The Sixth Station (23 page)

“Blood?”

He snickered, shaking his head. “No! We don’t drink blood. Not literally. It’s not what you think. Believe me,” he said and took a swallow of the wine.

“This blood,” he said indicating the test tube, “is the blood … different from all other blood on earth—except for the ‘source blood’—the blood from which it came.”

“Source blood. Right.”

“Yes. This is the blood of Demiel ben Yusef. It is not human blood. It will match only to the blood of Jesus, the first Son of our Lord God!”

“And how do I know that—I mean for sure? That it matches Jesus’ blood?”

“Find the source blood, find God. Have them both tested before it’s too late. Only a laboratory in this golden age of science versus belief can prove to the enemies of God Himself that this is no human blood!”

“I’m sure they’ve given him blood tests—Demiel, I mean.”

“I’m sure they have, too. That’s why they want to kill Him!”

Oh, crap. More Holy Grail nonsense.

More than a bit annoyed, I challenged him: “Listen, I can’t find the Holy Grail. I just want to find out who killed your friend Father Sadowski and get the cops off my back.”

“Yes, tragic, that. He was a good soldier. Never wavered in his commitment. He could have confirmed it for you. But you need to find the proof.”

“Listen, you supposedly cloned a baby from blood. Where did you get it?”

“Only Grethe knew. And, well, that’s impossible.”

That name again.

“Who is that exactly?”

“She was a nun. But she was also Headquarters’ finest obstetrician. A painter of icons. All of those things. But most of all she was a geneticist, born to it, really, but to perfect her science she worked at it day and night. Could have won the Nobel, but Headquarters would never have let her submit, of course. She,
we,
had to remain above suspicion.”

“Headquarters? You mean the Vatican?”

He sneered and spat.

“You’re a Catholic priest, aren’t you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Well, if that’s off-limits, then tell me where to find this Grethe.”

“Oh, long dead. Such a shame, really.”

“When did she die?”

“I don’t know. We were all separated after the birth took place. Forbidden to contact one another. But I heard about her untimely passing some years later. Terrible loss to science.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“I can’t believe she lived. She became a real problem. Headquarters, you see, felt it was imperative to re-create the first birth as closely as possible in modern times. That, you see, is the actual meaning of ‘resurrection’—that Jesus could return one day. Literally, ‘blood made flesh.’ And so His blood has been kept hidden for over two thousand years. Some was taken for the Great Experiment, but that was all that was ever taken. As far as I know.

“She was fairly young at the time. In her early thirties. But you see, she refused to fully give up the child to its mother and appointed father. Always trying to find them, always trying to interfere. I would have loved to have been the one to school the boy, but Headquarters did not want us to continue once we completed the Experiment. So I didn’t, but she kept at it. Too many renegades in this situation. I always felt it was Headquarters’ only failing.”

“Headquarters? What does that mean exactly?” I asked again.

He ignored me again. “No, I don’t believe she died of natural causes,” he chuckled. Chuckled! “I’m afraid she had to be eliminated.”

That word again! If nothing else, they
are
consistent.

“Or,” he continued, “she would have caused a world of trouble. Always trying to track the boy and his family. No, it wasn’t acceptable behavior, even if she did make
Him
possible.”

“So they killed her?” I asked, totally aghast.

“Don’t play the innocent with me, please. It doesn’t dignify your position.”

“I don’t have a position.…”

“I’m afraid that, yes, indeed you do. Whether you like it or not.”

“Did any one of you think that perhaps the nun thought of him as
her
child? I mean, if she’s the one who ‘made’ him from a hank of hair and a piece of bone, wouldn’t she have been more his real mother than a twelve-year-old kid who was just chosen as a carrier?”

I had to get up and walk around the room, which was becoming more claustrophobic by the second.

He reached out and took my hand and asked me to sit with him again, which I did, but very reluctantly. “She was thirteen when she gave birth.”

“Oh, brother.”

“You will know what to do when the time comes—and Ms. Russo, or do you prefer Alessandra?”

“I prefer a vodka. Do you have one?”

“No, but I have some very,
very
fine wine,” he said, pulling another hit from the pipe. He gestured to Cesur, who brought another bottle and a decanter to the table like one of those obsequious waiters in a tourist-gouging European restaurant.

Paulo poured the La Tâche—probably worth several thousand—very carefully into the decanter and let it sit a moment as he excused himself. I thought he might be going to use the lavatory, but instead he expertly wound his way to the back through the miles of piled-up carpets and slid aside a curtain to reveal a wall safe.

He asked to see my passport.

“No—I prefer not giving it over to someone standing in front of a safe, thank you very much.”

He laughed gently and said, “O ye of little faith…”

Not that again. Can’t these guys come up with anything more original?

“Okay,” he said, “then read me your passport number.”

“Well, I don’t have my passport. I have this
other
one on me.”

“Perfect,” he shouted, practically jumping for joy.

I pulled it out and read the endless sequence of numbers and—voilà!—the whizzing sound of the safe electronically unlocking began.

I could see in the dim light Jacobi removing a diary-sized leather-bound book.

He walked back to the table, laid it on the altar cloth, opened it, and said, “This will not always be flattering to me, I’m sorry to say, but I was suffering then from the sin of vanity, I know. Please understand. I had been chosen for a great task, and I assumed, of course, that because I had been chosen from all other men, that I was different from all other men.

“I have since learned I was no better, only fated.”
Sure.

He began reading:

“Recorded December 25, 1990, 2:30
A.M.

“We have returned to the place of His birth. It is time to once again see where it all happened and to fulfill my promise to finally record it all as I experienced it.

