* * *
Upon viewing the recording, the station manager rose from his desk and, in a loud voice, he exclaimed, “Put this on the air immediately! Mama mia! In all my days, I have never had such a scoop!”
Within an hour, he preempted all programming, and a white-robed Lori Vale appeared on hundreds of thousands of television screens in and around Rome, some in flat resolution and others in the more expensive, but highly popular, virtual reality version. She said she was speaking from an undisclosed location in Rome, Italy.
Lori addressed not just the Italian audience, for she knew that the story she had to tell was big enough to be picked up by international news organizations. For the holo-recording she looked directly into the camera, grasped a crucifix of the Savior Jesus Christ in her right hand, and in an unfaltering voice spoke to the entire world.
“My name is Lori Vale, and I’m fifteen years old. Despite my youth, a great responsibility has been placed on my shoulders, and I take it very seriously. Like millions of people around the world, I am outraged at the actions of Dixie Lou Jackson, for defiling the Vatican and taking the Pope prisoner. She has not advanced the cause of womanhood at all, as she claims. The only thing Dixie Lou Jackson cares about is herself, not oppressed females or the idealistic members of United Women of the World. While I have never been a member of the UWW, I am still inspired by the exploits of its martyred leader Amy Angkor-Billings, an outstanding woman who would not have condoned the actions of her successor.”
Gesturing to her right and left, Lori said, “Now I would like you to meet the authentic she-apostles who are here with me, not the fakes being exploited by Dixie Lou Jackson. So far, we have located eleven. One, the real Martha of Galilee, remains missing.” The camera zoomed in on the children’s cherubic, innocent faces.
Lori provided some of the background about how the she-apostles were located, and the creation of the Holy Women’s Bible, emphasizing that only one of the gospels had been falsified, not the entire book . . . and that all references to a She-Judas had been deleted, about a woman who was said to have conspired against Jesus.
The bold teenager didn’t hold anything back, not the death of her mother that she blamed on the Chairwoman, or Dixie Lou’s murder of the guard at Monte Konos, or the strange visions Lori had experienced. She held hands with two of the children, while some of the others alternated to speak ancient Aramaic on camera, repeating scriptural passages that had already been transcribed and published. Michelle Renee explained this as the toddlers and babies spoke, and translated their words.
“These she-apostles speak Aramaic,” Lori said. “The children with Dixie Lou do not.”
Immediately following the broadcast, an esteemed local professor of ancient languages telephoned the studio. His comments were played over the air live, as he gushed about the miracle of children speaking the ancient tongue so fluently. His confirmation of the Aramaic gospels added a nice touch of authenticity to Lori’s version of the story, and gave credibility to the disparaging comments she made about Dixie Lou Jackson.
Across Rome, as Lori watched the broadcast from her hidden apartment, Fujiko said to her, “You have a way with words, my young friend, a nice way of turning phrases.”
Lori nodded and thanked her, but she was thinking of something else, of the secret communication methods of the she-apostles. She saw them using it on the air, in their expressions and in the veiled movements of their lips. She was only on the periphery of their universe.
* * *
At home in suburban Washington DC, Zack Markwether leaned over his computer, reading an e-mail message from his sister, Jennifer. Fighting a bout of food poisoning from a restaurant, he had not been at the White House for two days, and had slept for fifteen hours straight. It was the middle of the morning, and he wore a blue robe over his underclothes.
“Sorry you haven’t been feeling well,” her e-mail said. “I had that myself last year, and it’s not pleasant. Please see the attachment, which I recorded for you. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the girl has the same name as your missing daughter, Lori Vale. Since she’s has been all over the news, I’m sure you’ve already seen this, but just in case—”
Lori?
Feverishly, Zack brought up the attachment, and it began to play a television program on his computer.
Transfixed, he stared at the screen. A pretty young woman in a white robe was challenging Dixie Lou Jackson, asserting that all of the she-apostles with her were fakes.
