Veil of the Goddess (34 page)

"Nothing below, in the hold?"

"I'm picking up a vague signal down there, too. Nothing big, though."

"All right. Let's focus on the big one.” He turned to the captain. “Whatchew hiding behind this door?"

Rather than wait for an answer, he kicked his booted foot through the closed door.

The ship's chapel was fancier than Ivy would have imagined before she'd seen it. The Greek shipping crew was all Orthodox and, as far as Ivy could tell, relatively devout for a bunch of sailors. Still, she'd been blown away when she'd first seen the gold leaf, the dozens of paintings, and the continually burning and frequently refreshed candles. A huge crucifix with a lifesized but strangely flat-looking statue of Jesus hanging from it dominated the chapel.

"It's a goddamn church,” the Agent said.

The senior agent pushed in and looked around. “The so-called Orthodox religion is as badly in error as the Papist faith. Both stray from the true word."

"Maybe so, but the detector is going crazy,” the Agent said. “This place is full of faith."

"Let me see that.” The senior agent grabbed the palmtop detector and pointed it around the room.

Sure enough, the device's proximity locator screamed but its direction sensing seemed completely out of whack. Even without understanding how the palm-sized device worked, Ivy could see that its signals were spiking aimlessly.

She took a couple of steps and the system squawked.
Good.
The power emissions from both Cross and Veil were stronger than it was built to deal with. Having them both in close proximity confused it and made it hard to get a fix on either source. Of course the ambient power associated with the chapel just added to its confusion.

"Just how old is this church?” the junior Agent demanded.

The captain shrugged. “We move our chapel from old ship to new ship when the old ship retires. This maybe come from a hundred years ago first, when Greece begins to build major shipping. Some changes, some things remain the same."

The junior agent scratched his head. “Could it be just another church? We've gotten funky signals before."

"Only one way to find out. Tear the place apart and see what we find,” the Senior Agent demanded.

Ivy froze, but forced herself to relax. Even if they subdued the boarding party, they could do nothing in the face of the helicopter's Gatling guns.

The Captain clutched the Senior Agent's arm. “No. This is our special place. It belonged to my father, to his father before him."

"Don't touch me.” The Agent yanked his arm free, then shoved the Captain against the wall hard enough to, crack the wood paneling.

Real tears ran down the Captain's cheeks as the senior Agent radioed the frigate to send over a group of sailors with crowbars. The sailors cheerfully demolished the chapel, yanked sandlewood paneling from the walls, cut icons out of their frames, and spilled the liturgical wine and wafers on the floor.

A couple of sailors kept submachineguns trained on the Captain, who continued to shout curses at them, wave his fists, and threaten to rush them each time they attacked another panel, another old painting.

"Even the infidel Turks do not do such damage when they inspect us. Why do you do this?"

Evidently the senior agent had heard enough. He grabbed the Captain and twisted his lapels so tightly the Captain's swarthy face turned blue. “The end-times are here, Captain. The Gog-Magog war is already under way. You'd better start getting yourself right with the Lord. These icons aren't going to help you."

He dumped the Captain on the floor, then turned to supervise the damage.

"We haven't seen anything,” the junior Agent reported. “I think we're wasting our time. Again."

"Maybe,” the senior Agent admitted. “Still, there is a certain satisfaction from destroying these symbols of the Antichrist."

He looked around. “Tear up the floors."

The Captain hadn't learned his lesson from the choking he'd gotten. “No! These are priceless mosaics, ancient floorboards. Surely—"

"Surely nothing,” the Agent said. “Down to the steel bulkheads."

For thirty minutes, six sailors and two agents used crowbars, electric screwdrivers, and a small jackhammer to tear out the floors and walls of the chapel, leaving the entire cabin a steel box with a large pile of litter in the middle.

They finally stopped when the senior Agent got a call on his cell.

"We've got another ship to inspect. Let's go,” he reported.

"But the damage to my ship,” the Captain protested. “It will cost many thousands of Euros to repair."

