The Stolen Gospels (4 page)
Chapter 3
Q: “What did the Divine Spirit say, after creating Adam?”
A: “What a huge disappointment. We need to improve on this!”
—One of Amy Angkor-Billings’ oft-repeated jokes
Shortly after dinner, Lori stood in the small kitchen of her mother’s two-bedroom house, staring at a flier on the counter, a green piece of paper with bright orange lettering on it. The notice from the Golden Goddess Society, sitting on top of a pile of mail, said something about a surprise speaker at the next meeting. The teenager sighed. Her mother got involved in so many oddball things, always having to do with women’s issues.
Just as she was about to move the flier aside to go through the letters, Lori felt a peculiar tingling sensation in her fingertips when she touched the green paper. Handling another piece of mail, she didn’t get that feeling. Hesitantly, she touched the flier once more, and got the tingling again. It must be static electricity, she decided, clinging to the fiber structure of the paper.
Just as she was wondering how far-fetched this sounded, her mother came in and announced, “You’re going with me to the meeting.”
They argued all the way to the car, and across the airbridge spanning Lake Washington. . . .
“I don’t see why I have to go with you,” Lori said. She slouched in the passenger seat as her mother drove the old Chrysler. Angrily, the lavender-eyed teenager glanced sidelong at her mother, who still wore her office clothes—a brown tweed suit with narrow lapels that were at least ten years out of style.
“It’ll be good for you.”
“A goddess circle? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Watch it, young lady.” She glanced with disapproval at Lori’s short red skirt and tight pink blouse, which revealed her blossoming figure. Her long auburn hair was secured in a pony tail.
Fiddling with the strap of her purse, Lori gazed out the window. The old car rolled along a winding street on the west side of Mercer Island, an upscale suburb of Seattle. Expensive waterfront and view homes were set in the midst of evergreen trees, with BMWs, Mercedes, and Rolls Royces parked in driveways. The moon was full and bright.
“Oh, like I don’t have a right to have an opinion, Mom? This is America, isn’t it? Land of the free?”
“If you hadn’t abused drugs and alcohol, I wouldn’t worry about leaving you at home.”
“I’ve been through therapy.” Lori stared at her own brown leather purse, which contained, in a zipper pocket, a plastic baggie of marijuana.
“And you relapsed.”
“A couple of lousy beers. Big stinkin’ deal.” She felt stressed, wanted to roll a joint and smoke it.
Lori was street-wise, tough and sassy. When she ran away from home the month before it was her second time, after which she’d gone to weekly counseling sessions with her mother. Lori’s friends were a major concern for Camilla. She called them “users, losers, and abusers.”
“If I have to, Lori, I’ll put you back in the rehab center.”
“It’s easier to get drugs in there than it is outside, do you know that?”
“You’re not staying out all night with boys any more, either, young lady.”
“Oh, like I’m gonna sneak off while you’re at the goddess circle.”
The car hit a bump, causing the glove box to pop open, revealing a .38 handgun inside. Reaching over, Camilla slammed the little door shut. Lori’s mother knew martial arts and the use of weapons . . . said she had almost been raped once, and refused to ever let it happen again. She regularly took Lori to target practice, showing her how to fire this handgun and a rifle, and had enrolled her in advanced
t’ai chi chuan
and beginning
karate
classes.
“Lori, you have to build back my trust,” Camilla said. “You’ve let me down too often, and each time it hurts. I’ve been looking forward to this meeting, and I swear you’re not keeping me from it.”
“Do you want me to be a lesbian, like you?”
“That’s not true and you know it!” As Camilla glared at her passenger, the big car veered, before she corrected the steering.
“You don’t like men.”
“I’ve never said that.” Because of Camilla’s burst of anger, her hands gripped the steering ball so hard that they seemed welded in place.
“Oh
right
, like you have sweet things to say about Daddy. Try to think of something good about him, Mom. Just one little thing.”
“There isn’t much. He did not treat his family well.”
