Dressing hurriedly in white pants and a white shirt, he went outside and washed his hands in a laving basin near the tent, then laid down his prayer rug and knelt in the shade for his first prayer of the day, facing east toward Mecca. To make up for the time he had been asleep, he spent extra time communing with Allah, asking for God’s infinite mercy upon his pitiful mortal soul.
As he finished, Malia appeared. “I am so pleased that you are feeling better,” she said.
He started to stand up, but wavered, and she helped him to his feet. “Guess I’m not as strong as I thought,” he admitted.
She supported him by one arm as he walked back to the tent. There she served him a meal of falafel, hummus, and wheat pocket-bread, with a bottle of warm beer. Afterward she left him alone, suggesting that he get more rest. Instead, he went to the laptop computer and switched it on.
Within fifteen minutes, after reviewing news reports, he had the full text of the Holy Women’s Bible in front of him, casting an amber glow in the half-light of the tent. The cover page said it was an Arabic translation of the original English version. A whistle escaped his lips as he read on and learned that the new book—released only a few days ago—had already been translated into virtually every living language in the world. Technology amazed him.
He scanned the Gospel of Martha, the last of the book, which asserted that Jesus had twelve female apostles and an equal number of male apostles. The “she-apostles” were named, and some of their long-ago family members as well. A number of the women, according to the text, tried to warn Jesus about the treachery of Judas, but Jesus wouldn’t listen, a fateful decision that led to his execution.
The Bedouin leader read the last pages, the final lines of verse. Taking a deep, agitated breath, he gazed through the open doorway of his tent toward the bright sky. Criminal women had written this . . . liars who did not believe in Allah the Magnificent. Something more troubled him. He scrolled through the screens, couldn’t figure out why. What was he looking for?
Pausing, Rashid closed his eyes and tried to think, struggling to remember something that had barely tickled the edge of his consciousness. At the fringe of his awareness his fingers moved, as if in possession of a mind of their own.
When he opened his eyes he found himself staring at the answer: a series of tiny hieroglyphics across the bottom of the last page, including an Arabic anagram of Malia’s name. The Holy Women’s Bible had originally been transmitted from her e-mail address! The flaw in her computer program had not been repaired yet.
But she is not Christian!
Rashid was certain of this. There was no more devout Muslim woman than his favorite wife.
The western women are liars . . . full of devilish tricks. What have they done to my Malia?
His heart grew cold. An arctic wind blew through his soul.
He called Malia in, and when he pointed to the hieroglyphics on the screen she began to shake. “What have you done?” he thundered.
“They didn’t tell me what they were transmitting. I didn’t know.”
“Where are the infidels?”
She pointed with a long, slender finger. “Beyond the rock outcropping, in two camps. They arrived in four aircraft, which are camouflaged.”
“How many women?”
“Around thirty adults, plus children.”
“The she-apostles,” he muttered.
“Yes, my husband.” She omitted some details, particularly the rift between Lori Vale and Dixie Lou Jackson.
“Get away from me,” he commanded, raising a threatening hand toward Malia, “for I do not wish to hit you.”
“I’m sorry, my husband. I didn’t know.” With her head lowered in shame, she hurried from the tent.
In a matter of seconds Rashid e-mailed the police in Tripoli, the nearest city. Within five minutes he received a response. The police were on their way. He was ordered not to contact anyone else.
* * *
Inside her camouflaged helicopter, Dixie Lou and her council sat in seats that had been swiveled into a simulated conference room.
“Maybe Katherine was right about Martha,” Deborah Marvel suggested. “This is trouble.”
“How did that guard know Martha wasn’t a she-apostle?” Dixie Lou demanded. Her wilting gaze settled on Nancy Winters, who looked away. “Who do you suppose she overheard talking in a tent?”
No one volunteered a confession.
“Maybe your son had something to do with this,” the heavyset Bobbi Torrence suggested. “I only mention it because he’s missing.”
