Veil of the Goddess (38 page)

"Despite that, the Foundation still managed to find it and take it. Hiding it in Italy, a country shot-through with Americans and our spies, a country that was a part of the coalition in our invasion of Iraq, and a country where the Church has issued an order for all of its priests to cooperate with the Foundation, hardly sounds like an improvement."

"Wait a minute.” Zack held up a hand as if he thought it could stop information from seeping through. “Surely you're not saying that the U.S. invaded Iraq just so the Foundation could gain control of the Cross."

"I'm not saying that—the Foundation said it. Vice President Cheney always claimed that there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, despite all of the evidence that Clinton's bombing raids had destroyed everything Saddam had tried to retain. What if the weapon of mass destruction wasn't some nuclear or biological device, but something even more powerful, more primal, more ancient? What if it were the Cross, itself? Isn't that what the Foundation has been telling us?"

Zack sputtered, but no words came out.

"If you're prepared to believe that The Foundation is trying to bring about the end of the world and, as Father Francis said, ‘force the hand of God,'” she continued, “how hard is it to believe that they'd trick our nation into invading a country that happened to be in possession of the one thing they need to make their dreams come true?"

Governments lie. Zack hadn't been especially surprised when the original justification for invading Iraq had proven to be based on manufactured data, wishful thinking, and suppressing anything that didn't agree with what the generals and politicians had wanted to hear.

But he
had
believed that the American invasion, and the sacrifice of American and allied soldiers, had been undertaken on the nation's interests—however misguided the war planners might have been. That his native country might have been led into war by fanatics to access a tool they could use to create future wars sickened him.

"There's got to be a way we can hide the Cross so completely they'll never be able to find it.” Or was that sensible? Maybe Ivy had a point about hiding being a doomed strategy.

Father Francis shook his head. “It could remain hidden as long as it was only because so many people believed that Saladin had destroyed it after capturing it from the crusaders. Now that its existence is known to so many, both within this Foundation and outside of it, it can never be truly hidden again.

"Already rumors of the Cross are circulating on the bulletin boards read by the religious and by conspiracy theorists. It can only get worse from here. How long before the sailors on your ship talk? What about the imams who helped you in Turkey? What about the priests in the Patriarch's circle? Men like to talk, like to share their secrets."

Unfortunately, all of that made sense. “Maybe we should go public with it. It was one thing for the U.S. to bomb a Mosque or raid an unknown little church. But imagine if we gave the Cross to
your
church, Father Paulo. It would instantly become a huge pilgrimage center. The Foundation wouldn't dare pull anything then. Sometimes the light of knowledge becomes our best protection."

Zack didn't need to be a mind-reader like the gypsies in Turkey to see the temptation that offer posed to Father Paulo. Paulo might be happy with his congregation of aging women and his deteriorating church, but what priest wouldn't want to find himself at the center of devotion? What priest wouldn't want his church to be the repository of the holiest object in the Christian faith?

"Lead me not into temptation,” the priest quoted.

Ivy shook her head. “Wouldn't work. How long do you think it would take before the Foundation snuck in a substitute and stole the real thing?"

This was getting a bit annoying. “I suggested hiding it and you say that won't work. So I suggested putting it in plain sight where it could be guarded and you say that won't work. Haven't you just backed yourself into a corner? Maybe there is nothing we can do and we should just give up."

"Hey, Captain. You're the planner. What does West Point have to say about this?"

"I came up through the ranks. I'm not a West Pointer.” Still, Ivy had a point. Until his career had turned on him, he'd been a lifer. He'd attended officer training school. He knew how to fight. And giving up was no more a part of his makeup than it was of Ivy's.

One thing he'd learned from military training is the importance of seizing the offensive. They'd tried to turn the tables on the Foundation, seize control of the situation, but only in small ways. Basically, they'd spent weeks on the defensive, running away. They'd succeeded, which meant they'd managed to stay alive. But the Foundation only had to get lucky once. He and Ivy needed to get lucky every day, every hour, just to stay one step ahead of their doom. Neither hiding the Cross, nor simply handing it over to the Church would let them escape their fate.

