Authors: Glenn Kleier
“That you are in God's plan was not of your design nor mine. I chose you because I recognized you.”
“You recognized me?”
“From the moment I first saw you at the Mount of the Beatitudes.”
“You mean you recognized me from television?”
“No. When I saw you it was for the very first time. And I recognized you.”
Feldman was confused. Having arrived at Jeza's release point, he stopped the car.
“I don't understand,” he said.
The Messiah, still facing away, did not respond. Feldman shut off the motor and leaned forward in his seat to get a glimpse of her face.
He was stunned to see her crying. Eyes wide open, staring off toward the desert, a deep melancholy etched in her brow, her cheeks glistening with tears.
“Jeza, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you with that stupid comment about not accepting who—”
She turned her large, dazzling eyes upon him once more, and in the soft moonlight she looked all the world to him like a lost, lonely child. Or perhaps an angel.
“I know,” she responded softly. “You have not.”
Feldman had never before experienced such a concentration of complex emotions like those that surged within him at this moment—empathy, protectiveness, desperation, yearning, emptiness, fear.
Love.
Before he was even aware of it, Jeza had slipped from the car and he realized he was about to lose her once again to the wilderness.
“No, wait!” he cried, fumbling himself out the door. Rushing to her side, he grasped her by her slender arms and pulled her toward him. She averted her face in an anguished grimace. Withstanding the tremendous temptation to embrace her, Feldman instead gently dried her tears with his handkerchief, took her hand in his and walked slowly with her up the winding hillside path.
She seemed very distant now, staring straight ahead mechanically, totally oblivious to the confusion of the man beside her. The closer they drew to the top of the slope, the more anxious he became, his eyes glued to her, his stomach knotted at the thought of her leaving.
At the crest she stopped to meet his gaze, her dark eyes reaching far inside him again. And the more he stared into that compelling visage, the more he was drawn into it.
“When will I see you again?” he asked her.
There was a troubling concern in her face. “For a while you shall not see me,” she said slowly, “and then in a while again, you shall see me.”
“But I want to be with you. I
need
to be with you!” Feldman pressed her, not liking the open-endedness of her answer.
The Messiah averted her eyes, turned and withdrew a few paces. “It is not to be,” she said.
Feldman was staggered. He moved close behind her and gripped her shoulders. “Please don't tell me that, Jeza. I couldn't bear the thought of that!”
She looked around into his turbulent eyes. “Jon, there is a great void ahead of you. A wide chasm that you will confront alone. A long and difficult leap.” She turned to face him and took his hands in hers. “And when you land on the far side, things will no longer be as they were.”
She squeezed his hands hard, her eyes filling with tears again, searching the depths of his soul. “But at that moment, you must remember, the Father has His purpose. And while you cannot change what is meant to be, you will always have what once was. Remember. And remember that I hold in my heart a love for you that is eternal.”
Feldman could no longer control his emotions. He simply lost himself to her. To her sorrowfulness. To her sincerity. To her spirituality.
In tender, selfless, pure and loving devotion, he leaned down to kiss her.
But her eyes prevented him. They shocked him, numbed him in the darkness of their icy blue waters. As he reeled, insensate, she released his hands and he fell heavily to his knees. She stood there staring at him, tears reflecting moonlight from her cheeks. And then, like an illusion, she slipped away, disappearing quickly and silently off into the night.
Na-Juli apartments, Cairo, Egypt 10:00
A.M
., Monday, March 20, 2000
B
efore Feldman had left on his trip to Rome, he and Anke had made arrangements to get together today at his apartment to make up lost time. It was a decision Feldman was regretting. His state of mind after the previous evening was leaving no room for interpersonal associations. He desperately needed time alone. To rest. To reflect. To rebuild his damaged psyche.
Despite Feldman's best efforts, it was obvious to him the minute Anke arrived at his door that she sensed the distance. He was unable to convey the accustomed warmth and emotion in his greeting. His hug was fleeting, his kiss perfunctory. He smiled with his lips, but his eyes were far away. She closed the door behind her and placed her hands on his cheeks, searching his face for a clue.
