Good Lord! Am I pregnant?

She ran to the elevators. Both cars were down in the basement so she took the stairs up. At the second floor she hurried along the corridor to the lab.

"Maggie!" she said to the young woman at the lab desk, glad that someone she knew had pulled duty this weekend. Maggie had frizzy red hair and a face like a goose, but her smile was winning.

"Carol! Hi! What are you doing in on a Sunday?"

"I need a test!"

"What for?"

"Uh… pregnancy."

"You late?"

"I'm never on time, so how can I tell if I'm late?"

Maggie looked at her sideways. "Is this 'Oh-God-I-hope-I'm-not' or 'Please-God-say-I-am'?"

"Am! Am!"

"Well, it's only supposed to be done on doctor's order, but since it's Sunday, who's to know, right?" She handed Carol a plastic-wrapped cup. "Give us some pee-pee and we'll see-see."

Carol hesitated, fighting to keep her hopes from rising too far. She couldn't allow herself real hope. The test was a double-edged sword—too much hope and a negative would be crushing.

With her heart thumping in her throat she headed for the door marked women.

4

Frustrated almost to the wall-kicking stage because he hadn't been able to open the safe, Jim turned his attention to other matters. It was after five by the time he had lugged all of Hanley's personal journals down from the upstairs library and lined them up on a separate shelf in the downstairs one. They were gray, leather-bound affairs with dates on their spines. One for each year, beginning with 1920 and ending with 1967. He left a gap in the middle for the volumes they could not find.

"He must have had this year's with him when the plane went down," Jim said. "But where are the other four?"

"Beats me, man," Gerry Becker said, standing beside him. "We've combed every bookshelf in the place."

Jim nodded. He had pored through many of the journals. They contained summaries of Hanley's projects, his plans for the future, and day-by-day comments and observations on his personal life. They were a priceless peephole into his father's life.

But where were 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1942? The four most important years—the three years before and the year of his birth, the ones that might contain his mother's name—were missing.

Frustrating as all hell.

"Maybe they're in that safe," Jim said. He looked at Carol, sitting in the wing chair. "What do you think, hon?"

She was staring into space. Carol had been glum and withdrawn all night. Jim wondered what was bothering her.

"Carol?"

She shook herself. "What?"

"You all right?"

"Oh, yes. Fine, fine."

Jim didn't believe a word of it, but he couldn't get into it with Becker still hanging around. He was getting to be a fixture around here, and that was a real drag.

"Dig this," Becker said. He had been flipping through the 1943 volume. He shoved the book in front of" Jim. "Read the second para on the right."

Jim squinted as he deciphered Hanley's crabbed hand:

Ed and I had a bit of a laugh over Jazzy's pitiful attempt at blackmail. I told her she had seen the last penny she would ever see from me last year and to be on her way.

"Jazzy!" Jim said. "I saw a name like that in—where was it?—1949!" He pulled the volume out and flipped through it. Where had he seen it? "Here!"

He read aloud:

"Read in the paper today that Jazzy Cordeau is dead. Such a shame. What disparity between the woman she became and the woman she could have been. The world will never know."

Jim's mind raced. Jazzy Cordeau! French… New Orleans? Could she possibly be his mother? Jazzy Cordeau was the only female name he had found that was linked to the missing years.

He had to get into that safe!

"I think I'll be cuttin' out," Becker said. "I'm bushed."

"Yeah," Jim said, trying to hide his relief. "Same here. Look, why don't we give this a rest for a while? We've been beating this place to death."

Becker shrugged. "Fine with me. Maybe I'll check the morgues at a couple of papers for you, see if I can turn up anything. Buzz you in a couple of days."

"Great. I appreciate that. You know the way out."

When Jim heard the door slam, he turned to Carol and grinned. "Finally! He's gone!"

She nodded absently.

"Honey, what's wrong?"

Carol's face twisted as tears filled her eyes. She began to cry. Jim rushed over and pulled her into his arms. She felt so small and frail against him.

"I thought I was pregnant but I'm not!" she said, sobbing.

He held her tight and rocked her back and forth.

"Oh, Carol, Carol, don't take it so hard. We've got all the time in the world. We've got nothing better to do from now on than work on producing little feet to patter around this big old house."

"But what if it never happens?"

"It will."

He led her toward the front door. It killed him to see her so sad. All this newfound wealth didn't mean squat if Carol was unhappy.

He kissed her.

"Come on. Let's get back to our own bed in our own little place and do some homework."

She smiled through her tears.

That was better!

Nine

Monday, March 4

1

Brother Robert knelt on the cold, rice-littered floor by the window and silently chanted the Prime. When he was through, he remained kneeling. His window faced east and he looked out at the brightening sky.

The evil was growing stronger. Every day it cast a greater pall over his spirit. And it was from there, to the east, from somewhere on Long Island, that it seemed to emanate. Martin had driven him the length of the island but he had been unable to pinpoint its source. The closer he got, the more diffuse it became—until he had been engulfed in a cacophony of evil sensations.

A sign, Lord. Show me who it is. Show me Your enemy.

And then what? How would he fight Satan incarnate?

Will You teach me, Lord?

He prayed so. He had no battle plan, no strategy. He was not a plotter, not a general. He was a contemplative monk who had given up the world in order to be closer to his God.

Forgive the impertinence, Lord, but perhaps You made a mistake in choosing me to lead this flock. The burden is wide and my shoulders are so narrow.

Perhaps he hadn't given up enough of the world. He had fasted and prayed and worked in the fields around the monastery, but still he had wanted to know. The lust for knowledge had driven him to petition his abbot, and the Abbot General himself, for permission to search out and catalog other monastic orders. Not the Benedictines and similar well-established examples, but lesser, more obscure orders that might have something to offer the monastic life as a whole.

He had been given two years, but he had gone beyond that. His trek across the world had been endlessly fascinating. He had met with some of the Orphic brotherhood and a few Pythagoreans in Greece. He had found remnants of Therapeutae and Anchorites in the Mideast, and even a trio of Stylites, each sitting alone atop a stone pillar in the Gobi Desert. In the Far East he investigated many cenobitic Buddhist sects, and in Japan he met with the last two surviving members of an order of self-mutilating monks.

He should have stopped then. His compendium of monastic orders and their ways of life was the most complete on earth. But it was not enough; he went further. He had been tantalized by hints he had heard of dark secrets buried in ancient ruins, in forbidden books. He had searched them out. And he had found some of them. He had dug into the fabled ruins, had read some of the ancient, mythic tomes.