The Return Page 3

  Not today, though.

  Rafael shut off the alarm and rolled out of bed. He showered and shaved and climbed into his civilian attire of denim blazer, polo shirt, and corduroy pants, which Maria always said made him look like an Andalusian schoolboy. He approached the night table and stopped and stared for a moment.

  He reminded himself that he didn’t have to do this. Then he reminded himself that that was precisely the point, that he was choosing to do this.

  He took a breath and opened the drawer and removed its contents: his Star 30M pistol, which he secured in the shoulder holster under his jacket, and then the folded piece of paper he’d placed in there the day before. He unfolded the paper, stared at it for a long moment, then refolded it and placed it inside his left breast pocket.

  Maria, frying something sweet and cinnamony at the stove, smiled warmly as Rafael entered the kitchen.

  “Good morning, amorcito. Churros for the road?”

  “No thank you, corazón,” he answered in his Castilian Spanish, a stark contrast from Maria’s Murcian dialect. “Running late.”

  “How many Sundays in a row are they going to throw at you? It’s getting ridiculous, no?”

  “I’m not going to the station today.”

  “No? So where are you running off to, then?”

  “It’s Sunday, isn’t it, mi cielo? I’m going to church.”

  She gave him a quizzical look, but he only smiled and kissed her softly on the mouth before turning and heading out the low door of their cramped, one-bedroom apartment.

  Anglada Parish lay in the hills just beyond Marina Alta, and with his car turning up A-7/E-15, Rafael could already hear the music. Brass bands playing jota, no doubt accompanied by men and women dancing the Fandango of Albaido, or the Brlea. Dulzaina players blasting ancient Spanish melodies over the countryside below. It was the first day of the Hogueras de San Juan, or Bonfires of Saint John festival, and the parish would be packed with locals, parishioners, and tourists all making merry. Mass had probably just ended, and, for a moment, Rafael wished he hadn’t missed it.

  He glanced at the small copper crucifix hanging on the dashboard, a gift from Father Ortega when he was eighteen. Since moving to Alicante in November, he’d been to church exactly twice, once on Christmas in his own neighborhood and once for a cousin’s wedding at Anglada in April. Whatever his recent lapses in the religious department, however, today would go a long way toward making up for them. He reached into his jacket pocket and grasped the folded paper in his fingers. There was no way he could have left it behind—he clearly remembered removing it from the drawer—but he wanted to feel it now, to make everything more real.

  After parking his car in the lot by the rectory, Rafael joined the crowds that were making their way over to an area outside the library where a makeshift podium had been erected. The music had ceased, and the dancers had stopped dancing, and Father Arroyo now strode through the crowd, making his way toward the platform. Humble and down to earth, at seventy-four, Father Arroyo still exuded the easygoing charisma that had made him so popular in Alicante. He ascended the platform and smiled warmly at the assembly before him.

  “Dear brothers and sisters, venerable fellow priests,” he began as the crowd quieted. “We live in a confusing age. Even Saint Arialdus or the martyrs of Cardera in their own times of darkness could not have foreseen the supreme challenges to our faith that we witness today. A time when so much is possible that too much is possible. A time when science is worshiped and religion is a subject of academic intrigue. When a new worldwide obsession with the stars and the heavens has replaced fear of heaven.”

  Standing off to the side, a little beyond the crowd, Rafael could see Father Arroyo’s two assistant priests, a tall blind man with shaved head, sunglasses, and walking stick, and a thick redheaded man with a wide smirk. Rafael had met these two priests several months prior at his cousin’s wedding. The blind man, he knew, was a recent émigré from Ireland, while the redheaded man was from the United States.

  He stared at them for several moments, hoping that they wouldn’t notice or recognize him, then turned his attention back to Father Arroyo.

  “John the Baptist,” the padre continued, “is described in the gospel as a man ‘sent from God to bear witness to the light so that through him everyone might believe.’ How we could use him now, my friends, how we could use him now. But in his absence, we, each and every one of us, must resolve to ourselves to be such witnesses, witnesses of the light, the luminescent, ever-enveloping light of God, in order that through us, our faltering brethren may believe anew.