“That’s a tired tune. Same old generality, without details.”
Steering the heavy car around a corner, Camilla nudged the accelerator. The old engine sputtered, then finally caught hold, just when it seemed about to expire. Exhaust fumes seeped into the passenger compartment.
“You’re too gullible around men, Lori, too trusting of them.”
“
Men
? Mom, I’m only fifteen. I date guys my own age, or maybe a year older.”
“Yeah, and I know what you do with them.”
“You’re paranoid, Mom, do you know that?”
“You must think I’m stupid. I know you’re sleeping with them.”
“Oh really? Well maybe I made up things in my diary because I knew you’d sneak and read it.”
“I never said I read your diary.”
“Then what’s this talk about sleeping with boys? Where’d you get that crazy idea?”
“I have my sources.”
“You’re so secretive, Mom. It makes me sick. Dark secrets about Daddy, unrevealed sources of information about me. You’re never honest with me.”
“That’s uncalled for, Lori. You know I love you.”
“You’re overprotective.”
The rain and wind from an afternoon storm had let up, but the roadway was strewn with small branches and evergreen boughs. Lori wondered what it was like to live in elegant, sprawling homes like those she saw out the window. In her own household, money was always tight, since her mother was a single parent with only a clerical position. Lori thought it might be nice to live another way some day, just for awhile.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to save you,” Camilla vowed. “I feel like I’m fighting for your life.”
“I’ll bet you’re lying about Daddy,” Lori said, ignoring her mother’s words. “You probably drove him away by being frigid.”
“That’s better than dressing like a whore. Your skirt is too high and you wear a pound of makeup.”
A headstrong girl, Lori removed her safety harness and lifted the door button. The dented passenger door creaked open, and she tried to get out of the car while it was rolling. With surprising strength her mother grabbed her by the arm and jerked her back inside, then pulled the car over to the side of the road.
“You could have been killed, Lori!” Camilla said. She cried for a moment, then reined in her tears with a burst of anger.
“I don’t care.”
“Put your safety harness back on, young lady.
Now
.”
With furious energy, Lori complied, because she didn’t really want to die. She had only opened the door of the moving car for dramatic effect. In reality, Lori Vale always thought she had something significant to do with her life, that one day she would be involved in a really important activity. At this point, though, she just didn’t know what form that might take.
Ever since Lori’s younger years—and in many respects she considered herself quite
old
now—she had felt things instinctually, as if able to sense another realm, or a form of energy that others did not detect. It was not a subject she liked to discuss with even her closest friends, and certainly not with her own mother, because she feared people would laugh at her. For now, she preferred to keep it as her own little secret. The ability served her well on occasion, enabling her to detect the motives of people, whether they were out for their own interests or if they were true friends. Or so she thought.
Camilla opened a small packet containing a moist towelette, and used it to remove makeup from Lori’s face, while the girl grimaced and tried to turn away. “Where are the earrings I gave you?” her mother demanded. “I told you to wear them tonight.”
“I don’t know.” Lori was lying. The pearl-and-gold earrings (a gift on her last birthday) were in a pocket of her skirt.
Muttering an epithet under her breath, Camilla pulled back onto the road. Several minutes later she slowed to read a street sign, then grabbed her notes from the seat beside her, concerning the location of the meeting. She flipped on the dome light. It cast a yellow glow.
“This is it,” she announced. “West Glen.”
“Whoopty-doo.”
Camilla switched off the interior light and turned onto a narrow street, which climbed sharply. At the top of the hill the road curved left. “That must be it,” she said, pointing to a beige colonial with three dormers.
As they pulled into a space in front of the house, Lori noted a neatly edged lawn, with rhododendrons and azaleas in winter dormancy, their leaves curled and stiff. The home featured large windows, which she guessed must provide a fine view of Lake Washington and the tall buildings of the Seattle skyline. Two late model imported cars were parked beside the driveway, along with a new off-road hovercraft. The garage doors were open, revealing a Cadillac and a Mercedes.
