Робин Кук - Intervention

“When is this guest week going to begin?” Sana questioned.

“What time will you be getting home tonight?” James asked.

“About five would be my guess,” Sana said.

“He’ll be waiting at your door,” James said.

“Wait a second,” Shawn said. He looked at Sana. “We’re planning on going out to dinner tonight, as Sana had enough of the kitchen last night.”

“That’s not a problem,” James said. “He’s eminently presentable. It will be a good way for you all to get acquainted on neutral ground.”

“We’ve got to take this stranger out to dinner?” Shawn complained.

“Why not? It’s a good way to start the relationship. I imagine it’s been a long time since he’s been taken out to dinner, if he’s ever been taken out to dinner. Think of the excitement you’ll be adding to this man’s life.”

“Who’s going to pay?” Shawn asked.

“I don’t believe you,” James said, “but I should. You are as cheap as you were in college.”

“That’s for sure,” Jack said, speaking up for the first time.

“If I have to endure it, I don’t think I should have to pay for it,” Shawn said, defending himself.

“The archdiocese will cover Mr. Hester’s meal tonight, but not yours, big spender. Keep accurate records and receipts if you expect to be reimbursed.”

“No problem,” Shawn said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to work.”

5:05 P.M., SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2008

NEW YORK CITY

Luke Hester had never felt quite so vulnerable as he did standing at the front door to the Daughtrys’ wooden house beneath the cone of light from a downward-directed spotlight. He’d just used the door knocker to announce himself, and the harshness and loudness of the clang had surprised him and fanned the fires of his nervousness. Turning, he eyed the vehicle in which he’d been driven down to the Village with the archbishop sitting at the wheel. Self-consciously, he waved. The archbishop waved back and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Luke did the same back, wishing he felt half as confident as the archbishop professed to feel that he, Luke, was going to be successful talking the husband-and-wife team out of publishing articles detrimental to the Blessed Virgin and the Church. What had caused him the most pause was the cardinal’s assertion that Dr. Daughtry has the help and attention of Satan. As a consequence, Luke was terrified to face whoever was about to open the door.

Perhaps the biggest reason Luke had not allowed himself to leave the monastery on his own since he’d fled there eight years ago was the fear that he would have to confront Satan, and here he was doing just that. And although he’d been forced during his teenage years to deal with Satan on a daily basis through his godless father, Luke conceded that he was still probably the least capable person to deal with the Prince of Darkness on any level.

Adding to his unease and vulnerability was Luke’s apparel. It had been James’s idea that wearing his Brotherhood of the Slaves of Mary habit would be too much for Shawn, so Fathers Maloney and Karlin had between the two of them come up with a very casual wardrobe of jeans and shirts, some of which he was wearing at that moment and the rest of which he had stashed in a small roll-on suitcase at his side. Also in the suitcase were toiletries that the two priests had gone out to buy, as Luke had brought nothing of the kind with him from the monastery. Besides clothes and toiletries, the suitcase contained a cell phone, some cash, and a new Rosary blessed by the Holy Father himself as a special gift from the cardinal. If he needed anything, Luke was supposed to call Father Maloney or His Eminence.

Suddenly, the Daughtrys’ door was pulled open to its full extent, and Sana and Luke confronted each other. Both froze in total surprise, as neither person came close to matching the other’s expectation. Sana was the most surprised, instantly overwhelmed, as James had been, by both Luke’s angelic, youthful appearance and virtuous aura but mostly by his soft, imploring eyes that looked to her like bottomless crystal-blue pools and his pouty, vulnerable lips. For his part, Luke had expected an unattractive, threatening male figure like an allegorical image of the devil in a medieval painting.

“Luke?” Sana questioned, as if she was experiencing a vision.

“Mrs. Daughtry?” Luke questioned, as if perhaps he was at the wrong house.

Sana looked around Luke’s thin but shapely body and caught sight of James, who had his vehicle’s interior light on. She waved to let him know that Luke was safe. James responded with a wave of his own, and then turned the vehicle’s interior light off in preparation of leaving.

“Please come in!” Sana said, with an uncertain voice. She was weak-kneed and astounded by Luke’s luminosity, particularly the color and shine of his shoulder-length white-blond hair and the perfection of his skin as he passed by her. “Shawn!” she called out. “Our guest’s here.”

Shawn appeared from the kitchen with a scotch on the rocks in his right hand. With a surprised reaction similar to Sana’s, he pulled himself up short and gazed open-mouthed at Luke. “Good Lord, boy, how old are you?”

“Twenty-five, sir,” Luke said. “About to be twenty-six.” He was relieved to a degree. Shawn didn’t look quite as formidable or devilish as he had feared.

“You appear much younger,” Shawn commented. The boy had such enviably perfect skin, and teeth as white as new fallen snow.

“Many people have said as much,” Luke responded.

“You are to be our houseguest for a week,” Shawn continued. “Welcome.”

“Thank you, sir,” Luke responsed. “And I was told you have been openly informed why I am here.”

“You have been retained to talk me out of publishing my work.”

“Only if it deals with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, Mother of Christ, Mother of God, my personal savior, who has brought me to Christ, Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Mary Queen of Heaven, Queen of Peace, Stella Maris, and Mother of All Sorrows. It is to her I am devoted and have already begun to pray that you will not denigrate her by suggesting she was not assumed into heaven to reside with God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

“My word,” Shawn commented, taken aback by this man-child, whom he already found incomprehensible. “Such an amazing litany. I understand you live in a monastery.”

“That is correct. I am a novice with the Brotherhood of the Slaves of Mary.”

“Is it true you haven’t left for eight years?”

“Almost eight, at least not on my own. I did come here to the city with some of the brothers to have some medical tests a number of years ago, but this is the first time on my own.”

Shawn shook his head. “It’s hard for me to believe a young person like yourself would be willing to deny your own freedom.”

“My freedom I gladly sacrifice to the Holy Mother. Staying within the walls of the monastery gives me more time to pray for her intervention and the peace it brings.”

“Intervention for what?”

“To keep me from sin. To keep me close to Christ. To help the brothers in their mission.”

“Come on!” Sana said to Luke. “Let’s take you up to your guest room.”

Luke studied Shawn’s face for a moment, then followed Sana up the stairway leading to the upper floors. They passed the second floor, where Sana said Shawn was sleeping, and the third floor, where Sana said she was sleeping, to the fourth floor. It was a room with dormer windows that faced the front of the building.

“Here’s where you will be staying,” Sana said, standing to the side, letting Luke step into the room dominated by a queen-size, four-poster bed. “Does it look like your room at the monastery?”