Jerusalem
M onsignor Derek Lonergan woke with a splitting headache and waited until the room came into focus. The old metal clock indicated 4 a.m. and he stared at it uncomprehendingly, realising that he had forgotten to wind it, again. He smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It felt dry and furry, as if an animal had done something nasty in it during the night. As he rolled his head off the pillow there was a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. An empty whisky bottle had fallen on the tiled floor.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered.
Derek Lonergan slowly swung his legs off the bed, his feet still in his sandals, wrestling to try to gain some freedom for his ample girth among the folds of the robes he had fallen asleep in.
‘Fuck these bloody cassocks,’ he swore again, addressing his remarks to the long-suffering walls of his room. Putting his hand to the side of his head he got to his feet and squinted out of his dormitory window at the road that ran past the walls of L’Ecole Biblique et Archeologique Francaise de Jerusalem. The sunlight caught the reddish grey of his bearded jowls and it felt hot on the pink skin at the front of his balding head. Judging by the length of the queue of the bloody Palestinians clamouring outside the cramped quarters of the Ministry of Interior on the other side of the road, and the bored looks on the faces of Israeli soldiers covering them with their Uzis, he supposed the sun was well past the yard arm.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered again to no one in particular. He had missed the morning meeting, as he had the morning before. This would no doubt earn him another rebuke from the director, Father ‘po-face’. Father La Franci’s idea of productivity was measured by the number of meetings that he could jam into a week. Dickhead. Fuck ’em. Fuck the lot of them. If the Vatican wanted him to work in this hell hole and protect their secrets and edit anything out of their bloody journals that remotely questioned their precious dogma then he would do it on his terms. Two doctorates in archaeology and geology said that he could, as he was fond of reminding anyone who tried to tell him what to do. He had friends in high places, as he was also fond of reminding them. Although Cardinal Petroni could be a right royal pain in the arse as well. Fuck him, too.