The Sixth Station (26 page)

As we opened the car doors to get out, a white peacock scooted past the car, and for a second I honestly thought it was an apparition. The priest patted my hand. “Just our resident peacock, not the Ghost of Christmas Past,” he joked.

A laugh a minute this guy.

We stepped out of the car, and fighting the crazy feelings that were beginning to overwhelm me, the reporter in me still managed to ask, “So how do you know this was
really
the place the Virgin Mary lived out her last days? I mean, no disrespect, but isn’t this sort of like the Holy Grail of houses? And in Turkey of all places.”

“O! Ye of little faith!”

“You’ve already tried that one on me.…”

Paulo looked at me, shook his head, and began walking toward the house.

“It must be very difficult to live without faith, to not believe in God.”

“You are wrong, Father. I
do
believe in the
concept
of God—just not the execution.”

Damn. Had I just said “execution” to a man who had a cross around his neck?

I sped ahead. “I mean, what I think is that there have been many great evolved beings—Moses, Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed, for example. They wanted everyone to know the truth, that one doesn’t need riches or golden cathedrals or
any
cathedral in which to worship. They wanted us to know that life is what we ourselves create. I believe that we get not just what we want but also what we
fear.
We draw to us that which is most on our minds. You don’t get what you deserve in life, you get what you
think
you deserve,” I said, surprising myself that I’d unload my inner beliefs to this creepy stranger.

“But—”

I cut him off. “No, wait, did you ever have a friend who was a hypochondriac and feared getting cancer and then lo and behold, he
got
cancer? Or on the good side, there were always girls in high school who weren’t the prettiest, the funniest, the whateverist, but they always had all the boys chasing them because they just
believed they deserved it.
Again, you call it upon yourself.”

He looked at me. No doubt about it, you could only call his look “bemused.”

“Your life plays out the way you expect it to, on some unconscious level.”

“You think, then, that I always wanted to be the man who helped facilitate a world-changing event?”

I stopped, looked at him, and spread my hands out with a big smile on my face. “You’re kidding, right? You aren’t exactly a, er—how do I say this?—a modest guy?

“I think your subconscious put you exactly where you thought you deserved to be when you were there doing what you claim you did.”

“Not claim, Ms. Russo—
did.
”

I went on. “Anyway, I’ve thought this whole God thing out over my whole life. I’m not as ignorant as you think. It’s just stuff I always knew, even as a kid. Anyway, I figure that when the evolved beings slash prophets died—”

He cut me off. “One
was
resurrected … twice.”

I let that pass and continued, “Okay, but anyway, after the prophet was no longer among the living
humans,
the followers always ended up fighting among themselves to keep the truth that the prophet had taught them from the people. And as far as I know, the followers and/or the followers’ followers, who then took over, generally always went on to build giant golden cathedrals in their honor. The exact opposite of what the prophets preached. No?”

He stopped short. “Why, Ms. Russo, you sound like a Cathar.”

“I do? You know I never heard of them before a couple of days ago, and now I can’t escape—”

“Neither could they,” he cut in. We continued walking up to the house. “They were the fastest-growing, not religion exactly, but Christian belief system, shall we call it, in Europe in the twelfth through the thirteenth centuries. Those who identified as Cathars disavowed
all
material things—church buildings with their golden chalices and gilt ceilings, up to and including their own personal objects, other than what they needed to sustain a holy and Christian life. They tried to emulate the way Jesus had lived His life.”

I shook my head, trying to absorb the information while feeling extremely cold in the warmth of the sun.

He looked directly at me as he continued, “The Catholic Church wanted two things from the Cathars: to secure the Cathar treasure and to wipe them off the face of the earth. It was a massive slaughter. Some accounts put the number at one million Cathars killed during the Crusades of hunt-and-destroy. A horrible holocaust perpetrated in the name of Jesus, who preached love.”

“Why Father Paulo, now
you
sound like a Cathar,” I teased back.

