The Sixth Station, page 21
I bowed my head and put my hands together on the freezing cold altar and waited for him to continue. Instead, a horrible pain—a blow?—to my head felled me. I felt a blanket go ’round my shoulders, heard the gate come down and the door lock, as the room went dark.
24
My brain felt as though it were swelling rapidly inside my head, squeezing the skull to bursting.
I heard the front grate opening, even though I didn’t remember that we’d ever pulled it closed! Then the noise stopped, but a blinding light began pouring in under the door. It looked as though the sun itself had melted and was dripping liquid light that was crawling toward me.
The wooden door suddenly swung fully open, and the whole room filled with a light so unbearably bright that the air itself became one with the light.
Then I saw them. Standing at the threshold bathed in the frightening, glorious light were three men. And each was holding a box.
It’s a dream. It’s just a dream. Calm down. You must have gone into hypothermia or shock. Doc said you had endometriosis back when you were trying to conceive. Did you get an early, heavy period? No—not due for at least two weeks. The priest will call an ambulance. Just a dream …
It was almost harder to see in the blinding light than it would have been in the pitch black, but I could make out the silhouette of a man standing over me. Not one of those from the doorway. This man was wearing fatigues with a bandolier of bullets strapped across his chest, a rifle and a semiautomatic pistol in his hands.
Iraq 2005? No, that was long ago. But still, he’s not an American soldier. I know that.
I was shivering, that I knew, when the man spoke.
“Father—don’t do anything foolish.” I moved my eyes until they honed in on another man in the room, a young priest. It wasn’t Father Paulo—I couldn’t see him anywhere.
Sadowski? No, Sadowski’s dead. Dead. I think I killed him. No, no. Not me.
The three figures in the doorway were still standing without moving a muscle. Like department store displays.
Don’t move; he thinks you’re dead. He walks over and around you as though you’re just an overturned piece of furniture.
“Hand them over, Father. I don’t want to kill you.” His accent was undetectable. “But you know I will, and I’ll take your pals here with me.”
I could see that the priest was holding three boxes, one on top of another. “These are just gifts…” the priest said. “Gifts. They brought—”
“Hand them to me,” the soldier said again, aiming the gun between the young priest’s eyes.
“Your guns are useless here,” the priest replied in a surprisingly haughty way, as though he weren’t about to die. “Are you blind, man? Don’t you see who our visitors are?” he said, gesturing toward the men in the doorway.
“Hand them to me or you may detonate or spread whatever is in the boxes. You will kill the Baby!”
Oh, God. Has someone taken a baby into the house? I hear no baby!
He turned to look aside. I could see the outline of a woman standing there. She seemed to be wearing a burqa and was standing stock-still.
Someone else was moving into my line of vision—but it/she/they were crawling on the floor. It was a young girl, blood seeping down her legs. Her tiny white nightgown was transparent with sweat—and occluded with blood. The poor little thing was whimpering but was so weak even her cries were barely audible.
Please let me wake from this nightmare. Oh, God! The dying girl—what is she holding? Is it a baby? Yes. A tiny infant—can’t be more than a few hours old!
“Help me … please … help me,” the girl tried calling to the strangers in the doorway. They immediately began to move forward toward her, arms extended.
I willed myself to open my eyes all the way.
Move, dammit! Nothing.
“Help me! Save me. Save my Baby,” the girl implored. The men looked as helpless as she was.
How could she have given birth? She is just a baby herself!
“I’m a prisoner,” she cried, her voice barely above a choked whisper. And then revealing what a child she still was, she implored with her last bit of strength, “Can you call my mother?” She looked to be twelve, or at the most fourteen.
The soldier stood between them. It was obvious that the rescuers were never going to get to the girl or the baby as long as he was alive.
Am I dead? Is this hell? Why don’t they do something?
With the rifle still trained on the doorway, and the pistol on the priest, the soldier spat out, “Snap out of it! Gifts, you fool? Biological weapons, chemicals. Goddammit.”
The priest answered him by bursting into a high-pitched laugh—ridiculous, absurd, and uncontrolled. He then threw his head back and sniffed the air like a wild dog. “That’s a good one,” the young cleric snorted hysterically, while the soldier shot concerned glances at the terrified girl. She was still holding on to the baby, still whimpering. He then turned to the woman in the burqa. As soon as his eyes met hers, she threw her head back, too, but so far back that it was nearly perpendicular to her shoulders. She let out an equally high-pitched laugh and also began sniffing the air in quick, rapid snorts.
The woman jumped and clapped her hands together like a schoolgirl.
Meantime, the young cleric, taking the soldier’s momentary pause for weakness or confusion, it seemed, tried to move forward. The soldier, in a movement so fast the priest didn’t see it coming, aimed the laser directly between his eyes.
“Stop where you are.”
He was squeezing the trigger and was probably a thousandth of a millimeter away from contact, when the priest said, “No, see? I’m putting them down,” as he lowered the boxes and gestured toward the wooden shelf a few feet away.
