The Artifact (63 page)

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Authors: Jack Quinn

BOOK: The Artifact
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Cassandra smiled. “Oh, yes.”
“Why not?” Andrea quipped.
“Women were meant to be the dominant species because of our ability to procreate. What a power that should have been.”
“Muscles and testosterone won out.”
“Earth was only an experiment.”
“You sound like you have an inside track.”
“I do.”

“Speaking of testosterone, I’ve always thought the penman of the Genesis fable got it backwards, blaming Eve for seducing Adam.”

“Men have perceived women as second-class citizens, if not worthless, from the beginning of time. It would have been unacceptable to saddle humanity with an Original Sin committed by a man. And who do you think conceived Genesis?”

“If the Garden of Eden had any credibility at all, it would have been Adam’s lust that

seduced, if not raped Eve, whether she had a headache or not.”

“Invalidating the theory of Creationism, that held sway until Darwin proposed the

equally fantastic hypothesis that we evolved from tadpoles.”

Andrea couldn’t tell if Cassandra was kidding or was some kind of fanatic. “I would have loved to interview you on air.”
“To make fun of me for your cynical viewers?”
“You have some unique ideas.”
Cassandra smiled her acknowledgement.
“Are you saying that God screwed up with homo sapiens?”
“Not completely.”
“Why doesn’t He, She fix it then?”
“I believe She is allowing the experiment to run its course.”
“While She’s busy with other endeavors throughout the galaxy, I suppose.”
“See, you are making fun, and we aren’t even on television.”
“Guilty. You ought to write science fiction—‘E.T. call home.’”
“I often think it a shame that there is not more credence in recent centuries than in ancient times.”
“Just because you believe, doesn’t make it true.”
“Or the corollary.”
“Unfortunately, it’s impossible to prove a negative, or in this case, a positive.”
“We’re better educated today, more skeptical, more demanding of logical answers. On the lookout for charlatans.”
“Jesus would be so designated if he walked the earth today.”
“Amen, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Your attitude is commendable for one who has the opportunity to await certain death within a specific timeframe.”
“Opportunity?”
“To examine your beliefs, perhaps revise your opinions.”

“Cassandra, give me credit. I haven’t slipped into atheism as the result of a few denied prayers. I’ve witnessed tragedy and evil firsthand for twenty years. Nothing could change my mind in the next few months about the absence of a benevolent God.”

“I respect your intellectual position.”

“How can anyone, man, woman or deity criticize me for concluding that a virgin birth or resurrection are patently incredible?”

 

The blizzard was tapering off to lazy flakes falling on hard-packed highways, bare tree limbs and conifers already bearing inches of wet snow. Paula and Jerry were having breakfast in a truck stop off Route 91 in Leominster. Jerry asked, “Are you sure they’ll go live from the same location they’ve been broadcasting from?”

Paula made a fist over her half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs, flicking a finger out at each point. “First, they’ll want to be flexible until the very last minute, to address contradictory panel comments or unanticipated external problems. So they won’t pre-record and downlink via satellite. Second, you can bet your badge they’ll want to field questions from the press, and doing that by telephone or remote video will not seem open or forthright. Third, the only way they can hope to elude arrest and jail time is to plead their case to the masses.”

“How the hell are they going to win public sympathy for upsetting the biggest religious apple cart in history?”

“Callaghan is not stupid, Jer. He’s been ten steps ahead of us, the Iraqis, the mob, the press, probably a dozen more sleazy treasure hunters we don’t even know about.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Paula looked around from their secluded booth at the nearly empty diner as she pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed a number.

“Hi, Maria, may I speak to The Man?”
Jerry frowned at her. “You’re gonna get traced, you know.”
“No problem. We’re coming in from the cold.”
“Whooo-eee!”
“Where the hell are you,” Harrington growled.

“Good morning, Kev,” Paula replied sweetly, pressing the speakerphone button while Harrington responded. “I’m just dandy, how are you?”

