Atonement.

Michael Hennessy felt the shadow of the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde enfold him like the unadorned robe of a novice monk, a fortress against evil and a refuge against sin. He stood behind the parapet of the neo-Byzantine church and stared down at Marseilles, its brick and stone, its white walls and terracotta rooftops, its chaos of steep steps and angled streets, all softening and fading to gray in the dying light of the winter evening.

As he gazed over the city, the variegated blue Mediterranean darkened to cobalt and the streetlights brightened, restoring solidity to the apartments and offices and monuments that spread out from the limestone hill beneath him toward the distant port.

He blinked hard against the breeze tearing his eyes, and then glanced at his watch: fifty-five minutes left. And his mind spoke again. Atonement.

But this time the word resonated and he wondered why it came to him now and what it meant.

Then his mind asked, Can there be atonement without confession and redemption without forgiveness?

He twisted his head upward toward the golden statue of the Virgin Mary atop the bell tower, but then realized that it wasn’t a religious question, for no saint could grant the absolution he sought, nor could there be reconciliation by proxy. It had to be done face-to-face, hand-to-hand, and man-to-man.

But where was that man?

Nausea waved through him. His muscles tensed. His jaw clenched. It was less a question than an accusation, one that over the years had left gouges in him like self-inflicted wounds that never healed, but only bled and bled into a vast emptiness.

Where… was… that… man?