The Sixth Station (34 page)

“He said they would not live to see the week out.

“So, yes, we lied to protect our families, and we lied because it was all the power in the world against three scientists who just wanted to be left to ponder together what we had seen and what we had experienced.”

“And you believed these so-called threats?”

“Not until my colleague Dr. Gaspar Bar-Cohen’s only daughter was found dead. ‘Crib death,’ they said.”

“And you honestly believed that the most powerful people in the United States had a newborn baby killed?” He turned to the judges, who remained impassive.

Hussein continued: “So, yes, we lied, and we have lived to regret it, but we were frightened. I, for one, cannot allow it to continue. If you kill this man, the world will end!”

With that he nodded toward ben Yusef and began weeping, just as Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe rose up from his wheelchair, jabbing his finger toward the witness chair.

“You lie! You lied then and you lie now! God will smite you down.…” He began to shake his finger and move toward the witness.

The courtroom went wild, and at one point the minister had to be restrained by security. The spectators and journalists, unable to remain silent, broke out in shouts and murmurs. People rose from their seats.

The chief justice slammed down her gavel as security began hustling the world officials out. Within minutes of the near melee, proceedings were called to a halt for the day.

I was flabbergasted.

Pantera stood up, helped bus the table, and then walked back into the dining room. “Hussein was, of course, scared in eighty-two, yes. But he lied not just because of the tragedy that befell Bar-Cohen. Regardless, this discovery would have won them the Nobel. He lied for us as well.”

“But he said it was the coalition of world leaders who’d sent Smythe.”

“He did. And they did. But it was us too—we also
asked
the three men to deny the whole thing. I asked them as a personal favor—once they were inside the house and had bypassed the greatest security in the world.

“It would have served no one’s purpose for the truth to come out then. We wanted them to think the baby was dead and didn’t want people looking for a risen Christ Child, obviously. We would have had every nut hunting us down.

“Hussein, Bar-Cohen, and Pawar have all, incidentally, come aboard since then. They are silent soldiers in the revolution of souls.”

He and the other men were the ones I “saw” in the house in Turkey.
Now
I’m beginning to figure out.

“The ‘revolution of souls,’ right. I won’t even begin to ask what the hell that means, but I will ask you this: What did those objects and those numbers on the transfusion bags mean?”

“Blood, a priest’s stole, fourth and sixth?”

Then it hit me: “Sadowski, the blood of Jesus, I get it. But Demiel had said to me ‘six,’ not ‘four.’”

I hit my forehead with my hand so hard, it left a red mark. “Damn! Go forth—maybe it means ‘fourth,’ as in an ordinal number.”

Even he looked impressed. “Now you have one more number to figure out.”

“Aha. Damn! But who did it? Who left the transfusion bags?”

“Could be them. Could be us.”

“I’m not part of
us
…”

“Yes. You are.

Then Pantera, his lanky frame towering over me, called a halt to the chitchat. “Ready?”

“For what?”

“A little hiking.”

He checked out my boots. “Not good for trekking, but they’ll do in a pinch. Now, let’s get going.”

“Where are we going?” I said, pulling on my jacket as we walked out the kitchen door, while he put on a backpack, into which he’d put several bottles of water.

“Up there,” he said, pointing to Montségur, which was poking through the dense morning clouds.

“You’re kidding me,” I said, getting my first real good look at the mountain. I followed him into the welding shed, where the landlady’s son was already hard at work, sparks flying everywhere. Amidst giant modern metal sculptures of Cathar crosses and robed figures were an assortment of hand-forged hammers, carabiners, and what looked like hiking and climbing equipment.

“Tout est prêt pour vous,
Yusef
,”
the man said.

“Merci
, Pierre
.”

“Petite hache, carabiners, corde…”

“Parfait, merci.”

“Bonne journée.”

The two shook hands, and Pantera took from him a rope, which he hung on his shoulder, a small ax, some webbing harnesses, and two carabiners, which he hung on a belt. He was wearing a flak jacket, jeans, and sunglasses. And what looked like two pistols this time. He handed me a walking stick.

