Master of Ceremonies Read online

  MASTER

  of

  CEREMONIES

  DONALD COZZENS

  MASTER OF CEREMONIES

  by Donald Cozzens

  Edited by Michael Coyne

  Cover design, interior design, and typesetting by Patricia A. Lynch

  Photo of Donald Cozzens by Paul Tepley

  Copyright © 2014 by Donald Cozzens

  Published by In Extenso Press

  Distributed exclusively by ACTA Publications, 4848 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60640, (800) 397-2282, actapublications.com

  This story is fiction. Aside from references to well-known historic figures, any similarity to actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, digital, or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, including the Internet, without permission from the publisher. Permission is hereby given to use short excerpts with proper citation in reviews and marketing copy, newsletters, bulletins, class handouts, and scholarly papers.

  To

  Marie and Tim Glasow and in memory of Tom Cozzens

  No grand betrayals

  We lacked the impudent will

  We died of small treasons.

  —Kilian McDonnell

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  1

  Kirkuk, Iraq, 2005

  Like a monk in prayer, Sergeant Mark Anderlee hadn’t moved in an hour. His lean body, flat against the dry dusty soil, felt weightless, suspended like a feather in effortless stillness. Trained to wait, he would wait without complaint, silently coaxing his target into the crosshairs of the Leupold scope mounted on his M24 sniper rifle. His target was a bomb specialist recruited by al-Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. The target’s real name, his briefing officer had said, was unknown. “He’s called al-Zahidi, the one from Zahid.” The name was irrelevant. It was a name adopted by at least one other al-Qaeda insurgent.

  Anderlee had to admit the army had changed him, and mostly for the better. He was disciplined now and able to control the anger that had soured his soul for decades. His sniper training, moreover, had taught him patience—a virtue well beyond his grasp when he was a schoolboy in Baltimore.

  He checked again the distance to target: three hundred and eighty meters—well within the 800-meter range of the M24 resting steady on its bipod. Anderlee’s eyes moved from the one-floor, flat-roofed building where al-Zahidi and six other insurgents were meeting to the fuel tanks fifty meters behind the windowless structure, then on to the three trucks parked square in the middle of the baked clay road, their beds covered with canvas tarps. The sun, both friend and enemy, hung slightly behind him now. Anderlee ignored its choking heat. He judged his escape route problematic at best. Still, he told himself, his chances were good—especially since he was working without a spotter. Spotters had bungled his escapes more than once.

  It might take another hour, he knew, before al-Zahidi gave him a clear and stationary target. “Come on you guys, meeting’s over,” he whispered. “Come on out. Come…on…out.” Anderlee willed himself to stay focused, always the hardest part—now made more difficult by the creeping realization that he was waiting for more than an insurgent bomb specialist. Mark Anderlee, at his deepest core, was waiting to take revenge, waiting for the instant when his abuser, now a retired archbishop, discovered he hadn’t gotten away with it after all. Just fourteen more months and he would have his twenty years of service. They would be, he was convinced, fourteen sweet months of anticipation. He would move through them with the patience of a saint, anticipating his retirement—a decent pension, clean sheets, hot showers—and the sinful pleasure of evening a score.

  Anderlee wet his lips, his eyes now almost closed. Waiting, he had discovered, allowed the pleasure of anticipation; as intense a pleasure as the surging, erotic euphoria of a mission accomplished.

  He peered again into his scope. In his mind’s eye he saw not al-Zahidi but an aging Wilfred Gunnison—bishop’s robes and all—right in his crosshairs. He couldn’t miss.

  Anderlee blinked himself back into the moment. Five men were now visible, two carrying semi-automatic weapons. That meant two others remained in the building. The five walked slowly toward the small caravan of trucks, his target doing the talking. The group paused, as though one of the men had asked a question or made some kind of point… It was enough; al-Zahidi was down.

  2

  Baltimore, Maryland 2005

  Father Bryn Martin, former master of ceremonies to the retired archbishop and now chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, had heard the rumors—he was to be named a bishop. But the call that would change his life still caught him off guard. He was in the archbishop’s office late in the day, summarizing a numbing auditor’s report, when the phone rang. Archbishop Charles Cullen, Gunnison’s recent successor and Martin’s new superior, raised his eyebrows in a gesture of frustration as he lifted the handset. Martin looked down at the report in his lap while Cullen listened. He lifted his eyes to see Cullen’s wide grin.

  “Father Martin is in my office now, Archbishop. I’m sure he would like to hear the news directly.” Cullen, his light blue eyes watering with pleasure, reached across the desk and handed the receiver to Martin. The accented voice, cultured, even lyrical, was that of Archbishop Lorenzo Tardisconi, the Holy See’s ambassador to the United States—and the man in charge of the selection of all new bishops in the country.

  “Father Martin? This is Archbishop Tardisconi.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. This is Father Martin.”

