“You need our huge depository of eggs, and we need you, Dr. Sehgal. Now tell him, Laurent,” Meyer insisted. “Tell him how many dedicated Demanian women in our ranks have made this possible. Tell him.”
“Well over ten thousand, I believe,” Laurent said, as if reading from a script he had rehearsed. “They come from all over the world. As you know, Dr. Sehgal, we need such a large number of eggs given the failure rate for cloning insemination.”
“All this sacrifice, and a Demanian woman is not good enough for the task, Dr. Sehgal?” Meyer’s face began to turn red with fury.
“I have nothing against your women,” Sehgal said. “But if I understand Demanian ways, they have all been violated, have they not? There are no technical virgins.”
“As is their wont, Doctor,” Meyer said as he cranked up the volume on his amplifier to provide the emphasis his voice could not. “Don’t proselytize to me. Just who do you propose to use as this Christian virgin surrogate, if indeed you can find one of age in this world? It is a wild-goose chase, and you know it. You will come crawling back to me.”
“Leave that to me, Mr. Meyer,” Sehgal said. “I am sure there are devout virgins who would jump at the chance when it becomes clear what role they will play.”
Laurent felt Sehgal had no idea whom he might find for this special surrogate, but he was impressed with the stubbornness he displayed with Meyer.
“All right, then,” Meyer said. He waved his arm in the air as if he had checked a box on an imaginary list before him. “If you insist on the fairy-tale version of virgin birth and all of that, so be it. Like I said, you’ll be back for a willing host when you’ve failed. Let’s get to the more important issue our partner, Laurent, says you have raised. What about the child? Who is to care for the child?”
“I will reluctantly agree to joint custody,” Sehgal said. “But I want him raised in India, where he can do the most good for as many as possible until at least the age of eighteen. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”
“I’ll leave them!” Meyer said as he spun the volume-control knob on his machine as loud as it would go. His synthesized voice was ear-shattering and vibrated the glass walls around them.
“Fine,” Sehgal shouted as he rose from his chair to leave. “Best of luck in your quest, Mr. Meyer.”
“Wait, wait,” Laurent protested. “We have come this far. We are so close.” The end of his obligation to Meyer was within sight, a moment that would not likely come again. He would lock the door to prevent Sehgal from walking out if he had to.
“Easy for you to say, Laurent,” Meyer countered. “You have a son. I made that possible. Now this man comes here with a plan to deny me mine?”
“He said ‘joint custody,’ Hans. Joint. Surely you can live with that?” Laurent pleaded.
Meyer folded his arms and paused for what seemed to be an eternity, obviously bitter about the ultimatum. Sehgal rose from his chair and moved toward the door as he prepared to leave. Laurent got up to block his path.
“All right, then,” Meyer said reluctantly, the resignation in his voice apparent, even in monotone. “Joint custody.”
“Then we have a deal?” Sehgal asked as he turned and moved toward the table to extend his hand.
Laurent looked at Meyer and carefully studied his eyes, the same lifeless ones Laurent had grown weary of after two years. He knew it was at moments like this when the voice machine on the table robbed a listener like Sehgal of being able to detect nuance or true intent. It provided Meyer with a distinct advantage. Laurent was certain Meyer was using the machine to lie through his teeth, but there was nothing Laurent could or wanted to do about it at this point. His commitment to Meyer was nearly complete, and no force in the world could stop where they were headed.
“We have a deal,” Meyer said as he smiled. “Now let’s remake the world.”
CHAPTER 9
Turin, Italy
June 2014
Sehgal was not usually one to remember his dreams when he woke, but during the first night in his hotel room in Turin he had the same strange dream that had been repeated over and over, and this one remained with him.
It always began in a church confessional, one he didn’t recognize. He was a young boy, and he kneeled on one side of the booth in the dark. The only light came from a small, worn, yellow plastic screen just inches from his face. On the opposite side of the booth sat his father, in the role of the priest and confessor. The screen between them masked their identities, but he knew from the sound of his father’s voice that he was there.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he rushed to say. “It has been too long since my last confession.”
The young Ravi, happy to know his father had returned from the dead, anxiously awaited his blessing. He couldn’t wait to end the charade. All he wanted was to go to the other side of the barrier to give his father a hug and be taken home. Instead, his father’s voice was stern.
“Ravi, have you examined your conscience? What have you made of yourself today?” his father demanded.
“I have won a prize, Father,” Ravi proudly said.
“Yes, Ravi. But this is a place to confess. You are alive, and I am dead. Why am I dead, Ravi?”
Ravi began to cry.
“For this, I am truly sorry, Father.”
“What good are you? You know your mother is dead too?”
He desperately tried to touch his father by pressing his small fingers through the holes in the screen between them. It was impossible.
“There are many here with us, Ravi. There will be many more. Now what will you do with your prize?”
“I will create the baby Jesus, Father. I will bring him back to live again.”
“And you will save us? All of us, Ravi?”
“Yes, all of you,” Ravi cried.
Ravi awoke from his dream unable to move. He felt as though there were another presence in the room, as if someone were watching and pressing the weight of his body deep into the bed. He lay perfectly still and prayed for a dreamless sleep and the light of the morning to come.
