It was time.
Silas felt strong as he stepped from the black Audi, the nighttime breeze rustling his
loose-fitting robe. The winds of change are in the air. He knew the task before him
would require more finesse than force, and he left his handgun in the car. The thirteen-
round Heckler Koch USP 40 had been provided by the Teacher.
A weapon of death has no place in a house of God.
The plaza before the great church was deserted at this hour, the only visible souls on
the far side of Place Saint-Sulpice a couple of teenage hookers showing their wares to the
late night tourist traffic. Their nubile bodies sent a familiar longing to Silas's loins. His
thigh flexed instinctively, causing the barbed cilice belt to cut painfully into his flesh.
The lust evaporated instantly. For ten years now, Silas had faithfully denied himself all
sexual indulgence, even self-administered. It was The Way. He knew he had sacrificed
much to follow Opus Dei, but he had received much more in return. A vow of celibacy
and the relinquishment of all personal assets hardly seemed a sacrifice. Considering the
poverty from which he had come and the sexual horrors he had endured in prison,
celibacy was a welcome change.
Now, having returned to France for the first time since being arrested and shipped to
prison in Andorra, Silas could feel his homeland testing him, dragging violent memories
from his redeemed soul. You have been reborn, he reminded himself. His service to God
today had required the sin of murder, and it was a sacrifice Silas knew he would have to
hold silently in his heart for all eternity.
The measure of your faith is the measure of the pain you can endure, the Teacher had
told him. Silas was no stranger to pain and felt eager to prove himself to the Teacher, the
one who had assured him his actions were ordained by a higher power.
“Hago la obra de Dios,” Silas whispered, moving now toward the church entrance.
Pausing in the shadow of the massive doorway, he took a deep breath. It was not until
this instant that he truly realized what he was about to do, and what awaited him inside.
The keystone. It will lead us to our final goal.
He raised his ghost-white fist and banged three times on the door.
Moments later, the bolts of the enormous wooden portal began to move.