My Lori? Zack’s heart skipped a beat. His memory tried to fit pieces into place.
As he heard the girl’s voice over his computer, memories poured into his consciousness, as if a flood valve had been opened on a dam, pouring a great river of information into his skull. Unsure if this was the same person, he remembered carrying his two year old daughter on his shoulders thirteen years ago, and her infectious laughter.
He also remembered her mother, a young woman with light brown hair and a ready smile. Employed in the Pentagon secretarial pool, Camilla Vale had been one of the civilians who had passed stringent security checks. Of all the women he’d known (and there had been many), he’d never married any of them. With respect to Camilla, it may have been the biggest mistake of his life. When their daughter was almost three, Camilla gave him an ultimatum, a deadline for marriage. When he didn’t meet it, continuing to avoid commitment, she disappeared with the child, leaving Washington, DC for parts unknown.
It had left a deep void in his soul, one that had never been filled. He had gone through a series of relationships with other women following that traumatic split, but none of them had been the same. He lived a life of regret for not marrying Camilla, for not promising to care for her and their unborn child. He should have been stronger, should have tried harder to find them.
Studying the girl on the screen, with her heart-shaped face and long auburn hair, Zack wondered if this could possibly be his lost daughter, whom he had not seen for more than twelve years. Since the original broadcast was in virtual reality, he was able to obtain three-dimensional views in his computer, in color. Examining her face from several angles, he thought he saw a resemblance to Camilla in the eyes, and to himself in the nose and chin, but feared that this might only be wishful thinking.
During the first couple of years of his relationship with Camilla, they had clicked—everything had worked. Their relationship had seemed bullet-proof to Zack, filled with passion and laughter. They had the same interests, enjoyed going to folk music concerts, baseball games, and Impressionist art exhibits. There were bicycle rides, hikes into the Appalachian back country, sailing trips in Chesapeake Bay and even quiet times spent reading poetry aloud—Theodore Roethke, Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The words of a favorite Browning poem came back to him, and he murmured them, “‘Love me, sweet, with all thou art. . . .’”
He fought back his emotions as the rest of the poem came back to him, and choked him up. As close as he and Camilla had been, he hadn’t thought she would ever leave him. He had called her bluff, and had lost. According to a news announcer, Lori Vale was from Seattle. While Zack had never been there himself, this bit of information gave him a rush. Camilla’s mother had been named Lori, and Camilla had been brought up in Seattle. They had discussed her hometown often, had spoken of taking a trip there together one day.
As moments passed, Zack became more and more convinced about the identity of the girl on the computer screen. Even her voice sounded familiar, with the soft, intelligent tones of her mother.
Catching himself, he backed up and tried to rethink the situation.
From a desk drawer he brought out a color photograph of Lori taken when she was a year old, one of the few photos he had of her. Rummaging around in the drawer, he brought out another picture, this one of the toddler standing between himself and Camilla. The child was around two in this one. The shape of her face looked right, although the heart shape was more accentuated now. The eyes looked right, too.
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On impulse, he e-mailed the photo to Fred Siegenthaler, a police detective in Washington, DC. He explained the situation and asked him to do a rush projection on the baby’s face, to see what she might look like at the age of fifteen. Knowing he had to wait at least until the next morning for an answer, Zack went into the living room and watched several television news programs, on different channels. His sister was right. Stories on both Dixie Lou Jackson and Lori Vale dominated the communication networks, along with special reports on the mysterious United Women of the World.
Hearing a loud beep from his computer room, he rushed in there. To his surprise, it was a message from Siegenthaler. Bringing up the attachment, Zack stared in disbelief at a projected image that looked like a twin sister to the teenager he’d seen on the television program. There were minor differences, in the thickness of the eyebrows and the length of the neck, but the detective had told him he was more than ninety-nine percent sure it was the same person.
My daughter!