“Perhaps I should have drowned him at birth,” Dixie Lou mused.
“He has behaved suspiciously,” Bobbi said, “ever since that Lori Vale showed up.”
“Now they’re both gone,” Deborah said. “And good riddance.”
“I was lenient with Alex,” Dixie Lou said. “In fact, I’ve been lenient with a lot of the people around me.” She glowered around the compartment, added in a low, menacing tone, “Two of you aren’t as loyal as I had thought. Maybe we should get by with a smaller council.” She stood up and removed the Sword of She-God—sheath and all—from a bulkhead bracket behind her.
“This is no time for us to squabble,” Marvel said. “We need to put all of our heads together—for damage control.”
Dixie Lou grasped the sword by its jeweled hilt and unsheathed it, revealing the gleaming steel of the exquisitely tooled blade. Intricate designs were worked into the steel.
“It sounds to me like the guard should be executed,” Nancy suggested, “but we’re short-staffed.”
“With rookies,” Dixie Lou muttered. “Just our luck.” She held the blade surface close to her face and peered deeply into the distorted reflections of its surface. Her eyes took on a wild, insane cast. “As for the guard, she has already been dealt with.”
The women murmured nervously among themselves. Opening a window for air, Dixie Lou heard the agitated voices of her inexperienced guards outside, hyperactive from the events of that afternoon.
“There is much to work through,” Dixie Lou said.
“We will need to be more vigilant,” Bobbi Torrence added.
Hearing the increasing noise of aircraft, Dixie Lou peered out a porthole, and beyond a waving flap of desert camouflage fabric she saw an approaching air squadron, darkening the sky.
Aided by Malia and her makeshift Arab technology, Dixie Lou had sent coded messages to operatives around the world, instructing them to take precautionary actions through narrowly defined chains of command. With the Holy Women’s Bible published, Dixie Lou had felt it necessary to take this additional risk. She couldn’t remain out in the desert indefinitely, had to reach out and let them know where she was, and ask them for military assistance. In a few moments she would know the results of her gamble.
“I have something bold in mind to gain public support,” Dixie Lou said, noting the agitation of her councilwomen as the aircraft noise increased. “Remain seated, please.”
Nervously, Dixie Lou replaced the sword in its sheath and wall bracket. During the moments remaining before the arrival of the airborne forces—which she hoped were friendly—she quickly sketched a plan to her council that had been fomenting in her mind, one their adversaries would never expect and would keep them off-balance.
“That might work,” Deborah Marvel said, after listening to her commander’s ideas.
As Dixie Lou listened to the comments of the other councilwomen she noted that they were, like Deborah, being extremely careful in their choice of words. Dixie Lou’s proposal was bold, but none of them dared oppose it. Everyone was too afraid of her. Exactly the way she wanted it.
And they only knew part of the plan . . . the part she wanted to reveal to them.
Emerging from the makeshift conference room, Dixie Lou breathed a sigh of relief as she saw seven black VTOL gunships on the ground, their tilt-rotors spinning. More were landing nearby, disgorging armed UWW commandos in pale gold uniforms. She recogn
ized two of her female officers as they ran across the sand from their gunships—disguised aircraft that bore no UWW markings.
* * *
But another squadron of aircraft rose over the desert coastline south of Dixie Lou’s camp, four brown police helicopters and a military escort of eight more. In the lead craft, Police Commander Raoul Tirez, in charge of the assault, was startled at what he saw. Hundreds of troops on the ground, unmarked aircraft taking off and landing. Who were these people?
Orange tracer fire skimmed his windshield, and Tirez heard an explosion, one of his companion craft turned into a fireball.
“Turn back!” he shouted into a hand-held radio. He was attempting to send a message back to the city of Tripoli when a missile tore through his helicopter. In less than a minute, all of the Libyan aircraft had been destroyed.