CHAPTER 10
Krakow, Poland
June 2014
Domenika had planned to visit with her parents in Krakow for three days on the way to her assignment in Turin, and she was convinced her stay, as usual, had lasted a day too long. She loved her parents dearly, but her visits with them were like stepping into a time machine. Though Domenika had just turned thirty-one, her father had a way of treating her like she was fifteen again. And then there were the constant comparisons to her younger sister, his favorite, who had gone abroad but not returned in years.
“Domenika,” he said in frustration, “I’ve told you and your mother a thousand times that your sister, Joanna, will put you up in New York. You are wasting away inside that museum.”
“You are the only person I know who refers to Vatican City as a museum,” Domenika replied. “Please. It is the Holy City, the home of our Holy Father.” The cuckoo clock on the wall behind them ticked and tocked incessantly, and louder than she remembered as a child. It was as if it were setting a tempo for their conversation.
He slammed his massive fist on the dining room table, rattling the china his wife, Julianna, had so carefully set in place for their Sunday dinner.
“How about listening to this father, your father, for once, Domenika?” he urged as he reached for his tumbler of vodka. “Your sister is earning thousands of dollars every time those magazines take her picture, and you are every bit the beauty she is.”
“Dosc! That’s it!” Domenika’s mother pleaded. “Can we not have peace for just this moment? Her life is at the Vatican, where it should be. And she is leaving for Turin tomorrow. Let us enjoy our meal before she is on her way again.”
Domenika turned away from her father and stared out at the scene framed by the large corner window of her family’s modest fifth-floor apartment. The rectangle formed a magnificent postcard view of the Grand Square in th
e ancient Polish city of Krakow. It was her favorite time of day. The summer sun was close to setting over St. Mary’s Basilica and lit the city’s magical skyline in pale hues of orange and pink. Shadows of nearby buildings had begun to steal their way across the busy outdoor cafés below her. Off in the distance, she could hear cathedral bells toll the eight o’clock hour. The trumpet sound, heard for centuries from the taller of St. Mary’s two towers, would be next. She quietly counted and, just as she expected, the famous trumpet blast blared forth precisely at her count of eight. She felt she had timed the lag between the bells of the distant cathedral and the horn of St. Mary’s ten thousand times since she was a little girl.
Domenika had grown up in Krakow, and she knew the city as a comfortable village with narrow cobblestone streets and great, wide-open squares. A romantic, candlelit place by night, Krakow was large enough to be endlessly explored but small enough that one rarely lost one’s way, even as a child. She seldom passed anyone whose name, or whose cousin, she had not known for years. Domenika smiled and turned toward her father.
“Papa,” she said softly as she looked toward a cover of Cosmopolitan magazine her mother had framed and placed on the credenza in the apartment’s cozy living room, “Joanna is beautiful. She earns the kind of money she does because she likes being a model. I don’t have her looks, and I am perfectly happy with my work in Rome.”
Domenika had been born at the University Hospital of Krakow, within sight of St. Mary’s Basilica. Her father had chosen her name because it meant “belongs to the Lord” and raised her to love God and the Church with her whole heart. Her middle name, Maria, was in honor of the Virgin Mary, and her familial name of “Jozef,” meaning “God shall add a son,” was viewed by the family as an omen. Unfortunately for her father, the prophecy of a son was never to be realized. Between the two daughters, Domenika bore the brunt of her father’s criticism.
From her early years, she was a stellar student and became the first in her family to go to college, and the first woman ever to receive a prestigious scholarship to the Vatican’s Gregorian University. The rumor was that the pope had personally chosen her from a pool of thousands of qualified applicants. No doubt she had a first-rate mind. But as the cardinal of St. Mary’s Parish for years, the pope had known her since she was a young woman and had been deeply impressed. She was knowledgeable to be sure, but he had seldom heard a child speak so eloquently from the heart and with such courage of conviction for her faith.
She went on to earn master’s degrees in theology and communications and graduated at the top of her class. Her academic gifts were surpassed only by her musical ones, and she was invited to play violin with the Rome Symphony Orchestra. After graduation, her professional opportunities were wide-open, and most thought she would pursue a career in music. However, she was intrigued by the internship she had taken with a public relations firm that helped publicize the plight of AIDS victims in Rome. Flush from a successful fund-raising event she had designed and overseen, she accepted an internship with Edelman Italia PR.
Edelman, the largest public relations agency in the world, had been hired by the Vatican years earlier to help manage the multinational media and legal fallout from the child sex-abuse cases exploding in the United States and Europe. Domenika was both fascinated and repelled by the work they did to contain the damage. When she was offered a full-time position on the damage-control team, she found herself torn. She wanted the job but struggled with the terrible acts they wanted to defend. On the one hand, she recognized the need to distance the Church from the human sins of an evil minority. On the other, she found it hard to forgive the pattern of cover-ups and neglect from the Church’s hierarchy and its disregard for the victims.
