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  “Let me know if I’m causing any discomfort,” he told her.

  “Quite the reverse,” she murmured. “You have the most incredible hands.”

  He continued to apply light pressure to the base of her neck until quite suddenly she raised her head and drew the hair back behind her shoulders.

  “Enough?” he enquired. He hoped so. The movement of her hair across the backs of his hands had given him a physical sensation not to be encouraged in the priesthood.

  But Claudia Coppi remained unsatisfied. She told him mat there was still some tension at the tops of her arms.

  “Here?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes, just there. Do you mind if I lean back against you, Father? It’s more comfortable.” She didn’t wait for his answer.

  The back of her head was on his chest, her hair against his cheek. In the same movement she placed her hands over his own and gripped them firmly. Then she pushed them downwards.

  He hadn’t discovered until now that she had altogether uncovered her breasts. She guided his hands over them. Exquisitely beautiful, utterly prohibited breasts offered for him to experience. For a few never-to-be-forgotten seconds of sin, Father Faustini accepted the offer. He held Claudia Coppi’s forbidden fruits, passing his hands over and under and around them, thrilling to their fullness and their unmistakable state of arousal.

  A monster of depravity.

  With a supreme effort to banish fleshly thoughts, he blurted out the words “Lead us not into temptation,” and drew his hands away as if they were burned.

  Tormented with shame, he stood up immediately and strode resolutely through the patio doors and around the side of the house without looking back. He didn’t respond to Claudia Coppi’s, “Shall I see you next Saturday?” He knew he had to be out of that place and away.

  He thought he heard her coming after him, probably still in her topless state. As swiftly as he could manage, he wheeled his moped out to the road, started it up and zoomed away.

  “Fornicating fool,” he howled to himself above the engine’s putt-putt. “Weak-willed, degenerate, wanton, wicked, wretched, sex-crazed fellow. Miserable sinner.”

  The little wheels bore him steadily along, his headlight picking out the road, but he was barely conscious of the journey. His thoughts were all on the depravity of his conduct. A man of God, a priest behaving like some beast of the field, only worse, because he was blessed with a mind that was supposed to be capable of overcoming the baser instincts.

  How will I answer for this on the Day of Judgment? he asked himself.

  God be merciful unto me, a sinner.

  Precisely at which stage of the journey he became aware of what was ahead of him is impossible to say. Certainly he must have traveled some distance before he was ready to submit to anything except the writhings of his tormented conscience. It had to be spectacular, and it was. Father Faustini stared ahead and saw a pillar of fire.

  The night sky was alight above the Plain of Lombardy, fizzing with hundreds of brilliant fiery points. Their origin was a fiery column, perhaps three thousand meters away, and towering over the land. Emphatically this was not a natural fire, for it was more green than orange, bright emerald green, with flares of violet, blue and yellow leaping outwards. Father Faustini was seized with the conviction that the Day of Judgment was at hand. Otherwise he might have suspected that something had been added to the Barolo he had swallowed, because what he was seeing was psychedelic in its extraordinary combination of colors. He’d seen large fires before, and mammoth firework displays, but nothing remotely resembling this.

  What else could a wretched sinner do in the hour of reckoning, but brake, dismount, go down on bis knees and pray for forgiveness? He felt simultaneously panic-stricken and rocked with remorse, that this should happen on the very night he had transgressed, after a lifetime of blameless (or virtually blameless) service in the Church. He knelt on the turf at the roadside, his hands clasped in front of his anguished face, and cried, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  He couldn’t discount the possibility that his lapse with Claudia Coppi was directly responsible for what was happening. By speculating that his few seconds’ fondling of a pair of pretty breasts had hastened the end of the world, he may have been presumptuous, but he felt an ominous sense of cause and effect

  He sneaked another look around his clasped hands. The state of the sky remained just as awesome. Streaks of fire were leaping up like skyrockets, leaving trails of sparks.

