The Sixth Station (12 page)

Then: “If you need money, there’s an ATM card in the dash.”
Why would I need your money?

Then the message went dead. I tried flicking on the “playlists” button, but I nearly hit a deer, so I figured I’d look for more when I got wherever I was going. I hit the dashboard phone icon and then “contacts,” and it lit up with about ten names and numbers. I hit “Eugene” and it immediately began to ring although a number didn’t show on the screen.

“Hello, Alessandra,” his voice mail chirped from the speaker. “I can’t imagine, frankly, that I’m not sitting here waiting for your call. But clearly I’m not. Maybe I’m serving mass; it could be the only reason I’m not answering the phone. I will call you back in a second if I’m not at the altar, and depending on the service, anywhere from a half hour to an hour, if I am. Got to keep up appearances, you know.”
Beeeeeep.

“No. I don’t know!” I screamed. “You call me, and you call me immediately.”

Immediately
must be different in the priest realm,
I thought, when forty miles became ninety miles without a return call, and I soon saw the exit that would lead to Rhinebeck.

I turned off and found myself on one of those long stretches of road that must not have changed since the 1960s. Neither did the people at the roadside stands selling organic and hydroponic vegetables in their tie-dyed shirts.

I followed the signs to Rhinecliff, and at the next sign, made a sharp turn up a one-lane road, but that seemed to simply go back down again to loop around a sad little park. After two attempts, I stopped at the Rhinecliff Bar & Grill, an old wooden place that looked like it was about to collapse. Three guys who looked like they drank for a living were belly up to the rail, under signs reading
110% AMERICAN
and
WE DON’T SERVE FOREIGN BEER AND WE DON’T SERVE FOREIGNERS!
Another guy, shooting pool by himself, eyed me like fresh meat.

“Can you tell me where Grinnell Street is?” I asked loudly.

“Nope,” said one guy, revealing a mouth that had fewer teeth than a newborn. The others looked at each other like I’d asked where one could buy a Democratic campaign button. “Never heard of it,” said another.

The bartender, a chubby woman who should have been jolly but wasn’t, said, “I know where that is.”

“Great,” I said, then realizing the directions weren’t free, continued: “And I’d sure love a cold beer. Got a Miller Lite draught?”

“Yup,” she answered without affect, pouring the beer and pointing up. “Just hook a right. You musta hooked a left. Then go straight up. Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” I said, gulping down the beer, which tasted better than any beer I’d ever had in my life. Either I didn’t realize how parched I was or they put something in the beer that made people never want to leave the bar, even when their teeth fell out.

I asked for another, finished it, left a generous tip, and walked out feeling like I’d just been on the set of
Barfly
minus Mickey Rourke.

Back in the Caddy, I “hooked a right,” or what I assumed was “hooking,” since it seemed more like bearing, and the road turned suddenly steep.
I hope the formerly dead lady spy has a driver
.

When I got to the top, there was a road with houses on one side, and a grassy area on the other that ended in a cliff that looked like it fell straight down to the Hudson River. There weren’t many houses, and they didn’t have numbers for the most part, so I drove as slowly as I could with my head out the window.

I saw an old metal number “20” on the doorjamb of a house on the right, although the sun was beginning to set, so it was hard to know for sure.

I drove the car up its steep driveway, set the emergency brake, got out, and walked across the lawn to a little cedar-shingle cottage with a vine-covered trellis over the dark green wooden door. I lifted the old brass knocker and knocked.

In a few seconds, the door opened and a quite tall, thin African-American woman, still gorgeous in her (my guess) mid-to-late sixties, stood before me. Not the bent old lady I was expecting. She was barefoot, wearing a beautifully cut navy blue pantsuit and starched, expensive-looking white man-tailored blouse, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back severely in a ponytail.

“Miss Russo?” she asked, opening the door wider after inspecting my face. “I’m Maureen Wright-Lewis. Won’t you please come in?”

I followed her into what felt like another age. Her spotless living room was filled with American antiques, authentic-looking Hudson Valley paintings. A black lacquer Steinway upright piano had an enormous jewel-encrusted cross on an elaborate stand placed on top, the way Liberace had kept that giant candelabrum on his grand piano.

