“What motive would we have?” the doctor asked. “Come with me, please,” he said, leading the way into an adjacent room. With Lori and Alex behind him, he went down a corridor for a short distance, and entered an office.
Opening a desk drawer, Zakheim brought out a clear plastic bag filled with jewelry and other personal articles. As Lori accepted the bag from him, her heart sank when she recognized her mother’s jade ring, gold necklace, and a monogrammed cigarette lighter.
“I wish it were not true,” Zakheim said.
“So do I,” Alex said. And in an icy voice, he added, “I lost my mother, too, a long time ago. Dixie Lou Jackson may have given birth to me—or that could be one of her many lies—but no matter what, I don’t consider her my mother.”
“We have one more thing to tell you,” Alex said. He left for a moment, and when he returned he was accompanied by three young men and two young women. As they stood in the office, he introduced them by name, including a redheaded food service worker named Mila Bennett.
The very serious-looking Bennett appeared to be in her early twenties, and she quickly took charge of the room. The others seemed to defer to her.
“You’ve been vocal about how the UWW has been mistreating the children,” she said, to Lori. “And we have a solution.”
“We’re taking a risk telling you anything,” Alex added, “but life is about taking chances, to one degree or another.”
“Our resident philosopher,” Bennett said. “Lori, when you and Dixie Lou arrived, an explosion blew up a rail line.”
“I remember,” Lori said. “She was very upset. You did that?”
Bennett nodded. “Originally, we wanted to break the stud knights out, since they’re no more than sex slaves.”
“Not all of them want to leave, though,” one of the men said.
“Some do,” Bennett insisted. “In any event, we have a more important cause now, since the she-apostles arrived. We’re going to rescue the children, get them out of here, out of the hands of those crazy Dubbers.”
“That’s what we call the UWW women,” Alex explained.
Bennett continued. “Maybe the children really are reincarnated apostles, and maybe they aren’t. No matter, we need to get them in the hands of more responsible people. Not these religious fanatics.”
“I’m with you,” Lori said.
“We hoped you would say that,” Alex said. He clasped her hand in a new form of friendship and camaraderie.
Chapter 20
Jesus Christ was generous, loving, forgiving, brilliant, and filled to overflowing with the spirit of God Almighty. The earth has never seen anyone who even came close to matching the influence of this Savior who walked among us.
—Lori Vale, from a dream
The subterranean conference room featured mirror walls and liquid crystal picture panels projecting morning views from topside. Styx sat at the head of a gleaming oval table, with Minister Culpepper on his right and the Vice Minister of Finance, Tommy Lee Chang, on his left. The rest of the large room was empty.
Waiting for Chang to distribute copies of his report, Styx watched a panel embedded in the mahogany table top as it changed, displaying the location of known UWW paramilitary squads, as well as those controlled by known UWW allies. He wanted to attack all of them at once and take them out, but the Minister insisted on a more careful approach, since some of his advisers felt they might be traps.
“Aren’t you going to begin?” Culpepper asked, in a raspy, irritated voice.
Startled, Styx looked over the first page of the report. The Minister was having him run this meeting, as he did frequently, saying he wanted to make certain Styx learned how to lead. Actually, Styx thought, the old man was just lazy. He should retire, but hung on stubbornly instead.
“Highlight this for us, please,” Styx said, to Chang.
“Just give us the bottom line,” Culpepper interjected. “Has everyone paid?” He was referring to a Special Funding Request that the Bureau had sent to all of their supporters around the world.
A Chinese-American who was a whiz with figures, Chang began nervously. “Well, we got another two hundred million from the Spanish crown and triple that from the British Parliament. The American Congress approved three billion in secrecy, and the Pope has agreed to . . .”
Culpepper half rose out of his chair. “I told President Markwether four billion.”
“He said he’s working on it.”
“The man’s a weakling and a fool,” Culpepper snarled.
