In Tongues of the Dead Read Online Free Page A

was almost forty, but still in reasonably good shape, almost as good as when he’d been in grad school a decade earlier. Benicio remembered defending his dissertation to earn his doctorate in clinical psychology, and he remembered the day he sat in his grad-student office and opened the letter containing an engraved invitation and a first-class ticket to Rome. His Columbia degree had turned into a position in the priesthood under the investigative branch of the Holy See.
    And now he was in the back of a hut in Prasat, one of the poorest districts in Cambodia and just east of Phnom Penh, the capital city. He shook his head.
    Benicio glanced down. He was wearing nondescript clothes purchased locally: itchy but relatively cool Khmer black shirt and baggy trousers. The heat was oppressive, and his days consisted of a never-ending search for a slightly cooler spot, a bit of shade, a cool drink. The people of Prasat also had to contend with hunger, disease, and roving gangs. The slum was a short distance but a far cry from the capital city. Phnom Penh was rapidly developing into a modern city, with industry and tourism. Not long ago Cambodia would have been completely written off anyone’s list of vacation spots, but the city’s image was changing as the nation opened up to the world.
    Unfortunately, being open to the world brought its share of problems. Benicio rubbed a rough hand through his dark hair as he sat in the back of the ramshackle, dirt-floored hut. Thefamily who owned the hut knew he was a representative of the church. He had tried to explain his reason for coming to their village but he wasn’t sure they understood.
    The people in the village were outcasts, discarded by a city that had no use for them. They were easy prey for hucksters and thieves. Recently a gang had started selling religious relics in the village, promising the relics conveyed special godly passage away from Prasat.
    Benicio knew religious relics were not inherently bad. But he also knew the power of the relic often came from the mythology associated with it.
    He had read about relics attributed with miraculous powers. The power to heal disease. The power to free a dead person from purgatory. The power to change a person’s destiny. A relic with such incredible powers would be of astronomical value. In the Middle Ages, the church sold licenses so individuals could sell relics to the masses. The church made a lot of money, but Benicio thought the practice was a fraudulent, moneymaking proposition and nothing else.
    And someone was doing it again.
    The Holy Church had sent Benicio to Cambodia to investigate the selling of religious relics to people who could barely afford to eat. Desperate parents were told the relics would ensure their children would get out of the slums. These days the church frowned on such fraud, but Benicio suspected the relics were being sold by missionaries from the Vatican. Such scams were sacrilege. Given his academic background and previous research on mythology, he was a natural choice for such investigations. He’d recently investigated a suspected case of demonic possession in a rural community in Brazil. An enthusiastic local priest wanted to begin an exorcism immediately but Benicio had quietly gotten the young girl admitted to a psychiatric facility. The church regarded Benicio as a discreet and loyal envoy, so here he was in a Cambodia slum.
    He had heard the missionary group would be in Prasat today. He wanted to catch them in the act of peddling the relics.
    He watched a young girl move barefoot across the dirt floor of the hut with a broad smile on her lips. He understood why a parent would do anything to make sure a child would survive. It sickened him that his church might be involved in a scam to play on that parental concern.
    As he watched her, he heard shouts and cries from the street. Benicio was immediately alarmed. Although his grasp of Khmer was limited, he thought that the