The Immortality Plot

The Immortality Plot - chapter 30

Delaney sat in Ryan’s Chevrolet Camaro with the passenger seat pushed back to the limit. They were driving south on route 95 and planning to take the 295 around Richmond and then head south on Country Drive to Norfolk and then Chesapeake. They hoped to arrive at their destination as dawn was breaking.

Delaney had consulted a map and found the location of The Land of Promise Road. It ran from the Centerville Turnpike down towards Virginia Beach. Delaney could see why The Priest had chosen this location. It was an isolated stretch of road running through a mainly rural landscape with occasional properties dotted along its length.

The location, he had been told, was an old, disused Antioch chapel that had fallen into disrepair and, like many buildings of its kind, had been left to rot.

Delaney was praying this wasn’t a wild goose chase. Rattin had whispered to him that Rachel Maclean was being taken there from the clinic where she had been kept a prisoner for over three months.The women were always delivered a little early and the choice of location was down to The Priest. Rattin received the information from the man whose presence and influence hovered behind the Renaissance Project and who was its mastermind. Rattin had sworn he did not know the identity of The Priest. He had never been told and there was no reason why he should have been. Delaney believed him. It’s what he would have done if he’d been running the operation. Divide and rule was a safe principle.

Delaney and Ryan spoke little as they drove through a frosted landscape. Delaney had been right about the weather. He had a knack or a gift for knowing what the weather was going to do. This was an unseasonably cold snap.

Whether The Priest would show up was an unknown factor. Maybe they would be too late and would only find Rachel Maclean’s mutilated body with a confession tape stuffed into her mouth. How he would break the news to Lena he did not know.

He had to remain positive. Since the start of the whole business his aims had been the same. To find The Priest was the first. But the second was to find and rescue Rachel Maclean. In a way that was now the more important of the two. Nothing was going to bring Maria back. Delaney’s mixed up metaphysical half-beliefs would suggest her spirit existed in some dimension or other, not with the same identity she had when alive, but with that essence of her being that had been alive condensed into an indefinable form of some kind, part of the fabric of the entirety of creation. Delaney imagined it as being like a waveform, vibrating at an impossibly high speed. There could be uncountable billions of such waveforms containing essences of individualities which made up what people might call God, or Allah, or the known universe, or consciousness, that existed in the constant now, with no past or future but containing all potential.

Christ, it was confusing, yet Delaney knew that the truth was probably going to end up being the simplest of things. If only he could grasp it. Must be the early morning causing the sudden flush of metaphysics.

They stopped at an all-night diner outside of Richmond. They drank coffee and ate burgers and fries. Both of them were hungry.

“Not long now,” said Ryan as they left the diner, filled up with gas next door and headed south. “I meant to say, thanks for letting me come with you.”

“It’s good to have the company,” said Delaney. “And what you said about being a witness, well, that’s a good point. If we do find Rachel at this chapel, maybe you’ll have to take her home to her mother while I hang around and hope that he turns up.”

“Okay, that’s fine by me. I don’t think I want to be a witness if you ever come face-to-face with him.”

Delaney didn’t answer.

“What you did, back at the Harvard Club, was quite something,” she told him. “You managed to hold on to your humanity even though you were under incredible emotional pressure.”