“When I catch up with your wrinkled ass,” Kevin’s voice intoned, “you’ll be fending off dykes in Leavenworth for the next twenty years!”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Kev. They’re going on the air in eleven hours. Can you take them before then?”

“That’s privileged. And you’re out of the loop, Girl.”

Paula expelled a weary sigh into the phone. “Well, I know a couple of places they probably are. If you don’t want to hear them, fine with me.”

Harrington didn’t reply for several moments. “What’s the deal?”
“Reinstate me and Jerry with total amnesty. We take point and command of the action. You get the perps and the credit.”
“You can go straight to hell, Najarian!”
“Fine,” Paula said, and disconnected.
Jerry picked up the check. “We’d better get out of here, Pal.”
She placed the phone on the table and took a sip of tepid coffee. “Let’s wait a couple, Jer.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Find out if they have a FAX in the back, will you?”

Jerry slid out of the booth and went to the cashier to pay for their breakfast. When he returned to their table her phone was ringing.

“Yes, Kevin?”
“Where the fuck are they?”
“We have a deal?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s a deal.”

“FAX that to me in your handwriting and signature.” She reached out to take the piece of paper from Jerry and read off the diner FAX number. “I’ll call you back as soon as I get it.”

 

Clyde Callaghan stood gazing out the bay window of the Rowe lodge at the large white flakes almost obliterating his view of the stand of birches surrounding the hewn-log building. His associates were seated around the living room perusing his broad back in silence.

Although demonstrations by Christians and non-Christians continued, they began to turn from violent to agitated the day following the last segment of Shimon’s treatise. The finality of the ancient document seemed to have removed some of the anger from the autobiography for many thoughtful Christians, replacing it with awe and trepidation at its implications. Even lax Christians were humbled at the potential ramifications of Shimon’s eyewitness account of his brother’s first century existence, and followed their devout brethren into churches around the globe to pray for guidance. Local police and militias had begun to quell demonstrations by Christians, riotous looters, felons and arsonists. Members of other religions remained smug and ebullient at the Christian dilemma, and the entire world seemed to be waiting for some definitive conclusion to the revelations made in the writings of Shimon.

“I have prayed for this respite,” Cassandra said. “The thought of continuing riots and deaths because we released the document saddened me greatly.”

Callaghan spoke without turning. “We couldn’t keep it from them in good conscience.”

Andrea’s wheelchair stood in the warmth from the fireplace. “IT BELONGS TO THE ENTIRE POPULATION,” her mechanized whisper told them. “DESTROYING OR HIDING IT, LETTING CHRISTIAN LEADERS CENSURE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CRIMINAL.”

“Well, it’s done,” Geoff observed. “Now we have other concerns.”

“One of which is how to wrap this up,” Pulaski said, “so we don’t get lined up and shot for treason.”

Alvarez lifted his hand like a schoolboy requesting permission to speak. “They know we’d accuse them of complicity if they tried us in court.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Conté said.

“We go on camera telling our story,” Gerlach told them, “we’re gonna sound like wimps making excuses.”

“We don’t have a story,” Crandall grunted, “without admitting the whole scam was authorized and by who. Names, titles, and dates.”

Callaghan turned to look at Andrea. “Which is why somebody else has got to explain our actions to the people.”
“She can’t even talk,” Sammy said, “never mind give a behind-the- scenes report of a momentous event to the entire world.”
Andrea spoke again through the metallic timbre of her voice synthesizer. “YES, I

CAN. MY SWAN SONG.”

“The satellite log showed that somebody had traced the transmission location of our final uplink,” Sammy said. “They can shut us down any time they want.”

“The Feebs,” Palagi offered. “They’ll bust in here as soon as the visibility improves.
Callaghan moved from the window to confront them. “We cannot allow them to stop us before we’re through.”
“I will not permit a shoot-out with the FBI,” Cassandra said.
“What if we can’t control it?” Gerlach asked. “Look what they did to that Davidian sect in Waco.”
Peters leaned forward in his chair wringing his hands. “Why can’t we just tape it and walk away?”
Geoff shook his head dismissively. “And go on the run ‘til they track us down?”
“There will not be any killing,” Callaghan assured them, “by us or them.”
“How can you be sure?” Cassandra asked.
“Charlie?” Callaghan said.

