The Sixth Station (31 page)

“I saw you! You’re a frigging liar!”

“You have quite a tongue for a woman who thinks she’s being held by an assassin who has her name on his check-off list.”

“Very funny. Who planted the car bomb, then?”

“I did. As well as a corpse in a suitcase.”

“A corpse.”

“They need to think you’re dead.”

“Who besides
you
? Perhaps you have me confused with a fool or, worse, an amateur.”

“Yes, yes, I know all about it. Iraq. Car bomb. Your husband. 2005.”

“Go on.”

“You were set up in the murder of Father Sadowski. Fine, fearless warrior, that. Damned shame what they did to him. But he got sloppy, let it happen.”

“Wow. Cold.”

“
You,
on the other hand, had to be eliminated, at least as far as our enemies are concerned—and I had to take the heat off you.”

“Why? Who am I in the scheme of things? I can’t help it if I got kissed by a terrorist.”

“You, dear girl, were born to it. In more ways than you can imagine. Anyway, I had to make it look like there was a third player in the game.”

“Am I supposed to thank you now?”

“No. Being hunted has a way of taking one’s mind off the mission.”

“I’m still being hunted.”

“Yes.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Did I just say ‘yes’ or not? You were spotted in Turkey. That fool priest.”

Wait a minute! Now I know his voice! The soldier! Turkey!

Just then the waiter brought some sort of fishy-smelling amuse-bouche. I was beginning to feel nauseated.

“No one associates you with that explosion in the parking lot. Well, not anymore,” he said by way of ignoring me.

“Wrong. My friend in New York City connected me with it right away.”

“Believe me. She hasn’t a clue.”

I let it pass. He let my arm go. “Excuse me, but I must release my hold on you. This looks delicious—no?”

Freaking weirdo!

“Were you just there—in the house in Turkey?”

“No.”

“Not true. You
were
there. I heard your voice.”

“Yes. I was there. Thirty-three years ago. I should have killed the pompous ass when I had the chance. He almost ruined the Experiment then, and now again, he’s endangered the entire mission—bringing you to that house.”

“So you
were
there!”

“Thirty-three years ago.”

“Explain how I saw you there just yesterday, for God’s sake.”

“How would I know?”

I told him some of what I’d seen and heard.

He studied my face without expression. I couldn’t help but notice that through it all, he, unlike Donald and most of the reporters and prosecutors I’d dated, had impeccable table manners.

For a professional assassin.

“So? You’re saying it wasn’t you? I heard you and saw you—in shadow, yes—but I saw you!”

“The hologram.”

“No—the priest said he didn’t get to show it because I’d passed out.”

He eyed me closely before saying, “I suspect then that what you saw was a sort of vision: You were able to alter the time/space continuum.”

“What are you, a physicist?”

“Yes. MIT.”

“Oh, puleeze. You decided that being a professional killer paid better?”

“Let’s get back to your vision. You realize that you relived exactly what happened in that house so many years ago?”

I gulped down another glass of wine.

“If this doesn’t convince you of your place in the scheme of things—”

“I have no place in your—or their—scheme of things.”

“You do. Just as it was mine to guard the Son of the Son, Demiel, and His Mother for all those years.”

“You mean the child you molested and took as a, a wife? A little twelve-year-old child!” I was nearly spitting.

“She was thirteen, and I assure you there was no molestation involved. But there was a marriage much later on. Again, destiny fulfilled.”

“You realize you are a monster?”

“I realize that I am a man with a destiny that can’t be changed: I was born to fulfill this part of the Experiment. I have lived my destiny every day of my life—but you have just started to live yours.”

“What happened to that girl? The judge said ben Yusef’s mother was dead.”

“No.”

“Just no?”

“Yes. Just no.”

I changed the subject. “The ‘experiment.’ What does that mean? I heard it from Father Jacobi.”

Every time I mentioned the priest’s name, his face would go blank with disgust.

“So you won’t be inviting him to your next birthday party.”

“Let’s just say having lived with him during the girl’s confinement, he’s not my idea of a man—or, more importantly, a man of God.”