"The love of money is the root of all evil,” the Agent responded. “Think of this as a small sacrifice toward your, admittedly unlikely, salvation. You Orthodox still believe in indulgences, don't you?"

By the time they went back on deck, the helicopter had vanished, possibly to refuel, and the Agents joined the sailors in the open boat for the ride back to the frigate.

"The Lord has given us idiots for enemies,” the Captain said when the sailors motored away. “Unfortunately, their idiocy has not prevented them from doing great damage."

"Sorry about the mess we got you into,” Zack said.

The Captain waved a hand. “I will not blame you for what your countrymen have done. Come, we still have many kilometers to cover before we reach Venice. I would rather not experience this kind of interruption again.

The freighter's engines rumbled as the Captain engaged propellers deep beneath the surface of the ocean and the ship picked up speed.

If the U.S. Navy and the Foundation were stopping all shipping like this everywhere in the eastern Mediterranean, the State Department would be getting complaints from every one of their allies and the Defense Department would be running through its budget even quicker than usual. All of which had to mean something.

The senior Agent had said something about the ‘end times.’ This was another area of Christian belief that the Catholic Church didn't emphasize but that Zack explained many Protestant faiths worried about a lot. But could the Agent have been speaking literally when he'd said that the ‘end times’ were actually
here
, rather than fast approaching? Perhaps that would explain why he didn't seem worried about offending foreigners or how much money his casual vandalism was going to end up costing his government.

Ivy wasn't sure.

"So, where was the Cross?” Zack demanded.

"You didn't see it? It was hanging right there in the open."

"You mean the Crucifix?"

She nodded. “They expected to see a Cross in a Church, so we gave it to them. It became invisible. Even its power, they could justify to themselves as the result of decades of sailors praying."

She looked into the shattered chapel. The entire chamber was filled with wreckage with only the Cross itself, along with the temporarily attached statue of Jesus, hanging over the shattered alter, unaffected by the carnage.

Venice was magical.

Since their ship was going to be in the harbor for several days, they left the Cross in the ruined chapel on the freighter and set off to explore the ancient city—and to see if they could figure out what they were supposed to be doing here.

Ivy described the many colors of power to Zack, but to him, the city was a mosaic of more subtle shades—the dark gray of the water in the canals, the dull brown of motorboats and the inky black of the gondolas clogging up the canals like cars on a freeway, the paler gray of stone buildings, the dusty brick of tiled roofs, and the gleaming whiteness of ancient churches.

"Venice isn't actually as old as Istanbul or some of the other places we've visited,” Ivy reported from a guidebook. “It was founded in 421 A.D. by Romans fleeing the destruction of that empire."

"I'd think being on a city of islands would make it easier to defend,” Zack admitted.

"They hammered millions of wooden piers into the marshland to create many of the islands.” She was still reading.

"Which means all these heavy stone buildings are being supported by wood that's been rotting for fifteen hundred years. Suddenly I'm not feeling so secure."

"Yeah, the whole place is settling.” Ivy looked up from her book and grinned. “Another thousand years and we'll be in real trouble."

He was still having trouble getting used to the bald and fat Greek Sailor version of Ivy although it had certainly fooled the Foundation Agents when they'd invaded the freighter.

Troubled or not, she still looked good to him.

She looked good to the pigeons in Saint Mark's Square, as well. By the thousands and tens of thousands, they abandoned the tourists who were feeding them bits of stale bread and corn and flocked around Ivy. Dozens landed on her head, their little claws grasping for purchase on her newly shiny dome. Others settled on her shoulders, while thousands more scrambled around her feet, somehow managing to keep out of the way as she stepped forward toward the massive cathedral.

"If the city wasn't built until the fifth century, it wouldn't have the same sort of artifacts we found in Mosul or Istanbul, would it?” he asked.

Ivy shrugged, temporarily sending up a cloud of pigeons. “According to the guide book, the Venetians were prime thieves and pirates—a kleptocracy. They looted most of the great treasures of Constantinople, except the Veil. They stole the relics of Saint Mark from the Coptic Christians in Egypt, and collected treasures from the entire world for a thousand years. The major symbols of the city, the four horses over the Doge's palace and the Cathedral of Saint Mark both celebrate theft."