Without asking, she left and came back carrying a small tea tray and a plate of cookies. She poured out two cups of tea and actually asked, “One cube or two?” as she wielded a beautiful antique set of silver sugar tongs. “It’s apple tea, so you may want to taste it first.”

Must be from one of those organic granola-cruncher farms up here.

“It’s not made here,” she offered, seeming to read my mind.

“It doesn’t need sugar,” I politely answered, refraining from asking about its origin. Secrecy and intimidation were clearly still part of the old dame’s game.

She offered the plate of cookies. “Very good, by the way.”

I took one, and suppressed my reporter’s urge to ask her to skip the small talk and tell me what I was doing nearly one hundred miles from the city. Or, more important, what she was doing here—a spy convicted in absentia.

She put down her teacup and looked at me. I reached into my bag and pulled out my reporter’s notebook, knowing she was about to spill whatever beans she had, and hoping she wouldn’t tell me to put the notebook away.

Instead, she said, “Fine, but no recording. Do you mind?”

By that she meant, “Do you mind if I frisk you?” which she did, indicating that I stand. After the pat down, she searched my red satchel.

When she was satisfied that I wasn’t carrying, recording, or whatever-ing, she looked me in the eye and began. “Ms. Russo, when Demiel ben Yusef kissed you yesterday? It was the sign that many in the world have been waiting for—the one he’d choose.”

“What do you—” I started to say, but she cut me off quickly.

“Excuse me, I’m not finished. Thirty-three years ago, President Reagan was in office and I was at the agency.”

“Yes, I know.…”

Ignoring me, she went on, “We did something that I still haven’t come to grips with.…”

“I assume—”

Again she cut me off.
Slow down, let her talk.

And she did: “No, it’s not what you assume at all. At any rate, at first I knew—
knew
—this ben Yusef person couldn’t be who—what—he says he is.”

“Sorry, but I don’t understand. You mean that business about how he’s the Second Coming? Like the communion host, he represents the flesh and blood of Jesus?”

“No, not represents, Ms. Russo. He, or someone, was actually born from the blood of Jesus.” I tried not to let what she’d just said knock me over. Had this woman of the steel-trap mind gone senile?

“Real blood? You mean like that kid in India who has the stigmata, or that girl in Florida who cries blood?”

“I’m trying to be clear here, so I’d appreciate it if you would knock off the mocking tone,” she sniped.

She got up, walked to the wooden wall cabinet, found a bottle of Scotch, and poured herself half a tumbler, then said matter-of-factly, “You see, Ms. Russo, I was in charge of the elimination.”

“Elimination?”

“Don’t act dense. The assassinations.”

“Plural? Who were you in charge of killing?”

“Jesus and His family.”

12

“What?” was all I could croak out.

“I said, I was charged with killing Jesus and His kin. By order of the director of the CIA, with, I always assumed, the tacit knowledge of the president. Of course, I had no direct knowledge of that.”

“Ahh, just to be clear here, Miss Wright-Lewis? You’re telling me that you think that Jesus walked the earth thirty-three years ago?”

“No. Not walked. He was just an infant when He—or some male infant that was supposed to be Him—was slated to be eliminated,” she said, as though she had been speaking of any of the hundreds of average orders issued at the agency on any single day.

10:34
A.M.
,
install bugs in the Soviet embassy; 11:15, kill Baby Jesus; 3:15
P.M.
, arrest international gunrunner …

Ignoring my upraised eyebrows, she continued, her voice getting more vehement, as though letting go of this loopy secret was somehow a relief.

“Do you remember that there had been a blackout thirty-three years ago that affected parts of Europe and the Mideast? Oh, probably not. You were just a baby yourself.”

“I was nine, actually, but no, I didn’t know about it.”

“Well, that was the day we got confirmation.…” She poured herself another large one. “I assume you’re driving, so I won’t offer you any,” she said. And didn’t.

“Confirmation … about…?”

