Chapter IV

The water was cold and turbulent.

AS HE STRUGGLED THROUGH the water he was just certain that his lungs were going to explode at any moment. He wanted to take a breath more than anything else in the world, but he knew that it meant certain death. This felt like a lot more than 20 feet. He kicked and clawed his way through the tube as it got wider and wider. His chest was burning like hot coals. His body was starting to shake from asphyxiation and little silver sparkles were swimming around in his eyes. Or, at least, that’s what Thomas felt like. He felt himself floating upward toward the surface. It seemed so far away, though. He didn’t know if he’d reach it alive.

“Open the south-west gate, please,” Dimitri said as they loaded up into two Land Rovers that were as black and ominous as the night.

“Nothing on the perimeter cameras,” Ritti informed them over the radio. Peter chimed in from the tunnels, “From where we were at I think he will surface somewhere in Rome, due west about four blocks. Past Viale Vaticano, past Via Angelo Emo.”

Dimitri nodded, “There’s little creeks and rivers allover the residential district. I’ll head west.” And with that the trucks screeched their way out of the southwest gate, bouncing past a set of railroad tracks almost instantly.

“I don’t get it,” Pena said as he watched Diego take off his shoes. “You know

how suspicious and out of place we look right now?” Nobody answered him. They had raced from the airport to exactly this location—a small, out of the way little creek in a residential neighborhood about a half-kilometer from the Vatican. “So, what now? Don’t we need to get a little closer?”

Marco was making calls on a cellphone as he sat in their rental car—a small Audi station wagon that was supposedly environmentally friendly. Marco gave a thumbs-up to Pena who was sitting at the edge of the little creek trying to figure out why Diego needed to take a swim.

“You know they have showers at the hotel, right?” Pena said to nobody in particular.

“Have faith,” Diego said as he disappeared into the murky water. Other than a few sodium vapor lights above them shining down on the small park area there wasn’t much light.

Pena hoped he wasn’t surrounded by crack-pots because by proxy that would make him one as well. It was cool, but not cold outside. A nice night for a football match. He couldn’t remember if Real Madrid was playing tonight or tomorrow. He leaned down and grabbed a handful of little rocks and started tossing them into the water. What the hell was Diego doing? This was the strangest rescue ever.

Now it was all starting to turn black for Thomas, and it wasn’t just his imagination this time. He felt as if he was on the verge of collapse. Every stroke he took the surface seemed to become farther away. This was some kind of horrible nightmare. But then there was also a kind of closure to it all. If this was it, then so be it. After the burning had started to subside in his lungs it was not so bad.

He had tried the best he could. Perhaps this was his destiny. Maybe this was for the best, anyway. The Prophecies of Jesus Christ were something that could prove to be dangerous if ever they were solved . . . but then . . . weren’t they?

Strangely, during his slowly passing seconds of airless motion, his brain put things into some kind of strange order. Suddenly, it made sense. The shadows made sense now. The mixture, the melting . . . it made sense. It all made sense now. It had been staring at him the whole time, and now that he was on the doorstep of death would it become clear to him. How odd it was, really, that his enlightenment should come hand-in-hand with his expiration from this life. He wanted to laugh and cry and scream and . . . he felt something tugging at him!

With every last bit of his energy, of which there was very little, he tried to kick free of it. Something had ensnared his chest. Something large had wrapped around his body and wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t figure out if he had gotten tangled up in some net, or some discarded rope. Whatever it was, it wasn’t letting him swim up to the surface. He felt his body being pulled back down as quickly as he had been going up. That was it, then. It was over now. There was nothing left in him to fight. No air. No life. No prophecies would save him now.

So he gave up.

He quit squirming and trying to break free.

He accepted his fate.

And at that moment he felt an explosion of cold surround him.

He felt himself coughing and spitting. He couldn’t see much except for a large figure lifting his body above the horizon. His mind was having a hard time putting things together. He now understood the Prophecies of Jesus Christ, but he couldn’t tell you where he was, whether he was alive or dead.

Thomas felt something about the size of a bowling ball slap at his back forcing him to retch and vomit gallons of water and the better part of a ham and Swiss sandwich.

“Take a breath, Thomas,” the deep voice said, dragging him to a soft place. Thomas squinted at the large figure as it stood over him. Between coughs he asked, “Are . . . are you . . . God?”