"So, basically, we have no idea what we're looking for and whatever it is, it was brought here as loot from some foreign conquest?"

Ivy waved her hand and the swarm of pigeons dispersed, several of them looking backward at her as they flew to see if she might relent. “I don't know, Zack. The priestess said to come to Venice and we did. I don't have a clue what comes next, except we've only got 48 hours to figure it out. Because that's how long before the freighter moves out and I don't think this is the kind of place we want to be lugging our Cross sections around in. It would be hard to be inconspicuous when we're surrounded by a hundred thousand Italians and another hundred thousand tourists from all over the world."

A small sign outside the massive Cathedral of Saint Mark indicated that Mass would begin in a few minutes. If there was ever a time when divine inspiration would come in handy, Zack figured this was it.

"What do you say we go to Church, then have a glass of wine on the plaza here and talk about next steps?"

Ivy brushed her fingers against her ugly blue coveralls, directly over where they'd sewn the Veil of Mary into a hidden compartment. “Why not?"

Mass was celebrated by an angelic-sounding choir, a massive pipe organ that looked to be at least a couple of hundred years old, and a bishop wearing the pointed hat and carrying the crooked miter of his rank.

The professions of faith, the liturgical Italian, and the massive solidity of the Church provided him a moral uplift, but Zack didn't get any brilliant ideas on what to do next. Inspiration wasn't that easy.

The Captain had grudgingly paid them for their work on the freighter, grumbling the whole while about the costs of the damage done by the Foundation Agents and the navy wrecking crew, but Zack wasn't surprised to see the ridiculous prices for food or a glass of wine at the restaurants on the plaza. They were tourist traps. Still, whatever else they might be, he and Ivy were tourists there in the ancient city.

He ordered a carafe of the house wine and a couple of glasses and then sent the waiter away.

"So, what next?"

Ivy took a sip of her wine. “Let's review what we know.” She ticked off the points on her fingers. “First, the Foundation is a nominally Christian organization, but it appears to have no respect for Orthodox or Catholic denominations."

"That isn't unusual with the extreme Protestant factions,” Zack reminded her. “Some of them think that the Catholic Church really is the Whore of Babylon from the Bible."

She looked blank. “If you say so. Second, there are at least hints that the Foundation, whatever it is, is trying to create some sort of new Crusade or war between the Christian world and the Moslem world."

"Which seems at odds with its lack of respect for the Catholics and Orthodox who would be on the front lines for that war,” Zack said.

"Unless they think getting the two groups to kill each other off would be a good thing."

Now that was a depressing thought. “It seems more likely to me that the organization has fanatical members but that the leadership has more ecumenical notions of Christianity. They may think the Catholics and Orthodox are misguided, but that they're on the right side of the war."

"Maybe.” They both knew he was just speculating.

"Third, the agent and the Queen talked about the Gog/Magog war. I have absolutely no idea what that is except they think we're in it."

Zack strained his memory. “It's from Ezekiel, I think. Part of some really cryptic prophesies that everyone thinks refers to themselves. Israel will be under attack."

"The last agent said that war had been going on for a while."

"Well, Israel has been under attack."

She shrugged. “Fourth, we know that the Cross is involved and is considered
the key
. Which I first thought meant it was critically important, but now believe is meant literally. The Cross is intended to open something."

He refilled their wineglasses and took a sip. Although he'd ordered the cheapest Italian wine the café offered, it still tasted pretty good to him. “And the Cross
can
unleash power that has been locked up for centuries."

"Yeah. That's about all we know. Unless you can think of something else, those four points are everything we've learned about the people who have been trying to kill us for weeks."

He considered, then shook his head. “We know one more thing."

"What's that?"

"There's someone working against them. Someone sent you a message to go to Byzantium to get the Veil. Someone told us to come here to Venice."