Fallen Masters Read online

  “Sí, señora.” The man behind the wheel was more than accommodating to Charlene. After all, she was an American and she would tip him well.

  “How far is it?” Charlene asked as the car pulled away from the hotel.

  “Cinco minutos, señora,” he replied. Then he translated. “Five minutes.”

  As they rode through the Zona Rosa, Charlene looked around at the busy street, taking in all the buildings and apartment complexes. She recognized many of the American chains like 7-Eleven, Burger King, and McDonald’s … but so many signs were in Spanish and she had no idea what they were advertising.

  The driver turned down a dark street and pulled in between two buildings and stopped the car. Charlene immediately sensed that something wasn’t right about this.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Why have we stopped? Why are we in this alley?”

  The driver started honking his horn, and five men appeared from behind one of the metal doors onto the alley. The door was marked with graffiti that read, VIVA DOMINGO, and Charlene thought to herself that there might not be a “Viva Charleno” if this played out the way that she was seeing it.

  “Get your famous gringa ass out of my car,” the driver said.

  “What is this about?” Charlene asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You think I do not know who you are? You are Charlene St. John, the famous American singer. And you are worth much money to my friends and me.”

  When Charlene exited the car, she found herself standing in the middle of what seemed to be a very long, narrow alley that would only fit one car. There were two people guarding her behind the car, and four others in front. They were arguing in Spanish about what they should do with her. She knew the word meaning “to kill” was matar, and that was definitely used a few times. It was at that moment she realized how tall the buildings were on both sides and that they went straight up and formed great columns.

  She smelled something very familiar and realized that it was McDonald’s french fries, a universal smell. Where there were McDonald’s, there were people, at all hours of the night. If she could get their attention, maybe they would help her.

  But yelling for help would do nothing, this she knew instinctively. And though she knew the word for “help me” in Spanish, ayudame, she didn’t think shouting that would accomplish anything either.

  She could scream. But, too often now, with the violence and evil—the Dark Forces—in the world, a scream would simply send people running in the opposite direction.

  “Sing, girl, sing.” She heard her father’s voice.… “You know what to do.”

  Did she actually hear this? Or did she imagine it? Whatever it was, it was inspired. She was told that the entire world recognized her voice, so that is exactly what she began to do. She sang an aria, her voice rising to magnificent heights of volume and power.

  Charlene St. John might have been able to navigate a crowd without being recognized, but there was one thing that was undeniable and recognizable and that was her voice. When Charlene opened her mouth, her would-be captors were stunned, and by the time they were thinking on their feet again, a crowd of people had started to form to hear where her voice was coming from.

  Within one minute there were enough people there for Charlene to be signing autographs, taking photos, all while singing as loudly as she could. Charlene grabbed two of her would-be kidnappers and pulled them into a photo with her, kissing one of them on the cheek.

  But as she touched him, it felt as if, somehow, the gates of Hell had opened. She couldn’t explain it, not even to herself and certainly to no one else, but she felt the swirling pool of evil in his core as a “black force.”

  She recognized that this feeling was not pure, and it certainly wasn’t positive. It was frightening, yes, but much more than frightening. It wasn’t just that the man was evil—evil itself became almost sentient.

  As the crowd moved her down toward the main drag, she saw Paul standing there with a camera crew from the local affiliate. Her SUV and a security detail were waiting to take her back to her hotel.

  “What are you doing here, Charlene, of all places?” Paul asked, surprised to see her coming out of the alley. He had been looking everywhere for her and gotten totally freaked out—nearly ready to call out the national police to find her.

  “It just happened,” Charlene replied without being more specific.

  “Come on. I’m going to get you back to the hotel.”

  “No, not yet,” Charlene said. “I still have one more stop to make.”

  “Charlene, don’t be silly,” Paul said. “I don’t know what you were doing here in this alley, but I have a feeling it wasn’t something you had planned.”

  Charlene was not used to hearing the word no. She just found out she was dying a few weeks ago and she had just foiled a plot to kidnap her; she felt she was entitled to do what she wanted.

  “Paul, I am going to do this,” Charlene said. “And I can either do this with you as my manager, making all the arrangements for the concert coming up, or…” She let the sentence hang.

  “Or what?” Paul asked, concern in his voice.

  “Or I can do it without you as my manager. It’s your call.”

  “All right, all right,” Paul said. “I won’t try to stop you. But, there’s something I must insist upon—meaning that if you don’t agree, then you really will have to do it without me as your manager, because I will quit.”

  Despite the intensity of the moment, or perhaps because of it, Charlene smiled. “All right, Paul, what it is that you insist upon?”

  “You will take the SUV and a security guard.”

  Charlene stepped up to Paul and kissed him on the cheek. “Isn’t it fun when we threaten each other and neither of us mean it?” she asked. “I’ll take the SUV and the security guard.”