"If this were a military campaign, we'd plan to seize the strategic offensive,” Zack finally answered Ivy's question. “But I have no idea how to do that. We've followed your Priestess's orders, visited Byzantium and Venice. We've learned a lot about what we're facing, but we're no better equipped to confront aircraft carriers, drone missile launchers, and the world's strongest military force than we were when we started this adventure."

Ivy smiled at him. “Do you remember the name of that famous church in Constantinople?"

"Hagia Sophia?"

"Know what it means?"

"Saint Sophia, right? Whoever she was."

Ivy shook her head. “It means Holy Wisdom. Which might also be the third person in the trinity. We've gained wisdom in our flight and we've made a network of friends and allies. Now we've got to figure out a way to transform our knowledge into power."

Sure. That sounded logical and it sounded easy. But it was easier to believe that knowledge was power when you weren't facing helicopter gunships, armed only with the certainty of your convictions.

"The Foundation has effective control over the U.S. military, so we've got to think like guerillas, attacking where they aren't, seeking the soft spots in their defenses. Obviously, the two of us aren't going to attack them militarily."

"Two?” Father Paulo said. “But there are already the four of us. And you told us of so many others who have helped you."

Ivy frowned. “Keep thinking, Zack, but I don't think we're quite on the right track. We came to Venice for a reason. Why here? Sure, it was great to meet with Father Paulo and Father Francis, but we could have met with priests in Turkey or Greece. We need to know why the Priestess sent us here."

"Maybe she likes the canals."

"Yeah. And maybe she thought it would be handy if we crossed half the world just to hand the Cross over to her enemies. But I don't think either of those is true. She sent us to Byzantium to pick up the Veil. So, why did she send us to Venice?"

The three men were getting a bit sulky and Ivy couldn't blame them. She'd asked for their plans and then, when they'd come up with any, she'd shot them down. Still, she couldn't help thinking that they were missing something fundamental.

From the guidebook she'd studied while she and Zack had explored the canals of this ancient city, she knew Venice had been a mostly uninhabited swamp until around the fall of the Western Roman Empire. A number of Romans had founded the city then to escape from the German tribes who overran Italy during that period. So, there couldn't be anything truly ancient here. Nothing dating back before the Christian era.

On the flipside, though, although the old city of Byzantium had dated back to the pre-Christian era, the Veil hadn't been hidden there until the 1400s when the Turks finally overran that last citadel of the two-thousand-year-old Roman Empire. Something old could have been brought to Venice in the fifteen hundred years since its founding.

"We were sent to Byzantium to pick up the Veil, so maybe we're here to pick up something else. Think about what could be hidden here. What is Venice famous for?"

"They've got the relics of Saint Mark,” Zack said.

"Anything else?” Ivy didn't think an ancient skeleton, even that of one of the Apostles, would provide the kind of power they needed to confront the Foundation.

"Who knows what loot is hidden around the city?” Father Paulo suggested. “We were a merchant nation, but also a nation of pirates and thieves. But for all that is known, Venetian merchants may have looted the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, Kali's strangling cord, and the Ka'bah stone, in addition to the known treasures."

"Which of those would help?"

Father Paulo shrugged. “I'm not saying any of them
are here
, just that Venice is a hodgepodge of ancient stuff gathered over the centuries by Venetian noblemen intent on proving that they were among the wealthiest and most artistically inclined of their world. It wasn't for nothing that the Renaissance started here in Venice, you know."

"I thought it started because of all the Greeks fleeing the conquest of Constantinople and bringing their scientific and artistic skills with them,” Zack offered.

Father Francis shook his head. “A very narrow-minded reading of history."

"Okay, is there any particular place where the loot would be?” Ivy asked. “I read something about the Cairo Museum having millions of uncatalogued treasures. Does Venice have anything like that?"

"Not museums,” Father Paulo said. “Just the city itself. And the mainland too, of course."

"But I thought—"

"When the city grew rich, noble Venetians competed by building palaces on the mainland."

