The Stolen Gospels (14 page)

Chapter 15

She-apostle babies and toddlers rarely smile, and never actually “play” with toys, in the usual sense of the word. They look at them occasionally, more out of curiosity than anything else, it seems, and then set them—or hurl them—aside. The children seem
old
in their behavior, and we understand why, of course, but there is something else about them that remains unexplained: an intense, abiding sadness.

—Note screen, UWW computer file

With Lori in the passenger seat, Alex drove the electric cart out of the Scriptorium and back down into the musty subterranean passageways. He accelerated through a long tunnel and took a banked turn at high speed. They went up a spiral ramp, then slowed and entered the interior of a large hall, where Alex parked the vehicle in one of several marked spaces along the perimeter, beside other small vehicles.

The hall was filled with stone slab tables and benches, a few of which were occupied by people in pale gold uniforms with UWW shoulder patches, or in dull grayish-brown robes with the hoods thrown back. Most of the diners were women. The men present, Lori had learned, were all “knights,” because of the requirement that they fulfill the various needs of the women. There were serving knights, office knights, kitchen knights, and a variety of other job categories, including the popular stud knights. Even though Lori had grown up on the streets, she thought that the use of a stud service was depraved, without the personal commitment and responsibility that should be present in a relationship. Even worse, the men of Monte Konos were held as slaves, without the right to make their own choices.

Lori noted a rectangular sign high on one wall: REFECTORY BUILDING. She and Alex seemed to be on the main level of the structure; through an open doorway another building, gray and weathered, could be seen on the other side of a cobblestone plaza.

“That’s where we were,” he said, noticing the direction of her inquisitive, lavender-eyed gaze.

“The Scriptorium?”

He nodded.

Lori wondered why they hadn’t just walked across the plaza, and theorized that the fun-loving Alex enjoyed driving the electric carts. She smelled pleasant cooking odors, which made her hungry.

As the pair walked toward the dining area, Dixie Lou and a middle-aged blonde woman caught up and walked with them. Wearing a long black dress and glittering gold earrings, Dixie Lou moved to Lori’s side. Upset that she wasn’t being allowed to see her mother, and wasn’t being told her condition, the teenager took a deep breath, but didn’t say what was on her mind. Ever since arriving here, Lori had been asking about her mother; she asked guards, Dixie Lou herself, anyone she encountered. But no one gave her any answers. While Dixie Lou had initially said her mother’s condition had stabilized, that had been the last piece of information Lori had received. After that,
nothing
, and she was feeling increasingly angry.

“The Refectory is much as it was in ancient times,” Dixie Lou explained, in her Southern drawl. “Of course we’ve added modern cooking and refrigeration appliances and a few other touches for the sake of convenience. But if you squint, you can almost visualize monks here with their hooded heads bent over bowls of soup.”

“How many monks were in the monastery?” Lori asked. She felt awkward being civil to this woman, whom she loathed, but if she was going to survive here—and find out about her own mother—it was a requirement. She would tolerate her, without getting too close.

“Four hundred twenty at the height of the facility in the fourteenth century. This dining hall seats a hundred and forty, a third of the population—so they ate in shifts.” With a golden-ringed forefinger she pointed to a high bank of windows, on one wall. “If those windows were lower you’d see a magnificent view of the valley and Macedonian mountains, quite spectacular. But monks, being austere, did not partake in such hedonistic delights.”

Dixie Lou selected a table near a buffet counter brimming with fish, lamb and salads, along with platters of dark breads and Greek cakes. Racks of wine lined a nearby wall.

Alex handed a luncheon menu to Lori. As he looked over his own copy, he tugged at an earlobe, thoughtfully.

She scanned the items, which were described in Greek, with English translations. There were no prices. Several types of baked fish and pilaf were featured, along with a stuffed squid sauté and, most tempting to her, a stuffed shoulder of lamb with eggplant. She loved lamb, but didn’t feel like eating anything too heavy. Ever since the terrible events at the goddess circle her stomach had been upset, and she felt like she had lost several pounds.

“See anything you like?” Alex inquired.