  “And call me when you get back.”

  “Yes, Mama G,” Charlene said with a little laugh as she slipped into the backseat of the SUV.

  Mama G? Where did that come from? she wondered.… She had only meant to say Mama.

  CHAPTER

  64

  Mexico City

  As Charlene and her bodyguard walked toward the Basilica—which reminded her of the Space Mountain ride at Disney World—she noticed a church to its left that seemed to be lopsided and sinking. She had been told that the Basilica was closed, and pulling on a few locked doors seemed to confirm that. Not ready to give up, she approached yet another door where she saw a young Mexican priest who could not have been more than thirty years old. He was startled when he saw her, not because he was afraid, but because of who she was—or at least who she appeared to be.

  “You?” the priest said. “Are you Charlene St. John McAvoy?”

  Charlene started to deny it, but she was standing in front of a church, and he was a priest—so she couldn’t do it.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Encantado. Que gran privilegio,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “I am privileged to see you,” the priest translated. “Why have you come?”

  “I’m not sure why I came,” Charlene admitted. “I am afraid that I have no faith. I have no particular belief. But I met a man on the plane. His name was Mr. Rojas, and he has come here every year for fifty years on what he calls a ‘promissory trip.’ It has something to do with his belief that prayer saved his daughter when she was a little girl.”

  “There have been many miracles worked by Our Lady of Guadalupe,” the young priest said. “God has worked miracles through you, through your music, though you may not know it.”

  “I’ve been told that,” Charlene said.

  “And how does that make you feel?”

  “It makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m not a miracle worker, Padre.” Somewhere she had heard that priests in Mexico were called padres. “I am merely a woman with a good voice.”

  “And where do you think you got that voice?”r />
  “I was born with it.”

  “Does everyone have a voice so beautiful?”

  Charlene smiled as she thought of Anna York in the Baptist church, back when she used to attend. Anna York had the worst voice she had ever heard, but seemed, somehow, to sing the loudest.

  “No,” she admitted. “Not everyone.”

  “God grants such gifts only to a few people,” the priest said. “And accepting that gift means also accepting the obligation to use it for His glory.”

  “If you say so,” Charlene replied. The conversation was making her uncomfortable, and she was wondering now why she had come here in the first place.

  “Do you want to go inside?” the priest asked.

  “You can let me in?”

  “Yes.” He opened the door just wide enough for her to enter. “Please remember to close the door when you leave.”

  “I will, Padre, and thank you,” Charlene said.

  CHAPTER

  65

  The priest walked away and Charlene went inside, thankful for this moment of privacy.

  The church wasn’t completely dark, but very dimly lit by dozens of flickering candles. She stood just inside the door for a moment, awed by the silence and majesty of the enormous church. She had played in large auditoriums many times and was fairly good at estimating the number of people a particular venue could accommodate. Ten thousand could be seated here, easily.

  Awkwardly, she walked up to the framed likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There was something beatific about the image of the standing, robed woman. The frame was gold, and above the picture was a crown.

  She thought about this place, a house of worship where so many of the faithful come to ask for help and favors.

  Looking down, she saw the bloodstained lines that formed near the four moving sidewalks that people would stand on to gaze upward at the Lady in the frame. Bloodstained because so many had gotten there on their knees to pray and ask for help. Before leaving the hotel today, Charlene had gone online to look up this iconic place. She learned that there had been an attempt to destroy it by bomb, and though the bomb did some damage, the cloak was undamaged.

  She also knew that, as with the Shroud of Turin, there had been various scientific studies to either authenticate or discredit the miracle of the cloak. They had been unable to discredit it, which meant that the believers still had their faith to support its authenticity.

  As Charlene stood there, she felt somewhat hypocritical and quite foolish asking for a healing when she didn’t really believe it was possible. She was dying, but death was not a fear of hers. If there was an afterlife, then perhaps she would see her beloved Ryan and father again. If death was all there was … so be it. At least all this pain would be no more.

  Charlene heard someone sniffing behind her, which startled her because she had been certain she was alone. Turning, she saw a woman dressed in black and wearing a veil. The woman was weeping.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you when I came in,” Charlene said. Charlene must have left the door open enough for the woman to come in after her.

  The woman didn’t respond, but continued to weep quietly.

  Charlene walked over to her. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you speak English? Is there anything I can do for you? I want to help.”

  “There is nothing you can do,” the woman said. “I lost my only son. He was murdered brutally.”

  Charlene knew of the brutal slayings that were taking place in Mexico’s drug war. “I’m so sorry,” Charlene said.

  “I have come here to find peace,” the woman said.