Styx chewed on a fountain pen. “We should get rid of him,” he said in his high voice, with a dangerous edge to it.
“Next election.”
“Sooner would be better.” Styx meant by assassination.
“Now don’t be too anxious,” the Minister responded, in a paternal tone that Styx found particularly irritating. “You can’t go around flying off half-cocked.”
Styx rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, reminded himself to be patient. Eventually his time would come, and then things would be violently different. He wouldn’t coddle people the way Culpepper did, wouldn’t play politics with them. They would do exactly what he told them to do, without hesitation.
* * *
Consuela Santos rode the old bus as far as her pesos took her, to the Pacific coast of Mexico in the state of Jalisco. It had been noisy and smelly the whole way on the clattering, dented vehicle as it traversed rough mountain roads, carrying animals, produce, and families with children. She was thankful for the camouflage of constant commotion. Several times a day, whenever her baby nuzzled against her, she opened her blouse and allowed Marta to suckle the warm milk from her breasts. None of the other passengers paid any attention.
In a seaside fishing town, the bus came to a squeaky, jarring stop, and the driver pulled a lever to open the front door. Consuela, who had been seated near the rear, awaited her turn and stepped off onto the unaccustomed luxury of a concrete sidewalk, in front of a freshly painted white stucco bank building. Cradling her baby in her arms, she stood by the immense plate glass window of the bank, gazing in at well-dressed people as they conducted transactions with tellers. With all they had, their lives seemed separated by a universe from the possibilities open to her. They were merchants and fishermen and farmers and domestic workers. There were even some who looked like tourists, dressed in shorts and bright shirts and blouses. In sharp contrast to all of them, Consuela and her baby had nothing.
“Are you all right, dear?” a woman inquired.
Startled, Consuela turned to see a mestizo woman in a tattered black and red dress, with a charcoal gray shawl wrapped around her head, covering most of her silver hair. Her face was deeply creased and weathered, but her eyes remained clear and bright nonetheless, as if this impoverished Indian, despite hardships, was able to see a side of life that Consuela could only imagine.
“I don’t have much,” the woman said, removing a few centavos from the pocket of her dress. She extended the money to Consuela.
“Oh no, señora, I couldn’t.”
“Do you want to eat?”
In her arms, the six-month-old Marta whimpered, and Consuela knew that she would have to eat so that she would have at least minimal nutrients, enabling her baby to nurse at her breasts.
Accepting the coins, Consuela murmured, “Gracias.”
As the woman adjusted her shawl and left, Marta babbled more of the strange, unintelligible words.
At a tiny store on a dirt side street, Consuela purchased tortillas and beans, then found a doorway in an abandoned building where she could eat. She crouched in the shadows, out of the direct heat of the sun.
* * *
During her first hours in town Consuela surveyed the citizens, and noted a number of foreigners of lighter skin who appeared to be Americans or Europeans. The village seashore, lined with weathered fishing boats, was picturesque, she had to admit. Rich people came to this place, which gave her an idea.
Just outside of
town, at the end of a chuckhole-filled driveway, she found what she was looking for, an isolated stucco house with an unlocked
bedroom window. The home sat on a knoll and might have offered a fine view of the aquamarine sea, if not for jungle growths in the way. This led her to believe that the owner either rarely came around or had abandoned the place. Entering through an unlocked window, she found the interior quite dusty and overrun with mice and fat cockroaches, and noted a newspaper that she couldn’t read, except for the year-old date. Basically illiterate, she nonetheless had a good understanding of numbers and simple calculations, which had been taught to her by an uncle years ago.
In a large storage room off the kitchen, she located cans of food and tins of crackers. A box of cereal and several soft packages of soup were infested with cockroaches, so she threw them in a garbage hole she’d dug outside in the yard, at the perimeter of the property. Since she couldn’t read or write she saved all of the packages and cans that had been opened, as a method of keeping track of her debt to the people who owned the house. She was not a thief, and was only protecting her baby.