"So, we've not only got to search the islands of Venice, we've got to search everywhere around it, too? All while the Foundation and Italian Police are everywhere in the city looking for us?"

"When you put it like
that
, it sounds like an impossible mission,” Father Paulo agreed.

"Can you think of a positive way to put it?"

"Perhaps it would be wise to consider prayer,” the priest said. “I have often found that, when I face impossible obstacles, the Lord shows me a way around them, through them, or simply moves them away."

"I've got nothing against prayer, Father,” Zack said. “But I'm thinking we're as outgunned in the prayer department as we are in more obvious weapons. I don't know how many members the Foundation has, but it's a sure bet they have more than four. And all of the ones we've met so far seem to be big on prayer. When they aren't trying to kill us, anyway."

"Prayer isn't an additive thing,” Father Paulo said. “The Lord does not set up scales comparing the numbers of prayers for one thing or another. If he did, we Christians would imitate the Tibetans with their prayer wheels to mechanize our offerings of thanks and requests for aid."

The obviousness of Father Paulo's suggestion almost took Ivy's breath away.

"You're right,” she said. “We've done what the Priestess told us to do. So, now we need to reconnect with her. Prayer is the traditional way of connecting to gods and the dead."

"I wasn't suggesting turning to paganism,” Father Paulo protested.

Ivy had tried not to confront that little problem in her own belief structure. If she was a Catholic and a Christian, how could she also be doing the bidding of a priestess of Ishtar? How like a priest to make her confront what she'd been trying to avoid.

Still, was there really a contradiction?

"Remember what you said. Based on the symbols on the Veil, we know that Mary may well have been a priestess of Ishtar or possibly even an avatar of Ishtar. And visions of Mary, messages from Mary are fully consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.” She doubted that they would be consistent with the teachings of whatever strange breed of Christianity the Foundation pursued, but that wasn't her problem.

"We didn't conclude that Mary
was
a priestess,” Father Francis protested. “We were speaking hypothetically. We don't know that Mary ever owned this Veil. The church recognizes that not every purported relic is authentic."

"Hypothetical or not, you convinced me. It's at least possible that my priestess is consistent with the Catholic faith. You said we need supernatural help and I'm going to ask for it. Last time we needed supernatural help, we got it from the priestess. Now, that person might be Mary. She might be just about anyone else, for that matter, but she's given us the only guidance we've had so far. I'm going to ask for her help again."

"How are you going to contact her?” Zack wanted to know. “She hasn't been in touch for weeks now, since that first night when we just happened to stumble into a cave that had once been a temple to Ishtar."

"We didn't just stumble,” Ivy said. She hoped she sounded more confident than she really felt. “My second sight showed me the way, just as it has shown me the way here in Venice."

"But where should we go?"

She was glad that Zack had said ‘we.’ “We're already there. The Church of Mary of the Sailors is shot-through with the blue power of the Goddess. If she won't talk to me here, where would she?"

Two days later, Ivy was beginning to wish she'd never asked that question.

Praying for a vision from the Goddess or her priestess had seemed like an obvious answer. They'd followed the priestess's orders, traveling through Turkey, Greece, and Italy and retrieving the Cross and Veil. Now they were ready for the next set of instructions. The only problem was, nothing was happening.

Ivy had lit candles, crossed herself with holy water, and gotten down on her knees and prayed for guidance from Mary, the Goddess, the Priestess, and from every saint and angel she could think of—male or female.

Praying hadn't hurt her any. From when she'd been a small child, prayer had always made her feel better, as if she'd been cleaned from the inside as well as on the outside. Two solid days praying made her feel cleaner than she'd ever felt before. But a good shiny feeling wasn't doing the job. The Foundation was still out there.

Father Paulo reported rumors from parishioners about Italian police officers accompanied by unidentified but definitely non-Italian men in civilian clothing who broke into homes and ransacked them, leaving the residents with wreckage to clean up. In a few cases, owners who had protested too much had vanished with the police. Few of those had returned and none of those who were missing could be found when their families hired attorneys to track them down. The Italian judiciary simply shrugged.