The soldier let him put all three boxes on the altar, and with his gun, gestured for the priest to move away from the boxes as he moved toward them.
But as the soldier neared the table, the woman in the burqa literally leapt across the room and snapped up one of the boxes—the one made of silver. In a split second, before he could even shoot, she ripped off its lid, and, giggling again like a teenager, scattered the powder inside the box. It flew everywhere—toward me, toward the girl, and toward the poor, very, very still baby.
“What have you done?” the soldier bellowed. My own eyes burned terribly. I could still see the baby—it was in the girl’s protective arms. It didn’t seem possible that it was even still alive.
While he furiously rubbed his eyes with one hand and pointed his rifle in at her with the other, the three men in the doorway stood as still as the poor little baby on the floor.
With his gun still on the woman’s temple, he pushed her to the floor and flattened her with the sole of his combat boot. With his free hand he whipped out a pair of handcuffs and cuffed her tightly behind her back. No one else moved.
“Against the wall!” he ordered the rest of them. “Move it!” The three men gingerly stepped in. I was shocked to see their clothing—it was all clerical, or at least religious, garb. One wore a hooded galabia, the next a Buddhist robe, and the third a huge fur hat and a white, fringed prayer shawl that extended to his knees over a black suit.
The solider commanded, “Hands up against the wall. Now!” They did as they were told, and with his rifle trained on them, he frisked each one in turn. Nothing.
“What was in that box?” Again, nothing. The lack of response so infuriated him that he struck the man standing closest to him, the Jew, with the butt of the pistol, drawing a gash from mouth to ear. Still, the man stood calmly, not even reaching to stem the blood gushing from his cheek.
The girl screamed, but still no sound came from the infant. Then in a coordinated move that looked rehearsed, each man turned his head to the left to stare at the newborn and its terrified child-mother, huddled, shaking, and soaking wet under the altar, where she had scampered.
The Jew opened his mouth to speak to her, but in a movement so quick it was almost unseen, the soldier put the pistol right up against the man’s temple. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?”
“My name is Gaspar,” the man said with an accent that sounded Israeli in a voice surprisingly deep for a man so young and so slight.
“You have exactly thirty seconds to tell me what you’re doing here and how you got in.”
I’m not imagining this. These things are really happening.
“You’ve used up fifteen of your thirty seconds.…”
Gaspar answered him in a voice that was quiet but firm. “We were guided here,” he said, oblivious to the semiautomatic pressed to his temple. “To see it for ourselves, study it—”
“Study? What? The Baby?” snarled the soldier.
“The star. It guided us here. We are just astronomers.”
He grabbed the Jew and put the pistol to his temple. “What is in the boxes? Anthrax? Botulism? You have five seconds…”
The Jew, unusually calm, simply whispered, “Myrrh. Just myrrh.”
25
I vaguely heard someone yelling, “Grab the Baby! Get the Baby!” But it was far, far off as I again slipped into a blessed form of blackness.
Once more, I had no clue of time passing—or not passing.
I began to wake after a while and realized I was no longer shaking and my head was no longer screaming in pain. I felt for blood on the back of my head. Nothing. I crawled out from under the bench totally disoriented in the blackened room.
Where the hell am I? I smelled the thick scent of hashish mixed with some sort of incense.
I walked a few steps and heard a crunch under my feet. I reached down and felt the satin cloth and the shards of glass beneath it. The test tube! It had dropped out of my bag and onto the floor at some point.
If ever there was evidence of Demiel’s otherworldliness, it’s gone now. Not your problem right now. Now your problem is getting the hell out of this place.
I tried feeling my way around. I could see the glow of the hash pipe and the shadows cast by a candle through the arch in the other room. I got up. Father Paulo was sitting on the far side of the arch smoking the shisha with a bottle of wine before him.
“Where are they, Father?”
I felt around for my red satchel and found it lying on the floor—had I left it there?—and realized I may have been robbed.
Sadowski’s phone, the new ID, passport, credit card, money—all were in there.
I checked the time and the phone’s digital clock showed me that it was “17:24:53,” that it was almost out of juice, and that there was zero signal in the house.
Nearly 5:30 P.M. An entire day had passed!
I started rooting around in my bag. Wallet? Check. Credit card? Check. Money? As closely as I could remember, it seemed to be the same amount of euros as I’d had earlier. Check. Passport? Check. I opened it. There was my picture with the crazy moniker “Alazais Roussel.” Check. Even my old Gap scarf was still in there—although, really, I couldn’t imagine who’d want that ratty thing. The answer I later learned was “everyone.”
I felt the leather binding. The book.
No eReader, no iPad, no holographic tablet reader—nothing on earth—feels, smells, or gives comfort like the luxury of a well-bound book. Thank God, it was safe.
“You destroyed the blood,” Paulo said, his voice choked with anger and with tears. He got off his stool and stood hovering over me, seething. “You destroyed the blood.”
“What the hell just happened back there? What the hell is going on?”
“You were to see the holograph of the event. That was the plan. But then…” He started to drift again. “You began speaking in tongues before I could do that.”