Geoff stood, stepped to the center of the room, and explained the contingency plan he and Callaghan had worked out the previous night.

 

Sammy wheeled Andrea out of the large central common area to her room at the rear of the lodge. He lifted her onto the hospital bed, propped the pillows behind her head and pulled the spread over her inert body up to her shoulders.

“Can I get you anything?”
“Sit close so I don’t have to use that damned machine,” she whispered.
Sammy stretched out on the narrow mattress beside her, snuggling close, facing her. “How’s this?”
“I have a headache.”
Sammy chuckled and kissed her cheek. “You sure didn’t have one the other night.”
“What a good friend. You’re going to miss me.”
“Suppose there is an afterlife, then what?”
Then I’ll miss you, too.”
“You’d better!”
“I sense you’ve kind of connected with Geoff.”
“He seems like a good man.”
“Maybe something nice will come out of all this after all.”
“More than that, I hope.”
“I probably won’t be around to hear the Fat Lady sing.”
“Don’t go there, Princess. You could hang in for years.”
“I don’t want to. Not like this.”
His voice was hoarse when he finally replied. “Don’t ever ask me that, Andy. I would never do it.”
“I’ll think of something, if I have to. Get Kevorkian out here.”

They lay quietly side by side, and Andrea’s eyes closed in a light sleep. Sammy remained immobile on the bed, his mind churning, his moist eyes glued on the flocked plaster ceiling. The importance of the Shimon autobiography had paled for him compared to the rapid progression of Andrea’s terminal illness. He had absorbed the doctrine of the Catholic religion without question in the New Jersey household of his first-generation, hard-working Polish parents. Until his misdirected sojourn in the seminary, after which he stopped going to Mass and hadn’t thought much about God at all since. Was the resurrection of Jesus a hoax that had been perpetrated on the so-called faithful for two thousand years? Is the Supreme Being an uncaring Deity as Shimon contends? Or nonexistent, as Andy believes, even near death.

Sammy rose carefully from the bed and walked to the window. The snow was still falling in earnest beneath plots of mown grass heaped with an accumulation of at least two feet. He hadn’t expected anything like this when they began searching for the artifact almost a year ago. He couldn’t help feeling some responsibility for foisting the contentious document onto the public; but what could he do? He couldn’t stop them. Rat them out to the Feds? Or did the world need to grapple with this, bring the issue of God into the forefront of our modern-day concerns, maybe even become a better place for having done so.

He turned away from the falling snow to contemplate the inert woman on the bed. Previously active and full of energy, lying there shrunken, helpless, desiccated by a horrible disease. Why? Why her? Why Brian, an innocent child, or any premature death for that matter? Is that supposed to be part of God’s great plan? Or is Shimon’s contention valid: that The Almighty has lost interest in mankind and has left us to our own machinations and random fate?

 

They were seated side by side in the Jeep with the motor running and heater on in the parking lot of the Leominster truck stop, for nothing better to do, field-stripping their Glock automatics, waiting for the plows to get a head start.

“Now that Harrington knows Callaghan’s been televising from Rowe,” Jerry said, “we’re going to be hard-pressed to get there before he does, or Callaghan goes on the air.”

“That’ll be eight o’clock tonight,” she answered. “We have almost ten hours to go
seventy miles.”
“What’s stopping Harrington from trashing us right along with Callaghan?”
Paula finished reassembling her weapon, flicked the safety on, slapped a loaded magazine
into the butt and slammed a round into the chamber. “Me.”

She picked up her cell phone, and pressed an instant dial number. Maria Hernandez answered her personal line on the first ring. “Can you talk?” Paula asked in Spanish.

“I’m fine,” Maria answered in her native tongue. “I am going to visit my brother in Boston to see the Celtics tonight.”
Paula continued in the same language. “What time is the game?”
“I think at seven o’clock,” she replied. “The snow is supposed to stop this afternoon.”

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