  “The Holy Father has chosen you for the office of bishop, to serve as auxiliary to Archbishop Cullen.” Tardisconi paused to let his message sink in. “Will you accept?”

  Distracted by Cullen’s obvious delight at this pivotal moment in his chancellor’s life, Martin felt a rush of excitement and pleasure—the understandable but dangerous pleasure of ecclesiastical affirmation, the almost adolescent thrill of being held in favor, of being noticed.

  “May I have some time to think about this, Archbishop?”

  “I suspect, Father Martin, that you have been thinking about this for some time now.”

  Despite the vaunted secrecy veiling the process for the selection of bishops, word had made its way through the clerical network that a new auxiliary for Baltimore would be named in the near future. Bryn Martin was a presumed favorite, perhaps the favorite. In spite of the papal sanctions meant to insure confidentiality, two different sources had told him
he was being vetted. Instinctively, Martin knew this was no time to appear humble.

  “I am honored, Archbishop, and humbled. Yes, I will accept the appointment. And I am most grateful to his Holiness, to you, and to Archbishop Cullen for your confidence in me.”

  “Praised be Jesus Christ,” Tardisconi replied piously. He promised to pray for the new bishop-elect and turned abruptly to matters of protocol. “Two weeks from this Tuesday the announcement will be made simultaneously by the Holy See, by my office in Washington, and by Archbishop Cullen. Until that time you should confide only in your spiritual director and with chancery staff responsible for essential preparations for your ordination as bishop. Archbishop Cullen will advise you in the matter of the customary gift of gratitude to his Holiness.”

  Martin repressed a smile at this last point of protocol. For centuries papal honors, especially episcopal and abbatial appointments, have been a major source of revenue for the Vatican treasury. The bishop-elect had no idea what amount would be appropriate. He would have to trust Cullen for advice.

  Cullen took the phone back and ended the call with customary courtesies.

  “This calls for a little single malt,” he said.

  It was growing dark outside and the desk and table lamps shed a soft, golden glow, much like candlelight. The two churchmen sipped their whisky and talked easily—like members of a select and exclusive club—for the next half hour.

  For the past six months there had been signs, subtle yet telling to any astute clerical eye, that Father Bryn Martin was held in favor. He had clearly won the new archbishop’s confidence, and Cullen seemed to enjoy Martin’s company. But Martin never allowed himself to forget that while his working relationship with Cullen was cordial, they weren’t really friends—not yet anyway. That was a mistake even the savviest of veteran priests often made. Seminarians are taught to think of their bishop as their spiritual father and, since the Second Vatican Council, as an older brother. From a realpolitik perspective, that is hardly the case. Their bishop is, in truth, their feudal lord who, by ecclesial tradition and personal instinct, uses familial images and language to control his vassal priests.

  It hadn’t taken Martin long to grasp this reality. More than fraternal concern, more than fatherly support and encouragement, what really grounded the relationship of priest to bishop was loyalty—not loyalty to Christ and his gospel, but loyalty to the ecclesial system, to the culture of privilege and preference. In theory, of course, it should be the reverse. But loyalty to the gospel before loyalty to the institutional church could get a priest into real trouble. The conviction that loyalty to the institution assured a priest he was being loyal to Christ and his gospel is the great lie in the Catholic Church.

  With their glasses emptied, Cullen and Martin rose from their chairs.

  “Thank you, Charles,” Martin said softly. “This wouldn’t have happened, I know, without your endorsement.”

  “It’s a great honor, Bryn, but you will find out soon enough the job has its burdens. And the burdens will crush you if you don’t tend to your spiritual life.” Cullen paused. “And the privileges? They’re more dangerous than the burdens.”

  Cullen and Martin embraced, the brief, slightly awkward hug men often exchange, with Cullen patting Martin’s back in encouragement and congratulations.

  “Get something to eat, Bryn, and then make a few phone calls. Don’t take Tardisconi’s admonition to secrecy too seriously. You know who you can trust.”

  The press conference announcing his appointment was only two hours away. With his mind racing, Martin reached for the newer of his two black suits. Clerical politics, he had discovered early on, demanded of the career-minded priest an air of public piety and just the right degree of deference. There was a theatrical dimension to the hierarchy that bordered on camp. There were roles to be played. It would never do for a priest to go around saying he wanted to be a bishop or a chancellor or even a monsignor. No, a climber had to channel his ambition carefully, had to be noticed, had to project an air of gravity, and above all had to project an air of absolute, unquestioning loyalty to the minutest of the church’s teachings and policies. Maybe this was what was bothering Martin. Maybe this was what made his mind race and his stomach tighten. Had he become the kind of climber he despised?

  He couldn’t finish his usual breakfast bagel and coffee. He returned to his room and sat down. He couldn’t pray, couldn’t think. His inner turmoil displaced any possibility of a peaceful interlude before the press conference that would forever change his life.