  “So on Saint John’s Eve, when we bring our discarded tables and chairs and sofas and we throw them into the embers to create the always majestical and glorious bonfires of Saint John, fires that make the handiwork of our competing brothers and sisters in Santa Pola and Almoradi look like pilot lights, we must recall the true light to which we bear witness. And when we burn our old and useless furniture, we must also burn the useless, wasteful parts of ourselves, the doubt, the fear, the illusions, the vanity. We are sons and daughters of Alicante, we are children of Saint John, and we are first and foremost cherished children of the Lord! Amen!”

  “Amen!” answered the crowd, which then applauded with much enthusiasm, even if Father Arroyo’s sermon was noticeably similar to that from the previous year. As the padre descended from the platform, the jota music and dancing started up anew, and members of his flock encircled him to wish him well and exchange pleasantries.

  Still standing off to the side, Father Reese, the heavyset, redheaded American priest, watched, while his companion, the quiet man with the sunglasses, Father McCord, stood listening to the music, soaking up the scene. As often happened when the two were together, Father Reese swiftly assumed the role of narrator.

  “Francisco Guerra is shaking hands with the padre,” he said in English. “Very enthusiastically.”

  “All right,” McCord replied, with little interest.

  “Guerra never gave the padre the time of day, you know. When the church needed access to the emergencia funds, Guerra wouldn’t even return his calls. Now he’s his best friend? Carlos Bartrina, he’s also there, apple-polishing no less shamelessly.”

  “So what’s changed?”

  “What’s changed? The word has obviously gotten around.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Oh, come on, Father McCord. You love to pretend to be above any gossip, but I know your hearing is 20 percent more powerful than the rest of ours, isn’t it?”

  Father McCord just smirked, and Father Reese continued, “Bishop Sabartes is moving to Toledo to become archbishop. That you’ll admit to knowing, I’m sure. The very same weekend that was announced, Father Arroyo is suddenly called away to meet with the Presbyteral Council in Seville. A coincidence?”

  “You think Father Arroyo will be appointed to take the bishop’s place.”

  “Praised be He who grants you such discernment, Father McCord.”

  Over by the podium, Father Arroyo conversed briefly with several other revelers, then strode over to greet his two assistant priests.

  “Benedictus qi venit!” Father Reese exclaimed in Latin as Arroyo arrived. “Glorious and inspiring, as always,” he added in Spanish.

  “I know, I recycled from last year,” Father Arroyo said with a self-deprecating smile. “But with all the sangria flowing, I assumed it was safe.”

  “Ha, yes! Of course!” Father Reese agreed.

  Father Arroyo turned to Reese’s colleague. “How are you this morning, Father McCord?”

  “I can’t see any cause for complaint.”

  “Very cute, Father McCord. Well, I’m off to take confession now. If you two gentlemen would be generous enough to hold down the fort for a few hours, make sure nothing gets out of hand, it would be most appreciated. We’d rather not have Oswaldo hosing down vomit like last year.”

  “Of course, Padre,” answered Father Reese. Then, when Fat
her Arroyo had walked on, he leaned in closely to Father McCord.

  “Notice the distance in his voice?” he muttered. “Subtle, but you could hear it. In his mind, he’s already gone!”

  As Father Arroyo moved down the path leading to the church, past the children carrying cardboard effigies on sticks and the ladies in bridal gowns handing out tuna-and-fig pies, revelers smiled, nodded, waved. As he rounded the corner by the old greenhouse, which Father Reese was supposedly renovating, he paused and admired the breathtaking view of Marina Alta below and the shimmering Mediterranean stretching beyond it toward the horizon. He had gazed upon this very same view thousands of times before, but this time his doing so was accompanied by a new and bittersweet feeling: nostalgia.

  “What do you mean retire?” Bishop Alonso had exclaimed two days prior, eyes wide with shock, as a half dozen other bishops and priests sat uncomfortably, watching the drama unfold around a small table in a windowed room overlooking Seville’s city center.

