Veil of the Goddess (26 page)

A feather's weight pressed against his shoulders, then impossibly entered into his body, pressing through it without disturbing anything but leaving him with a feeling that he had been vulnerable, that Ivy, or the demon if it wasn't Ivy, could have reached in and rearranged things without his being able to do anything to prevent it.

He had to have faith. Faith that this was Ivy. Faith that she'd chosen
him
as her bridge to the Istanbul of the present and from the lost Constantinople of the Roman Empire. If he had faith, he could only do what she asked.

He tried to kiss her back.

One moment, his lips met a cool fog. A moment later, he was kissing a warm, breathing, and completely delectable female.

He opened his eyes, fearful that his imagination had run completely wild. But she was here, she was real—and she was kissing the daylights out of him.

And now she was going to think him a big pervert for pushing his straining erection directly into her crotch.

"You made it. Thank God. I was worried sick about you.” He held her, fearing that if he let him go, she might vanish again, return into the mists that had hidden her from his sight.

She pulled away abruptly. “That was tough."

That wasn't the reaction he'd hoped for. “Sorry."

"Yeah. Me too."

So much for any fantasy that she wanted him. “How's your leg?"

She bent down and pushed on it. “Seems to be healed. This magic stuff is weird and unpredictable, but it has a lot of power."

"No kidding."

Even when she'd moved, she'd kept one hand gripped on Saint Christopher, that hand also resting on his chest. Now she let it go, finger by finger, her face showing her fear that, without the medal, she'd be whisked back into whatever invisible world had kept her trapped.

He'd never forget the grin she gave him when she didn't vanish back into the blue haze or wherever it was she'd been trapped. The imam had called her a saint. With
that
smile, she could certainly model for any religious painting.

"Father Galen stole the veil from me,” she said.

"I think he's got the Cross too,” Zack admitted.

Her smile vanished. “Those objects are too dangerous. We've got to get them back and take them to Venice."

Zack nodded. He was way past questioning Ivy's visions now. If she said it needed to happen, he would do his best to make it happen. “I'm open to suggestions."

"We go to the Patriarch,” Cejno said. “We tell him Father Galen steal these things. He give them back to us."

It wasn't much of a plan, especially since they didn't know that Father Galen hadn't just been following the Patriarch's orders. But they had to start somewhere. Zack didn't have any better ideas. From the grim look on her eyes, Ivy didn't either.

The pilgrims melted away.

They would have
rioted
for the Patriarch and for the incredible miracle of Mary's Veil, returned after so many hundred years. They would have
fought
for him,
burned
for him,
killed
for him, even
died
for him. What they wouldn't do was
live
for him. Not here. Not in Constantinople, the city of so many of their ancestors.

Tears blurred the Bishop's vision as he greeted those who stopped to pay their respects before returning to their homes.

When he'd been a child, not so very many years before, the streets of Constantinople still rang with the musical sound of the Greek language. Back then, church bells competed with the Mosque's calls to prayer. The dream of a cosmopolitan city rather than a wholly Turkish one, a dream that had been sustained by both Roman and Ottoman Emperors, had not seemed impossible.

Back then, his seminary had been filled with fellow students, Greek by culture and language but Turkish by nationality and birth. Then, the young were everywhere. The land of their fathers and grandfathers and countless generations had still been largely Greek.

But that had been before. Before the anti-Christian pogroms that had created fear in a city that had once welcomed everyone. Before steady and insidious pressure to make Turkey a unified whole—despite treaties and agreements. Both priests and parishioners had fled, driven from a city where their ancestors had lived for two thousand years, from a part of the world where Greeks had thrived a thousand years even before that, going back to the days of Achilles and Odysseus. Greeks had survived in this land through Trojan, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, Gothic, Hunish, Arab, Slavic, Bulgar, Seljuk, Ottoman, and finally nationalist Turkish invasion and conquest.