Part Two
THE SHE-JUDAS
Chapter 16
For the indignation of the She-God is upon all nations of men, and her fury upon all their armies; she hath utterly destroyed them, she hath delivered them to the slaughter.
—Isaiah 34:2, as amended in the Holy Women’s Bible
During the arrival of the UWW military force and the battle against the Libyans, Dixie Lou made her move. “Hurry, hurry!” she exhorted the councilwomen, guards, translators, and matrons—and the one child they had to watch among them.
In the midst of it all, Deborah Marvel stuffed her own things into a pack. She didn’t have much in the way of possessions, just a small travel bag and a toiletry kit grabbed hurriedly during the escape from Monte Konos, along with a paperback novel that had been given to her by one of the pilots.
Angrily, Dixie Lou hurled a rock at a burly female soldier she didn’t think was working quickly enough to gather up camp supplies, hitting her squarely in the chest. The woman, who had dark facial hair and a scowl set deeply into her features, quickened her pace.
Carrying her pack and camp supplies to the command helicopter, Deborah grimaced, but knew to keep her opinion to herself. For years she had been Dixie Lou’s staunchest ally, voting with her at council meetings almost all of the time—believing in Dixie Lou’s vision for the UWW and for the welfare of women. As a reward for this support, Dixie Lou had promised to make her second in command in the UWW, the most powerful of all councilmembers and answering only to the Chairwoman herself.
But Deborah was beginning to wonder if she had made a Faustian bargain, if she had sold her soul to the devil. Dixie Lou had changed for the worse since replacing Amy, and had become increasingly brutal. The way she left Katherine Pangalos and five other councilwomen back at Monte Konos—all women with a history of voting against Dixie Lou in council matters. Hardly a coincidence, and they were probably all dead now, in the BOI military attack. Deborah also didn’t like the way Dixie Lou treated the she-apostles, using cruel forms of persuasion on them.
For now, Deborah was committed, though she would keep her eyes open.
She saw the fires of downed aircraft out on the desert. The Libyans had not sent enough firepower, at least not this time. Something exploded in the distance, and everyone hurried into the UWW vessels. Moments later Deborah was airborne, sitting with Dixie Lou aboard the command aircraft. Through the porthole the troubled councilwoman saw the blinking lights of scores of planes and VTOLs, all sleek and black in an assortment of shapes.
Inside some of them were children who had been brought along at Dixie Lou’s command, in all a dozen females around the ages of the authentic she-apostles, including the phony Martha of Galilee. They were human props to be used by the Chairwoman in the next stage of her plan.
Human props, Deborah thought, agitated by this. Am I one as well?
Sitting alone in the forward section of the passenger compartment, Dixie Lou was working on a speech, looking at herself in a mirror attached to a seat-back and using a recording cube to play back her own words. The speech, at least the parts Deborah overheard, concerned the creation of the Holy Women’s Bible and the “glorious” future of women. But the Chairwoman seemed to be in an even edgier mood than usual, and made a number of rude remarks to her aides and councilwomen, who subsequently tried to avoid her.
* * *
As the aircraft lifted into the afternoon sky, the Arab woman Malia came into Lori’s camouflaged camp, and said it was Dixie Lou leaving with a large UWW force. Malia also described the battle with Libyan forces. Lori’s first reaction was that this freed her up to take off herself without being detected, but she wondered if it could be a trick.
“Where is Dixie Lou going?” Lori asked, noting other Arabs milling about at the edge of the camp.
“North,” Malia said. “Out over the Mediterranean.”
“Toward Europe? But why?”
“I’ve brought someone who might know,” Malia said, nodding toward the robed people who had accompanied her.
At a gesture from Malia, one of the group stepped forward and tossed back the hood of his dark gray robe. Lori did a double take, then squealed with delight as she made the recognition.
“Alex!”
They ran to each other and hugged. She felt the hardness of the young black man’s muscles, lifted her lips to his and they kissed. Behind Alex, she saw Liz Torrence and Siana Harui, and she smiled at them. Crying out with happiness, Fujiko rushed to her daughter. “My baby! My baby!” Fujiko said.