“And you are—what?—a gunslinger for God?”

He raised his eyebrows slightly in that condescending way that the French have perfected into an art form.

I decided to get to the meat of it. “What do you all want from me? I don’t kill people, and when you get right down to it, I don’t even believe in God. Well, not your God. I’m not the person you want.”

“Yes. You are. And what I want is for you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. You are going to be challenged in the coming days in ways you cannot now begin to imagine. The world is on the precipice. The Son of the Son is on trial, just as his biologically identical father was nineteen hundred and eighty-two years ago.”

“So you guys made a clone. But you can’t really believe it is the clone of Jesus.”

“Not believe.
Know. Know
as surely as I know who
you
are.”

“Well, that proves it. You think my name is Alazais Roussel, which I’ve never even heard before I got those bogus credentials—which were made by friends of mine in New York.”

He laughed lightly and took a sip of wine. “You are a very clever woman, but not as clever as I had hoped.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

The waiter brought our dinner, and for the first time since this horrible odyssey began, I wasn’t the least bit hungry.

“So tell me, how do you know this Demiel ben Yusef was actually cloned from the DNA of Jesus? Wasn’t Jesus a man of peace, while this maniac is his exact opposite? That’s what happened to that cow this farmer had cloned in the early 2000s. I saw it on
Discovery
. Bessie had been his favorite, so he had her cloned when she died. But it was reborn as the devil cow. Stomped the whole family to death. You must have read about it.”

He looked annoyed; actually, it was more a look of disgust at my levity.

“No, I didn’t read about it. And no, Demiel is not the exact opposite to the Son of God. He is exactly—and I mean that literally—the
same
being as the first Son. Jesus was called a seditionist. Demiel is called a terrorist. The only danger either of them ever posed was as a threat to the powerful. The truth—the truth of God—is a powerful thing. More powerful than all the men in Washington or Israel or the Arab states.”

“Okay, suppose he
is
innocent—which I don’t believe for a minute—what makes you think he’s the real deal? Or the clone of the real deal at any rate?”

“Because a group that has been in existence since the beginning of the Christian era has protected the precious blood of Jesus—has held these drops for this long, knowing,
knowing
that it was the key to resurrection, the next coming. They didn’t know how it would happen but only that it would. In the ancient times, they believed it would happen through some sort of godly miracle. And science is, in its way, a miracle of God.”

“You mean these people kept a beaker of blood for thousands of years without it drying up?”

“No. Yes. But it’s not what we should discuss right now.”

“How do you know I’ll have anything beyond ‘now,’ considering my status as a fugitive?”

“Because now you have me. To guard you.”

“Not that I believe one word, but if I did, I’d have to ask you why
you
of all people need to guard me. I still believe my life could come to a tragic end—if you have your way. Which you won’t.”

He picked his head up and looked right at me—yes, like a lover would—and said, “Alessandra, like you, I have no choice in the matter. I—we—
need
for you to live, even though you are an impossible rebel. Keeping you
alive
is the challenge.”

“That explains nothing,” I snapped, refusing to return his look. He then pointed directly to one of the embroidered tapestry wall hangings.

“Do you find it odd that such an ancient piece hangs in a restaurant in such an obscure village?”

“No. I’m not a scholar of embroidery, so I have no idea if it’s ancient or just old.” I decided that I needed at least a piece of bread. I had let the fish get cold.

“Doesn’t it look familiar at all?”

I refused to admit that now that I looked at it, it did—in a sort of weird déjà vu kind of way. The tapestry depicted a woman from the Middle Ages standing in the foreground at the base of a mountain. Three companions were standing slightly behind her; one was definitely a man, the other, I couldn’t make out. All had those crazy-shaped yellow crosses on red backgrounds on the front of their tunics.

In the forefront, the woman who was wearing trousers had a small sack around her neck and a knife tucked into her rope belt.

I pulled out my reporter’s notebook. It was well past the time I should have started taking notes.

“Do you mind?” I began jotting before he began answering.