  “I simply feel the time has come,” Father Arroyo replied softly.

  “And what time is that, Padre?” Alonso shot back. “A time when faith is cowering in the corner, when a man can be sucked into outer space on the evening news? Is that the time of which you speak, the time you feel is ripe for abandoning the Church?”

  “My intention isn’t to abandon anything,” Father Arroyo replied.

  “I’m sure it can’t be any secret to you,” Bishop Alonso continued, “that you were under serious consideration to assume Bishop Sabartes’s former appointment. Now, we’ll need to fill that position in Valencia and your own at Anglada Parish!”

  Father Arroyo made no response.

  “Why?” Bishop Alonso continued. “I’m afraid I simply don’t understand.”

  “I can’t explain it,” Father Arroyo replied, but that was a lie. He didn’t want to explain it. He knew exactly why he wished to retire: plainly and simply, he didn’t have it in him anymore. Despite all outward appearances, his health was beginning to fail, as was his passion, if he was being perfectly honest with himself. More than anything, however, it was the weight, the tremendous gravity of his position that was doing him in. He had spent untold years absorbing other people’s maladies—physical, spiritual, practical, personal—like a sponge. He had listened to their fears and nightmares, waded into the darkest corners of their souls, and calmly reassured them, attempted to give them strength. But despite his brave face, it had all taken something out of him, he could feel that, and he wanted desperately to preserve whatever was still left. In short, Father Arroyo wanted, for the final years of his life, to relax.

  “Enough dissension,” Cardinal Falero cut in, causing everyone to stop and turn to the head of the conference table. At ninety-three, Cardinal Falero often looked like he was asleep when he wasn’t speaking. He was never asleep.

  “If the padre wishes to retire, let him retire,” Cardinal Falero declared, his voice hoarse and shaky. “And may God be with you, Padre Arroyo.”

  Brushing off the memory of that unpleasant discussion, the padre now stepped away from the vista overlooking Marina Alta, wound his way around the greenhouse, and turned in to the church, a tall Gothic structure that had withstood several disasters, including an infamous fire in 1849 in which dozens of worshipers assembled for midnight Mass had perished.

  There were about twenty-five minutes to go before the first scheduled confession. The padre brought a copy of Summa Theologica into the confessional, where he read from it for several minutes, admiring the crisp logic of Aquinas’s arguments. When the appointed time came, he set the book down and tapped his fingers against the mahogany of his armrest, an old enduring habit. After a moment or so, he heard the front door swing open and the confessor enter the church and settle into the small booth on the other side of the partition. Father Arroyo waited for the man to speak, but he didn’t. This was probably his first time.

  “Speak, my son,” the padre invited.

  There was a deep breath on the other side of the curtain and then the voice of a man who could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.

  “Bless me, Padre, for I have sinned,” the man said. “It’s been … six years since my last confession. And my sin was confessed about then.”

  “You haven’t sinned since then?” Father Arroyo asked.

  “I sin every day, Padre, like everyone. But not like then. And sinning is not what brings me here today.”

  “So what brings you, my son?”

  “A debt, I guess.”

  “To whom?”

  “The Church, perhaps. Or maybe to God. I’m not even certain.”

  “Go on.”

  The man began to speak, then stopped, then started again. “Do you remember, Padre, back in 1999, a case involving a girl, a theater actress, who was badly disfigured in a robbery in a pawn shop?”

  “In Almoradi?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Two teenage boys attacked her.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then, the voice continued. “We were twelve years old. Loners, both of us. I was quiet, tried to do what was expected of me, but Roberto—I’ll call him Roberto—he was a visionary. Many of us, if we’re not Roberto ourselves, we have a friend like him. Charismatic and up to no good, and we get pulled along like a mutt on a leash. In this particular adventure, far riskier than anything we’d ever attempted before, no one was supposed to get hurt. Roberto had assured me of this. He had scoped everything out, planned, made arrangements. It was going to be quick and easy and like it never even happened, except that we’d have the kind of dinero we hadn’t before.

