Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“Where do they have him now, Effredio that is?”

“At the old capilla below Gólgota, Padre. There in the ruined garden.” She waited. He was thinking. “He is heavily guarded,” she added.

“Have we a man among the guards?”

“Yes, a Cebuano—stupid but loyal. His name is Candelario de Mactan. He is to be Longinus tomorrow.”

Perfect, Cotinho thought. Longinus was the one-eyed centurion who, out of pity, delivered the spear thrust that put Christ out of His misery. According to the local legend, a spurt of blood from that sacred wound hit Longinus in the face and restored his sight. But spears can be thrust in more than one direction, and blood can cover whole islands. Once more, Padre Cotinho felt the hand of God moving in the night.

“The chapel at Gólgota, you say? I shall go there at once.”

“And I, Padre?” Rosalinda asked.

“Wait for me beneath the hibiscus near the rectory,” he said. “Padre Fagundes has the midnight mass. Pray for me, daughter. Pray for our cause and our mission. God is with us still. We will prevail.”

“Curt?” the commodore said. “I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I, sir,” Billy agreed. “Curt’s too dumb for anything this elaborate.”

“My feelings precisely.”

“But we’ve got this guy Kasim talking anyway. He’ll give us more. I told him he’s going up on the cross at noon tomorrow.” He looked at his watch. “Today, actually.”

“Oh Christ, Billy!” He stared at Torres. “The cross?”

“Well, it’s got him thinking, and I’ll bet he’s thinking about talking. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

The commodore nodded wearily.

“And don’t worry. It’s just nails and whips. I won’t expend any ordnance, sir.” Billy laughed.

The commodore looked up at him. He wouldn’t be baited. The bags under his eyes felt full of sand.

“You’re a cruel man, Warrant Gunner Torres.”

“But good at my job, sir. Don’t get upset—he won’t die. At the touch of the first spike, he’ll spill his godless Commie guts all over Gólgota. If it even gets that far. You going to be there to hear his confession, sir?”

“No, I’ve got to get things battened down over on Balbal. We may receive an attack at any moment. We’ve lost two Thunders already, that’s a quarter of a million in U.S. dollars. Apiece. Our budget is stretched to the limit. Over the limit, come to think of it. What with the empty run you made to Ko Kut last week. I hope Hughes made the pickup all right this time. Any word from him?”

“No sir. Remember you ordered radio silence after I messaged him with the rendezvous fix? He’s due back tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“He’d goddamn well better make it,” the commo said, “or I’ll bust him back to—” Wait a minute, he thought.

“To what sir?” Billy Torres asked. “Civilian?”

Candelario de Mactan had the night watch, and he didn’t like it. He was a big man. Big men get cold faster than little men. There was more of them exposed to the wind. He didn’t like the wind blowing down from Gólgota. It blew through the ruined garden that surrounded the chapel and brought him the smell of dying flowers and cold marble. It brought him the smell of those crooked crosses on the hilltop. He didn’t like to look up, unthinking, and suddenly see them there outlined against the cold moon. Yet he couldn’t keep himself from staring up at them. He forced himself to look away, and then he was staring at the mask. He didn’t like the mask at all. It was the face of the centurion Longinus, who had killed Our Lord. A cruel, black-bearded face with only one eye.

Don’t be foolish, Candelario told himself. It’s only a mask. The fact that it has only one eye does not mean it will take the sight from one of my own eyes. I am not a savage, I am a descendant of Lapu Lapu, the king of Mactan who killed the evil invader Magellan in the surf of the Mactan Sea. All men of Mactan are Lapu’s sons. The mask looks like Magellan’s face, on the monument at home. But Lapu Lapu stands as big as life, bigger than life, high above Magellan, whom he killed with one stroke of his bolo. Even though I must wear the mask tomorrow—today, really, in only ten hours or so—it will not make me Magellan. I am working for the men who will kill today’s Magellans. Who knows, perhaps I myself will be the one to behead the commodore, Magellan’s heir.

But still he was cold.

He could hear the padre inside the chapel, hearing the confession of the captured Moro. He had not realized Moros believed in confession. It was warm in the capilla . The padre had brought coffee. Candelario could smell it on the warm air from the chapel window. He stepped closer to breathe the coffee smell more deeply. A man could take sustenance from smells alone.

“When you sought me that day on Siquijor,” the padre was saying, “you brought me fresh hope, my son.”

“And I brought this upon myself,” Effredio said bitterly. They were speaking the heavy Visayan dialect of Negros, which neither Candelario nor any other of the commodore’s guards could penetrate.

“Don’t despair, my son,” Padre Cotinho said. “You’ll be safe, as safe as any of us. I’ll arrange it. It’s all being arranged. But you must not talk. They will not harm you. The commodore will not permit it. Like all Americans, he is soft at the core. Torres for all his cruelty obeys the commodore’s orders. He must obey them. He is a slave of the Americans. Never fear. There is always hope.”

“Not on that, there isn’t,” Effredio said. He was staring out the lancet window at a cross on Gólgota.

“There is always hope in the cross, my son,” Padre Cotinho said. “It is my hope—no, it is my certainty —that you will find it up there.”

Effredio was quiet for a minute.

“I have sinned, Padre,” he said at last. “Bless me.”

Padre Cotinho embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks. Effredio’s cheeks were wet. The padre poured him another cup of coffee from the thermos he had brought with him. Some slopped over, onto his hand. He handed the metal cup to Effredio, then with his wet thumb traced a cross lightly on Effredio’s brow. He stood back, smiling, and traced a larger cross in the air.

On his way out a few minutes later he handed Candelario the last of the coffee, and took him aside.

“Today, as Longinus,” he said, “you will place the lance deeply and accurately. The man within is a traitor to our cause. Yet though he has betrayed us, I do not want him to suffer. You will use the spear before they nail him to the cross. Make sure of your thrust, compañero. Comprende? ”

Candelario nodded. He always obeyed orders. He appreciated the gesture of the coffee. The padre was a good leader.

TWENTY-SIX

The old imperial navy submarine pens had been blasted out of dead coral and roofed with reinforced concrete, then layered with loose coral rubble and sand. Now, nearly half a century later, they were invisible from land, sea, or air. Cactus and wire grass covered them on top while clever jogs in the entrance channel disguised their hidden gates. Inside, though, they were brightly lighted by the power of generators, clanking and howling with activity. Sôbô had found a few of his old crew from the destroyer Yunagi to serve as foremen. The younger Japanese machinists and construction workers were the most skilled he had been able to locate. All were eager for the job—a chance to travel to forbidding but exotic tropical isles. Good pay, too. And plenty of cut-rate sex. They’d done a crackerjack job. Renovations on the schooner Venganza were nearly complete. Sôbô had thanked the men personally and distributed bottles of sake to the foremen for immediate (but moderate) consumption. He himself would not stay for the toasts—just for the first one—which he pretended to drink—Banzai!—but spilled on the floor instead. Then he went topside.