But no more. The dreams were dying. The Miracle of the Veil's return had proven to be more bitter than sweet. Perhaps Mary had been right to take the Veil and hide it. Perhaps he had been wrong to drag it out of its holy resting place for the gratification of a mob and the crushing of his dreams.

"Dream new dreams,” his visitors whispered to him. Even priests who had studied with him, here in Constantinople, but who had fled the city in the hard years shook their heads when he begged them to stay.

"Constantinople is lost to us, at least for our generation. Perhaps one day, we shall return like the Jews have to Jerusalem, but our time is not yet. Faith, even with the protective shield of the veil, cannot protect us. The Turks do not welcome us."

It was easy for them to say. They had their parishes, their Greek, Serbian, or Bulgar weddings and babies. They had the resurgent Church in Russia as a solid anchor of support. They didn't face vast but empty cathedrals of faith, the few graying faces of those too old to flee trembling on the edge of their benches as if only waiting to be swept into the arms of the Lord.

The Patriarch had no new dreams to dream; he had only his old dreams, dreams his father had whispered to him when he'd come home drunk, telling him of the war, of betrayal by the French, the incompetence of the Greek Generals, but that some day, Constantinople would stand at the head of a renewed Greek nation, would lead the world from the darkness of their dangerous days.

When he'd dared touch the True Cross, then again when Father Galen had handed the veil to him, the Patriarch had believed that those old dreams would come true.

The last of the priests who'd been visiting him left and the Patriarch wiped his eyes, gathered the wine glasses, and rinsed them off in his sink, smiling to himself as he imagined his housekeeper's face if she saw what he was doing.

So be it. He was the servant of the servant.

The creaking sounds of the old building didn't surprise him. Constantinople has a revered place among the Orthodox Bishops, but his Church lacked the strict hierarchy of western Catholicism.
Respect
flowed upward from the many Orthodox churches around the world, but little money came with it. And the few hundreds of the faithful remaining in the ancient city couldn't afford the maintenance all of the Church's structures required. He spent what money they had on Churches, on the poor and aged. Little had been spared for his personal comfort.

He started, though, when a shadow moved against the wall.

"You have stolen what is ours."

He whirled around to see the people whose gift had made his dream seem within reach.

The woman's pants had been ripped and a solid sheet of dried blood covered the torn fabric and had soaked through her once-white athletic shoes. The man looked angry and he certainly looked as if he knew how to handle the submachine gun he carried as lightly as a toy. Father Galen's torturer, the young Kurdish smuggler, lagged behind them.

"I don't understand.” He considered offering them wine, but they didn't seem in the mood for conversation.

"Where is my Cross? Where is my Veil?"

"Both remain within the protection of the Holy Church. Where else should such precious objects remain?"

"They are not yours, your Grace. We need them back if we're going to prevent something horrible."

The woman had changed. A priest learns to recognize the eyes of someone who has peered beyond the ordinary world and gazed too deeply on the holy. There is a reason why the Lord shrouds so many of his mysteries from casual view. Her tall and slender form had gone gaunt, but she stared at him with neither anger nor mercy. So the angel set by God to stand guard at the Garden of Eden must look. Wisely did the angels tell the shepherds to fear not, for the face of an angel inspires both awe and dread.

"Father Galen told me you had given the Cross and Veil to us,” the Patriarch said. “If he was lying, of course you shall have them. I hope, though, that once you have finished, you can return the Veil to Constantinople. It has been a symbol of our city for a thousand years or more."

The woman considered, then nodded. “If it can be done, it will be done. But I need them now."

He glanced at his watch. He should be in bed. It was after three in the morning and he was expected to perform mass in a few hours. But a man does not ask questions or complain of the hour when an Angel of the Lord visits him and tells him to rise.

"We'll go to Father Galen now and recover the relics."

"That is a wise decision,” Ivy said.

It was about time something went right.

The Patriarch seemed subdued, but the red glow of his faith still surrounded him.