  “But when the girl showed up, we panicked. Roberto held his butterfly knife to her face only to scare her, but when she screamed, thrashed about, he lost control. He swore it was an accident later on, and maybe it was. No one can ever know but him.”

  “But the robbery itself was not an accident,” Father Arroyo interjected.

  “No. No, it wasn’t. They sent us to Santa Leticia. Not the worst place, not as bad as some of the youth centers you’ll find in Malaga or Madrid, but you could have put me anywhere and I would have been in hell either way. I saw her face at night, the jagged red line running along her cheek like the pathways in a maze, the look of sheer terror in her eyes. I dreamed about her acting on the stage, the blood still running from her face, the audience shrinking in disgust. I died, Padre, and I would have remained dead were it not for a young chaplain, a man named Luis Ortega. Are you familiar with Padre Ortega?”

  “No. No, I can’t say I am.”

  “He taught me scripture, about purification and transformation and how there is always a way to be forgiven. Always, without exception. Even the unpardonable sin could really be pardoned according to Padre Ortega. Were it not for Padre Ortega, I know I never would have made it out with my soul intact. He brought me back to life.

  “When I left Santa Leticia at fourteen, I wanted to be as removed from a juvenile delinquent as humanly possible, so I enrolled at the police academy in El Puerto and became a detective. Meanwhile, I lost track of Roberto. We hadn’t remained close in Santa Leticia. I heard rumors that he’d gone to America, but I didn’t truly know what had become of him—that is, not until a month ago when he showed up at our station in Dolores. Slick and clean cut, but with that same unmistakable Cheshire cat grin he’d had as a boy. He was somehow stranger, edgier than I’d remembered him, and he belonged now to some sort of intelligence unit, supposedly connected to Interpol, but probably not really. In the police force, we call such units los misterios. We never know for certain exactly what they are. We play host to them from time to time, by order of the CNP. We allow them use of our office spaces, even grant them access to our resources when necessary. Most importantly, we don’t ask questions.

  “Roberto’s group has been working out of Dolores for three weeks now. The mission, as I understand it, involves an American fugitive, a terrorist who is believed to be hiding out somewhere in Alicante. Fro
m what I gather, he’s considered extremely dangerous and guilty of unspeakable crimes. We haven’t been told very much, but when I asked Roberto why he believed this man was in Alicante, he told me his photograph had been taken here, a picture that showed him walking with another man through La Explanada de España.

  “This photograph was of course not shown to me. But we do share an office, and even among the most discreet operators, you will find that a certain sloppiness can develop. It’s only natural in an office environment where people are working round the clock, barely eating or sleeping. Words are spoken too loudly. Documents are left out in the open longer than they should be. Other things, too.”

  At that point, Father Arroyo heard a slight rustling of fabric from the other side of the partition, and then a small, folded piece of paper was gently passed through the bars of the grille. With some hesitation, he retrieved the paper.

  “Open it up,” the voice instructed.

  Father Arroyo slowly unfolded the paper.

  “I bring this to you, Padre,” the voice continued, “because I believe you will do what is right. I do not know what is right, only that the Church once saved my life and that I believe strongly in the power and reality of redemption. That a man can return from anything, anywhere, no matter what or who he once was and that his past is between him and God. Should you wish to speak to me again, my mobile number is written on the back of the paper. In the meantime, I leave this matter at your discretion.”

  Father Arroyo said nothing. He just continued to stare at the paper in his hands, at the grainy black-and-white photograph depicting two figures walking through La Explanada de España, the city’s palm tree–lined main promenade. Their clothing was washed out by light, but their faces were relatively discernible. The man on the left, holding a cane and wearing sunglasses, bore a strong and obvious resemblance to Father Arroyo’s Irish assistant priest, Father McCord, though his head was in the process of turning, and it was therefore difficult to identify him for certain. The man on the right, grinning widely, lifting one hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight, was without a shadow of doubt Father Reese.