He laughed softly. He might have dressed as a Catholic priest, but this guy was a real rogue.

I continued: “Not that you seem to live like one! But tell me, why would people who eschewed all material things have a
treasure
?”

“That is your job to find out, I assume.…”

A horrid chill ran up my spine, and my teeth began to chatter uncontrollably—even though it had be seventy-something degrees that gorgeous day.

I unwrapped the terrible pink hoodie I’d tied around my waist and slipped into it, zipping it up tightly. The gesture did not go unnoticed. Jacobi gestured toward the house and made the double sign of the cross. And
his
gesture did not go unnoticed, either.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I changed the subject and asked instead, “So I heard the story about how John the Apostle supposedly brought Mary here to live after Jesus appointed him her caretaker as he was dying—”

“Not a story. A fact.”

He sniffed and raised one eyebrow and began walking again, and I followed, chastised. Somewhat. “And this is the region where John the Apostle ended up? But please tell me how you know that this is that
particular
house or that John and the Blessed Mother were ever even
in
Ephesus.”

The priest sat down on a small wooden bench and wiped his forehead. He was sweating—and I was freezing! I saw him take a small vial out of his black jacket and slip a pill in his mouth. He patted the seat for me to sit beside him, which I did.

“Are you all right, Father?”

“Yes, yes, old age is not, as they say, for sissies.” He composed himself and continued: “Let us start with John the Apostle, who is also known as ‘John the Evangelist’; although not everyone believes they are one and the same, they are. The Evangelist remained in Judea with the other apostles until the persecutions of Herod Agrippa I.

“At that point the disciples scattered throughout the various provinces of the Roman Empire—you can find that in Acts twelve, verses one to seventeen. It is our solemn belief that John then went to Asia Minor, where he began his mission.”

“And you know—or believe this—why?”

“Well, because a Messianic Christian community was already in existence at Ephesus well before Saint Paul ever even began his work here! According to accounts from that time, John had been the leader of that community. In fact, it was here in this city that John wrote
three
epistles.”

“But what does this have to do with the Blessed Mother?”

“John brought the Blessed Mother to live in Ephesus with him, as I said.…”

I must have looked confused. “John was Jesus’ favorite. He even called him ‘the Beloved Disciple.’ Our Lord instructed John to care for his Mother—and he gave him those instructions as he was hanging on the cross. ‘Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own
home
.’

“Yes,” I said, remembering what Wright-Lewis had said. “Gospel of John. Right?”

“Exactly! I’m impressed, Miss Russo!”

I decided to come clean. “Don’t be. I got that information just the other day from a woman—in fact it was the woman who urged me to come to Turkey in the first place.”

“Who might that have been?”

“Maureen Wright-Lewis? She was with the CIA back in the day and then vanished after being accused of being a traitor … in the 1980s?” I asked more to judge his reaction than anything else.

The reward was quick. He looked aghast and shocked.

“Still has a huge price on her head, I think. She knew who
you
were, Father, back then even if you didn’t know who she was.”

The priest nearly jumped off the bench, unable to maintain his demeanor. Standing now in front of me, he shook his bony finger at me and exclaimed, “You met Wright-Lewis? She’s alive?”

“Well, yes.” I didn’t react as he was expecting me to.

“Then trust me, she is not in hiding
or
wanted. She must still be on the company’s payroll.” His breathing started coming rapidly again, and again he popped a pill under his tongue. “And if she is alive,” he seethed, “then she is still hunting.”

“No, no, no, Father Paulo,
that
you’ve got wrong. I know that she
was
involved in the search for some kind of clone baby back in 1982. She confessed that much to me. But she thought until ben Yusef showed up that they had blown up the plane you all were supposed to be riding in—”

“Not some kind of ‘clone baby,’ as you call Him. The clone of Jesus Himself!”

“Oh, yes, ah, that’s what I meant.”

Why is it so cold?

“Your condescension is quite arrogant, you know,” he said, and then continued, as though he assumed he’d just given me a huge blow.
Not.