  He should have insisted on more time to think about it. To pray about it. That’s what he should have said. And that’s what he should have said when Archbishop Gunnison had first asked him to be his master of ceremonies. Instead, Martin had acquiesced on the spot both times. It was the beginning of his rise to the office of bishop—and the end of his innocence.

  As he sat alone, Martin remembered it all—the appointment as Gunnison’s master of ceremonies, the call from Tardisconi, and his own obsequious response. Yet another scene, this one rife with the musk of guilt, came into focus. Martin squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out what happened so long ago in that dark car parked in shadow outside the archbishop’s residence. Was the archbishop’s bizarre behavior that night behind Martin’s rise from master of ceremonies to chancellor and now to bishop in just two and a half years—an astronomical assent as church careers go?

  Bishop-elect Bryn Martin got up, left the rectory through the side entrance, and with his hands buried deep in his overcoat pockets walked the short distance to the Catholic Center. On this day, of all days, the incident he was trying to forget should be left to the mercy of God. Waiting for the light at the corner of Cathedral and Mulberry, Martin told himself he wasn’t sad at all.

  3

  Baltimore, 2007

  Dan Barrett and Paul Kline half raised their long-necked bottles of beer in a subtle man-toast to Mark Anderlee.

  “It’s great to have you back home,” Dan said.

  “Yeah,” Paul added, “it really is. Twenty years of army life. I don’t know how you did it.”

  The three men meeting for drinks in the Belvedere Hotel’s Owl Bar had known each other since Blessed Sacrament elementary school. But it wasn’t until their high school years at Loyola Blakefield that their friendship took hold. After graduating, Barrett and Kline went on to college and eventually to teaching careers in two of Baltimore’s Catholic high schools. Anderlee had enlisted. Now, more than two decades since their years at Blakefield, they were gathering for beer and wings to celebrate Anderlee’s retirement from the army and his return to Baltimore.

  “I feel bad I never wrote,” Paul said sheepishly.

  “Forget it. If you had written I would’ve felt I had to write you back. You did me a favor.”

  The three smiled weakly.

  Barrett and Kline had looked forward to the evening and hearing about Anderlee’s two tours in Iraq.

  “We heard you were the leader of a goddamn sniper unit, for Christ’s sake,” Dan said, coaxing him on. After the first round of drinks, Mark opened up a little but spoke only in generalities, never once hinting at any heroics on his part. It was clear to the two civilians that their old friend wasn’t into recounting his experiences as a soldier—at least not tonight.

  “What’re you going to do now?” Dan asked.

  “My army pension is pretty good so I don’t have to look for a job right away. I’ll be staying with my Aunt Margaret until I find a place I like. Maybe in a few years I’ll go someplace where I won’t freeze my ass off during the winter months. My mom is living in South Carolina. I’ll check it out. But right now I have some business here in Baltimore.”

  Barrett and Kline exchanged a glance.

  “What kind of business?” Dan said.

  “Church business.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Mark?” Paul asked. Anderlee looked over his shoulder to make sure their waitress wasn�
�t heading for their table.

  “One night I was on patrol in Tikkrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown. It was routine, nothing out of the ordinary. But on that patrol, on that quiet night, I realized that as much as I hated Hussein, there was someone I hated more. And I swore to myself I would square things when I got back home.”

  The three men leaned in across the table as Anderlee, his voice just above a whisper, said, “The summer before we started at Blakefield, I spent two weeks at Camp Carroll, the summer camp run by the archdiocese. There was a priest, Father Wilfred Gunnison, an older guy in his fifties or so who was like the chaplain or something. The prick messed with me.”

  “Mark,” Barrett interrupted, “Archbishop Gunnison?”

  “Yeah, I’m talking about the Most Reverend Wilfred Freakin’ Gunnison, the retired archbishop of Baltimore. One and the same.”

  “Damn,” Dan said.

  Kline was speechless.

  The two men, their stomachs suddenly cramped, sat staring at their beer bottles. Anderlee, without raising his eyes, broke the silence.

  “It was the summer I turned fifteen, Father Wil, as we called him, tells me he has to do weekend Masses at some parish in a small town in Pennsylvania, about two hundred miles north of here. Do I want to go with him, give him some company? I said okay ’cause I couldn’t think of any reason to say no. He goes to tell one of the counselors I’d be away for two nights and I go and put some stuff in my backpack.”

  He took a swig of beer. Neither of the others touched theirs.

  “Gunnison says to be ready to leave in an hour—around four o’clock. He had it all figured out. We’d drive for about a hundred miles or so and stop for dinner, spend the night in a motel, and drive the rest of the way to the parish on Saturday.

  “‘I need to be at the parish in time for confessions and the Saturday vigil Mass,’ Gunnison says, all piss pious and friendly like. The plan was to spend Saturday night at the rectory and then, after the two Sunday morning Masses, we’d drive back to Camp Carroll.