She knocked the Scotch back straight, sat down, and continued. “… That a baby had been born. Not a human baby—no, in fact, it was the first human clone. Illegal, of course.”

“A clone,” I said, suddenly fascinated. “I’ve heard there have been experiments but none had actually been successful.”

“Well, it did happen. In Turkey. And this baby? It was supposedly born from the blood of Jesus Christ.”

I stopped writing and just looked at her.
Oh, crap. What a bunch of crap.

She read my mind, or probably my smirk.

“I just, I’m—”

“I know what you are. Frankly, I never trusted the press, never will.…”

“You aren’t the first person who’s said that to me. I mean about being chosen. And you certainly aren’t the first person who told me she hates the press.”

“And I won’t be the last,” she said calmly. “Look, I don’t know why he, they, whomever, chose you. Maybe they figure you’ll be able to dig out the truth. Maybe they want to use you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, please. These days everyone from terrorists to disgraced politicians plays the media like cheap fiddles—and for the most part even the most desperate fringe bloggers and conspiracy theorists have worldwide access and get attention. Maybe the gods play you, too,” she added, teasing me. Well, I thought she was teasing me at least.

“So it makes sense he or they picked a reporter—one that supposedly has that oxymoron, ‘journalistic integrity.’”

I actually laughed.
Our truth.

“I know what you’re thinking about me,” she went on to say. “Let’s just say I took one for the team. After that, they naturally wanted me out of the way. I’d done my job thirty-three years ago, but then they doubted me—thought I might be, well, it doesn’t matter. Yes, I was the one responsible for setting up the kill for this Jesus thing. I mean, cloning the Son of God? The implications seemed horrifying.” More horrifying than infanticide, I wanted to add, but didn’t.

“I’d been tracking a report on the birth of a baby supposedly cloned from the DNA of Jesus, when a blackout hit the Middle East and elsewhere. And it had happened at almost the same moment that a new star became visible. Religious fanatics in Turkey were already saying it signaled the end of the world. Little did they know…” She paused, remembering.

“I was already in Turkey trying to track down the cloning lab—and that’s where the birth occurred. Officials you’ve never heard of—or most people had never heard of—from the Soviet Union, China, most of Europe, Israel, and even an operative from the PLO—all met together, in a secret location in Istanbul. The pope had sent his Vatican agent, Cardinal Riccardo Renzi. We were actually meeting around gas lanterns—not for the intrigue but because that area was blacked out—and somehow they kept this part contained—not even batteries were working.

“The cardinal announced that he believed that the birth of what he called a ‘devil spawn’—the clone of Jesus Himself—had been born.”

She didn’t really say that, did she? “Devil spawn” and “Jesus clone”?

I leaned even more forward in my chair. I needed, wanted, to catch every syllable, as I wrote furiously in my notebook.

“But what about the president of the United States? What was his position?”

“It was not within my purview to ask such a question, nor would I have asked even if it were. Suffice to say he was a member of the nonradical arm of the Fellowship. Or at least he attended their prayer breakfasts.”

“The Fellowship?”

“The White House Prayer Breakfasts are probably what you’ve heard about.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” I continued, “how could a prayer group who prays for breakfast even have a radical arm?”

“
Arm
is probably the wrong term.
Fringe element
is more like it. They call themselves Face of God Fellowship. Their detractors just call them the ‘Black Robes.’”

I looked at her inquisitively.

“There were a lot of judges allegedly involved.”

My mind immediately shot to the judicial panel as they walked in yesterday, resplendent in their black robes, and to my odd, out-of-nowhere comments to Dona about how they looked like Inquisitionists.

I refocused. I was there to do an interview, not to muse on life.

“All right, then. I can understand, if such an event did really happen, how there would be some, ah, sign that religious crazies around the world would interpret as evil or something but … but why would the United States get involved?”

“For one thing,” she answered rapidly, “the Girl whom they’d impregnated was American.”

You people killed an American’s baby?
I couldn’t control the look of disgust on my face.

She ignored me. “And let us not forget what happened to you yesterday, Ms. Russo—and you are as typically American as they come. Third generation?”

“Fourth.”