The Holy Bullet by Luis Miguel Rocha Read Free Book Online

seconds.
    “Let’s do the following.” The young man changed strategy, negotiating, the difference between a good thesis and an excellent one, the gateway to a great career. “The bottle stays with you, and I’ll return at a better time. Is that all right?”
    Marcinkus looked at the young man awhile longer.
    “Come tomorrow after dinner.”
    “Thank you, Your Eminence. I’m eternally grateful.”
    “I’ll collect on that gratitude.”
    “It will be a privilege.” The young man started to turn around. “Thank you, Your Eminence. Until tomorrow.”
    “Wait,” Marcinkus ordered. “That stays here.” He took the bottle from the young man’s hand.
    “Of course, of course. A thousand apologies. Until tomorrow, Your Eminence.”
    “Don’t be late.” And he shut the door, with a slam that almost knocked the plaster from the wall. Marcinkus returned to his memories, to the specters that waited for him from the other side, whatever that was, where the dead live, waiting for time to pass for us. No one has ever returned to tell us what this other side is like, but Marcinkus was going to remember those dead, awaken them, even if only in his own memory. What he didn’t know was that today the dead who had accompanied him for eighty-four years would demand he join them.
    “Rest in peace, Your Eminence,” the young cleric said. Paul Marcinkus didn’t hear him.
    Time runs out. The archbishop, stretched out on his deathbed, knows that his problems are starting now, when he will be called to account by the God he fears so much and forgot on so many occasions. The true banker of God sees himself before the Omnipotent, showing his books of assets and liabilities, what is owed and what is owned, explaining why he committed frauds, convincing Him of the necessity of diversifying the investments and laundering the money of organized crime. In the fever and anguish of death, Marcinkus sees God like the chairman of a board of directors, incapable of recognizing that everything His servant did over eighty-four years was for the good of the Enterprise.
    On the floor of the bedroom, beside the bed, an overturned bottle and a broken glass.

Chapter 8
    R aul Brandão Monteiro knew this day had to come. It was not that he had the soul of a mystic or had had some premonitory dream. A retired captain of the Portuguese army didn’t permit himself, at the risk of his professional reputation, to seek foresight in anything other than reason. As much as he tried to convince himself and others that the past was past, he knew a day would come when the past would claim its own. That day was today.
    First an old man with a cane came in. His hand covered the cane’s golden lion head. Then a younger man in an impeccable black silk Armani suit entered. If the cane with the lion head supported the old man, it also wouldn’t have been inappropriate for the younger. His pronounced limp revealed a past accident or wound to his left leg. Only a few knew the origin of the injury; perhaps the captain himself, Raul Brandão Monteiro, had some idea of what had happened. The man in the impeccable Armani suit, now a cripple, was not a person who divulged things from the past or raised questions of karma. Everyone must play the cards he’s dealt.
    The sudden tension was out of place in the serene Alentejan mountain in Trindade, near Beja, where the captain had decided, several years ago, to take off his boots and enjoy retirement, with his wife, Elizabeth, English by birth. Better that Elizabeth wasn’t in the house, though, with these people. This old man with so much power, capable of bending the CIA to his wishes, knew Elizabeth had gone to the city to shop.
    “My beloved captain. We meet again,” said the old man, stopping before Raul.
    The cripple, ignoring manners, brought a chair over so the elderly man could sit down and catch his breath. Age is a stepmother and time a step-father. Together they have no mercy; they are implacable, bending