He could not endure her scrutiny and turned away. “I—I'm just not myself today, Anke. The effects of the trip, I guess …”
“Of course,” she comforted him. “I can't imagine what it must have been like for you. It was more than I could handle just watching it on TV. We don't have to go anywhere or do anything special today. Come on, let's just sit down, relax and talk for a while. I have so many questions!” She took his hand and escorted him to the couch.
Reluctantly, Feldman acquiesced. He felt so unreconcilably guilty. Anke was such an amazingly vivacious and spirited woman. Such a positive force in his life. So full of optimism and happiness. So different from Jeza. Yet his romantic feelings for Anke had inexplicably gone into hiatus.
Is it possible that a man could love two such different women, so differently?
he wondered. Annoyed with the complexity, he closed his eyes and shook his head in a vain attempt to clear his mind.
Noticeably concerned, Anke sought to draw him out. “Jon, what happened yesterday has really upset you, hasn't it?” She reached over and turned his face toward her to catch his eyes. “Can you let me in? I'd like to help.”
He took her hand. Her soft fingers were slightly larger than Jeza's, but hardly as strong.
What am I doing with these absurd comparisons?
Feldman berated himself. He labored to meet her gaze, shook his head again, denying her.
“Anke, I'm sorry, I can't talk about it now. I've been through a lot. I just need to regroup a little.”
“Sure, Jon,” she accepted, reluctantly. “I—I was just hoping you could fill me in a bit about all that happened with Jeza. There's so much I don't understand.”
“I have a feeling,” he continued to sidestep her, “that a lot of your questions are being addressed right now. Why don't we see what the latest news reports have to say?”
Without waiting for an answer, eager to learn if any Vatican archival data other than WNN's might have survived the Swiss Guards, Feldman grabbed up the remote control and switched on the TV.
Anke snuggled up to him, as if working to bridge the distance, but he remained preoccupied and the disconnect continued. Acceding to his strange behavior, Anke sighed and settled back on the sofa. A little more removed from him this time.
The TV news report was chronicling world reactions to the previous day's events. Everywhere, more and more numbers of terrified, God-fearing people were polarizing into pro-Jeza or anti-Jeza alignments. Increasingly, the majority of Jeza supporters were rallying around the rising flag of the Messianic Guardians of God. Meanwhile, the opposition was dominated by their staunch archrivals, the Guardians of God. As the report elaborated, the current crisis was affecting all aspects of global society. The commerce and government of nations were crippled, falling apart, drifting, as many people simply canceled life, hunkered down and girded themselves for the coming unknown.
Reports on the Vatican Secret Archives were all over the tube. But, as Feldman soon figured out, most of the purported exposés turned out to be bogus—rehashes of known Vatican scandals dating back centuries and masquerading as new revelations. Stories of papal intrigues: mistresses, illegitimate children, secret marriages, homosexualities, pedophilia, murders, graft and assorted corruptions. On and on.
Feldman pointed this out to Anke with irritation, and Anke looked at him quizzically, surprised at his uncharacteristic level of emotional involvement.
At last, Feldman's remote control found a channel with the report he was seeking. This was the genuine article. Although not a WNN production, the report credited WNN and other networks that had been successful in smuggling materials past the Swiss Guards.
In a spirit of unprecedented cooperation, these several news media had shared their spoils of precious information, assembling the scattered bits and pieces of the archival puzzle for a clearer, although incomplete, picture of Jeza's revelations. Feldman and Anke watched intently as, once again, Hunter's camera traveled down the musty halls of the Vatican Museum, chasing Jeza through the massive bronze doors of Bramante's Corridor while the announcer revealed the findings:
“… penetrating the veil of the mysterious, forbidden Secret Archives of the Roman Catholic Church. Records previously hidden from all eyes but those of caretaker monks sworn to lifetime vows of silence, now exposed to the world for the very first time.
