Rome, Italy
Renate Bรคchle had dragged Lawton Caine to Midnight Mass at
St. Peter's Basilica. How she had gained the coveted
tickets to hear the pope serve one of the two most
beautiful Masses of the year, she would not say. She had
merely given him a look from those icy blue eyes of hers
that these days sometimes even held a twinkle. They had
twinkled when he asked.
Lawton Caine, formerly Tom Lawton of the FBI, now a dead
man with a new identity working for the U.N.'s ultrasecret
Office 119, would ordinarily have skipped Mass entirely.
He was a lapsed Catholic who liked being lapsed.
But this Midnight Mass...it was unlike any he had ever
attended. There was no sense of urgency, no sense that a
schedule must be met, no tired children longing for their
beds and keeping parents preoccupied.
No, this had been a Mass devoted to true spirituality.
Every moment had been treated as if it were the end in
itself. Dignitaries from all over the world had shared in
the solemnity and celebration, and Tom had walked out of
the Basilica feeling as if he had for the very first time
come in contact with the core of his Catholic faith.As if
for that brief period he had stepped out of time into
eternity.
In short, he'd been wowed.
Renate, too, had been wowed. For those moments, she had
allowed herself to feel something she hadn't felt in a
long time: vulnerable. She had opened herself to the
miracle that the Mass was supposed to be. Of course, that
vulnerability couldn't last long. Vulnerability seemed to
be something she had virtually erased from her nature.
But after the Mass, she had mentioned to Lawton that she
missed home and the Weihnachtsmรคrkte, the traditional
Christmas markets set up in every German city and town.
She let her thoughts drift back to memories of those
festive squares, decorated with holiday lights, where
carols, laughter and Glรผhwein flowed in equal measure. To
his surprise, she had carried him away with her into the
city of Rome, to a small German restaurant that was open
all night. There they drank the traditional hot spiced
wine, joined in the carols and ate bratwurst that, if it
could not take the whole of her back home, could at least
take her taste buds there.
Tom, she knew, was missing Miriam Anson and Terry Tyson,
friends from his previous life with the American FBI and
the closest thing he had to family. She hoped that the
restaurant gave him at least some sense of a home.
They left at five in the morning and wandered the darkened
streets of Rome, taking in the age of the place, the
history that seemed to fill even the air. They spent some
time at the Trevi Fountain, shivering in the cool air,
receiving a blessing from a passing monsignor who paused
to smile at them โ probably thinking they were lovers. He
made a swift sign of the cross over them, murmuring the
Latin words: In nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritu Sancti.
Magical. "Right about now," Renate said, "my parents and
the rest of my family are sitting in Mass back home."
She rarely spoke of her family. She, too, was officially
dead, as were all of the agents at Office 119. They were a
small community of people without country, without family.
Save for each other.
Tom reached out and squeezed her hand. She didn't pull
away.
All of a sudden, the magic shattered.
They heard a rumble and saw flames rise into the predawn
sky. Almost at the same instant, both their pagers went
off, hers with a shrill beeping, his with a demanding buzz.
They exchanged worried looks and hailed the first cab they
could find. Renate slammed the door on vulnerability. It
was time to work.
"The bombs exploded within minutes of each other," the man
they all called Jefe was saying. In his past life, Tom had
known him as John Ortega, a fellow FBI agent. Now his name
was unknown and unspoken. He was simply Jefe.
Chief. "Midnight Mass in Boston. Early-morning Mass in
Baden-Baden, and here in Rome. Noon Mass in Jakarta. All
were timed for fifteen minutes after the hour. I guess
they didn't want to miss the late arrivals."
"Baden-Baden."
Renate whispered the name. Her face went from rosy to
ashen in a single instant.
Jefe paused, his attention drawn from the other agents to
Renate. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"My...family," she said, breaking the unwritten code of
silence about such things, a code enforced by the desire
to protect loved ones left behind.
Color returned to Renate's face, but it was not the glow
of earlier that morning. Whatever warmth she had felt then
was freezing now into a cold, killing resolve.
