The Lost Apostles (12 page)

Chapter 15

The name Jesus is not intrinsically male or female. Derived from the Hebrew word Yeshua, it means “Jehovah is salvation.”

—Editor’s unpublished notes, the
Holy Women’s Bible

Western coast of Mexico . . .

Everyone else had gone to bed, but Raffaela Inez was restless, unable to sleep. She kept thinking about the young Mexican woman, Consuela, and her unusual baby. Raffaela had spent time with the child each day, listening to her babbling . . . and trying without success to understand her. In her medical studies, including research into the communication patterns of babies, Raffaela had never encountered anything like this before.

Consuela said “bad doctors” were after Marta. Preposterous. Or was it?

It was a warm evening, and Raffaela sat on a wicker settee outside, in the yellow illumination of a porch light. Medical journals were stacked next to her, along with the most recent Doctor’s Journal, forwarded to her by a colleague who knew she wouldn’t want to miss it, even while on vacation. Moths hurled themselves at the light and fluttered about, darting in front of Raffaela’s face, but she paid little attention to them.

Instead, she stared blankly at a current journal article on new prosthetic devices. Unable to focus on it, she put it down. Then, absent-mindedly, she flipped through the pages of the other journals, scanning old headlines and articles. Nothing of interest. With a sigh, Raffaela was stacking the journals neatly, when one of them fell on the floor and opened to an article she had not noticed earlier, under the heading, MYSTERIES OF LANGUAGE.

In the article the author—a German doctor named Werner Hinkel—summarized what was known about the means of communication employed by various animals, including elephants, dolphins, whales, and dogs. He said they showed emotions and intelligence beyond the range of human comprehension or interpretation, since humans tended to make the mistake of using their own experiences and reference points for everything, thus creating filters that blocked vision.

The doctor went on to assert that even plants had intelligence, and cited the example of a wooden fence that was being overgrown by ivy. A small boy, after playing near the fence, returned to his mother in her rose garden and said, “The ivy spoke to me.” The woman, trying to humor her child, replied, “That’s nice, dear. And what did the ivy say to you?” Without hesitation, and in a tone that she found eerie, the child said, “It wants to wreck the fence. It doesn’t like the fence there.” His words were barely out of his mouth when a large section of the structure slumped to the ground, under a strangling snarl of ivy.

“Children understand these things better than we do,” Dr. Hinkel wrote. “They are much closer to the vast mystery of existence than we are, having more recently emerged from it in the process of birth.”

The concluding sentence particularly intrigued Raffaela: “Mothers, the next time your baby babbles at you, with sounds that make no apparent sense, try looking at it in a different way. Maybe it’s not gibberish after all; maybe it’s something else—the intelligent language of another dimension.”

Setting the article aside, Raffaela envisioned the innocent face of little Marta, who lay asleep inside the house, and she wondered what unknown thoughts were going through her mind.

* * *

Rashid Ali Khan was feeling better. Upon arriving at his Bedouin camp in the middle of the night, he’d been so ill with fever that his men had strapped him to a camel’s back, to prevent him from falling off. He remembered someone carrying him into his tent, and seeing his number-one wife Malia in flickering lantern light, hovering over him and assuring him he would get better soon. How many hours or days had passed since then? He wasn’t certain, but knew from the warm temperature in his tent that it was not morning.

Someone had opened the window and door flaps so that desert breezes could blow through, and as he awoke he had no bed coverings over him. The thin woolen blankets had been tossed aside. He’d probably done it himself in his sleep. His wife’s side of the low bed had been made up neatly. This large tent of the caravan leader had partitions inside, and a high ceiling so that a dozen men could stand in the reception area or sit comfortably for meetings and meals. The walls were hung with carpets and cloths with graceful Arabic designs.

As he sat up he stared at his small prayer rug, which someone had left rolled up at the foot of his bed. He wondered how many holy prayers he’d missed during the fever. He heard the rapid voices of women outside, but not of Malia. One of them said the men were on the nearby beach, fishing. Rashid’s laptop computer sat on a low table in one corner.

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 recognized 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.