“I’ll have monk food,” Lori said, finally. “Greek bread and a bowl of lamb broth soup.” Her stomach wasn’t so queasy around Dixie Lou now, but the sensation had been replaced by another. She didn’t like anything about the woman.

“Ah yes,” Dixie Lou said, in a tone of approval. “
Zomos arniou
, my favorite soup. It’s best when served with boiled greens and slices of feta cheese. And white
retsina
, of course.”

“
Retsina
?”

“Wine. There is no drinking age here. Even small children drink with their families.”

“I’d better not,” Lori said. “Alcohol has been a problem for me.”

“Of course,” Dixie Lou said. She discussed the food selection with the blonde who accompanied her, a woman who had not yet been introduced to Lori.

During the meal, a young female guard brought a message to Dixie Lou, in an envelope. The guard saluted—the three-fingered “W”—and left.

Lori stopped eating her soup and watched. As Dixie Lou read the transmittal something changed in her face, a complex interaction of emotions. Sadness in the expression, but in the eyes, something entirely different, and devoid of emotion.

“It’s a coded Internet report from our operatives in the Bureau of Ideology,” Dixie Lou announced, her tone somber. “Amy Angkor-Billings is dead, martyred like our Lord Jesus Christ.”

At her table and those nearby, people gasped and began to weep, while Lori continued to watch the eyes of Dixie Lou Jackson—dark, simmering orbs that concealed so much. But not the anger when she noticed Lori studying her.

Abruptly Dixie Lou excused herself, along with the other woman, saying she needed to take care of important business.

* * *

The BOI had multiple sources of information concerning the operations of United Women of the World. On a bi-weekly basis they received encrypted Internet reports from operatives secretly placed around the world, as well as personal statements in other formats. All were of such importance that they found their way first to the Vice Minister of Minority Affairs, Styx Tertullian, for his review and dissemination.

So it was that Styx opened a coded e-mail file that had been forwarded to him by internal security.

The screen was blank.

With a barely suppressed expletive he pressed deep-access keys to find out why.

A computer voice spoke: “Erased, possibly by magnetic disturbance. A small amount of data retrieved.”

Well, that’s something anyway
, he thought. He tapped the appropriate keys for retrieval, and the computer voice said something that was garbled. The following words appeared on the screen:

Your old way of life is dead.

—The Ladies

“I’ll get you for this,” he vowed, and slammed his fist on the desk.

He had something in mind, a plan he had recommended to Culpepper several weeks ago, and which had been approved. In recent months, the Bureau had been receiving coded reports that the “Ladies” had a mysterious preoccupation with unusual babies, having put out inquiries and dispatched people to a variety of countries to round them up.

Babbling babies. It almost sounded laughable, but the women were devoting considerable resources to a top-secret project involving them. What did it all mean?

Greece. An interesting country. Amy Angkor-Billings herself had been captured there, near the city of Salonika. Looking at a map, he placed a finger on the city in the northern part of the country. And his eyes wandered even farther north, to the rugged Macedonian mountains.

* * *

The next day, Styx Tertullian limped aboard a BOI Lear Fan 2100 prop-jet, which was hangared underground. An elevator lifted it to the surface, where hinged sections of ground folded open to make way. Other elevators raised a runway into place. The aircraft accelerated down the runway, took off in a hazy afternoon sky.

This was an antique plane from the century before, but entirely rebuilt. He liked it because of its unique look, with a propeller in the rear and a Y-shaped tail, and the fact that it represented another era, a bygone time when life was much more simple and women didn’t raise such a ruckus about religion.

The comfortable interior, which had been customized according to Styx’s exacting specifications, featured massive black leather chairs with individual entertainment centers and control panels that enabled a passenger to order a wide variety of foods and beverages from an automated kitchen and bar. The ceiling, of a black graphite material, had a soft, elegant sheen, as did the walls, which were silver. Beneath his feet, the Persian carpeting was BOI silver-and-black, dotted with blue Christian crosses.