“This first series of documents,” the announcer explained, “is a collection of records detailing a portion of the Vatican's vast financial holdings.” And a number of accounting sheets were displayed in succession, with specific entries emboldened. The Italian was translated into English across the screen.
The columns displayed the assets of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See—the Propaganda Fide. The viewer was taken quickly through the numbers, arriving ultimately in a bottom line of trillions of lire. Once this figure was established, the huge sum was converted to U.S. dollars and displayed at the top center of the picture. This financial figure was captioned “Vatican Assets” and remained on the screen as a running tally while the report moved on to investigate other records.
Next came an analysis of the portfolio value of the Vatican International Bank, the Instituto per le Opere di Religione. This body of stocks, bonds, securities and notes also turned out to be substantial. But even more astounding was the production of a receipt substantiating large stores of gold bullion stockpiled by the Vatican at the U.S. Fort Knox depository. The fabulous sums were added to the previous number.
“It's tike a telethon,” Feldman observed.
Turning to an analysis of the Church's corporate holdings, the announcer apologized for the incomplete data, which nevertheless provided enough end-of-year financial statements to document trillions more lire in assets. The tally at the top of the screen grew ever higher.
Moving on, the announcer presented a compilation of financial records from thousands of Catholic dioceses, bishoprics and cardinalships around the globe; records of the Vatican's worldwide ecclesiastical and nonecclesiastical real estate holdings that the Church had systematically and quietly accumulated over the millennia through third-party purchases, private donations, estate bequeathals and charitable gifts.
Next came an even more startling revelation. A fascinating account of a long-standing, on-again, off-again, direct and indirect involvement with the Sicilian Mafia. Cited were specific, significant financial contributions made by la Cosa Nostra through the years, which were demonstrated to have been accepted knowingly by the Church.
But, as the announcer pointed out, this odd-couple relationship grew more problematic. “In a 1988 internal report from the Vatican Prefecture for Economic Affairs is the disclosure of major financial fraud involving several disastrous investments of the Vatican Bank.
“It's shown that during the 1980s, the cardinal secretary of the Vatican Bank served in a personal capacity on the boards of several Italian companies in which the Vatican had majority holdings. Owning sizable shares in two of these companies, and known to the Vatican at this time, was a Mafia-controlled entity called Finia C.C.”
The report went on to explain how the Vatican had allowed Finia to pool their collective holdings for the purpose of acquiring shares of international companies through bulk stock transfers. Later, Mafia financiers manipulated these holdings into a complicated foreign exchange pyramid scheme in a hostile takeover attempt of the ailing insurance firm International Fidelity Trust of New York.
Ultimately, the venture ran afoul of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But the Vatican, alerted beforehand by a sympathizer in the SEC, sounded the alarm to Finia, which then divested the conglomerate of all relevant holdings before the investigation became public. The unfortunate companies and individuals who acquired the problem holdings, however, were left with massive losses and tangled legal actions which continued to this day.
The reporter concluded this account by displaying a compromising Vatican file of dates and financial figures, including the names of Mafia individuals involved in the illegal transactions.
The revelations continued.
More records showed that, near the end of World War II, the Vatican had accepted from Nazi Germany many important art objects and other spoils of war. Included in this trove were more than 139 master paintings, extensive collections of valuable jewelry and miscellaneous rare antiquities, rightful ownership of which was never questioned by Curia officials.
“Until now,” the announcer expounded, “all of these valuables were presumed lost or in Russian hands. As detailed in these Secret Archive records, however, this priceless art collection is now known to reside in the private repositories of St. Peter's Treasury.”
And on the topic of St. Peter's Treasury, more disclosures. An incomplete cataloguing of some of the Vatican's prized collection of modern masterpieces: oils by Matisse, Chagall, Gaugin; watercolors and drawings by Klee, Kandinsky, Moore, Dalí and Modigliani. All told, over eight hundred signed works by more than two hundred fifty of the world's most renowned and accomplished artists. And beyond this, a fabulous wealth of statuary, tapestries, rare furnishings and artifacts of inestimable worth.