While walking to the house, Lori noticed that the sky was a wash of gray-black with a sprinkling of visible stars. A cold wind whipped across the moonlit waters of the lake. A chill ran down the girl’s spine, but she didn’t know why. She stared up at the house, and women who were visible inside at a second floor window, milling around, talking.
Something rustled in the bushes.
Camilla let out a cry.
“Just a cat,” Lori said, watching a gray-and-white feline, illuminated in yard lights, as it scurried across the lawn and disappeared into the backyard.
The pair climbed brick steps to the creaky, wooden front porch, where Camilla rapped a brass lion’s head clapper mounted on the door. The soft tones of women’s voices could be heard inside.
But no one answered.
A peculiar feeling came over Lori, an odd mixture of fear and excitement.
Camilla rapped again, but still no one came to the door.
With a splash of headlights across the porch, a green sports car pulled into the driveway and squeaked to a stop behind one of the open garage doors. An exotically beautiful dark-skinned woman emerged and climbed the steps to the porch. Without a word she opened the door and stepped inside.
The woman hesitated, looked back. “Are you going to join us?” she asked.
“We rang the bell and knocked,” Camilla said, “but no one answered.”
“I’m sure it’s all right to go in,” the woman said. She glanced at her watch. “They’re about to begin.”
Trying to sort out her feelings, Lori went inside with the others.
* * *
In the front passenger seat, Styx felt the throbbing heartbeat of the V-Warrior attack helicopter as it bore him westward. The Cascade Mountains of Washington State lay in moonlight below, with their craggy tops casting fantastic shadows across the nightscape, as if the mountains were living creatures that had been frozen in time by the ice and snow.
The aircraft looked like an ordinary transport chopper, but it had concealed gun ports and missile launchers. It was not one of the stealth aircraft that the Bureau had, because none of them were available on short notice for this mission. It didn’t matter to Styx; this disguised attack craft was all they needed.
Glancing back into the rear compartment, he saw the eight members of his squad sitting motionless, with the portholes beside them letting in moonlight that glinted off the silver portions of their uniforms. They wore black helmets fitted tightly to their heads like second skins, with their eyes concealed behind narrow slits.
Styx’s heart matched the iciness of the night as he thought of the Satanic women who would feel his wrath tonight, especially Dixie Lou Jackson, second in command in the UWW, just as he was in the BOI.
“Bring her in alive if you can,” Culpepper had ordered.
But that wasn’t Styx’s intention, and the men in his squad were fiercely loyal to him. He would do whatever he pleased.
Chapter 4
They want a reversion to the mythical days of when we didn’t talk back as much, when women were little more than slaves to the interests of men.
—Amy Angkor-Billings, United Women of the World
In central México, Consuela Santos was filled with fear. A young peasant woman whose father tilled the land and whose mother cooked and cleaned for the local parish priest, Consuela had shamed her parents by bearing a child out of wedlock. She and her baby—now five months old—still lived with them in their small adobe house, but so religious were they that they had not spoken to her in weeks.
It had been an unseasonably warm day, but now Consuela pulled her thin
rebozo
around her shoulders to ward off the night wind, and held her baby close, wrapped in the long scarf. She passed the town
cantina
, moving through dim light cast through an open door and windows, and heard the drunken patrons inside, laughing and talking loudly. Across the street were the cloth-draped merchant stalls of the
mercado
, which only a few hours before had been the bustling center of commerce for three villages, but which now lay dark and quiet. She smelled the spoiling remnants of fruit, vegetables, and fly-encrusted meat, and saw a mangy, swaybacked street dog eating scraps.
From fear she could hardly catch her breath. Holding the bundled child securely, she turned onto a narrow cobblestone street, hurried up broad stone steps and entered the village church, pulling her
rebozo
over her head and uttering a prayer as the cool darkness of the interior enclosed her. She kept glancing back, to make sure no one followed. People were looking for her child. They called themselves doctors and claimed they only wanted to help, but she knew better.
