They crowded forward, candles in hand, hesitant at first, the curious at the rear pushing those ahead. They were older, mostly female, with a few younger men and women salted among them. Plainly dressed for the most part, but they had an eagerness in common. He saw it in their eyes. They were searching for something but not quite sure what.
And when they saw the body stretched out on the altar they hesitated, but only for a moment, only for a heartbeat. Then they were moving forward again, surging ahead like some giant, single-celled organism, filling the center aisle and splashing against the chancel rail.
Dan listened to the talk within the Mary-hunter amoeba.
“Is it her?”...”Do you think that’s really her?”...”That’s not what I expected her to look like”...”Aren’t you forgetting the Assumption? Can’t be her”...”Right. She was assumed into heaven, body and soul”...”Besides, she looks too old, all dried up...”
And then the crowd was parting like the Red Sea to make way for a pinch-faced old woman in a wheelchair. She wore a fur cap despite the heat and was propelled from behind by a burly orderly in whites.
“Let me through.” The woman swung her cane before her to clear the way. “I’ll tell you if it’s her or not, but I can’t see from back here.”
Her orderly wheeled her up to the brass gates of the chancel rail and she stared across at the altar.
Over and over Dan hear voices murmur, “What do you think, Martha?” and “Martha will know,” and “What does she say?”
Apparently this Martha was an authority of some sort among the Mary-hunters.
“I...” she began, then stopped. “This shouldn’t be but... Get me closer, Gregory.”
Her dutiful orderly unlatched the chancel gates and pushed them open. Dan didn’t want them in the sanctuary and was stepping forward to stop him when he felt a restraining hand on his arm.
Carrie was beside him.
“Wait. Let her look.”
Gregory wheeled old Martha through the gates and parked her next to the altar where she was almost eye level with the Virgin. She peered closely through her bifocals, then, tentatively, she reached out and brushed the Virgin’s cheek with her fingertip.
“Oh!” she cried and threw herself back in her chair as if she’d received a jolt of electricity.
Behind her Gregory stood with hands clasped behind his back, unprepared for the sudden convulsive movement. Martha and her chair went over backward.
A moment of mass confusion in St. Joseph’s with people shouting and crying out in alarm, and then utter silence as Gregory righted the chair, turned to lift Martha back into it, and froze.
Martha was standing beside him.
Dan couldn’t tell who was more surprised—Gregory or Martha.
The old woman looked down at her newly functioning legs and screamed. Pandemonium reigned then as the rest of the Mary-hunters added their own screams to hers, surging forward, surrounding the joyfully weeping Martha and the altar with its precious burden.
When a modicum of control was finally restored, the Mary-hunters knelt as one and began to recite the Rosary.
Their hunt was over.
Dan felt Carrie squeeze his arm. He turned and saw her tight grin, the fierce gleam in her eyes.
“Let the Vatican try to keep her a secret now!”
MIRACLES IN MANHATTAN
“We’ve had many healings,” Martha Harrington announced to reporters from the front steps of St. Joseph’s church on the Lower East Side yesterday.
Mrs. Harrington should know. Three days ago she was wheelchair bound, barely able to stand without the aid of two canes, and even then for only a minute or so. Now she breezes up and down the steps of St. Joseph’s like a teenager. She is reportedly the first miracle cure associated with the mummified body on display within the church.
The body, which the faithful proclaim to be the earthly remains of the Virgin Mary, appeared on the altar of St. Joseph’s three nights ago during a prayer vigil on the church steps. Since then it has become an object of worldwide devotion and the center of a storm of ecclesiastical controversy. So far, the Archdiocese of New York has had no comment on the healings other than to say that the phenomena are under investigation.
“Not everyone is healed,” Mrs. Harrington said. “We can’t explain why some are healed and others are not. It would be presumptuous of me to try. ‘Many are called but few are chosen,’ as the saying goes.”
Obviously, Martha Harrington sees herself as one of the chosen.
(The New York
Times)
IN THE PACIFIC
11o N, 140o W
Now a supercell, the storm increases the whirling velocity of its central winds, growing wider, stretching into the upper atmosphere as it angles northeastward. Its spinning core organizes into a funnel cloud that dips down...down...down until it brushes the churning surface of the ocean. The funnel latches onto the sea like a celestial leech, whipping the water to foam as it draws up a thin stream into its 200-mile-an-hour vortex.
NINETEEN
Haifa, Israel
Customs Inspector Dov Sidel sat in his office, sipping tea and skimming this morning’s Ha’aretz. A low-volume day at the port so he was taking his full break. He glanced at an article about inexplicable cures in a New York City church attributed to what was supposedly the remains of the Virgin Mary. After reading half of the first paragraph, he turned the page.
Two heartbeats later he flipped back.
A photo was connected to the article, a grainy black-and-white close-up of the face of the miraculous relic in Manhattan. Something familiar about that face...
And then he recognized it: the sculpture he’d so admired when it had been shipped through Haifa this summer. When had that been? July? He’d jotted down the name of the Tel Aviv gallery that had shipped it, and on his next trip to the city he’d stopped by the Kaplan gallery in the hope of seeing more works by the same artist. The owner had told him the Old Woman piece was a one of a kind that he’d bought at auction. He’d had no idea who the sculptor was.
And now Sidel knew why. There was no sculptor.
No wonder the owner had seemed so brusque and unhelpful. He’d smuggled out an archeological artifact as a contemporary work of art.
Inspector Sidel dropped the paper, picked up his phone, and dialed his superior at the central Customs Office.
JERUSALEM: THE LADY IS OURS!
JERUSALEM (AP) The Israeli government has announced that the mummified woman on display in St. Joseph’s church in Lower Manhattan, currently the object of hysterical devotion by throngs of Catholics and Christians of all denominations, belongs to them. Spokesman Yishtak Levin claims his government has “indisputable evidence that the remains were smuggled out of Israel on July 22 of this year.” Stating that “the remains are an historic national relic and the rightful property of the Israeli people,” he demanded its immediate return
.
(The New York
Post
)
Manhattan
Kesev stood on the front stoop of a crumbling brownstone and watched the roiling mass of people that filled the street in front of the church.
He seemed to be viewing the scene from deep within a long black tunnel. He had known despair and hopelessness before, but never like this. Of all the possible outcomes, this had been his worst-case scenario.
His only hope was the Israeli government’s claim to the Mother. If its demand for her return was honored, he had a chance. A slim chance, to be sure, but once she was again on Israeli soil, she was in his domain. As a Shin Bet officer he would be standing by at all times, waiting to leap upon any opportunity to spirit her away.