  As yet there were no avenging angels to be seen, nor other apocalyptic phenomena. He heard no trumpets, but nothing would surprise him now.

  Instead he saw two brilliant lights, so dazzling that they made his eyes ache. And immediately there came a low droning, becoming stronger. The source wasn’t supernatural. A car, its headlights on full beam, was moving at high speed towards him along the road, from the direction of the pillar of fire. Father Faustini could understand people fleeing from the wrath to come, but he knew that they were deluding themselves. There could be no escape.

  And so it proved.

  The engine-note grew in volume and the lights intensified in brilliance. Ordinarily, Father Faustini would have waved to let the driver know that he was dazzled. But of course he wasn’t mounted on his moped. He was on his knees at the side of the road. He’d abandoned the bike when he’d first seen the pillar of fire. Abandoned it where he had stopped, in the middle of the narrow road.

  The car was racing towards it.

  He clapped his hands to his head.

  There simply wasn’t time to drag the moped out of the way. He could only hope that the driver would spot the obstruction in time and steer to the side. It might be academic at this late stage in the history of the world whether an accident-even a fatal accident-mattered to anyone, but Father Faustini had always been safety conscious and he couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for anyone’s death.

  In truth, the driver of the car would share some blame, for bis speed was excessive.

  What happened next was swift and devastating, yet Father Faustini saw it in the curious freeze-frame way that the brain has for coping with danger at high speed. The car bore down on the moped without any letup in speed until the last split second, when the driver must have seen what was in front of him. The rasp of tire rubber on the surface of the road as the brakes were applied made a sound like a siren’s blare. The car veered left to avoid the moped, and succeeded. But it hit the curb, went out of control and ricocheted to the opposite side. Father Faustini registered that it was a large, powerful sedan. The white light from the headlamps swept out of his vision and was replaced by intense red as the car skidded past with its brake lights fully on. It mounted the curb and started up a bank of turf that bordered a field. The band of rear lights lifted and spun in an arc. The whole thing was turning over. It was thrown on its back not once, but three times, tons of metal bouncing like a toy, smashing through a fence and finally sliding on the roof across the ploughed earth.

  One of the rear lights was still on. It went out in a spray of sparks. Smoke was rising from the wreck.

  Father Faustini’s legs felt about as capable of holding him up as freshly cooked pasta, but he stumbled across to see if he could get anyone out before the entire thing caught fire.

  The weight of the chassis had crushed the superstructure. The priest got on his knees beside the compressed slot that had once been the driver’s window. There was a figure inside, the head skewed into an impossible angle. Too late for the last rites.

  Round the other side was the passenger, another man, half on the turf. Literally. The other half, from the waist down, was still trapped inside. The halves were separated at the waist.

  The priest crossed himself. A wave of nausea threatened, but it was vital to stay in control because the air reeked of raw petrol and the whole wreck was likely to turn into a fireball any second. Still troubled that someone might be alive and trapped inside, he lay on his stomach to try and get
a sight of what had been the backseat. He needn’t have troubled. There wasn’t a centimeter of space between the torn upholstery and the impacted roof.

  As he braced to get up, a sound like the rushing mighty wind of the Pentecost started somewhere to his right. The petrol had caught fire.

  He sprang up and sprinted away. Behind him, there was a series of cracking sounds followed by an almighty bang that must have been the petrol tank exploding. By then, he was twenty meters away and fiat to the earth.

  He didn’t move for a while. His nerves couldn’t take any more. He actually sobbed a little. It was some time before he thought of saying a prayer. In his embattled mind, the car crash had overtrumped the Day of Judgment.

  Finally, he sat up. The wreckage was still on fire, but the worst of it was over. Filthy black smoke was taking over and the stench Of burning rubber stung his throat and nostrils. He stared into the flames. The charred, mangled metal that remained barely resembled a vehicle.

  Every muscle he possessed was trembling. With difficulty, he got to his feet and walked past the burning wreckage towards the moped, which still stood untouched in the center of the road, a testimony to his stupidity and his responsibility for this tragedy.