As if with new eyes, with all doubts removed, Zack saw the truth of this in the features of the girl on the screen, in the unmistakable identity markers of the Markwether family, a lineage that went back to the pilgrim founders of the American nation and to European conquerors before that. Lori had his tallness, nose, and firm chin. The eyes were lavender and widely spaced like his own mother’s.
Zack had suffered tremendous guilt over losing contact with his daughter, and in the first couple of years after Camilla disappeared with her, he had made some attempts to locate them. All to no avail, and he had given up. Now he was elated.
I can’t believe it!
In a daze, he sent a coded e-mail to his brother, the President of the United States. “You’ll have to get by a little longer without me,” he wrote. “I’m on my way to Rome.” He summarized what had happened, and then sent separate notes to his sister and to the detective.
Shortly after breakfast, Zack’s videophone rang. It was his brother calling from the Oval Office, his image projected over the secure land line. The President had been gaining weight recently, as he was prone to do from all of the state dinners. Soon, as usual, he would go on another diet and the pounds would fall off. He could gain and lose weight amazingly fast.
Zack filled him in with more details. After listening in astonishment, President Markwether said, “You can’t go to Rome!” His reddish-brown eyebrows lifted in displeasure.
Feeling his face flush hot, Zack snapped, “What do you mean?” Reconsidering his tone of voice, he added in a softer tone, “I mean, what do you mean, sir?”
On the video image a slight smile lifted the corners of his brother’s mouth, but it was ephemeral. “You can’t risk it. As a nation we can’t risk it. NATO is involved, and may take military action to liberate the Vatican. Those crazy women might even have nuclear weapons, could destroy the entire city of Rome.”
“Then I need to get Lori out of there. She’s your niece, too.”
President Markwether paused. “Even so, I don’t want you interfering with NATO.”
“Can’t you see I have to do this? Don’t talk to me like one of your staffers, Mr. President. Talk to me as your brother. I ran from my responsibilities before, didn’t marry Camilla. Now I have a chance to reconnect with my daughter.”
The most powerful political leader in the world rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His normally rock-hard, blue-eyed gaze wavered.
“You’ll have to put me under arrest to stop me,” Zack said, “or take away my passport.”
“I wouldn’t think of doing those things.”
“And you won’t try to stop me in any other way?”
President Markwether swiveled his chair and looked out a window of the Oval Office, at the perfectly manicured gardens. “All right, go,” he said, “but you know what our position is if you’re taken hostage.”
“No deals in exchange for my life.”
“Right. We won’t even return a phone call.”
* * *
“What about the accusations Lori Vale made?” Nancy Winters asked.
“Shouldn’t we respond right away? If we’re not careful, our credibility will be harmed.” The narrow-faced councilwoman sat in an ornate Vatican conference room with her peers and Dixie Lou Jackson. It was mid-afternoon.
It’s already been harmed, Deborah Marvel thought, seated across the table from the Chairwoman. Deborah wanted a way out of this, wished she could find a way to slip out of the Vatican. Reconsidering, she decided that she must be here for a reason. Fate. Being here, she could make Pope Rodrigo more comfortable, and might even find an opportunity to free him.
For several long moments Dixie Lou appeared lost in her own thoughts, then said, “Deborah, I want you to orchestrate a propaganda campaign against Lori Vale, to reduce her stature. Not that she has that much to start with, but we can’t be too careful. Portray her as a headstrong girl, with a history of past drug and alcohol abuse, and too much sexual activity.”
“That’s all true anyway,” Bobbi Torrence said, “from what she’s told others.”
“I know; play it up. Then we’ll filter other information out, disputing everything she says. In fact, write me a speech and I’ll go on the air with it tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll get started right away,” Deborah said, moving to the doorway.
“I never had any doubt of that,” Dixie Lou said, staring through narrowly slit eyes at her subordinate.
