The Sixth Station (25 page)

I could see the old priest nod his head to Cesur from the corner of my eye.

“With a steady grip on the Baby, I dipped my index finger into the holy water that the priest held in front of us.

“I placed a finger into the Baby’s mouth and recited the traditional naming prayer of the Akan people of West Africa.

“Then, directly to the Baby, I cried exuberantly, ‘You are Demiel!’ At that the Baby seemed to look up—even, unimaginably, part His lips in a smile.

“I almost forgot myself, held the Baby higher again and again. ‘Let’s drink to Demiel!’ I shouted. ‘Son of the Son!’

“Then the two chalices were passed among us, and we all swallowed deeply and kissed one another on both cheeks.

“Paulo, that scum, however, scowled. He was pissed that the wine’s peak moment had passed and he’d missed it. A taste he’d waited all his life to experience.”

I heard him sniff beside me.

“Grethe headed back into the house, while I stayed outside with Paulo and uncovered the high-resolution telescope I’d designed. Gazing through the lens, I could see what the blinding star didn’t yield to the naked eye.

“It was perfectly symmetrical. The sides of the star would, if folded in half, match up perfectly, something that could never occur naturally. But then again, was there anything about this night that had occurred naturally? I began taking photos through the lens. I had no idea whether the star was visible all over the world to any naked eye—or just to us, just in this little spot on Bülbül Mountain.

“I turned the telescope over to Paulo and walked back inside, assuming my role as bodyguard. I put on and then adjusted my shotgun and bandolier across my chest. To an outside observer it would have been difficult to tell who was in charge at any one time, as our roles seemed to change constantly. But to those on the deep inside, none of it was random. It was all, in fact, a perfectly coordinated dance, with no missed step, no toe stepped upon, no matter how many appearances to the contrary. Not so far.

“But that would be consistent with everything here—where nothing was as it appeared. I shut tight the second set of purple velvet blackout curtains.

“I then lit several other candles—still a strange sight in a room buzzing with the quiet white noise of high-tech medical equipment, three hungry laptops—created way before the time that such a thing was even possible to consumers—constantly being fed with information from the portable satellite dish, and, of course, the sleeping Girl and the newborn Infant.

“Sister Grethe went over to the Girl’s bedside just as the priest—almost on cue—walked back inside and picked up the Infant with the expertise of a man who’d fathered legions of them. Which of course he had.

“As he held the Baby, the nun slipped on surgical gloves and then gently manipulated the Girl’s engorged nipples until the first drops of breast milk—colostrum—the yellowy, thick, sticky first milk—appeared.”

Needless to say, unsettling for me to read these words about a little girl from a grown man to whom she had been “betrothed.”

“The Baby began sucking immediately, while the Girl continued to sleep, seemingly unaware that she was nursing the most extraordinary Child in nearly two thousand years.

“As calm settled over the house, and as Sister Grethe and Father Paulo were finally ready to get a few hours of sleep themselves, the alarm in my headset went off.

“We had been breached.”

23

I stopped reading and looked up at the priest. “My God! This reads like a sci-fi thriller!”

“I can assure you, Miss Russo, it involved a lot of
science,
but it is
not
fiction.”

Just then our plane touched down so smoothly I hardly felt a thing. Or maybe it was because I had been so completely thrown back in time that my head was in a whole other place.

We deplaned at a small private airport and hurried across the tarmac and into a waiting car. The priest informed me that the car we were in was armored. “Secure against bullets and hopefully anything else they can throw at us.”

“Who is ‘they,’ may I ask? And where the heck are we?”

“Need to know, Miss Russo, need to know…”

“
I
need to know. If I’m going to be shot at, trust me, I need to know.”

“I can only say there are forces—black forces—who put Demiel into this position and who, frankly, need to take you out of the equation.”

“Me? Why
me
?” I looked out the window and decided to come clean.

“And, ah, this is weird, okay? But I think I blew up a car and, along with it, the, ah, one of the ‘black forces.’ At a rest stop in upstate New York.”

He laughed. “Do you think one explosion would eliminate an entire group thousands of years old?” He laughed again.

“Pardon? Sorry, but the joke escapes me right now.”

“Shall
I
continue the readings?”

Not sure he’d not edit as he went along—taking out any unflattering references to himself—I picked up the book and continued, as he anxiously shifted in his seat, trying to read over my shoulder.

“The inside of the house was instantly thrown into darkness. In seconds, the automatic lockdown gates slammed into place, and then the infrared emergency lights came on, casting a glow to the ancient walls of clay bricks and stones. It was all working perfectly.

“We three assumed our positions as smoothly as if we’d been choreographed by Balanchine. Grethe remained at the bedside; I moved toward the chapel room; and Paulo headed toward the cache of weapons.

“Theotokos stirred in her sleep, so Grethe kept Demiel steady at her breast.”

I looked at the priest at that point. Damn! He was talking about the little New York City girl who’d been abducted in 1982. Somehow I kept reading without gagging.
Monsters!

“I retrieved my thermo-controlled binoculars and Browning M2 .50.

“I carefully made my way into the other room—the chapel—and knelt at the small brick-arched window, slipped the binoculars between the panels of the velvet drapes, and pressed a code to release a tiny opening into the two-foot-thick stone wall and a corresponding hole in the outer metal lockdown gates. It was the modern equivalent of an ancient arrow slit.

“Sixteen satellite TVs built into the floor and flush with it had also already automatically flipped open and were lit up, feeding information into the laptops.

