He waited for him to finish, then watched without moving an inch as the man got back into the car. Matt made sure the tracker was solidly attached, then slid back out from under the car and retreated along the same path he’d taken, only pausing briefly to commit the car’s license place to memory.
He found Sanjay standing by the cash register, clearly unable to do much, out of worry.
Matt gave him a firm nod of gratitude as he reached over for a pencil and scribbled down the Chrysler’s license plate on a flyer. He tucked it into his pocket, then turned to Sanjay. “Do me a favor. Anyone asks, you haven’t seen me, not since lunchtime. Okay?”
Sanjay nodded. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
Matt’s expression clouded under competing instincts. “Better you don’t get involved. Safer for you that way.”
Sanjay acknowledged his words somberly, then hesitated and said, “You’ll be careful, won’t you?” in an uncertain tone, as if unsure about how much he should say or get involved.
Matt half-smiled. “That’s the plan.” Then he thought of something, took a few steps to the fridge, and pulled out a can of Coke. He held it up to Sanjay and said, “My tab still good?”
Sanjay visibly relaxed a touch. “Of course.”
And with that, Matt was gone.
Chapter 19
Amundsen Sea, Antarctica
“So what’s the verdict? Do we believe this guy?” Gracie leaned her head against the cold glass of the conference room’s window. Outside, the light was virtually unchanged, the sky infused with the same grayish pallor, which didn’t help her flagging spirit. She needed to rest, to take a step back and give her mind a chance to reboot, if only for an hour or two. It had to be the equivalent of way past midnight, and the continuous daylight of the Antarctic’s austral summer had already wreaked havoc on her body clock, but there were still too many questions that needed to be answered.
“Gracie, come on,” Dalton replied. “He’s talking about Father Jerome.”
“So?”
“Are you kidding me? The guy’s a living saint. He’s not gonna fake something like this. That’d be like—I don’t know—like saying the Dalai Lama’s a liar.”
Father Jerome wasn’t technically a living saint. There was no such thing, since dying was a prerequisite to receiving the honor of sainthood, at least as far as the Vatican was concerned. But he was pretty much a shoo-in for beatification, if not canonization, at some point in the future.
In his case, though, the term saint was more than appropriate.
He’d begun his life in 1949 as Alvaro Suarez, the son of a humble farming couple in the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains in northern Spain. His youth was far from cosseted. His father died when he was five, leaving his mother with the unenviable task of providing for six children in a Spain that was still under Franco’s iron fist and recovering from years of war. Raised a Catholic, the young Alvaro—the youngest of his siblings—showed a great resilience and generosity of character, especially during a harsh winter when a viral epidemic almost took away his mother and two of his sisters. He credited his faith with giving him the strength to forge ahead despite overwhelming odds, and with helping his mother and sisters pull through, and their salvation further solidified his bond with the Church. Throughout his youth, he was also particularly drawn to the stories of missionaries, of selfless souls doing the work of God in the less fortunate corners of the planet, and by the time he was in his teens, he knew he would devote his life to the Church. Having narrowly escaped becoming one himself, he chose to concentrate on helping orphans and abandoned children. He left home at seventeen and began his journey, joining a seminary in Andalusia before crossing into Africa, where he soon founded the first of many missions. En route, he took his first vows a few months short of his twenty-second birthday, choosing the name of Jerome after Jerome Emiliani, a sixteenth-century Italian priest and the patron saint of orphans. The modern Jerome’s hospices and orphanages were now scattered across the globe. His army of volunteers had turned around the lives of thousands of the world’s poorest children. His charitable work, as it turned out, had even outshone that of the historic figure who inspired him.
Forget the technicalities. The man was indeed a living saint, and Dalton’s point was hard to ignore. Provided what the monk had