  Beyond, the night sky was still rent by the vast pillar of fire that had so distracted him. The colors were still unearthly in their brilliance and variety. Even so, Father Faustini was forced to reconsider whether it could really be Judgment Day. The shock of the car crash had altered his perception. He couldn’t explain the phenomenon. There had to be a reason for it, but he hadn’t the energy left to supply one.

  He got astride the moped, started up and rode off to report what had happened���

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Saturday evening performance in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. Domingo and Freni in full voice, before a packed, enthralled house. The entombment scene was drawing to its climax. United in Verdi’s tear-jerking “O terra addio,” the tragic lovers, Radames and Aida, embraced in the crypt, while the massive stone slabs that would bury them alive were lowered inch by agonizing inch. Offstage, the priests and priestesses chanted their relentless chorus, and the unhappy Amneris prayed for Radames’ eternal soul. There are moments in an opera when no one minds too much if people wriggle and sway in their seats, straining for a better view, or trying to bring relief to aching buttocks. But when Aida reaches its poignant finale, when the slave girl is expiring in the arms of Radames, and the lights are slowly dimmed to signify the sealing of the tomb, the stillness in the auditorium is palpable, from the orchestra stalls right up to the sixth tier.

  Or should be.

  This evening in the Center Parterre, the most expensive seats in the Met, there was a disturbance. Of all things at this heart-rending moment, a series of electronic beeps shrilled above the singing, a call-signal considerably louder than the wristwatch alarms that are always going off in cinemas and theaters. Some philistine had brought his pager to the opera.

  The most absorbed of the audience ignored the source of the sound, refusing to have their evening blighted. Not everyone was so forbearing.

  “Jesus Christ-I don’t believe this!” a man spoke up in the row immediately behind, regardless that he was adding to the disturbance. Others took up the protest with, “Knock it off, will you?” and stronger advice.

  In the third row, the source of the bleeps, a silver-haired man in black-framed bifocals, tugged aside bis tuxedo, unhitched the pager from his belt and pressed a button that silenced it. The entire incident had lasted no more than six seconds, but it could not have been more unfortunately timed.

  And now the curtain was down and the performers were taking applause, and in the Center Parterre as many eyes were on the man in the third row as on Domingo. Dagger thrusts of obloquy struck at the offender. Try as he did to ignore them by energetically applauding and focusing his eyes fixedly on the stage, he could expect no mercy from the offended patrons around him. New Yorkers are not noted for reticence.

  “I know who I’d bury alive.”

  “How do jerks like that get admitted?”

  “I bought a ticket for a fucking opera, not a business conference.”

  The jerk in question continued vigorously clapping through six or seven curtain calls, until the house lights were turned on. Then he turned to his companion, a stunning-looking, dark-haired woman at least twenty years younger than he, and attempted to engage her in such earnest conversation that the rest of New York was shut out

  She wasn’t all that impressed. It was some consolation to those around as they got up and started to file out that the lady was unwilling to gloss over the lapse. In a short time, her voice was raised above his and snatches of the tongue-lashing she was giving him threatened to shake the chandeliers. “��� never been so humiliated and if you think after this I’m going to tag along for dinner and a screw, forget it”

  Someone called out, “Attagirl! Dump him!”

  And that is what she did, flouncing off between the rows of seats, leaving her escort staring after her and shaking his head. He didn’t attempt to follow. He remained seated, judiciously letting the people he’d upset get clear. And when everyone had filed out of his section of the auditorium, he took out the pager again and keyed in a set of numbers.

  Having got something on the display, he delved into his breast pocket and, impervious to the surroundings, took out a cell-phone and pulled out a length of aerial.

  “Sammy, were you trying to reach me, because if you were, you could have timed it better, my friend.” While listening, he settled deep in the seat and propped his feet over the row in front. “The hell with that I sure hope for your sake this item of news measures nine point nine on the Richter scale.”

