Free The Holy Bullet by Luis Miguel Rocha

that express your belief, whether a cassock or collar, a turban, a chador, a burka, a niqab , a long beard or hat, a star or tattoo, but there are a small number of situations that call for forgoing those elements that might attract undesirable attention. This was one of them.
    “As soon as we land it’d be better for you to take off the clerical collar,” Rafael advised. It went without saying the tone of recommendation was no more than that, a tone. James Phelps was intelligent enough to pick that up.
    “And later?”
    “Later is simple. Follow my instructions.”
    “Naturally,” the older man agreed. “I’m not at the age to step into quicksand.”
    “You’re already in it, Father. Now it’s necessary not to sink to the bottom.”
    “I trust you.” He smiled.
    “Better to trust in your God. More certain.”
    The Englishman looked distrustfully at him. “Our God, dear friend. And don’t make me more anxious than I already am.”
    Phelps remembered the encounter with Rafael in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican. He’d come in alone and left twenty minutes later without even stopping long enough to wait for the emissary of the Church of Saint Gregory of Divine Mercy to get up from his red velvet chair. He was still in the process of doing so when he heard a Let’s go coming from the hall Rafael had gone down. Where to? he murmured to himself.
    Rafael hadn’t said a word about what went on in those twenty minutes in which he’d disappeared through the enormous door that separates the papal apartments from the rest of the palace. Nor whom he had spoken with. Could it have been the pope himself? Secretary Bertone? Or some other person less mentioned and revered? Rafael was not the kind of person you could ask about something like that, just as Phelps was not the man to ask, for all that he felt tempted and even had the right to, once he had to go along with him. Everyone has his business and his weaknesses, and, if the stories he had heard about Rafael’s past were true, as he believed, he knew what Rafael was capable of doing. Phelps was sure that if Rafael considered it important for him to know the tenor of the conversation or the instructions, he would tell him. Until then he would live in ignorance, following the journey to the unknown through the air at four hundred miles an hour.
    “Would you like something to eat?” the flight attendant asked, offering something edible wrapped in plastic, probably a sandwich with some kind of processed meat.
    “Yes, thanks,” Rafael answered, letting down the tray on the back of the seat in front of him, one of the ergonomic marvels of aviation, finding space where there was none.
    “And you?” the attendant automatically asked James Phelps.
    “No thanks. I’m not hungry.” The pleasant man passed his fingers under his clerical collar, with a sensation of discomfort, a sudden pressure, lack of air, his face turning livid. What have I gotten myself into? he thought. “But I’d like a glass of water, please.”
    “Of course.” The attendant picked up the bottle and poured it into a glass. “Here you are, sir.”
    The priest took the glass and awkwardly set it on the tray, grabbing at his left leg. A pain like a knife stab pierced through his thigh. He controlled himself as much as possible to avoid crying out, suffering, breathing deeply and swallowing his groans, turning them into painful pants of breath.
    “Are you all right?” the attendant asked, her hands full of aluminum covers and a glass of orange juice.
    “Yes. It’s nothing. It’ll go away, thanks,” he answered, leaning his head back on the seat and shutting his eyes for a few minutes. Small drops of perspiration covered his face.
    Rafael, unaffected by his companion’s discomfort, attacked his sandwich, ham with something unidentifiable that didn’t much go with it, not that that was important to him. He bent over his orange juice to drink. Perhaps he was one of those rare human