Ivy was ever-conscious of power now. Back in eastern Turkey, she'd had to shut her eyes to see its outlines. Now, she sometimes had to concentrate to see the real world through the bright glare of the holy and anti-holy.

The Bishop led them through narrow alleyways to a two story stone building that stood out from all of the similar buildings around it only by being a bit more dilapidated, then pounded on the massive doorknocker.

It took a good five minutes before a priest finally opened the door, an angry scowl on his face.

The scowl vanished when he saw who was knocking. “Your All Holiness!"

"Bring Father Galen to me."

"At once, your All Holiness. Will you and your guests wait here?” He ushered them in, giving Ivy what looked like an unfriendly gaze. She knew that the Orthodox allow married priests, but this one still seemed uncomfortable with the presence of a woman.

Or maybe it was the Kalashnikov around her shoulders.

The priest shot another look at her, then squeaked out of the waiting room and backed up the stairs.

He reappeared moments later, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Father Galen is not here, Your All Holiness."

That couldn't be good news.

"We will inspect his apartment,” the Patriarch announced before Ivy had a chance to react.

He swept forward, not giving the priest a moment to complain or come up with a reason why something like this was simply not done.

Ivy tagged along, her hands relaxed but ready to swing around the assault rifle if anyone made a suspicious move.

A row of identical doors lined the second story hallway. Only one of these was opened. Without hesitation, the Patriarch led them to it, then stepped inside.

"Father Galen does not usually leave his room in such a state,” the priest explained as they stared at the ransacked closet, the open chest of drawers, and the books spilled from a large bookcase. “I cannot understand what possessed him."

Ivy could guess. “He was packing."

"But he hasn't asked his superiors for permission to travel and his vacation isn't scheduled for months,” the priest argued.

She shrugged.

Ivy wouldn't have guessed that greed would have motivated the fat priest, but the monetary value of Mary's Veil and the True Cross would have to be measured in millions, if not billions of dollars. With the possible exceptions of the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, these were the most holy artifacts in the Christian religion.

"He is a faithful member of the Church,” the priest protested.

"All our faiths are continually tested,” the Patriarch reminded him. “Mine has been tested severely over the past twenty-four hours as I realized that not even the return of Mary's Veil would bring our people back to the holy city. Father Galen is not the strongest vessel, although I have always believed him to mean well. Gather all of the priests you can and follow me to the treasury."

"It might be dangerous,” Zack said.

"No one ever claimed that the Lord's work must be easy."

He set off at a clip that Ivy thought admirable.

Constantinople had been looted by the Catholics during the infamous Fourth Crusade, and by the Turks when the Empire had finally fallen. Ivy would have guessed that the city's conquerors would have left the Church's treasury bare.

She would have guessed wrong.

The Patriarch punched a combination into an electronic lock as sophisticated as anything Ivy had seen in any U.S. bank and stepped into a huge warehouse that glistened with gold and with every color of power.

"When the Roman Emperors created Constantinople as the New Rome, they moved many of the Eternal City's ancient treasures here,” the Patriarch said when he saw Ivy's interest. “We hold in our treasury the ancient gods from the thousands of cities and tribes the Romans conquered, as well as objects remaining from the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and many relics of the prophets and disciples of our Lord. We protected many of them from both Franks and Turks."

"Where are the Cross and Veil?” Zack got to the point.

The Patriarch led them to a second vault, then froze when he saw that its door was ajar.

He struggled to push the armored steel door open until Zack lent his muscle.

The vault stood empty.

"When the pilgrims refused to stay, I was horribly disappointed,” the Patriarch said. “That must have been a test of faith for Father Galen as well. A test that, tragically, he seems to have failed."

"Where would he have taken them?” Zack demanded.

The Patriarch shrugged. “I cannot believe he would simply sell them. Perhaps he intends to use them to set up a heretical church of his own. Maybe he thought to smuggle them out to our sister church in Rome, or the wealthy Orthodox Church in Russia."