“March 26, 1982, House of the Virgin, Selçuk, Turkey.

“It was over, and I was crying.

“As I lay in the bed in the tiny, ancient two-room stone house, surrounded by candlelight and machines, I kept repeating over and over almost like a mantra that could soothe me, ‘Can I go home now? Please, may I go home now?’

“But the mantra didn’t soothe me, didn’t help me. In fact, I was becoming more terrified and agitated by the second. The worst—the physical part, the dangerous part, the giving birth part—was over, but still the other three couldn’t console me.

“I was clutching the sheet and looking around wildly for my mother, who wasn’t there. Who had never been there—not in this place.

“They all knew that if they didn’t do something, anything, to calm me down, I might hemorrhage—or even, God forbid, harm the baby somehow.

“They brought Him to me in an attempt to get me to breast-feed.

“I turned abruptly away from them and pressed myself against the wall, a shock for the others who’d planned it all out so well. I felt as though my baby was something monstrous and foreign to me.

“‘Get away from me!’ I cried. ‘Stay away from me! He’s not my baby, and you know it! He’s not my baby!’

“My will was simply no match for my body, and I flopped back down, defeated. My long red-brown hair was matted to my head from having been through such an ordeal.

“As I drifted away in my mind, I could see the nun retreat, cuddling the Baby, but she was clearly confused and, I later learned, more than a little frightened herself.

“‘Blessed One! Turn, look at your beautiful boy.…’ the nun implored me.

“The older of the two men, the priest, a forty-year-old renegade American Roman Catholic cleric, moved in closer. He then gently pushed the nun aside.

“‘Take the Baby to the trough. Try the bottle. Please,’ he directed her. ‘Try the bottle—it has the special formula,’ he said in a way that wasn’t so much a request as a command.

“The nun, a thirty-five-year-old woman, did as she was told, holding the Baby and retreating into the far corner of the cold room. He was her superior and therefore had to be obeyed.

“My future husband, who was also in the room, moved to the other side and seemed oblivious to the commotion around him.

“The young man chosen to be my betrothed was an armed mercenary. His address was whatever it needed to be anywhere he needed to be in the world and was subject to change without notice, as I would later learn.

“He was almost forgettable in his looks, as he was bred to be and as he had worked hard to become. But he was a dangerous creature, and that always lay right beneath the surface. Sandy brown cropped hair, six feet tall, hazel eyes that saw everything but showed nothing. Mostly he didn’t look like what he was: deadly.

“On the stone bench lay his stash of weapons—two semiautomatics, hundreds of rounds of ammo, and one rapid-fire machine gun.

“Not exactly ‘Silent Night,’ was it?

“The priest came to my bedside and tried to take my hand, which I yanked away as hard as I was capable of doing. I stiffened when he tried to touch my shoulder.

“‘Get away! Get away from me!’

“He grabbed my hand and said in barely accented, upper-crust American accent, ‘Please, Blessed One. You are doing God’s work.’

“‘No! I’m not going to do it. I want my mom. I want to go home! Please, when can I go home?’

“At that, my future husband looked up.

“‘What is she on about?’ he asked. ‘You better give her the damned drugs before she brings the world to the door with all that whining.’

“Yes, this was the blessed event that had been in the making for almost two thousand years!

“The priest, almost always in command, was becoming somewhat alarmed himself. He’d exorcised demons, he’d presided at miracles, yes, but he’d never been charged with anything remotely like this. But then again, no one ever had.

“The priest stood up from my bedside, exhausted, somewhat beaten down and a bit resigned and removed a pill from his vestment pocket and handed it to me.

“I struggled to get out of bed, knocking the pill to the floor, and managed to roll away from the spot where I’d been lying, which was now sticky with blood from the strain.

“The priest motioned to the nun, who, though chastised, rushed into the other tiny room where the chapel was located. She was back in seconds with a hypodermic needle, and the priest held me down while the nun shoved the needle into my arm. It was methadone, which they swore was safe for nursing mothers.

“I became so drowsy I couldn’t fight it any longer. I didn’t even want to, actually. The nun wheeled the IV over and inserted the needle into a vein, looking terribly worried.

“She quickly removed the blood-covered white linen sheet with the skill and speed of a battlefield nurse and replaced it with a clean and starched one.

“I was just a child myself—kidnapped from New York City; a thirteen-year-old whom they’d said had been bred one day to bear the Second Coming.”

The priest put down the book and then put his head down upon the table and wept, great heaving sobs that held a lifetime’s worth of—I didn’t know what—guilt, sorrow, loss?

When he composed himself—Cesur had brought him pristine white linen handkerchiefs with which to soak up his tears—he said, “Forgive me. I have not been permitted to read this before today.”

“The author?”

“Why, the Blessed Mother herself! The Mother of Demiel ben Yusef,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Not a story, but a report. Miss Russo, what we have been privy to
is
nothing short of the new gospel.”

“Yes, I assumed it was the girl who gave birth, but who is she?” I thought I knew, but I wanted it confirmed.

It was another question that hung in the air unanswered.

“Let me ask you something else then. Where is the girl and this soldier now?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Perhaps they’ve gone back to where he lived as a young boy. In Carcassonne, France. But I doubt it. He was no good.”

Then he waved me away. “I am very, very tired and need to pray on all of this.

“Mr. Cesur will see you to your hotel.” Father Paulo stood up creakily, dismissing me with, “Until tomorrow, or should I say later today, then?”

I was thinking about the horror of their crimes: kidnapping a child and, worse, somehow impregnating her.