“Do I look older than you?”

“Take it. I’m taking one, too, don’t worry.”

As we walked back out and toward the trail at the foot of the mountain, I said, “This is a paved walk. Why all the drama with the rope, and all?”

“I’m a drama queen, all right?”

“Ha! I knew it. By the way, do you plan on killing any tourists today?” I snarked, looking directly at the bulges under his jacket.

“Only if they ask directions.” He was lightening up. Oh, those crazy assassins!

We hiked for about twenty uphill minutes when we came to, of all things, a freaking parking lot at the base of the peak about a quarter of the way up.

“You’re not serious! We could have driven up here?” I was already panting.

He wasn’t.

“Have some water,” he said, taking it out of his knapsack, handing it to me, and walking a few paces to a small stone monolith with a round circle on top that was shaped like a wheel with spokes carved into it. Under that was carved the Cathar cross and the words
STELE D RESSEE PAR LA SOCITE DU SOUVINIR ET D E STADES CATHARES PRINTEMPS 1960
.
IN THIS PLACE ON 16TH MARCH 1244 MORE THAN 200 PEOPLE WERE BURNED. THEY CHOSE NOT TO ABJURE THEIR FAITH
.

He bowed his head, made the double sign of the cross, stood in contemplation a moment, turned, and said, “Are you ready, Ms. Roussel?”

“I told you not to call me that. And, yes, I’m ready.”

You may die trying to climb this thing. It’s straight up!

We began the trek for real this time. The “path” appeared to have been carved simply from the footsteps of the hearty pilgrims who had managed to climb this thing.

Thank you, Jesus, for the walking stick!

As we began climbing the mountain—it is the equivalent of climbing a more than three-hundred-story building—I quickly realized that if this was their idea of a French tourist attraction, it was no wonder there were no tourists.

It’s a straight climb up a slippery slope of a so-called footpath worn into the rocky soil that was a foot wide at some points, and so muddy in most spots it was like maneuvering on ice. The tiny path had no side rails whatsoever to prevent hikers from falling straight down.

And I was worried about that cliff in Rhinecliff?

If one side of the “pathway” was a straight drop down, the other side offered no solace. It was just rock face (think a rock wall in a gym) but covered with sharp, thorny bushes. I could see that the higher we would climb the steeper the fall to
my
untimely death would be. There wasn’t anyplace to go but straight down thousands of feet.

If he pushes me off the edge, no one will ever be able to recover my body: There’s no way to even get down there.

He was hiking ahead of me and clearing what nettles were impenetrable. I was breathing hard and wanted to stop. The mountain air was getting thinner, and I was more out of shape than I had ever dared to admit—before this.

He kept climbing.

What’s with this guy? Jeez. He’s killing me here. “In a pinch” was right: Even my trusty old boots are starting to cut notches into my ankles.

As I was wheezing and climbing and leaning on that walking stick like Old Mother Hubbard, my right foot gave out and I began sliding backward on the tiny dirt path. Within seconds I was on my face, my legs out from under me. My body was twisted, and my legs ended up hanging over the cliff.

I managed to grab onto a branch to keep from going straight down. Only my torso and arms were touching terra almost firma.

“Ayyyyy…”

Pantera turned then and stood there looking at me.

Oh, fuck. He’s going to push me.

He put down his walking stick and walked back to where I was half on, half off the cliff ledge.

“I can’t take you anywhere. All right, now just move your legs back away from the edge … slowly now, slowly.”

“I can’t. I’m terrified. Grab onto me.”

“No. If I do that, the ground could give way and for sure you’ll join the Cathars down there in the Prat des Cramats.”

“I can’t. I’m terrified.”

“Son of the Son! Just do what I’m telling you.”

“Okay, okay, ayyy…” I slowly turned my trunk and maneuvered my legs away from the edge until I was lying flat on the narrow path that was at that point a forty-five-degree slope and not quite as wide as my body.