  What he then heard was enough to cause visible disturbance in Manfred Flexner. He withdrew his feet from their perch. He crouched forward as if it might enable him to hear better. His free hand raked through his hair.

  Six minutes later, shaking his head and trying to stay calm, he reeled out of the opera house into the plaza of Lincoln Center and took some gulps of fresh air. At this time of night the esplanade was thick with sables and minks, the audiences from the ballet and the Philharmonic jostling the operagoers in the scramble for taxis. Flexner had his chauffeur waiting across the street with the limousine, so he had no reason to rush, but he wasn’t going home yet.

  He stared into the floodlit fountain for a while. Inside the last half hour he’d interrupted an opera, lost his companion and slipped forty points on the international stock markets. He needed a drink.

  The world was not a happier place next morning. He watched the Alka-Seltzers fizzing in the glass on his desk and brooded on what might have been. Pharmaceuticals were Manny Flexner’s business.

  Pharmaceuticals.

  And here he was relying on the product of a rival company. He’d worked all his life in the expectation one day of finding a market leader like Alka-Seltzer mat would become a steady seller for the foreseeable future. His was the traditional story of a Lower East Side boy with a head for business who’d made some bucks driving taxis, lived frugally for a time and invested his earnings. Realizing, as all entrepreneurs do early in life, that you get nowhere using self-help and savings, he’d borrowed from the bank to buy a share in a small business supplying labels to pharmacies. When self-stick labels came in, he’d just about cornered the market, and made enough to borrow more cash and move into the supply side of pharmaceuticals. The 1960s and 70s had been a prosperous time in the drug industry. Manny Flexner had taken over a number of companies in the U.S.A. and expanded internationally, buying shrewdly into Europe and South America. One of the Manflex products, Kaprofix, a treatment for angina, had become a strong source of income, a steady seller throughout America and Europe.

  The story had a downturn. The pharmaceuticals industry relies heavily on the development of new drugs; companies cannot survive without massive research programs. In the early eighties, scientists workin
g for Manflex had identified a new histamine antagonist with potential as a treatment for peptic ulcers. It was patented and given the proprietary name of Fidoxin. The potential market for antiulcer drugs is enormous. At that time, Smith Kline’s Tagamet dominated the field with sales estimated at over a billion dollars. Glaxo was developing a rival product called Zantac that would eventually outsell every drug in the world. But Manny Flexner was in there and pitching.

  The early research on Fidoxin was encouraging. Manflex invested hugely in studies and field trials designed to satisfy the federal panel that advised the Food and Drug Administration, for no drug can be marketed without the FDA seal of approval. By 1981, Manflex was set to beat its rivals in the race to a billion-dollar market. Then, at a late stage, long-term side effects were discovered in patients taking Fidoxin. Almost every drug has unwanted effects but the possibility of serious renal impairment is unacceptable. Reluctantly, Manny Flexner had cut his losses and abandoned the project.

  Too much had been gambled on that one drug. Through the 1980s Manny had been unwilling to sink so much into any research project. The recession in 1991 had hit Manflex harder than its rivals. Thanks mainly to the old standby, Kaprofix, the company still rated in the top ten in America, but had slipped from fourth to seventh. Or worse. Manny didn’t care to check anymore.

  Today was the worst yet He had the Wall Street Journal in front of him. Overnight, his stock had plummeted again in Tokyo and London. The reason?

  “The biggest firework display in history is what they’re calling it,” he told his Vice Chairman, Michael Leapman, throwing the paper to him. “A twenty billion lire fire. The flames could be seen thirty kilometers south of Milan. How much is that, Michael?”

  “About twenty miles.”

  “The lire, for God’s sake.”

  “Not so bad as it sounds. Say seventeen million bucks.”

  “Not so bad,” Manny repeated with irony. “An entire plant goes up in smoke, a quarter of our Italian holding, and it’s not so bad.”