told you—I was punished for it.”

“And you couldn’t simply recover the children yourself?”

“They were too young to follow. They had no—” He seemed to search for a word. “No song. I couldn’t hear them.”

“But I assume you were able to trace them at a later date.”

“When they began to exercise their talents.”

“But you didn’t bring them back.”

“We wanted to make certain. No more mistakes.

We understood… Mr. Neuma

“The seed?” Cardinal Palestrina asked.

“Bindings,” Walker said.

“Bindings of what nature?”

“Vanity and anger and fear.” The Gray Man smiled to himself. “A mirror, the kingdoms of the earth, her firstborn son…”

“Spells that would come to fruition in the future,” Palestrina interpreted.

“Yes.”

“Can you see the future?”

“No. But there are people here in the building who can. One of our other projects. ‘As through a glass, darkly’—you know the expression? We rely on their advice. It isn’t infallible but in this case it seems to be accurate.”