“I don’t speak in tongues. Where is the girl? What have these people done with that child and her baby?”
“Headquarters had the technology way back then to produce it,” he said, as though I hadn’t asked him a question. “They needed to capture the magnificence of the moment, but you didn’t need any of that, did you?”
“You mean it was a holograph? You showed me a holograph?”
“No. It’s always the least deserving who see what others fail to see,” he sneered at me jealously and pulled a deep toke.
What the heck is he jealous of? I nearly had a heart attack.
“I don’t know why you were chosen,” he went on contemptuously. “I don’t even know why that animal was chosen to be the husband of the Girl. I only know that I was honored to be part of the Great Experiment. Then when you showed up … But you have ruined everything. Common people shouldn’t be sent to do uncommon jobs.
“Astonishing, really.” He took another deep drag; the smell of hashish filling the tiny walls was giving me a contact high. Or had I been drugged already?
Holograph, my ass.
I was still very shaky—no longer shivering, but just shaky—as I made my way to the door. I had to get the hell out of there. He didn’t attempt to stop me.
“What now?” I asked, hoping he’d give me a clue about where the heck I was supposed to find this “source” blood.
“They will come to collect what they can of the blood you spilled, then I don’t know,” he said, slipping into a good ole Middle Eastern drug high, which I recognized from my days with the guys in Iraq. He began chanting in a low rumble that sounded terrifying in the close confines of that tiny stone house.
I tried the door.
Damn! It’s stuck! No, it’s not. Breathe. Calm down. Breathe.
The knob finally turned, but the gate was still locked down. I reached down and saw that the padlock was locked from the inside and the key was still attached. He wasn’t apparently trying to keep me a prisoner here.
I unlocked it, lifted it, and took a huge gulp of the fresh spring air outside the confines of this sicko’s hashish den.
As the heavy gate began to rise, I could hear chanting that matched the priest’s coming from many, many voices. Fear—and a million more questions—ran through my brain.
Sensory overload. Get out. Get straight. You’ve probably been drugged. Get out. Get straight.
I lifted the gate all the way up and was astonished at the sight. Like a specter or a movie about the Middle Ages, coming up the path to the door where I stood were dozens of burning candles held by white-robed monks.
Their haunting chant—“Pater noster qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum”—reverberated like angel song in the crisp night air. The closer they came the more clearly I could see them. Embroidered on their robes were large yellow crosses that shimmered in the dusk. The shape of the cross was the same as that worn by Father Paulo.
26
I stepped aside as the line of hooded monks—male and female, young and old—walked solemnly past me while bowing their heads to me as though I were some sort of religious figure myself.
The first monk, a woman of eighty years or so, walked inside the house first, and the others filed in after her, chanting, “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo,” as she walked toward Paulo.
I turned and headed back toward the parking lot.
I could see still Mr. Cesur standing there, waiting outside the car as though we’d been gone for only ten minutes instead of one whole day. He asked no questions, nor did he even inquire about Father Paulo. He opened the car door for me, and I flopped into the backseat exhausted.
What now? Where the hell should I go?
Anywhere but here. “The airport.”
I grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the stash in the seat console as the nearly battery-depleted phone began to ring. The ringtone was not the usual one I’d heard on Sadowski’s phone, but, bizarrely, the classic Dragnet theme: dum-da-dum-dum. Caller ID: “Unknown.”
“I swear every priest is insane!” I said out loud, although Mr. Cesur was in his own world at that point.
I immediately recognized the voice. “So the old SOB is still alive and kicking.” Maureen!
“Ms. Wright-Lewis!”
“I think you have earned the right to use my first name.”
“But how did you find me, and how the hell did you know about the priest?”
“You forget with whom you are dealing, dear. Old spies don’t really fade away.”
“You don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.”
Stop gushing. You don’t even know the woman. Just because she’s alive and not looking to kill you …
I continued, unashamed: “I was beginning to think I was trapped inside Rosemary’s Baby,” I joked. “Am I still a wanted woman?”
“More than you can imagine. It’s imperative that you keep deep undercover. No one—not your friends nor your family—must know your whereabouts or be able to contact you. I’ve lived most of my life this way, and now you have to. Until your name is cleared, that is.”
“But you found me. How hard would it be for everyone else? And I have two friends who are helping me.”
“Again, trust no one. The more contact you make with the outside world, the easier it will be to find you. I can’t stress that enough. Tell me, Alessandra…”
My name has never sounded so, well, seductive.
“Did you find any proof yet that the others survived?”
“I think so. The old priest had a book hidden away that has never been opened before. It is the supposed diaries of all the eyewitnesses to the event. The birth.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end. She may have been the greatest sleuth the world had ever known, but—damn!—if even she couldn’t keep a natural reflex from surfacing once in a while …
“I was shown a holograph too—or I know this sounds crazy, it might have been a, ah, a vision.”
“A vision or a holograph—which was it?”
“Does it matter right now?” She has some bug up her rear. Dammit, lady.