  This made her feel awkward, and she groped for the right words, not really finding them: “Look, my name is Charlene St. John. I’m a singer. Maybe you have heard of me?” she added somewhat sheepishly. Charlene reached into her purse and pulled out Paul’s card with his cell phone number printed on it. “I’m giving a concert here. Perhaps you would like to come. I’m told that the tickets are very hard to come by. I’d love to see you there. If you’d like to—”

  The woman stopped weeping and looked up with an expression that startled Charlene. It was an expression of disbelief and displeasure. “Did you not hear me? I just told you I lost my son. And you respond by inviting me to a concert?”

  “I’m sorry,” Charlene mumbled. “I meant only to—well, I’m sorry,” she repeated. Charlene, clearly feeling like an idiot, and not comfortable in this place to begin with, hurried out of the church.

  CHAPTER

  66

  When Charlene returned to her hotel room that evening, she felt the words of a song nearly bursting from her. Sitting down at the desk, she used hotel stationery and pen to write the new words, which she set to the tune of her signature song, “Someone, Somewhere.”

  This time and this place

  Are ours by a certain grace

  A gift from one loving Source

  That guides us on our course

  Somewhere is here

  Sometime is now

  Take my hand, dear

  Let me show you how

  We are one

  We are one

  We are one

  She had just finished writing the song when the phone in her room rang. “Hello?”

  “Charlene, turn on the TV,” Paul said.

  “Why? I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “Turn to channel 360. It’s one of the satellite news networks from the U.S.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “You’ll see as soon as you turn it on.”

  Charlene picked up the remote, then clicked on the TV. It was showing the replay of a soccer match and the announcer was shouting in excitement as one of the players scored: “Bustamante es exitoso!”

  She punched in channel 360.

  “We are bringing you breaking news about the latest earthquake, this time affecting the lower half of the Indian subcontinent. The unusual thing about the earthquake is the area that it covers,” the announcer was saying. “Like the earthquake in Turkey that has taken place recently, the area covered by this earthquake is unprecedented. Equally unprecedented is the strength of the earthquake, which, like the Turkey quake, registered at 9.5 on Richter scale. One third of the subcontinent appears to have been flattened. There is no historical record of two such large events occurring so closely together in time. We’ve entered new territory here. We have no way of determining yet the extent of casualties from the earthquake, but early estimates indicate that millions have already perished,” the announcer said in somber tones.

  The screen was filled with pictures of the devastation, cities reduced to rubble, dazed survivors walking around as if they were lost ants whose colonies had been decimated.

  For the next several minutes Charlene watched the pictures and listened to the descriptions of the destruction, almost unaware of the tears streaming down her face. Everything seemed to be flooding into her—flashing into focus. The lecture, her dreamlike reunion with Ryan, and her day, starting with planes crashes, meeting with Mr. Rojas, the Basilica, and the strange encounter with the woman at the church.

  Then she got an idea, and she picked up the phone and dialed Paul’s room.

  “Are you watching this?” Paul asked. He sat on the edge of his hotel bed watching the scenes of destruction and chaos in India. He had to force himself back to the present reality to hear what Charlene was saying to him.

  “Paul, I want this concert to be a pay-per-view. Just like we did before.” She smiled slyly, knowing what kind of response she would get from him. “I’ve already announced I want all the ticket proceeds to go to Turkey for the relief of all those injured and displaced people, and this would be the perfect time to try to raise funds for this new horrific event.”

  “Impossible,” Paul replied, sputtering in surprise at her request. “We can’t possibly make the broadcast arrangements for pay-per-view at this late date.”

  “Make it happen, Paul,” Charlene said. She didn’t often “
pull rank” with him, but she felt she had to see this through. There was so little time left—for anything.

  “How am I supposed to pull this off?” Paul asked, clearly frustrated by her impossible request.

  “You can announce to the world that this is to be my farewell concert, and my farewell gift to the world.”

  “Even so, it would take a miracle,” Paul said.

  Charlene smiled. “Do you know anything about Our Lady of Guadalupe?” She had been learning a lot herself—and very quickly—about the Lady and what she represented. Millions of people believed this was a sacred place, where miracles occurred for those who had faith. “This might just be the right place to help a miracle come true,” she said. Suddenly, she knew—she really understood—what she was here to do.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Paul promised.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, the earthquake in India, and the announcement that Charlene St. John was giving the proceeds of her farewell concert to benefit not only the earthquake victims in Turkey but also the victims of the Indian subcontinent became symbiotic news stories, creating a frenzy of subscribers to the concert show, raising millions of dollars.

  Charlene did a round of publicity while in Mexico City, promoting both the live concert and the pay-per-view show. She did several television interviews, not only for Mexican TV but satellite TV networks from around the world, speaking, when necessary, through translators.

  “How much money do you think you will raise?” a German television station wanted to know. “I mean how much of what you raise will actually go to the victims of the recent earthquakes?”

  “Everything it makes will go to help those people,” Charlene replied.