The light switches didn’t work. At the back of the house she experimented with various settings on an electrical panel, but to no avail. Soon she began to clean the house, and washed the curtains in a nearby stream. In this way she felt she was earning her room and board, almost as if it were a real job.
The ample brick-floored kitchen featured a wood-burning stove with a cast iron top for heating pans, but she didn’t dare use it during the day, for fear of smoke that could lead to her being discovered. So, over ensuing days, Consuela only lit the stove at night when she thought no one would notice.
In the food storage room she noted several large steel drums, and opened them. They contained uncontaminated grains and corn meal, perhaps for making bread, and in one she found a large quantity of salt, which she theorized may have been used for curing fish.
To ward off evil spirits, she sprinkled a thick line of salt all around the bed where her baby slept. She also borrowed red votive candles from the local Catholic church (intending to pay for them when she could), and lit them each night, after carefully covering the windows so that no light escaped. In a dresser drawer she located a necklace with a gold crucifix on it, which she shortened by knotting the chain, so that it could be hung about her daughter’s neck . . . a further effort to thwart the evil ones who wanted her baby.
As each day passed Consuela felt a little more secure in her squatter-abode, and harbored faint hopes that perhaps she might live here for several months or longer, hiding Marta for as long as possible, so that no one could hear her strange, dangerous talk. In this idyllic retreat, Consuela also wanted to remain until she got her bearings and found a way of earning a living. She kept the premises spotless, and organized the labels and empty food containers meticulously, to record the items she had consumed. She intended to pay all of it back and return the home to its owner in better condition than it had been when she’d found it.
Chapter 21
There are several signs of demonic possession. One is to speak in a strange tongue, a language that is not of the person’s experience.
—The Rites of Exorcism, a Roman Catholic handbook
Midnight . . .
Fear washed through Lori as she slipped down the stone staircase, just behind five shadowy figures: Alex Jackson, Yonney Zakheim, Mila Bennett, and two men whose names Lori couldn’t recall, each of them dressed in dark clothing. The group moved with urgent purpose, and Lori felt instilled with the feeling that she had to do this, no matter the danger. Wearing only a thin black blouse and jeans, she shivered.
At the bottom they slid furtively along a wall, not walking boldly through the corridor. The two women carried pistols, while the four men had automatic rifles.
Overhead, electric lamps flickered on and off, casting eerie shadows. The wall of the passageway was moist against her arm, and bore the odor of mildew tinged with a chemical, perhaps something that had been sprayed on it to kill the growth. Somewhere she heard rainwater running through ancient gutters, a familiar sound to her now.
Glancing back, she thought she saw movement in the shadows behind them, and whispered a warning to Alex, just ahead of her. He passed the information forward, and Mila called them to a halt.
“What did you see?” Mila whispered, moving close to Lori.
“I’m not sure. Maybe it was a trick of my eyes, or of the light. I thought I should mention it.”
“You did the right thing.”
In her pocket, Lori closed her fingers around a small handgun. Glancing back, she didn’t see anything now, and neither did her companions. Cautiously, they continued forward.
* * *
“We’re almost there,” Alex whispered to Lori. He hoped that it wasn’t a mistake to bring her on this important mission. In these catacombs, ghostly shadows and unexplained sounds had a way of playing tricks with the mind. Some people said the spirits of the dead haunted the remote mountain, the revenant forms of monks who had dwelled here in centuries past. Over the years there had been numerous sightings and strange noises that people tittered and whispered about, but always with a nervous edge, as if they weren’t quite certain.
Normally Alex and his companions might have taken the rail car for a short distance, but they couldn’t risk it this time, because of the chance of discovery. The operation had to go smoothly, on a tight schedule. They had to coordinate with other people coming from different directions, converging on the exact same spot.
