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alcohol and drugs for lesser reasons than his, and he vowed that his loss of faith, of hope, would not be his undoing.
    After scrubbing the film from his mouth, Kilkenny splashed some water on his face and head, matting down the disheveled tufts of red hair. His hotel room was small but efficient and, most important, located within walking distance of the Vatican, where he spent most of his time. He had come to Rome at the behest of his father, to work with his father’s oldest friend, Malachy Donoher, the Cardinal Librarian of the Holy Roman Church.
    Kilkenny’s job was to improve the flow of information between the Vatican Library and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, for it was through these two entities that the Church remained abreast of advances in science and technology while retaining an institutional memory that spanned a millennium. Donoher believed the academy and library, working in concert, could give the pope a clearer view of advances that
might pose moral or ethical problems tempered with a broad historical perspective, the goal of which was to provide the Holy Father with wise counsel when matters of science and faith seemed at odds.
    Officially, the invitation to be a consultant to the Vatican drew on Kilkenny’s technical expertise at managing information—a fairly simple task to be remunerated with a modest fee. But Kilkenny suspected that Donoher and his father had conspired, creating an assignment that was merely a pretext to force him from an empty home in Ann Arbor, where his surroundings could only remind him of all he had lost. Kilkenny had buried himself in work in the two months since the deaths of his wife and unborn child, but grief remained his constant companion. He existed only in the present, his desired future obliterated by a cruel disease.
    He appreciated the thought behind the invitation, even if the job demanded little of his mental energies. Kilkenny’s true work—as a venture capitalist with his father’s company, MARC (Michigan Applied Research Consortium)—kept him fully engaged with new and interesting challenges. Kilkenny oversaw the transfer of nascent technologies from academic research laboratories into the world of commerce—he was a trafficker in intellectual property. And not just any property. From quantum energy cells to strange organisms hidden for eons in dark waters beneath miles of polar ice, Kilkenny served as guardian and even midwife to innovations that would change the future. His profession was both exhilarating and lucrative, and on more than one occasion deadly.
    Travel was part of his job, so living in Rome for a few weeks did not seem at all unusual. And he had to admit, the Vatican did offer a dramatic change of atmosphere, no doubt exactly what his father and Donoher had intended.
    Several new garment bags hung in the closet above two boxes of new dress shoes. He had arrived in Rome two weeks earlier wearing jeans, sneakers, and an Ireland rugby jersey, carrying a briefcase and a small overnight bag, but the garment bag containing the rest of his clothing had gone astray. When it became apparent that the bag’s MIA status was likely permanent, Kilkenny took advantage of the opportunity to update his wardrobe at several of Rome’s finer clothiers.

    After drying his face, Kilkenny traded the boxers he’d slept in for running shorts and a T-shirt and began to stretch lightly. His freckled skin gave a boyish look to his six-foot frame—a lean, well-defined body built not for bursts of speed or strength but endurance. He clipped a fanny pack around his waist, retrieved a pair of Saucony running shoes from the closet, and sat on the edge of the double bed to pull them on. A biography of Mark Twain rested on the nightstand along with a black diver’s watch and a small triptych frame.
    Reaching for his watch, Kilkenny’s eyes lingered on the woman pictured in the frame’s central panel. The photo was