Tom met her eyes and pressed her shoulder. "Take it easy,
Renate. You can't do a damn thing right now."
"Yeah," said the chief. "Besides, the info is still
scattered. We don't know anything for sure yet."
Renate's eyes fixed on the chief. "My entire family was at
the six o'clock Mass in Baden-Baden."
From outside, the endless wail of sirens could still be
faintly heard.
Intel continued to come in to the office, but it remained
sparse for hours. The chaos in each stricken city was such
that little information was being sent out of the affected
areas. Everyone was too busy dealing with the death and
destruction.
A huge rear-projection screen displayed a world map,
political boundaries in blue, continents outlined in
green. As the morning progressed, red dots appeared by
more and more cities, as reports came in.
Large television sets built into another wall were tuned
to CNN International, Al Jazeera and other European, Asian
and American networks. Pictures of destruction began
arriving, but little was actually known.
Eventually the news began to identify other targets: a
North Sea drilling rig, a pipeline in Turkey, nuclear
weapons assembly plants in New Mexico and Kiev and the
computer files of the New York Stock Exchange.
Despite the other targets, the chaotic map soon told a
horrifying story. There was no question that the Catholic
Church was a primary target of this terrorism. Along with
the other targets, a major cathedral had been destroyed in
each time zone. The only exception was Baden-Baden, where
the target had been a simple family parish in the
foothills of the Schwarzwald.
"And Baden-Baden doesn't fit," Tom said, looking at the
map. "Why two churches in the same time zone? Why not
another cathedral? Why not Kรถln, or Notre Dame in Paris?"
"None of it fits," Jefe said, reading from a computer
screen. "The initial reports say no one was injured in the
attacks on economic targets. The workers on that North Sea
rig say they were given time to evacuate before the rig
was blown. And yet they blow up churches with thousands of
innocent worshippers. It doesn't make sense."
As he spoke another light winked on, this one in South
America. Brazil. Rio.
"Maybe they hit Baden-Baden because there was extra
security in Paris and Cologne," Marga-rite Renault said,
her English accented by her French background. A former
member of the Sรปretรฉ, she was around forty, with classic
Gallic features, dark hair and eyes. "The European nations
have beefed up their antiterrorist activities. Maybe Baden-
Baden was a target of opportunity."
Renate could listen no longer. She knew what had been
done โ and why. There was no reason to dance around the
issue. Justice demanded honesty. "It wasn't a target of
opportunity. They murdered my family. They couldn't find
me, so they murdered my family."
A half hour later, Margarite found Tom in a side cubicle.
She lowered her voice so she could not be overheard. "I am
worried about Renate. She is always so controlled, but
this..." A shrug. "This she cannot control. It has
happened. Now she must โ how you say? โ deal with it."
Tom nodded slowly. He was more worried about Renate than
he wanted to admit. If her entire family had been in the
church that had been blown up, he didn't have to guess how
she would react. She was tough and disciplined, but the
cold, hard look in her eyes left no doubt where her
thoughts were running.
His heart would not allow him to leave her alone in her
shock and rage. He entered her office and sat in the chair
beside her desk. "Renate."
She ignored him, tapping away at her keyboard. "Renate."
Slowly she looked up. He wanted to see emotion in her
eyes. Any emotion, even anger. All he saw was the icy
coldness of a lifeless glacier. "I'm working."
"You're not working," he dared to say, then plunged on
before she could argue. "You're looking for revenge."
Something sparked then in those cold blue eyes. "Don't I
deserve it?"
"You don't know anything for sure."
With a swift gesture, she turned her flat-panel monitor
toward him. "You see? My family's kirche. It's on the
list. They are dead."
He felt his heart crack for her. "Maybe..."
"No maybe. Don't tell me maybe. I know." For the briefest
instant, a fathomless grief broke through, crumpling her
face. Then it was gone, so fast he wasn't sure he had seen
it.
"Just remember our mission," he said. "Our mission,
Renate. Don't forget who we are. We are not them."
"They are animals," she said coldly. "And I am going to
kill the ones who hurt my family. I am going to kill them
with my own hands."
"Renate."
© 2003-2026