“‘We’ve been breached! Hold your positions, and don’t move. Die in your spots if you have to,’ I ordered.

“I surveyed the mountainside from the window and from the monitors, looking closely and magnifying every inch of the area, around the Fountain of Health, the Fountain of Wealth, and the Fountain of Happiness. Nothing moved. My headset blared a warning signal into my ears again.

“Wait, was there motion on the far side of the old walnut tree?

“Nothing.

“I surveyed the ruins behind the house—what was left of the original monastery, a Templar stronghold during the fifteenth century.

“I looked down to the old cistern located between the house and the parking area. Nothing.

“That’s when I heard the footsteps, at least three sets of them. The intruders were neither running nor creeping; the steps were the leisurely paced footsteps of men—definitely men—in leather-soled shoes hitting the stone walkway in front of the house. They were close enough to attempt an attack on the Infant.

“Yet the cats lazing in the tree, which were particularly skittish, surely would have scampered away at the first sound of human footsteps. They were still lazing in the early dawn. What the hell was going on?

“The footsteps were getting closer. Soft-soled, probably Italian leather shoes, I surmised. Very good shoes on one of the intruders. Possibly sandals on another.

“The sacred site had been closed to visitors for over a year now for ‘renovations and refurbishing,’ and so it was theoretically impossible to breach.

“Then the beeper in Paulo’s vestment pocket began to vibrate.

“Sister whispered frantically, ‘Yusef! Yusef! Headquarters!’ Paulo slowly pulled it out—careful not to put the gun down nor inadvertently turn it toward Theo and the Infant.

“Only Headquarters had access to the beeper, which meant they were still, of course, watching us, guarding us, but nonetheless the possibility that we had been ‘made’—and, more important, that the greatest experiment in two millennia may have been discovered—was terrifying to the other two. To me it was much more personal.

“‘Who?’ I whispered as loudly as the situation would allow. ‘What do they advise?’

“‘What does it say? I can’t make it out.…’ Paulo said, holding the beeper up.

“‘Wake up, please, Theo.…’ Grethe whispered, shaking the Girl. The methadone had done its job. In a former time Grethe would probably have been a monk or a nun working in the herbarium of a cloistered order, but today she was a defrocked Catholic nun and board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist with a vast knowledge of modern medicine.

“We all had worked too hard, the experiment was too perfect for Headquarters to have allowed a breach.

“Grethe stroked Theo’s forehead, and the Girl opened her eyes halfway.

“After what seemed like a lifetime, Paulo called out, ‘No breach! They say to proceed.’ Then, ‘Damn! I’ve lost it.…’

“‘Tend to Demiel,’ I ordered the nun. I was there to protect the Girl and the Infant, but these two suddenly seemed frozen in fear. If I could have, I would have put a bullet into each of them. Nothing was as important as the Experiment. Another transmission beeped in.

“‘No breach! It says no breach,’ he choked.

“‘Are you sure?’ I whispered back. ‘Impossible. Bring it to me.…’

“I assumed the fool was so scared that he’d forgotten how to interpret the Phoenician lettering (which had been applied to an obscure form of Aramaic circa 600 BC).

“‘Please, Yusef, don’t do anything drastic. It says there was a power failure in Ephesus,’ he said, bringing the device to me where I was crouched at the window. ‘That’s what caused the problem!’

“‘Thank God. He’s safe!’ Grethe cried, carelessly raising her voice to a normal level again.

“‘Keep your voice down! We are not safe! I am in command and I
will
kill you if you do not assume your station,’ I threatened, now not completely trusting Headquarters over my own instincts. Father Paulo made the double sign of the cross in thanksgiving. In many ways he was worse. She was a woman—and shouldn’t have been given the assignment in the first place. This was a man’s job.

“Then through my headset I heard the footsteps begin again. Distinct, sure, unhurried.

“The bitch, ignoring my orders, placed Demiel back in His sleeping Mother’s arms, putting both the Baby and the Mother directly in harm’s way.

“Just then we heard the unmistakable harsh metal-upon-metal sound of the steel lockdown gate lifting up. Next the bolted, titanium-backed, bulletproof front door opened easily and smoothly.

“‘Dear God!’ screamed the nun. She gasped with one hand over her mouth, the other hand pointing toward the front door.

“Three men stood in the doorway with their arms out. The blinding light glinted off something metal they each held in their hands.”

The car came to a stop, and he motioned for me to put the book down. When I didn’t respond, he shut it for me and rested his bony hand on mine in some sort of fake beatific pose.

Cesur got out, punched in a code, and a locked gate swung open. The sign on the opposite side read
MERYEMANA.
This is the child Theo’s middle name
and
the name of the supposed mother of ben Yusef!

I looked at the priest quizzically, and he said, “It means, ‘Mother Mary’s House,’ the last known dwelling place of the Virgin Mother.”

“Oh, I see.”

“It’s the place where nineteen hundred and eighty-two years later Life Eternal was reborn.”

“Oh. But I don’t see.…”

As the big black car slowly made its way up the hill, I stretched my neck to see out the windows. What I saw, as we passed, though, was a little souvenir shop, locked up, but with the front still displaying wooden “icons,” tchotchkes, rosary beads, snacks, and even cheap “religious” jewelry items.

Hail Mary full of bracelets.

We drove a bit farther and unexpectedly, a shiver ran up and down my spine and tears sprang to my eyes when the Meryemana came into view.

Here it was, the tiny abode made entirely of stone, looking just as it must have looked two thousand years earlier: solid, serene, and solitary. Not a soul was anywhere to be seen.