After several weeks of reflection, and some prodding by her mother, she resolved to take the job. Part of her decision stemmed from pride. She was the only woman on a list of a dozen others considered qualified for the post, all of them men. She believed in her heart there was not another who could more capably stand by the Church and defend it, regardless of gender. She threw herself into the role offered to her as deputy communications director of the Vatican Incident Response Team. Cardinal Luca Ponti, charged by the Holy Father to manage the global crisis, had sat through several strategy presentations she had developed on managing the crisis. He too saw what the Holy Father had recognized. He admired her passionate defense not only of the Church but also of the pope’s strong support of punishment for those who were guilty of covering up the heinous acts of child abuse in the first place. This, in turn, led to her eventual and unprecedented hiring for the role by the Vatican as a special assistant for public affairs. The position suited her well.
Domenika looked over at her collection of high school track-and-field medals. Next to the picture of Joanna on the cover of a fashion magazine, her mother had placed a picture of Domenika as she was performing a solo at Rome’s Oratorio del Gonfalone concert hall. Domenika remembered the moment well. Her mother had taken the photo before she could turn from the lens, which was her natural instinct when cameras were around. While Joanna was certainly a stunning model, many had told Domenika that her father was right. It was often said throughout Krakow that Domenika’s beauty outshined her sister’s. They talked of her almond-shaped, emerald-green eyes, her sharply sculpted cheekbones, and her noble nose. Her mass of auburn hair glowed in the sunlight like a halo and curled wildly about her shoulders.
Domenika herself didn’t see it, which is why her boyfriends were few and far between. She cared little for those who cared only for looks. Looks were temporary things, and the comments about her beauty only embarrassed her. She cared for books, stories, and strange languages that spoke of faraway places, places she would one day visit and write home about. Most of all, Domenika had learned to love God and all of the mystery that surrounded her faith. Catholicism was the very essence of Krakow, the place Saint John Paul II had called home.
“Such a waste,” her father said, setting his tumbler back down.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Domenika said as she stirred her tea and cast her eyes downward to avoid his glare, “you won’t find me living in New York City because I can’t stand Americans!”
“And what, Domenika, have they ever done to you?” her father said. “I say God bless them. God bless their President Ronald Reagan. God bless New York City. God bless them all.”
“Papa,” she replied patiently, “Ronald Reagan is dead. He’s been dead for years.”
“Well, God bless him anyway; he was a saint even if he wasn’t Catholic. Just what is it with you and the Americans? They fought with us against the Germans. They helped bring down the Russians.”
Domenika’s mother intervened again. She came to the table and pressed a plate of herring and vinegar, her husband’s favorite appetizer, against his chest.
“Franka, let the girl speak, will you?” she asked as she unfolded a napkin across his lap.
“Papa, I have visited Joanna twice in New York,” Domenika said. “I had my fill of them there. And then there are the usual throngs of exchange students from America who believe they own the streets of Krakow each spring. It’s their attitude of entitlement I don’t care for.”
“Yes, the same attitude that helped us defeat the Nazis, that threw the Russians out, that helped secure our freedom, Domenika,” her father said.
“It’s arrogance, Father,” she said. “They strut about the world with such confidence, as though they own it. If they desire something, they buy it, never mind the price. They know little about a subject? No matter, you will hear their opinion anyway. Life is difficult? They will invent a technology to fix it. Have enough of your family? Get a new one. Tired of one faith on Sunday? Find another more suitable to your liking on Monday. Honestly, I have no use for them.”
“Oh, please, Domenika,” her mother intoned. “Whatever you do, don’t get your father started again.”
Domenika watched her mother retreat to the kitchen to avoid wha
t she knew was coming next. Here comes the storm, she thought wearily.
“Let me tell you something about faith. Our own Catholic faith,” her father said. He hissed the words as his face grew redder and his manner more agitated. “Now, I believe in the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. I believe in his Jesus Christ, his only begotten son—”
“Papa,” she stopped him. “I know the Apostle’s Creed. We all know the creed. You don’t have to recite it here. I know where you are going with this; it’s the same place you always go.”
“What?” he said in a whisper. “Are you worried that I am going to criticize today’s modern Church? The same modern Church that has convinced my daughter that the shame it has brought upon itself, its fascination with little boys, is something that can be explained away by you or anyone else? It is sinful, Domenika, sinful that the Church is paying you to whitewash its sin.”
Domenika knew the vodka was fueling his fury as he pushed his point. There was nothing he loathed more than the smugness of the Church about its systemic abuse of innocent children. He was tormented by its refusal to be humble in the face of the grievous charges, and it rankled him to his core that his daughter was a paid shill in its service. As much as he loved his Church, he was infuriated by the way it had disgraced the rules of God. Domenika had heard it many times, and always felt the familiar feeling of letting her father down. He tapped into her own misgivings about her role in the smoothing over of the tragedy.
“Papa, please believe me. I know that my work for the Church and what you have read in the papers when I have defended it has upset you,” she said, fighting the welling of tears in her eyes. “But we must stand by the Church. You have told me that ever since you carried me on your shoulders to St. Mary’s. It has made some terrible mistakes, but it needs our devotion now more than ever.” She knew her words sounded rehearsed, but she meant them.
Her mother returned to the table with a large, steaming platter of pork and potatoes, only to see her strong-willed daughter on the verge of tears.
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