“No,” the voice said with a chuckle, “I’m just one of his servants.” Thomas didn’t understand. This didn’t look like heaven at all. “Are you an Angel?”

“No, no, my friend. I am a janitor. And you’re not dead, either . . . just a little confused about which direction is up.”

“What happened?” Thomas asked as he started to look around at the three people who now surrounded him. “I was heading for the surface.”

Diego laughed, “I think you got a bit mixed-up as you made your way out of that drainage pipe. You started heading down towards the bottom of the river. And you fought me pretty good for a few seconds, there.”

“So I made it?” Thomas said, his body shaking as his perceptions started to come back to him.

“We need to get you out of here before some very angry people find us,” Diego said as he lifted Thomas to his feet.

Unsteadily he stumbled inside Diego’s grasp, clumsily making their way to the rental car. Marco and Pena said nothing as Thomas was carefully loaded into the back of the Audi. Pena got behind the wheel, and Marco took the front passenger’s seat. Diego rode in the backseat, propping Thomas up, and making sure that he was breathing properly. Though large and quite strong, Diego had a careful and soft touch with Thomas. He had cared for many sick people in his days, and knew how to treat people without hurting them.

“Who are you?” Thomas said to all of them.

Diego smiled, “My name is Diego,” he pointed to Marco, “that is my good friend Marco, and the man behind the wheel is Antonio Pena. We are your rescue party. Consider us like your second family.”

Thomas studied them all, blinked several times as water dripped down from his hair, and offered, “I never really had a family, so I guess you will be my first family.”

“Family it is, then,” Marco said, speaking for the first time. He smiled at Thomas and then turned back towards the front of the car.

As they made their way, zig-zagging down one street, and back the other

way at another, Pena leaned back and tossed a baseball cap to Diego. Diego nodded, and turned to Thomas. “You should probably put this on incase people are looking for you.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said as he slid the hat on over his head. It fit perfectly.

He leaned forward, addressing all of them, “You knew Pablo?”

Marco turned back, “Pablo is my friend. He and I planned this several months ago. I hope to see—”

“He’s dead,” Thomas blurted. Social grace was not one of his acquired skills. “Lots of blood. Completely dead.”

“I didn’t see him die, but I heard it. He died so that I could live.” Thomas lowered his head, his eyes searching for something to look at that would keep him from crying. This was just too much for him, all of it coming at him so fast.

“He was a good man, a good servant of God,” Marco said as he turned slowly back around.

Thomas and the rest of them sat quietly being tugged from one side of the car to the other as Pena maneuvered the car through the city. At a corner they passed two black Land Rovers, but he chose not to mention it to anyone else. Marco and Diego had done their part, now it was his time. In a couple of days, if everything went right, they would be back in Spain, getting ready to head out to their new home in the Mediterranean. He watched his mirrors as he drove cautiously through Rome’s tourist packed streets.

They drove on, in relative silence, just listening to the rhythmic bumps echoing through the station wagon as they continued on their journey. Thomas leaned forward again, “Antonio Pena . . .”

Pena tilted his head back and to the side, “At your service.” “You are close to your father?”

“No,” Pena said, considering the fallout they had had some years back. He hadn’t thought about him in a long time. “We don’t talk much.”

“What about your mother?” Thomas continued.

Pena shrugged, not sure why this man would be interested in his family life.

“Every now and then. She travels a lot, but when we can we’ll get together. Why?”

Marco glanced back at Thomas and then to Pena. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. All in good time, he thought. With his eyes still close he said, “Thomas, you have been through a great deal. Perhaps you should catch a couple hours siesta. In the morning we will all be able to think strait.”

“Mr. Pena,” Thomas said as he leaned back himself, “You’re a pure blood Castilian. That’s pretty rare, these days.”

“You can’t choose your family, Thomas,” Pena said as the different splashes of streetlights and shadows passed over him. “It’s all just a matter of chance and fate.”

‘You can’t choose your family’ Thomas thought as his eyes closed. He wondered where they would be when his eyes opened again. He wondered what tomorrow would bring them. What dangers awaited them? What his newfound understanding of the Prophecies meant? He took a long, slow, deep breath of clean air . . . just to make sure that he still could.