Wildcard. Rachel Lee

was grinning for real as he closed his door. He would bet she was calling Terry right this minute.

      Then, flopping back down on his bed, he picked up another file.

      Savannah, Georgia

      Father Steve Lorenzo loved the smell of peach blossoms. His daily midmorning jog was one of his few self-indulgences, and he made it a point to cherish every moment of it. The warm spring sun on his face, the comfortable burn in his thighs, the sound of his steady breaths and, this week, the smell of peach blossoms. His seminary training had taught him to live in prayer, to seek God in every moment of the day. Sometimes that was hard, but this was not one of those times. Only God could create a morning such as this.

      The day hadn’t begun so wonderfully, of course. The alarm clock had seemed especially rude, probably because he’d been called out late last night to visit a parishioner who’d been injured in an accident. The man’s injuries had not been as severe as he had feared, but Father Lorenzo had given him the Anointing of the Sick regardless. It was no longer reserved for persons on the brink of death.

      After the alarm clock had intruded into a comfortable dream, he had risen to shower, shave and perform the same morning ritual that had anchored his days for nearly thirty years: celebrating morning Mass at his parish. Of course, with the priest shortage, he’d had to drive across town to a neighboring parish to celebrate Mass for them, as well. It was a small sacrifice, and he understood the need for it, but it did eat into his morning jogging time.

      But the last hour had been his own. He’d left the rectory and headed for the waterfront, taking an easy pace past stately, antebellum mansions. It was the same route he jogged each day, four and a half miles at a comfortable eight minutes per mile. He no longer trained for races, though he’d done his share of ten-kilometer events and even a couple of marathons. That had been years ago, when he saw running as a mission, a contest between his body and his will. Now it was simply a joy.

      Running was a solitary practice, and he’d more than once had to apologize to some parishioner who had seen him, waved and received no reply. The outside world existed only in soft focus, enough for him to avoid traffic and obstacles as his attention turned inward. Because of that, he almost missed the dark-haired man who waved to him from a park bench.

      Almost.

      In an instant, he became aware of the slight twinge in his right ankle, a pain that usually disappeared into the biological magic called “runner’s high.” The rhythm of his breath broke for just an instant, allowing the beginnings of a stitch in his side. He let out a soft curse and pressed on for the last half-mile to the rectory.

      He didn’t need to be told what to do. He took a quick shower, changed into civilian clothes, told the parish secretary that he would be out for lunch and headed across town to a small diner near the university. Although he occasionally filled in at a nearby parish, he doubted any of those parishioners would recognize him without the clerical collar. Few people did, even from his own congregation, so fewer still would know a priest they had seen only once or twice.

      The man was waiting for him, sitting in a booth away from the window, perusing the menu as if he actually cared what the lunchtime offerings might be. Father Lorenzo knew better. He doubted if the man would even eat.

      “Hello, Father,” the man said as Lorenzo sat.

      At least we’ll speak English, Lorenzo thought. Most of their discussions in Rome had been in Italian, and while Lorenzo was modestly capable in his ancestral language, he was by no means fluent.

      “Hello, Monsignor.”

      “I see you remembered,” the man said, with no trace of a smile, no trace of expression whatever on his strongly Roman features.

      “It wasn’t complicated,” Lorenzo replied. “If I ever saw you in town, I was to come here within the hour.”

      “Yes, well, for some things it is better not to use telephones. Even e-mail might be read by others, on my side of the Atlantic or on yours.”

      Lorenzo nodded, hoping against hope that the overly dramatic words were merely preamble to a routine request. It would not have been unlike this man to do that. He was, after all, given to hyperbole. Still, the steady look in the man’s eyes did not convey the sense of over-inflation. This was serious.

      “It seems our old enemies may be closer than we thought,” the man said. “We have intercepted some…disturbing communications.”

      The man didn’t have to identify the enemies, nor the subject in question. Father Lorenzo had no doubt to whom and to what he was referring. Theirs was a cause to which he had dedicated himself in a solemn oath, even if at the time he’d deemed it ridiculously unlikely that the oath would ever compel him to action.

      He was, after all, merely a parish priest of no great account. He had never imagined for himself a bishopric or cardinal’s red. He had never wanted such positions or the political responsibilities that accompanied them. He was content to serve God in the small ways, and his sabbatical in Rome two years ago had been simply an opportunity for a prolonged pilgrimage in the host city of his faith, a chance to breathe the same air and walk the same ground as Peter, Paul and countless other saints.

      Instead, he had made the acquaintance of this man. A casual acquaintance, at first, born of the coincidence that this man had been born and raised in the same village from which Lorenzo’s great-grandfather had emigrated. It was one of those curious quirks of fate, destiny or Divine Providence—depending on one’s perspective—of which life was made. Over a dinner that would have pleased the Almighty, coupled with an Italian wine that might have been vinted by the angels themselves, they had discussed cousins, old family stories and, of course, their mutual vocation.

      Like Father Lorenzo, this man had been gravely troubled by the emerging scandals in the American Church, and by the ways those scandals might undermine the Church’s mission and message. And, like Lorenzo, he saw an undercurrent of political prejudice in the timing and persistence of the media frenzy accompanying those scandals.

      But unlike Lorenzo, he had expressed the belief that something could and should be done about the situation, and not only in terms of reforms within the Church.

      “This is an ongoing battle that has raged for millennia,” he had said. “Sometimes openly, but most often in the shadows. The Church needs warriors. It always has. It always will.”

      Their conversations had continued over the course of Lorenzo’s year-long sabbatical. Step by step, the man had offered a view of church history that differed from the official accounts in both substance and tone. It was a story of conflict, of a struggle against misguided but dangerous heresies within and ruthless enemies without.

      Had he been at home, in the relative religious sterility of the everyday life, Lorenzo would have thought it absurd. But caught up in the fervor of Rome, where he could attend morning mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral and noon mass at the Basilica of St. Peter, where he could gaze at the Sistine Chapel, where every prayer seemed uttered from a half step closer to heaven, it had struck a chord. More and more, he had found himself nodding as he listened. More and more, it had made sense. In Rome.

      Now, in a diner in Savannah, it seemed almost silly. And yet the man’s eyes were every bit as intense as they had been eighteen months ago, when Lorenzo had been walking through the catacombs. The man not only believed, he had the kind of moral certainty that Lorenzo found only rarely. A moral certainty in the faith, practice and future of the Catholic Church. The kind of certainty a priest could not easily ignore.

      “The murder of your ambassador in Guatemala,” said the monsignor, shaking his head. “It has created serious problems. Problems we cannot afford to ignore.”

      Lorenzo was familiar with the problems of Guatemala, having been posted to a mission there early in his career as a priest. For eight years, he had watched the people struggle with poverty, disease and war. Although they might not have understood all the reasons why, they knew the military dictator who ruthlessly wiped out one village after another was a CIA puppet. Anger was widespread, and the U.S. a common