* * *
Deborah Marvel didn’t like turning against Lori, and only did so in order to keep from incurring Dixie Lou’s dangerous wrath. The councilwoman wrote the speech for her superior and delivered it to her that evening. Then, working long into the night, she set the Internet propaganda mechanism in motion. She only caught a few hours of sleep afterward.
Early the next morning, she awoke at her normal time anyway and continued a physical conditioning routine she had developed . . . as much to keep her troubled mind in shape as her body. Every day she worked out, either in the papal gymnasium or by jogging around the Piazza di San Pietro. Sometimes she ran up the interior steps of the great basilica to the top of the domed ceiling.
Dressed in dark blue shorts and a tight tee-shirt, Deborah ran laps around the square this morning, at a surprisingly brisk pace. Then she darted into a portico and drank a bottle of water she had left on a bench. She felt a little better, as the beta endorphins generated by exercise percolated through her brain, driving away the fatigue.
As she drank, she gazed up at the magnificent dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, arguably the holiest structure in all of Christendom. Events had been occurring too fast, and now the world was faced with the greatest religious confrontation since the crusades . . . except this time it was Christian against Christian.
Dixie Lou Jackson was like a storm from hell, moving so fast that no one could keep up with her . . . or stop her. Feeling increasingly desperate, Deborah needed to come up with something, even if she died in the attempt. Purposefully, as a small act of defiance, she didn’t attend the Chairwoman’s morning speech.
Chapter 24
She-God shall rebuke the nations of men, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
—Isaiah 17:13, as amended in the Holy Women’s Bible
After moving into the top floor of the apartment building, Lori considered what to do with the three adult prisoners in her custody, who were being kept in an improvised cell in one of the units. She had taken care to have Fujiko keep administering drugs during the trip here, and afterward, using her medical skills.
Lori had been considering allowing the prisoners to take guarded walks around the top floor, and perhaps guarded trips to parks, too, where they could get more exercise. But there were security issues involved with taking them off premises, and even with keeping them here. She needed to come up with a humane way to deal with the trio, so that they did not suffer unnece
ssarily.
She, Alex, and Fujiko sat on black wicker chairs in a common living area they had set up for their apartments, discussing the situation. From the street below, horns honked impatiently, tinny sounds that rose above other traffic noises. A window-mounted air conditioner whirred behind Lori, but didn’t cool the room enough to suit her. Being from Seattle, she wore shorts and a thin blouse, while her two friends had on heavier clothing, and looked perfectly comfortable.
Ever since Lori made her television broadcast, the worldwide controversy over the she-apostles had intensified. Millions of people believed in her, but even more believed in Alex’s diabolical mother. Despite what the Chairwoman had done to the Pope and the Vatican, she had the UWW behind her, and its proven advocacy of women’s rights, including the publication of the powerful Holy Women’s Bible. To millions of women, that was a compelling factor in her favor, but Lori felt certain that Dixie Lou’s popularity could not hold, because she was relying on a foundation of lies.
After consulting with Alex and Fujio, who were her closest confidantes, Lori had decided to remain here in Rome for a while longer. With all of the furor surrounding the she-apostles, it would be too risky to move them.
“Our prisoners have no idea where we are,” Lori said, “so I think we should take them out and release them in another part of Rome, so that we can focus on more important matters. We can do it tonight, after their medication wears off.”
“Maybe we should have killed them,” Fujiko said. Annoyed by a gnat in front of her face, she swatted at the tiny insect, but it escaped.
Feeling the hairs bristle on the back of her neck, Lori exclaimed, “You don’t mean that! I would never consider doing anything so dishonorable, not for any reason!”
Meeting the teenager’s hostile gaze, she responded, “I just wanted to see what your reaction would be, Lori.”
Annoyed, Lori said, “A test of my character?”
Fujiko nodded. “Something I wish I’d been able to do with my last superior, Dixie Lou Jackson. Actually, Lori, I agree with you, and do not believe in taking human life.”
The Lost Apostles Page 18
