ht.”
“They said I might or might not eventually remember the explosion, but all I remember right now is a little flash. For a while I thought it was something I’d dreamed, and maybe it is, but I don’t think so. Do you know the setup in the theater?”
“Yes.”
“Your man in Radenau laid it out for you.”
Fr. Lulfre nodded, then added, “Our man in Europe, actually.”
“This is the elderly person who introduced himself to me as Herr Reichmann?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you already had a man on the ground there?”
He shrugged. “It’s always better if you think it’s all up to you.”
“Then why did he phone me with instructions?”
“He got impatient. Professionals always get impatient with amateurs. You know that.”
I shook my head. “Why did you send me at all?”
“We sent you for exactly the reasons I gave you.” He smiled briefly. “For almost exactly the reasons I gave you. Under his real name, Reichmann maintains perfectly respectable offices in Berlin, Prague, and Paris and works on retainer for a dozen different firms and individuals, mostly in the U.S. He’s a very useful, knowledgeable person, and ninety-nine percent of the chores we give him are routine and innocuous, but when we asked him to look into Charles Atterley for us, he showed a side we hadn’t seen before. His approach was, ‘I can’t make out what the blighter is saying, so why don’t I just shoot him and be done with it?’ Whatever you may think of us after this dreadful experience, Jared, absolutely no one considered taking such advice. We had to send someone of our own to have a look at Atterley, and believe me, we very much wanted you to persuade us that he was harmless.”
“And I failed to do that.”
“It was out of your hands, really. He was condemned from his own mouth by the speeches you faxed to us.”
“And you actually authorized his assassination?”
The man shrugged. “You said it very well, Jared: These days are still those days. Nothing’s changed in the last five hundred years—or the last thousand—except that heretics can no longer be executed in public. I take all this as seriously as Pope Innocent the Third, who ordered up a crusade against the Albigenses. I take it all as seriously as Pius the Fifth, who, when he was the grand inquisitor, personally instigated the massacre of thousands of Protestants in southern Italy. I take it all as seriously as Thomas Aquinas, who said, ‘If ordinary criminals may be justly put to death, then how much more may heretics be justly slain.’ For Thomas well knew that the murderer just shortens his neighbors’ temporal life, whereas the heretic deprives them of eternal life. If you no longer understand the difference—or if it no longer matters to you—then I assume you’ve lost your faith.”
“You assume rightly, Father. I’m afraid it’s fallen to the modernist fallacy.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, and I could see that he sincerely meant it.
“Since you quoted me about ‘these days still being those days,’ I assume the resourceful Herr Reichmann had the theater bugged.”
“Of course he did. It was an obvious thing to do. Atterley and his followers were just too incredibly trusting to survive for very long as subversives.”
“Yes, they were. So you knew they were recruiting me.”
“Yes. That was an unexpected bonus, and you handled it just right.”
“Except that I ended up recruited.”
“Yes—except for that.” He frowned for a moment, then looked up. “You say you now remember the explosion?”
“I said I remember a little flash. I’m looking up out of a well at Herr Reichmann, who’s looking down into the well at me. I think this was the stairwell at the theater.”
“That’s right. That’s all you remember?”
I nodded.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened there. Reichmann’s story is that you blundered into him on the stairs moments before the bomb was to go off. Evidently you assumed he was up to no good and wouldn’t let him talk you into leaving the theater with him, and when you headed down the stairs to warn the others, he slugged you and left you to your fate. This was relatively lucky for you, since that iron staircase was the only structure that survived both the blast and the collapse of the roof.”
“You don’t think it actually happened that way?”