Ahead of him, Mila picked up the pace, while Alex thought back to earlier in the evening, when he had met with the others, including Lori Vale, the newest member of their clandestine group. . . .
* * *
“Tell me again what she said to you,” Yonney Zakheim had said. The paunchy, bespectacled man had been leaning across the rectangular table in his own studio apartment, glaring at Liz Torrence, a computer programmer who was the niece of a councilwoman. She’d been sitting next to Alex in an apartment that was a windowless room, used in centuries past by cenobite monks.
A slender young woman with the long, elegant fingers of a piano player and green eyes, Torrence had responded, “But I’ve already told you. Jen said she wasn’t feeling well, that she was going to consult with one of the musers.”
“Those old men?” Zakheim had said. “What do they know?”
“She thinks the monks know things, ancient healing methods. They do trace back to the original inhabitants of this monastery.”
“And no one here has seen any sign of her since?” Zakheim had then asked, looking around at everyone except Lori, who didn’t even know Jennifer Aldrich. “Doesn’t it bother any of you that she knows our complete plan and no one knows exactly where she is? What if she turned us in to Alex’s mother?”
“What if Alex is a spy for his mother himself?” Liz Torrence said. “What if, what if? If we worry about everything, nothing will change around here. The children will never be rescued from those crazy women.”
Others had been seated with them at the table: their leader Mila Bennett, strangely silent; Dan Rhodes, a muscular laborer; Siana Harui, daughter of another councilwoman; and Christine Brickowski, whose older sister was one of the Scriptorium scholars working on the Holy Women’s Bible.
“At least Jen doesn’t know when we plan to make our move,” Siana Harui said. She had short black hair, and a small bone structure like her mother. “We’re deciding on that right now.”
“She knows enough,” Zakheim said. “She knows all of our names, and what we intend to do. It doesn’t ring right. Why isn’t Jen here?”
Torrence heaved a deep sigh. “You worry too much.”
“I don’t like it. I just don’t like it.”
“Jen did look feverish, and her face was sweaty.”
“I hope it wasn’t nervous guilt,” Zakheim said.
“You’re always so paranoid,” Torrence snapped. “Every one of us is sick of i
t.”
“So you’re all against me, is that it?” His eyes feral, Zakheim looked from face to face.
“No one’s against you,” Bennett said. She placed a reassuring hand on the doctor’s arm. With the man’s coat off, Alex saw the shoulder holster he wore, and the composite pearl handle of a pistol. Nearby, a black automatic rifle leaned against the wall. The other men, including Alex, had similar weapons, and every woman—including Lori—concealed a pistol in her purse. All of the guns were constructed of new ceramics and plastics, and could be folded into innocuous shapes, making them undetectable by surveillance equipment.
“I say we make our move tonight,” Bennett said. “If we delay, it only increases our chances of being discovered.”
They had split into two groups, approaching the target from different directions. . . .
* * *
Thinking back on the meeting, it troubled Alex that no one had located their dark-haired companion Jennifer Aldrich, that she wasn’t participating in the operation. A rail car maintenance employee, Jen was in a key position to cause serious disruption to the Monte Konos transportation systems, and had successfully sabotaged the rail lines twice without being caught.
Now Alex and his companions hid in the shadows of the corridor beneath the Scriptorium Building. Through a high-arched doorway, a guard station was visible to them in a pool of illumination, and beyond that, the bullet-proof glass doors of the living quarters of the she-apostles.
Alex glanced around nervously. A little ahead of schedule, they had several minutes to wait for the next guard shift to take over, the women they had paid off. A short distance down the corridor, on the other side of the guard station, he saw movement along the wall, and a light that blinked once. The rest of the rescue team.
“Everyone is ready,” Mila Bennett said in a subdued voice, remaining in the shadows.
Lori moved closer to Alex. “I’m not afraid,” she whispered.
“I know that. You’re tougher than I am.” He checked the clip on his automatic rifle, snapped it back into place.
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