“They blew up
a
plane, not
the
plane,” he said, not yet regaining his composure. “It was a decoy.” He too was trembling now. I didn’t think it was from fear or cold, since the sweat was pouring off his forehead in rivulets; more like blind rage.

“Wright-Lewis is the personification of pure evil!” he raged, taking his starched handkerchief from his pocket and mopping his brow.

“I think she thinks the same about you! But anyway, whatever she was, she is not any longer. I believed her when she told me that she’s spent her life in sorrow and regret about what they’d done. She is greatly relieved to even hold out the smallest bit of hope that she
didn’t
kill him.

“She said that she now believes that ben Yusef
is
the reborn Christ, and that when he kissed me in front of the UN Building she realized that I was the one who was supposed to find the proof. She’s now even a born-again, or something like it, and prays only for the proof that she didn’t”—I felt foolish even saying it—“kill Baby Jesus in that plane.”

He looked weary and wary at the same time. Standing before me, he leaned down and looked right into my face. His face was so close to mine that I could smell his breath, and it was clear he’d had something stronger than a communion host and a sip of religious wine that morning. He said, “You listen to me carefully. Very,
very
carefully. Trust no one, Ms. Russo, not even me, if you don’t believe me. But I beg you
to
believe me. Maureen Wright-Lewis above all is not to be trusted. Maureen Wright-Lewis is a hunter!”

“A what?”

“An Inquisitor! Inquisitionist.
Inquī
s
ītiō
,” he spat out disgustedly. I remained silent. I mean, seriously, how does one respond to such a statement in the twenty-first century?

“You think that they
don’t
exist?” he asked, exasperated, as though he were addressing a complete naïf. “They, like
my
kind, Ms. Russo,
always
exist.”

“I don’t understand—your ‘kind’? You mean an exorcist?” I asked, totally confused.

“Oh, God, no! Anyway, you don’t need to understand. You just need to
believe
—even though I realize that idea goes contrary to your contrary nature.”

Then he turned slightly away before turning back again. “Will you excuse me, please?” He walked toward the souvenir stand without waiting for my acknowledgment. I could see he was making a call on his cell phone, but try as I might I couldn’t grasp what he was saying. Then it occurred to me: I had been straining to hear in English and he had been speaking in Italian. Before I could switch my brain, he’d hung up and was slowly walking back to the bench where I had been left shivering.

As though he hadn’t just accused Wright-Lewis of being an Inquisitionist straight out of the twelfth century, he took my hand and gestured for me to walk with him again.

“Your hands are very cold. Why, my dear, you are shivering.”

“Well, it’s freezing here—especially in the shade.”

“No—it’s twenty-two degrees!” I made a face and he said, “Oh, that’s about seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit. They still don’t teach that regularly in the U.S.—ridiculous.”

“Well, they do, but not when I went to school.”

We slowly headed toward the house, and he said, “So you wanted to know how we know for certain that this was the actual home where the Blessed Mother lived out her days.”

“Yes, I mean, there are nothing
but
old dwellings in this part of the world it seems.”

“Well, this particular blessed house lay in total disrepair for nearly two millennia, until it was discovered in the early nineteenth century by Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, a German nun, stigmatic, visionary, and prophet.”

“She just happened to come upon it while traveling?”

“No, no; in fact, she’d never even
been
to Turkey. The vision of the house came to her in fevered dreams. The tomb of John the Apostle is in Ephesus, too. We just don’t know where. She saw the house, knew
exactly
where it was. But the church never verified her vision. Rantings of a crazy woman.”

“So…”

“So in 1881, fifty-seven years after her death, a French priest, Abbé Julien Gouyet, decided to follow Emmerich’s visions and traveled to Turkey, where he searched for and then discovered the remnants of the house
just
as she had described it. The house, she had been told in her visions, had been built by John the Apostle for the Blessed Mother, on Bülbül Mountain near Ephesus.