Her baby had been making strange sounds, and she suspected something evil had possessed her, something that could only be purged in this holy sanctuary.
The people who sought little Marta were not really doctors; that was only a ruse to make her let down her guard. They were too intense and she saw something in their eyes. Deception and malevolence. In reality they were servants of the dark prince—Satan—and wanted her precious child for their secret, unholy purposes. She felt this in the deepest core of her being, and that they had put a spell on Marta.
Consuela knew her demonic pursuers wouldn’t dare enter the church. As the heavy wooden door closed behind her and she stood in the vaulted Spanish sanctuary, she breathed a deep sigh of relief. On her right, red votive candles burned, flickering at the kiss of a slight and ghostly breeze. Townspeople had lit them, to pray for friends or family members.
With her heart beating rapidly she hurried along the main aisle, past the rows of pews to the altar. Towering beside her, a statue of the crucified Jesus was flanked by the smaller statues of two women, one the Virgin Mary, and the other the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of México. Before the latter, she knelt and prayed. The saint’s face was benign, and seemed to gaze down on Consuela and her baby compassionately, giving them personal attention and protection.
Behind her, three other people knelt inside the high-vaulted building, praying silently in the dark-wood pews. Upon passing them she’d noticed Bibles in their hands. No one escaped her scrutiny now, because of the extreme danger.
In Consuela’s arms, her baby made the strange, unholy sounds again, this time too loudly. Putting a hand over her child’s mouth, she muffled the blasphemy that she could sense, but could not comprehend.
The black-robed parish priest slipped out of a door behind Consuela and glided past her, going toward a door that led to the bell tower. She almost called out to him, but decided not to. He was Father Matteo, who employed her mother to cook and clean.
The baby whimpered, and continued the muffled, abhorrent sounds.
Out of the corner of her eye, Consuela saw the black-robed priest pause and gaze back at her. He had a puzzled expression on his weathered face, which was half in shadows and half in the flickering yellow light of a candle.
The baby kicked and thrashed, and went into a screaming, crying tirade.
Hesitantly, the priest approached her.
Behind Consuela, she heard the heavy door of the church slam shut, and felt a hot breath of outside air.
At the head of the aisle, looking in her direction, Consuela saw what appeared to be a large woman in a white dress. She couldn’t make out details of the face. The woman began walking toward her. She was carrying what might be a medical bag, but it was white, not the customary black. Her lapels were starched and stiff. Her shoes squeaked on the tile floor.
Consuela looked at the priest, and saw his hand go into a pocket of his robe as the big woman approached. He appeared to be afraid of her.
Does he have a weapon there? A priest with a gun?
She didn’t know why she was thinking so strangely, so conversely to everything she had been taught in her life. She was twenty-four years old and had always been a good Catholic; it was in her blood, as much a part of her as the child she held so tightly in her arms. Her faith had always been her anchor, providing her with strength and constancy and the knowledge that her life was connected to something more important than her solitary, meager existence. But her faith was a broad white sail as well, linking her with an ethereal wind that guided all humankind on a heavenly course.
How did this holy man fit into such a structure?
Her pulse drummed and thrummed in her ears.
Keeping his hand in his pocket, the priest moved briskly toward her.
By now the other figure—approaching from the aisle—had halved the distance to Consuela. Out of the shadow-face of this person emerged two burning red embers for eyes, like fiery fragments wrenched from the bowels of Hades.
The priest reached her first and placed a hand on her shoulder. He smelled of fear. Sweat glistened on his brow. “My child,” he said in their native Spanish, “you are troubled, and I—”
Consuela wasn’t looking at him. The other figure neared, moving slowly, inexorably, and the terrified peasant woman no longer saw ember-eyes, replaced instead by a white visage and the palest of albino orbs, staring directly at her. She wondered if all this was only her imagination, if she was trapped in a wild kaleidoscope of the mind, a spinning, topsy-turvy nightmare. For some reason she felt a threat not only from this person but from the priest. She didn’t trust either of them. The priest’s grip tightened on her shoulder.