In half an hour the plane touched down at Seattle’s Boeing Field, just south of the downtown area. A Bureau car awaited him at the edge of the tarmac. After using a transmitter on his i.d. card to turn off the car alarm and unlock the doors, Styx located the keys above the visor on the driver’s side.

The back seat was filled with grocery bags and other articles he had ordered, all of which had been placed there within the hour by BOI personnel.

The vehicle, a nearly new Hummer hovercar, was equipped with radar confusion devices on both license plates—thus giving the police garbled speed readings, making them think their radar equipment was acting up. It enabled him to drive twenty miles per hour over the speed limits without worry of apprehension.

Of course he wouldn’t get a ticket anyway because of false government i.d. cards he could present if stopped, showing he was with the National Security Administration. Still, he didn’t like to waste time with such matters. Every moment was precious.

Because of the speeds at which he was able to drive, he arrived at the small house in West Seattle one minute and fifty-eight seconds sooner than he would have been able to do otherwise, as calculated by the car’s computer system.

After retrieving a bouquet of red roses and one of the bags of groceries from the back seat, he bounded up the creaky steps to the front porch. A note awaited him in shaky, familiar handwriting, inviting him to enter.

The home’s alarm system beeped as he entered. Quickly, he tapped the five digit code into the control panel just inside the front door.

“Is that you, Styx?” a familiar, frail voice called out, from the rear of the house. “I’m in the bedroom, dear.”

“Hi, Louise!” he called out in his high-pitched voice. “Just let me get a few bags of groceries into the kitchen and I’ll be right up.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” she said.

As Styx carried bags into the kitchen and made sure the perishables went into the refrigerator he thought about how much this elderly woman, Louise Bonham, had meant to his family. During his formative years he had lived in the bungalow next door, and Louise had been his mother’s best friend. The two women had done everything together, from school fund raising events to art classes they taught at the community center down the street. When Styx’s mother died six years ago she exacted a promise from him that he would take care of Louise.

In all that time Styx had done as she’d asked, for it had been her dying wish.

A wrinkled, angular woman, Mrs. Bonham was in her usual place in bed when he walked into her bedroom, picking up the odors of medicinals. An open, white-leather
Bible
lay on her lap, and an oxygen tank rested on a cart beside her bed, with its hose and mask within her reach. She needed oxygen at night when she slept. Well over eighty, she had steadfastly resisted all efforts by her son and daughter to place her in a retirement home. Styx admired her independence, and through the Bureau he had made arrangements with city officials to let her remain at home. Senior helpers and nurses were sent regularly to care for her, and every few weeks, whenever he could get away, Styx came himself.

She could get around on her own, but only with the help of a walker-frame, and only for short periods of time because she was weak and grew fatigued easily.

He leaned over to kiss her deeply creased forehead, and handed her the bouquet of flowers.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, drawing the roses close so that she could smell them. “You shouldn’t have!”

She always said that, but never failed to show a little girl’s delight at the gifts he brought. This was a God-fearing woman like his own sainted mother, not at all like the others who continually tried to stir up trouble.

He checked the gauge on her oxygen tank, and the tightness of the fittings. They were fine.

“Thank you, Styx,” the old woman said. “You’ve always been such a dear boy.”

* * *

Although it was only mid-afternoon, President Markwether lay on his bed in his suit, except he had draped the tailored gray jacket over a nearby chair. The White House staff had been notified that he was “incommunicado, working on a special project.” He’d been trying unsuccessfully to take a nap, since he had not been sleeping well lately.

“Why are you so tense?” the woman asked, as she sat on the edge of the bed and massaged his muscular shoulders and neck. He had once been an athlete, a football quarterback. He wore a white shirt and red tie with the suit trousers. He kicked off his shoes. They thumped on the carpeted floor.

“The usual.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, with a love tap on his back. “You’re not very good at it.”

Eleanor Markwether was not beautiful in the classic sense, but she had a quality about her that people found appealing, a charisma that made the citizens of the United States believe she really cared about the issues she championed: food and education for the poor, medical care for children and the elderly. Polls indicated she was fifteen points more popular than the President.