The Stolen Gospels (22 page)

Chapter 27

The sudden appearance of this American teenager at the eye of the storm, and her reputed effect on it, leads to obvious questions that we cannot ignore. Lori Vale has a background of substance abuse and promiscuity, as well as a history of failure to respect authority. Her religious background is, at best, checkered. All of these facts will be cited by the opposition to impugn her credibility.

—Committee Report, the
Holy Women’s Bible

For centuries the Swiss Guard had been the Pope’s most trusted military force. Comprising three hundred men, they saw to it that no one except a short list of people obtained an audience with the Vicar of Christ. The President of the United States was on that most exclusive of all lists.

President Lowell Markwether surveyed the large waiting room, which he’d heard had been redecorated recently, with art works and antique furnishings brought in from storage, replacing what had been here before. Two aides sat nearby, one carrying the nuclear codes briefcase, and the second—his white-gloved brother Zack Markwether—holding a parcel wrapped in paper bearing the Presidential seal. Zack, a powerfully-built man with auburn hair and a narrow chin, wore his brown and tan US Army officer’s uniform, with colorful ribbons on the chest. He stared straight ahead.

The President thought back on the events that had placed him and his brother here. Zack—two years older—had been a basketball star in high school and a Rhodes scholar in college, graduating Magna Cum Laude. Everyone expected him to be the most successful of the pair—he’d always been the more popular and had achieved much more in school, with his Attention Deficit Disorder closely monitored and controlled by medication.

But subsequent events, when the two of them were adults, had been quite different. Unable to hold a civilian job, Zack had, by his mid-twenties, enlisted in the Army. In that career he had excelled, attaining the rank of full colonel and a coveted investigator position with the National Security Agency. During that time, Lowell Markwether had founded a successful Internet company, and with his fortune had bankrolled a victorious US Senate campaign for himself. This led in turn (by the time he was forty-six) to the Presidency, where he was now in the third year of his initial term.

On the other side of the waiting room sat a Cardinal in a ceremonial scarlet robe and skullcap; he avoided making eye contact with the President, and instead fussed with an embroidered edge on his garment. The door through which the President had entered moments before was open, and just outside stood two Swiss Guards in sixteenth century body armor with royal purple and gold leggings and red headdresses. Each man carried an antique rifle. On the President’s right, just inside the room, two more of the papal guards stood at attention by another door, leading to the Pope’s temporary office—which he was using while remodeling was being conducted in his own office.

The waiting room, with gold-embossed arches and doors, featured the original paintings of great masters, depicting a number of the most important cardinals of history. The mosaic tile floor was the finest workmanship President Markwether had ever seen. He sniffled from a cold that had been sneaking up on him in the last couple of days. To ward it off he’d been loading up on vitamins, but today he felt the malaise gaining on him, as if he were opposed by an inexorable enemy, with an army of persistent bacteria.

The door to the inner sanctum opened, and a tall, elderly man in a white vestment emerged, walking energetically. He held one hand on a golden cross that dangled from his neck. In his late-seventies, the olive-skinned Pope Rodrigo was still in excellent health, which he attributed to a vegetarian diet and mild activity regimen. He had a full head of thick black hair, with dignified streaks of silver. President Markwether and his aides rose to greet him.

“So nice to see you, Mr. President,” the Pope said, extending his age-spotted, ring-bejeweled hand.

Markwether kissed the hand. “Thank you for seeing me, Your Holiness.”

“This way, please,” the old man said. He led the way back into a private study, where his morning espresso and Segovia cookies were being served by a nun.

Just before going inside, the Pope conferred briefly and privately with the nun. At this time, Zack passed the wrapped parcel to the President, saying as he did so, “Maybe I should stay with you.” He nodded toward the man carrying the nuclear codes. “And him, too. Security doesn’t look too good around here. Did you notice how old the guards’ rifles are? Sixteenth century, I’d guess. I wonder if they even fire, or if they’re strictly ceremonial.”

The President smiled with a lack of concern. “I saw other guards with automatic weapons—out in the corridor and in St. Peter’s Square.”

“You don’t understand security the way I do, Brother. This place is full of holes, like a sieve. It’s dangerous. Let me come inside; I’ll give the Pope a few suggestions.”