The woman reached into her white bag.
Consuela bolted and ran out a side door into the night. The church was no longer a sanctuary. It had been invaded by evil, an extension of the entity that was trying to destroy her child.
Shouts and gunfire sounded behind her, and a bullet struck the door frame as she ran into the street, but neither she nor her baby were hit. Dogs barked frantically.
A man screamed out in agony. It sounded like Father Matteo.
She didn’t dare look back.
* * *
A tiny nun in a black habit hurried through the grand corridor, her smallness and simple garb contrasting with the exquisite craftsmanship and immensity of scale around her . . . the Italian marble floor, the ornate mirrors, gilded walls, leaded glass, and vaulted ceiling, the paintings of Christian religious scenes by renowned masters, the sculptures of famous popes and cardinals. On the third finger of her left hand she wore a golden band, signifying the sacred wedding vow she had given to her blessed savior, Jesus Christ.
At a Gothic entrance portal she stood before two Swiss Guards who wore sixteenth century body armor with royal purple and gold leggings and red headdresses. Each man carried an automatic rifle. It was shortly after 7:00 AM in Vatican City.
Beneath the folds of her robe the nun carried a glass message cylinder, which she brought forth and displayed for the guards. One of the guards looked it over, then waved her in with a jerky motion of one arm.
She passed through into a waiting room that featured intricately designed blue-and-white mosaic tiles. Two more Swiss Guards stood at another door, which led to the papal offices.
The door to the inner sanctum swung open, and an angular, ruddy-faced man in a white vestment emerged, walking toward her energetically. Pope Rodrigo held one hand on a golden cross that dangled from his neck. He ushered her in, smiling broadly. “Ah, Sister Meryl,” he said as they walked together into his enormous, exquisitely appointed office, “It is good to see you!”
This nun was from his own home city of Segovia, Spain—and he liked her so much that he always came out to greet her in this fashion. They knew many of the same people, and often shared stories and gossip.
“And you as well, Your Holiness.” She bowed. “May I say, you are looking especially well today.”
“You have brought me another recipe?” he asked, knowing full well that only official business was carried in such a manner.
She giggled, revealing a toothy smile. With a diminutive mouth, smooth skin, and clear brown eyes, she appeared much younger than her sixty-three years.
Accepting the cylinder from her, he brought forth a sparkling diamond key and opened it. The cylinder twisted into two sections. He removed a slip of parchment from one of them and left the sections on his desk.
“Mmmm,” he said as he read. “Minister Culpepper again, but this time he isn’t asking for money.”
She nodded, and despite her familiarity with the pontiff she maintained her place, not asking any questions.
“It seems he has a twelve-year-old grandson who wants to embark upon a career with the Church. The boy’s father is a manufacturing executive, taking a position in Rome.”
“I see,” Sister Meryl said.
“Culpepper says the boy is bright and a fast learner.” Then, with a heaving sigh, the Pope set the parchment on an ornate side table. “In four years—when he’s sixteen—we’ll set him up as a clerk while he attends seminary.”
“Do you have any orders for me?” she inquired.
“Yes,” he said with mock seriousness. “Wear my robes for awhile and deal with all the important people who want favors.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Sister Meryl sent a coded e-mail message to UWW headquarters, informing them what had occurred that day in the papal offices. From minuscule to large details, she had been providing them efficiently for more than two decades. The week before, she had transmitted other records on the Roman Catholic Church, updating information that the UWW already had on the religious organization’s real estate holdings and other assets all over the world. This was absorbed into the burgeoning UWW data base, along with similar facts on every other religious group on earth.
Sister Meryl wondered what the UWW did with all of it, and what their plans might be, although she believed in the group because they advanced the cause of women. Lately she’d been hearing intriguing rumors that the female leadership had embarked upon a top secret project. She liked their energy. The United Women of the World, in contrast with the Catholic Church, was dynamic and in a constant state of flux.
