their ranks and were blathering away with incoherent speeches about the imminent end of the world, but more common were the scattered choruses of hymns and carols that could be heard across the neighborhood.
Gracie and Dalton were shown to a room on the ground floor of a guest house that abutted the main building. Brother Ameen was in an adjacent room. Father Jerome was given a cosseted guest suite on the second floor. The plan was for them all to remain at the mansion until the big sermon at the stadium the following evening.
Ogilvy, who was in town, had asked for continual updates live from inside the Darby estate. Gracie and Dalton had given the network’s viewers a tour of the compound, but hadn’t managed to get a word from Father Jerome, who was resting in his suite and had asked not to be disturbed.
After Gracie signed off, Dalton checked his watch and said, “I’m off to the airport to get the skycam and the rest of our stuff. I might pick up some fresh clothes if the mall isn’t mobbed. You need anything?”
Gracie chortled. “An alternate reality?”
“I’m not sure Gap sells those, but I’ll see what I can do.” He smiled.
He wandered off and left her. She went back to the room, where she collapsed on the bed. It had been a brutal few days, and there was no end in sight. She managed to tune out for all of three minutes before the phone rang.
She fished out her BlackBerry, but it wasn’t the one that was ringing. She burrowed deeper into her bag, saw the soft blue glow of another screen, and pulled it out. It was Finch’s phone.
She eyed it curiously. The caller’s ID was flashing up. It said Gareth Willoughby. It wasn’t a name she recognized at first—then it clicked. He was the producer of the BBC documentary.
She took the call.
Willoughby didn’t know Finch had died. The news took him by complete surprise. He told Gracie he didn’t know Finch and said he was just returning his call.
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, then Gracie said, “I guess you must be glad they finally agreed to let you go up there and talk to Father Jerome, huh?”
Willoughby sounded confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean if they hadn’t said yes, or if you hadn’t kept on insisting . . . who knows what would have happened. I know we probably wouldn’t have flown out to Egypt.”
Willoughby wasn’t getting it. “What are you talking about? They came to us.”
His statement pricked Gracie like a dart. She straightened up. “What?”
“They came to us. I mean, yes, we were there. Making the documentary and all that. But we didn’t go looking for him. We had no idea Father Jerome was even there.”
Gracie was having trouble reconciling this with everything she’d assumed. “So how’d you end up meeting him?”
“Well, it was just one of those serendipitous breaks, I suppose,” Willoughby said. “We were filming there before heading out to Saint Catherine’s in the Sinai. That was our original intention. Not the Syrians’ monastery. We were at Bishoi at the time, you know, the other monastery near there?”
“I know the one,” she told him.
“Well, Bishoi’s story, the whole thing about him chaining his hair to the ceiling so he wouldn’t fall asleep. It’s the kind of rather wonderfully creepy detail that adds a bit of spice to this kind of show. And while we were there, we were buying supplies from this small shop and we bumped into this monk from the monastery of the Syrians. We got chatting, and he told us Father Jerome was up there in one of their caves. Acting rather bizarrely. As if he were possessed, only in a good way. Which was really timely for us.”
“Hang on a second,” Gracie blurted, trying to make sense of his words. “I thought everyone knew Father Jerome was there.”
“No one knew.”
“We looked it up,” Gracie objected. “It was there.”
“Of course it was—after we filmed our program,” Willoughby corrected her. “That’s when it hit the wires. Nobody knew he was in Egypt before we got there and wrapped our piece. He was on his ‘sabbatical,’ remember. They wouldn’t say where he was. We thought he’d died at one point. And if you think about it, it was all rather fortuitous, in more ways than one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we wouldn’t have met that monk in the first place if it hadn’t been for our commissioning editor at the