“Don’t be presumptuous. Go back and sit down.” As the Pope finished talking with the nun, she scurried away and the President followed the holy man into his office. The door closed behind them.

“You have brought a bomb?” the Pope inquired, looking at the parcel. He spoke English with a slight Spanish accent. Waving an arm, he designated where he and his visitor were to sit, in seventeenth century Spanish chairs with a
papelera
in between, a hand-carved wooden chest with drawer compartments.

“Of course not,” the President replied, amused at the pontiff’s unpredictable sense of humor. “Although it could make you blow up somewhat physically. It’s a box of North Carolina chocolates, made at my family’s factory.”

“Ah yes, one of my favorites!” he said. A mischievous expression crept over his creased face as he accepted the gift. “I shall have to hide this where the nuns won’t find it. They say I eat too much chocolate, and keep trying to make me cut back.”

“One can never eat too much chocolate, Your Holiness.”

“My sentiments exactly.” Pope Rodrigo set the box on the table. “Now what is it you wish to discuss, the matter that could not be mentioned on the phone or by letter?” He lifted a golden scepter from a stand and examined it casually.

“There are matters of utmost sensitivity that you cannot mention to your Cardinals and I cannot reveal to my Cabinet. We are alike, you and I.”

“So true, although I envy you your pretty wife.”

“You don’t mean that, Pope Rodrigo.”

The men exchanged smiles, but the President’s was uneasy, and he came to the reason he had requested this audience. “The Bureau of Ideology is causing problems for me.”

The Pope nodded understandingly. He replaced the scepter on its stand.

“How do you suppose they spend so much money?” the President asked. He sipped a little demitasse of espresso.

The Pope chuckled, but unpleasantly. “Ah yes, their latest funding request—sort of like a municipal levy but without the option of voting on it. It’s hard to say where all of it goes, but I can think of better uses for it.”

“So can I. Did you pay the latest demand?”

“Yes, but to do so we had to divert funds earmarked for new churches in Africa and Asia.”

“Well I didn’t make my quota, and Culpepper’s not happy about it. His attack dog, Tommy Lee Chang, has been crawling up my backside.”

The Pope nibbled on a chocolate cookie, nodded. “Their Vice Minister of Finance. Most unpleasant fellow.”

“He certainly is.”

“I shall pray on your behalf.”

“Maybe we should send money to the women instead,” the President said, solemnly. The words had barely escaped his lips when he regretted them, but his host showed no evidence of being offended.

“What a choice,” the Pope mused, “United Women of the World or the Bureau of Ideology. One extreme or the other.” His eyes twinkled. “What is it you call those organizations in private?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want me to say that here, Your Holiness.”

“Sometimes, humor relieves tension.”

“We call them United Whores of the World and the Bureau of Idiots.”

“How about the Bureau of Idiotology? Or the Bureau of Insanity?”

The President grinned. “Those work too. Sometimes I wish they would just blow each other up and get it over with.” Then Markwether sat silently, considering the problem. In recent years the BOI had grown too large, too powerful to be controlled.

“The UWW is just as bad as the Bureau,” the Pope said, “but on a smaller scale.” He smoothed his robe across his lap. “I’ll bet the ladies are putting the arm on several third world countries right now, with their own funding demands.”

“Probably so. They’re a tough bunch, from what I hear.”

“We must be careful ourselves,” the Pope mused, “or the women will have our jobs one day.” He scratched his ruddy chin. “Reports have reached my desk that these women are an offshoot, fanatical branch of Christianity, but followers of Jesus Christ nonetheless.”

“I’ve seen their strange emblem, the cross misshapen into a sword.”

“Just the tip of the iceberg.” Crossing the opulent office to his desk, the Pope retrieved a brown sheathe and passed it to the President.

“What’s this?”

“A present. You were kind enough to bring a gift for me, and here’s one for you as well. I purchased it a couple of days ago for a pittance, nothing worth mentioning. This is your copy.”

President Markwether thumbed through the pages. “
Holy Women’s Bible
? A UWW project, it says. But I have heard nothing of this.”

The Catholic patriarch nodded. “Nor had I, until recently.”