I lifted my head and my torso up on my elbows and looked up at him from this prone position imploringly. “Now what?”

“Now say ‘Ommmm,’” he chanted.

“Very funny, you frigging …
desperado
!”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Just get up on your knees and then stand up.”

“What if I fall?”

“I will miss you deeply.”

“So you won’t help me?”

“There’s no room for two of us on this slope, so just do what I said so we can get on with it.”

Reaching out for a branch again, I held on and got up on my knees and then onto my feet. My jeans were ripped at the knee and I was bleeding. Palms too.

“Come on,” he said, and walked a few hundred feet ahead, and I followed him. At this point, I was ready to turn back, but we were too high up for me to attempt a descent alone. He stopped at a large boulder and sat down, patting the side of the rock for me to sit beside him. I sat down, refusing to wince at my bleeding hands and knees.

He knelt in front of me, took his backpack off, and took out a tiny first aid kit. He opened the rips in my jeans and washed my knees off with water, swabbed them with a packet of disinfectant then with an iodine swab, and sealed each with big knee-sized Band-Aids.

“Always be prepared—right?” I said.

He didn’t answer and took my palms in his hands and looked at them. He cleaned them with a new towelette and swabbed them with iodine—and, yes, it hurt like hell.

“What? No more Band-Aids?” I said, refusing to let him see me wince even once.

“They won’t stay on since you’re climbing. But this might help.”

He took both of my hands in his, turned them over palm side up, and looked at them. Then he brought them to his mouth and kissed the left palm and then the right.

I nearly fell off the mountain again. No one had done that to me since my mom used to kiss my scrapes and scratches with her magic kisses.

“Let’s go. Come on. Get up.”

Is this the guy who just made that tender—not to mention sexy—gesture? Manipulative horse’s ass!

I got up and we resumed climbing. After another half hour of straight up, we came to the thinnest part of the trail—just below the remains of the castle walls that I’d seen so clearly in the cell phone’s camera the day before.

When we got to steadier ground, I pulled Sadowski’s phone out of my inner jacket pocket, turned it on, and snapped a picture of the sunlight streaming through the turrets. At the sound of the camera’s click, Pantera turned on his heels in front of me like a madman and grabbed it out of my hands angrily.

He turned it off. “Listen, monsieur, even I know that there’s no signal up here. I tried it from the rooming house.”

“Down there, no. Up here, yes.”

He put the phone in his own backpack, and we proceeded up to the top and over the wall into the courtyard of what was once a great castle.

“This is where the Cathars lived?”

“Well, yes, but not in this castle. The village was destroyed. This was built afterward.
¹⁴
They lived on the pog here,” he said, pointing out what looked to me like a crazy-steep, uninhabitable mountainside.

“Then why did you bring me up here?”

“To experience the walk our forebears took every day that they lived in peace, and that same path, which they then took down to their deaths in the fire in the valley below.”

“Our forebears? Are we related?” I joked. “Not for nuthin’, but yours might have been French, but mine were Italian.”

“Yes, they were. Well, beginning in May or June of 1244 they sure became Italian, at any rate.”

“You’re saying…” I remembered reading in the book last night about how the smuggled treasure had been allegedly brought to Italy.

Stop with the “alleged.” You sound like a police reporter—even to yourself.

His answer was a crooked grin, and he said, “I want to trigger some memory for you. It’s vital…”

“What the
hell
are you taking about? I promise you, I’d remember if I’d ever climbed this thing…”

Then I looked down over the ruined castle wall, as he pointed out the gorgeous valley four thousand feet down, already in bloom this early spring day, and at once a crazy sense of déjà vu followed immediately by the stench of burning human flesh hit me again.

“The stench is unbearable,” I choked out, my eyes beginning to burn.

He smiled and simply said, “That, Alazais,” pointing down to the valley, “is called a memory.” He looked down. “That is where they were burned alive.”

“But what is the smell now?”

“Legend has it that a chosen few can smell the fire even to this day. Guess that must mean you.”

“No.”