“It’s 1244. The slaughter of the Cathars.”

“Yes. I know about that.”

“No, you really don’t. I would appreciate it if you would meditate on this tonight as you fall asleep,” he said, gesturing toward the tapestry. “The answer may come to you.”

“So then, let me ask you this: What does that odd-shaped yellow cross on red stand for?”

“Ahh,
la croix Occitane—
the Occitan Cross. Let’s see how to best explain this. In the Middle Ages, the Cathar yellow cross was a distinguishing mark—essentially a badge of shame—ordered by the Roman Catholic Church. Like the way the Nazis forced Jews to wear a yellow Star of David so that they could be identified and scorned. In some instances these were on a red background.”

“Weird that they would both use the same colors!”

“Not really.
Herr
Adolf was an occultist. He believed that Montségur was the site of the Holy Grail castle and sent archaeologist types to look for what he called the ‘mysterious blood.’”

“What mysterious blood?”

“The Cathar blood. Many of the Cathars were nobles who had chosen to give it all up and live as Jesus had. But their blood—and the blood of several of the Knights Templar, who had come to the village as hired mercenaries and ended up converting to Catharism—symbolized for Hitler the purest blood on earth. White, noble, warrior.”

“If Hitler didn’t believe in Jesus, what did he care about Christian blood?”

“The term
Aryan
derives from the Sanskrit word
drya
.” Yusef drew the word on a matchbook. “Meaning ‘noble.’ To Hitler’s way of thinking, you couldn’t get purer—or
whiter—
than that. He was looking for that blood, or at least that bloodline.”

“I’m astounded. Hitler sent people here?”

“It was reported and I believe it—on March sixteenth, 1944, the seven hundredth anniversary of the fall of Montségur, he had Nazi planes fly over Montségur in formations of the Celtic cross and of swastikas. It was his way of fulfilling a thirteenth-century prophecy that after seven hundred years ‘the laurel would be green once more.’

“We believe he thought the actual missing Cathar treasure was
their
bloodline. And he was almost right. It was blood all right—but it was the blood of Jesus.”

“And you know this … how?”

“On the eve of the mass burnings right here in 1244, four Cathar knights—two were female—rappelled down the backside of the sheer cliff face of Montségur.”

That’s what Maureen had been referring to!

“
This, after a siege by the pope’s Crusaders and the king’s forces, numbering possibly ten thousand, that lasted about eleven months. Their brethren the next day walked willingly—women, children, men, and Cathar and Templar Knights alike—into the giant pyre.”

“Now I know why it’s the Pyre-nees.…”

He looked surprised. “What’s astounding is that these knights, under total cover of darkness, slipped away carrying that treasure. After the burnings, the troops sacked the village and found nothing much worth looting. For the soldiers, a very disappointing payday.

“The treasure, which they
thought
was the equivalent of Fort Knox, was nowhere to be found. Logic dictates that three or four people could not have rappelled four thousand feet down a sheer cliff in the middle of the night carrying chests of jewels and gold.”

“Agreed.”

“It had to have been small, unimportant-looking, and weightless—or nearly so.”

“Again, that’s true. So what could a group who divested themselves of all worldly things—”

“Even the Eucharist,” he said, jumping in.

“So then what could they have had that was so valuable that the pope’s and king’s Crusaders killed and burned and died for?”

“Nothing less than the blood of Jesus. The blood of the man on trial right now.”

“You mean, your son?”

“No, I mean the Son of the Son of God. I was only a guardian.”

“He carries your name.”

“But not my DNA.”

“Well, you should know better than me about that.”

“Yes. I do.”

I looked askance but he ignored me. “So you think they carried a chalice?”

“I never said that. What I believe, what
we
believe, is that
something
held an actual drop of the blood of Christ, but what it is no one knows.”

“Any idea if it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“The Knights Templar venerated something called the ‘Head,’ or ‘Baphomet.’ There are stories that it was a skull, but I don’t necessarily buy that. There are other tales claiming it to be a head or a face that was imprinted on a banner they carried into battle. It’s a Templar belief.”