“And you’re a baby, too,” Alex said, grinning at Lori, “still too young for me.”
“But now we have a chaperone,” Lori said, glancing over at Rea Janeg, who was serving a plate of figs and dates to the she-apostles, food that had been brought to the camp by nearby villagers. “She looks pretty tough, eh?”
“We’ll need her,” Alex said, giving her a playful nudge.
“How did you get away?” Lori asked, watching the little towhead Candace holding a fig, chewing around the edges of it.
“We ran off when they weren’t looking. The Arabs found us this morning.” Lori saw him gazing at the departing aircraft. She could barely hear their engines and rotors.
Alex updated her on the events in the other camp, including the conversation he overheard between Deborah Marvel and Nancy Winters, and how they did not like the idea of a fake twelfth she-apostle, because it could severely damage the UWW cause by discrediting it. He also told Lori he didn’t know where his mother was going, but said, “At last we’re free of her.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I have a bad feeling.”
* * *
Lori knew that she could not remain in the desert any longer, not after the battle in which Libyan aircraft were destroyed. Soon the authorities would be crawling all over the place, searching for evidence, making accusations.
But she had another important decision to make. Which direction should she go? Rea Janeg had assured her that the helicopter—with its long range fuel tanks—could still fly a considerable distance. Rea even drew a radius on a map, showing how far they could go with their remaining fuel. If necessary, they could fly to Spain, Germany, Turkey, or south into the heart of Africa, as far as Lake Chad.
While considering the options, Lori spent time that evening with the eleven she-apostles. Together, they walked out on the sand beneath the starlight, a short distance from the helicopter.
As one, they paused and formed a line, gazing to the north, in the direction the UWW aircraft had taken. Lori stood in the middle, with five children on one side and six on the other. As Lori knelt and held hands with the toddler Mary Magdalene and the baby Abigail on either side of her, she remembered what the latter had told her three days ago: “To speak the special tongue of the she-apostles you must learn to think without words. . . .”
All of them linked hands. Moments passed, and without the exchange of words, the answer came to Lori. She would leave first thing in the morning and follow the same route, across the Mediterranean. They were going to Rome.
Afterward, when she returned to camp and separated from the children, Lori had
her doubts about the decision she had made. It had not been at all logical; in retrospect she could think of many reasons to take an entirely different route, getting as far away from Dixie Lou Jackson as she could, finding a safe place for the children. But that portion of her brain, with its capacity for sound reasoning, could not see into the realm where she needed to find such answers.
The whole concept of safety is an illusion, she realized.
* * *
For several days, Raffaela and Arsinio Inez had been vacationing, a welcome respite from the rigors of their professional lives. Time and time again, however, their conversation turned to the young peasant woman staying with them, and her most unusual child.
“We need to consult with someone on this,” Arsinio said one day, as he and his wife stood at the living room window, gazing out onto a tropical, sunlit yard. It was late morning, with the moisture of recent rains evaporating from the broad green leaves of plants, forming a mist over the jungle. “You know some people at the university who should be able to offer good advice.”
She shook her head. “We need to be extremely careful about this. Let’s just assume for a moment that she’s right.” A woman who did not mince words, Raffaela was brilliant, with a unique ability to identify and hone in on important points. “Just think about that for a moment.”
“All right.”
The baby was asleep in the guest bedroom while Consuela was out with the boys at the beach, where they were teaching her how to ride a surfboard. For the occasion, Raffaela had taken the young woman into town the day before and purchased a swimsuit for her. Consuela had never owned one before, but said she knew how to swim, since she’d grown up near a lake where she’d gone swimming nude with other children. In the swimsuit she had looked quite lovely, with a pleasing figure. Gilberto and Jose had been only too happy to act as her beach escorts.
The Lost Apostles Page 13
