The American looked at the cardinal, tilted his head, and said: “So God tests us to see if we are ready for redemption? When finally we recognize the Messiah in our midst… without killing him, we are all redeemed?”

Braun nodded. “Her.”

“Pardon?”

“Young man, the second shroud contains on its surface an image as well. It is the image of the second redeemer … a female image.”

The American gasped.

FOUR

The mid-December storm rolled in off the Pacific, driving before it angry sheets of rain that pounded the waters of Marina Del Rey and the decks of the boats huddled there against the fury of the Pacific Ocean. The wind made hungry slicing noises in the rigging of the marina’s sailboats and breathed life into ambitious little harbor waves that slapped like applause against their hulls. It was nearly 8 A.M.

A hundred yards east of the marina’s easternmost edge, commuters struggled to get to work. Streets and storm gutters overflowed the curbs and ran across the sidewalks. At almost every intersection stalled cars rested like the carcasses of drowned animals, their soaked owners standing disconsolately nearby waiting for a tow truck or an ark. The few pedestrians out that early leaned into the gusts and wrestled the storm for possession of raincoats and umbrellas. The storm was winning.

In the main cabin of the forty-four-foot sloop Valkyrie, Seth Ridgeway twisted fitfully among his tangled sweat-soaked sheets and waited for the dream to come. It usually came to him on the soft padded feet of a half sleep between waking and dreaming, between reality and fantasy. It was always the same and it always ended badly just as it had in real life, but as much as the dream hurt, it was his only link with her and it was better he remember the pain than forget her.

The dream began as it always did in their hotel room at the Eden au Lac in Zurich; he felt the excitement and the anticipation. Unconsciously, Ridgeway’s right hand fumbled through the sheets and touched the wedding ring he still wore on his left hand. Six wonderful years, a marriage of infinite variety: she, the ethereal art history expert and he, the wounded, down-to-earth former policeman who taught philosophy. Everyone liked to wink at the way they met. Everyone except UCLA’s administrators, who usually acted like people congenitally lacking a sense of joy. They frowned. And the deeper they frowned, the deeper Ridgeway and Zoe laughed. Their parties were a clash of cultures: SWAT team commanders and art gallery owners, beefy squad commanders who thought Dada was the second word uttered by an infant, and disheveled art critics who had never before met a cop unless they were arrested during a demonstration in the sixties.

It was everything but boring.

As the December storm raged now, Ridgeway moaned in his sleep; the dream ran faster and faster. He wanted to catch sight of her, to hold her, to look at her once again. But like a piece of film out of control, the dream raced by. She came into the room, exhilarated by the afternoon.