And a hot feature on the wires would get him off a hick rag like the Monroe Express and back into the journalistic mainstream. Maybe the Daily News. Maybe even the Times!

Gerry had been in the mainstream once. Younger guys like Stevens—younger only by a few years but that was like a generation away these days—seemed satisfied to diddle around on a local rag and write the Great American Novel on the side. Not for Gerry. News was the only writing that mattered. He'd been on his way up at the Trib, living in a fourth-floor walk-up, but slowly inching ahead, doing what he wanted. Then the Trib had folded, just like the World Telegraph & Sun. Black days, those. Only the News, the Post, and the Times were left, and they were up to their eyeballs in guys more experienced than Gerry. For a while he had tried The Light, hoping for a shot at the top spot after its editor mysteriously disappeared, but it went to someone else. A weekly didn't prove to be his style, so he had hooked up with a small-time daily and waited for his chance.

His chance was now.

He slammed a notebook back into its slot. So much for that shelf. Nothing but notes and jottings and equations and abstracts of scientific articles pasted onto the pages. No love letters or dirty pictures—not a drop of juice.

Time to go to the next shelf. Boring as hell, but something was going to turn up, and Gerry intended to be here when it did.

He went to pull a volume from the next section of bookshelves but couldn't seem to budge it. When he took a closer look, he saw why. Suddenly excited, he squeezed his fingers in above the books, grabbed hold of the tops of their spines, and pulled.

The whole row of books pulled free in one piece.

Only they weren't books, just a facade of old spines glued to a board. He heard Stevens at his side.

"What've you got here, Gerry?"

At the rear of the shelf a dull gray metal surface reflected the light from the window.

"Looks like a safe to me, Jim. A big one."

But where was the combination?

Eight

The First Sunday in Lent, March 3

1

"You're welcome to stay for the service, Grace."

Grace smiled at Brother Robert and looked around the room. They were in the oblong basement of Martin's brownstone in Murray Hill. This room did not seem to belong to the rest of the house. It was so much warmer. Fluorescent lights, recessed into a beige suspended ceiling, glowed through multicolored panels, giving a stained-glass effect. There was wall-to-wall carpeting, and the walls were deeply stained tongue-and-groove knotty-pine. Rows of chairs were lined in a semicircle around a low platform at the far end. The walls were bare except for the crucifix at the far end; both it and the statue of the Blessed Virgin in the left corner were covered in purple drapes, just as they were in churches throughout the world during Lent. But this wasn't a church.

About two dozen or so people stood around chatting. Nothing special about them. The Chosen looked like people off the street of any middle-class neighborhood in the city. Some wore suits and dresses, some wore jeans; one woman who didn't have the legs for it sported a miniskirt. And they were all very friendly. They had greeted her with genuine warmth.

"Yes, do stay," Martin Spano said.

"I don't know, Marty—"

"Martin," said the pale young man grimly. "Please don't call me Marty. Nobody calls me Marty." Then he smiled quickly. "Well, what do you think of our little group?"

"They seem very nice."

"Believe me, they are."

He was called away by one of the Chosen, leaving her alone with Brother Robert.

"Are you going to have a Mass?" Grace asked.

"Oh, no," he said in his French accent. "Just some readings from the Bible, the Old and New Testaments. The Church doesn't really recognize groups such as these. They are clearly Catholic, but the monsignors and bishops and such think they are a little… you know how you Americans say… " He pointed his index finger at his left temple and moved it in a circular motion. "Loony Tunes."

"Oh, dear!" Grace said.

She was not at all sure she wanted to get involved in this sort of thing. During the past year or so she had heard of these groups. Catholic Pentecostals, they were called. Charismatics.

"I have not encountered this sort of thing anywhere else in the world, and I find it truly fascinating, truly extraordinary. In a way it is a return to Christianity's humble origins." He gestured to the room. "Believers gathering together in homes to pray and hear the word of God, to witness the presence of the Spirit. That's what Christianity should be about. They have accepted me as a leader of sorts, at least for the time being, but I am not here as a priest. I am here as another one of the Chosen. They don't pretend that what happens here is sacramental, or in any way a substitute for the sacraments. It is an adjunct to the sacraments."

"I don't see how the Church can object to that."

"It doesn't object, but neither does it approve. It will never say so, but I believe the Church is a little concerned about groups like this. Although they are few in number, they are growing. They go to Mass and to confession and receive Communion in the orthodox ways, as we all did earlier this morning. But every Sunday afternoon and every Wednesday night, when they gather in meetings like this, they are on their own, with nothing between them and the Spirit. Surprising things happen."

"How surprising?"

He touched her hand gently. "Stay and see."

Grace stayed.

She sat in the last row and listened to readings from the Gospel, from various books of the Old Testament—mostly the frightening ones from Ecclesiastes—and to a homily from Brother Robert. His voice was mesmerizing. He was fiery and moving as he exorted the Chosen, whom he called the Army of God, to be ever vigilant for signs as to the identity of the devil incarnate, the Antichrist.

While he was speaking, some people sat and listened quietly, but some called out Amens, others stood and held their arms aloft as they swayed back and forth in time to a music audible only to them. Grace was shocked. This was more like one of those Protestant revival meetings they put on television every so often.

Then they all began to pray. And they prayed holding hands. The woman in front of her turned and reached her hand back for Grace to take, but Grace shook her head and folded her hands in front of her. She didn't want to hold hands during prayer! What kind of praying was that?

And then it happened.

A woman in a tweed suit in the front row stood up, rigid and trembling, then fell down onto the floor and began to shake. The nurse in Grace brought her out of her own chair.

"She's having a seizure!" Grace cried.

As she started forward, hands held her back, voices told her, "No, wait. She's all right"… "She has the Spirit"… "The Spirit is upon her."

Sure enough, in a moment the woman lay still, then turned over and sat up. Her eyes were unfocused. Her tongue moved strangely as she opened her mouth and began to speak. The words that came out were like no human speech Grace had ever heard.

Suddenly, directly to Grace's right, someone else, a man in a plaid flannel shirt, sprang up rigidly from his chair. He didn't convulse but started talking in a foreign language, one that sounded exactly like the first woman's. After he had finished, he stared blankly ahead, his jaw continuing to vibrate up and down.

"Hear them?" said a voice in her ear.

She turned and it was Brother Robert, standing at her side.

"What's happening?"

"They're speaking in tongues. Just like the Apostles did on the first Pentecost Sunday." His brown eyes sparkled. "Isn't it fascinating?"