I watched them leave as the evening grew dark and quiet. I hadn’t learned as much as I had hoped, but neither had they. We were still circling one another, wary of giving too much away. I had not mentioned Sekula to Reid and Bartek, but Angel and Louis had taken on the task of checking out his office once they returned to New York. If they found out anything more, then they would tell me.

I closed the door and called Rachel on her cell. My call went straight to her message system. I thought about trying her parents’ number, but I didn’t want to have to deal with Frank or Joan. Instead, I walked Walter along the marshes, but when we came to a copse of trees at the farthest extreme of the woods, he would go no farther, and grew agitated until we turned back to the house. The moon was already visible in the sky, and it was reflected in the waters of the little pond, like the face of a drowned man hanging in its depths.

Reid and Bartek drove toward I-95. They did not speak until they were heading south on the interstate.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” asked Bartek.

“I told him enough, maybe too much.”

“You lied to him. You said that you didn’t know what it meant to be ‘found.”’

“These people are deluded.”

“Brightwell isn’t like the rest. He’s different. How can it be otherwise, the way he keeps reappearing, unchanged?”

“Let them believe what they want to believe, Brightwell included. There’s no point in worrying him more than he is. The man already looks weighed down by his burdens. Why should we add to them?”

Bartek stared out the window. Great mounds of earth had been torn up for the widening of the highway. Trees lay fallen, waiting to be cut up and transported. The outlines of digging equipment were visible against the darkening sky, like beasts frozen in the midst of some great conflict.

No, he thought. It’s more than a delusion. It’s not merely the statue that they’ve been seeking.

He spoke carefully. Reid had a temper, and he didn’t want him sulking in the driver’s seat for the rest of the journey.

“He will have to be told, regardless of any other problems he may have,” he said. “They’ll come back, because of who they believe he is. And they’ll hurt him.”

Ahead of them, the Kennebunk exit was approaching. Bartek could see the parking lot of the rest stop, and the lights of the fast-food outlets. They were in the fast lane, a big rig on their inside.

“Bugger,” said Reid. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought you along.”

He floored the accelerator, cut in front of the truck, and made the exit. Seconds later they were heading back the way that they had come.

Walter was already barking by the time their car pulled up. He had learned to respond to the warning noises from the motion sensor at the gate. Now that Rachel was gone, I had opened the gun safe and placed one gun in the hall stand and another in the kitchen. The third, the big Smith 10, I tried to keep close to hand wherever I was. I watched the big priest come to the door. The younger one stayed by the car.

“Lose your way?” I said as I opened the door.

“A long time ago,” said Reid. “Is there somewhere we can go to eat? I’m starving.”

I took them to the Great Lost Bear. I liked the Bear. It was unpretentious and inexpensive, and I didn’t want to be stiffed on a pricey meal by a pair of monks. We ordered hot wings, and burgers and fries. Reid seemed impressed by the selection of beers and went for some British import that looked like it had been bottled in the time of Shakespeare.

“So where were you stricken by remorse at your dishonesty?” I asked.

Reid shot Bartek a poisonous look.

“The voice of my bloody conscience started up somewhere beside a Burger King,” he said.

“It wasn’t quite the road to Damascus,” said Bartek, “but then you’re no Saint Paul, apart from a shared bad temper.”

“As you seem aware, I wasn’t entirely forthcoming about certain matters,” said Reid. “My young colleague here appears to feel that we should make clear the risks that you’re facing, and what Brightwell meant by your being ‘found.’ I stand by what I said earlier: they’re deluded, and they want others to share their delusions. They can believe what they want to believe, and you don’t have to go along with it, but I now accept that those beliefs can still be a threat to you.

“It goes back to the apocrypha, and the fall of the angels. God forces the rebels from heaven, and they burn in their descent. They are banished to hell, but some choose instead to wander the nascent earth, consumed by hatred of God and, eventually, the growing hordes of humanity that they see around them. They identify what they believe to be the flaw in God’s creation: God has given man free will, and so he is open to evil as well as good. So the war against God continues on earth, waged through men. I suppose you could term it guerrilla warfare, in a way.

“But not all of the angels turned their backs on God. According to Enoch, there was one who repented, and believed that he could still be forgiven. The others tried to hunt him down, but he hid himself among men. The salvation he sought never came, but he continued to believe in the possibility that it might be offered to him if he made reparation for all that he had done. He did not lose faith. After all, his offense was great, and his punishment had to be great in return. He was prepared to endure whatever was visited upon him in the hope of his ultimate salvation. So our friends, these Believers, are of the opinion that this last angel is still out there, somewhere, and they hate him almost as much as they hate God Himself.”

Found.

“They want to kill him?”

“According to their tenets, he can’t be killed. If they kill him, they lose him again. He wanders, finds a new form, and the search has to start over.”

“So what are their options?”

“To corrupt him, to make him despair so that he joins their ranks again; or they can imprison him forever, lock him up somewhere so that he weakens and wastes away, yet can never enjoy the release of death. He will endure an eternity of slow, living decay. An appalling thought, if nothing else.”

“You see,” said Bartek, “God is merciful. That is what I believe, that is what Martin believes, and that is what, according to Enoch, the solitary angel believed. God would even have forgiven Judas Iscariot, had he asked for His forgiveness. Judas wasn’t damned for betraying Christ. He was damned for despairing, for rejecting the possibility that he might be forgiven for what he had done.”

“I always thought Judas got a raw deal,” said Reid. “Christ had to die to redeem us, and a lot of people played a part in getting Him to that point. You could argue that Judas’s role was preordained, and that, in the aftermath, no man could have been expected to bear the burden of killing God without despairing. You might have thought that there would have been a little room for maneuver in God’s great scheme for Judas.”

I sipped at an alcohol-free beer. It didn’t taste great, but I wasn’t about to blame the beer for that.

“You’re telling me that they think I might be this angel that they’ve been seeking.”

“Yes,” said Reid. “Enoch is very allegorical, as you’ve surely learned by now, and there are places where the allegory bleeds into the more straightforward aspects. Enoch’s creator meant the repentant angel to symbolize the hope of forgiveness that we all should hold within us, even those who have sinned most grievously. The Believers have chosen to interpret it literally, and in you they think they’ve found their lost penitent. They’re not certain, though. That’s why Brightwell tried to get close to you.”

“I didn’t tell you when we first met, but I think I’ve seen someone who looked like Brightwell before,” I said.