After studying it further, Markwether said, “This looks like blasphemy to me, Your Holiness, with twisted biblical passages.”

“It’s that, and much more, Mister President. From your perspective it’s a bargaining chip, a document you can sell to the BOI for a substantial sum—” He winked. “Perhaps for the one billion dollars of your funding shortfall.”

“How do you know the exact amount?”

“The ways of God are mysterious.”

Nodding, the President listened while the pontiff continued. “One of our priests spoke with a runaway from Monte Konos, the headquarters of the rebellious women. The runaway was a sex slave to them, what they call a stud knight. A despicable practice, and the young man was lucky to escape with his life. He says this computer printout represents only part of an immense project, a new
Bible
that will incorporate
The Old Testament,
The New Testament
, and the sort of blasphemy you hold on your lap. He says reincarnated apostles are dictating the new gospels, in ancient Aramaic.”

“Is that so?”

“And that’s not the most intriguing part. He says the modern apostles are all females.”

“But Jesus had no female apostles!”

“I know that. The stud knight—Giovanni Petrie—said the women are insane. Apparently they’ve come to the belief that Jesus had twenty-four apostles, not twelve—and there were a dozen of each gender.”

“This is the worst sort of heresy, Your Holiness. But why do you entrust such a document to me? Wouldn’t you prefer to keep it secret and deal with it yourself?”

“You are the President of the United States, leader of the most powerful Christian nation on earth. My friend, I trust you implicitly. This will help you, as I have suggested, and when it is turned over to the Bureau the women will be—shall we say?—dealt with.”

“The Bureau does get rather excited about heretics, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

The President smiled. “I shall have to bring you a much nicer gift next time.”

Moments later, as Markwether and his aides were being escorted to the visitors’ apartments by a nun, Zack Markwether whispered to his brother. “Look down the corridor there—those guards are standing around chatting.”

To the President it did appear that Zack was correct in this instance. Upon seeing the approaching dignitary, the guards straightened, and stopped talking. They stood at attention on either side of a doorway, as the nun led the visitors past them.

“These guys need to be shaped up or shipped out,” Zack said. “Just be glad the White House isn’t operated this way.”

* * *

Heads bowed, they stood in a prayer circle on the grassy expanse of Gasworks Park, at the northern perimeter of Seattle’s downtown core. These were the rejects of society, hardened youths who lived on the streets and endured the underbelly of human existence: stabbings, drug overdoses, venereal diseases, miserable, impoverished deaths. Dressed in tattered jeans and denim shirts, they wore their hair in radical, brightly-hued spikes and frizzy cuts, or they shaved all the hair off. Metal rings pierced their ears, noses, lips, tongues, and belly buttons. These were the dropouts, misfits, malcontents, and dissenters who didn’t fit into structured employment, school, or home environments. They didn’t care a whit what others thought of them, with the exception of their peers.

By evening, the Seattle Police would be out as usual in this public area, making arrests for the sale and consumption of methamphetamines and other illegal drugs. Some of those in the prayer circle would likely spend the night in jail.

Only moments before, a young man in military surplus clothes, who had been Lori Vale’s boyfriend before she left him for another, had spoken emotionally of her compassion for the downtrodden, how she had reached out to help others, even when she was hurting herself. Lori never passed a person sleeping on the street without leaving something for him or her: money tucked in a pocket, gloves fitted over freezing fingers, a pair of used shoes, a wrapped sandwich. A teenage girl with orange hair, Alicia Koppel, mentioned parties they had attended together, and heart-to-heart talks lasting far into the night.

It had been almost three weeks since Lori disappeared, and those who missed her feared the worst—but hoped for the best.

* * *

The door of Styx’s office swung open hard, and Minister Culpepper strode in, holding a sheet of paper. “President Markwether wants to make a deal. E-mail from one of his aides.”

Styx read the encrypted document. It was a request to reduce the funding demand by one billion dollars, in exchange for an unfinished manuscript—the
Holy Women’s Bible
. Several passages were quoted from the book, along with an excerpt from the introduction. Feeling his face flush hot, he said, “Who cares what that stupid book says? It’s garbage, like the first quote we saw.”