FORTY-FIVE
SALZBURG
9:50 A.M.
CASSIOPEIA SAT IN HER SUITE, HER MIND IN TURMOIL. Everything around her would normally be enticing. The wooden beams, embroidered linens, painted Bavarian chests, teakwood furniture. The Goldener Hirsch seemed an homage to history. But none of it mattered. What consumed her was how she’d managed to embroil herself in such an awful mess.
Her father would be so ashamed. He’d liked Josepe. But her father, though smart in so many ways, had been so naïve in others. Religion being his main fallacy. He always thought there was a divine plan, one that each person had little choice but to follow. If followed correctly the reward was eternal bliss. If not, then only cold and darkness awaited.
Unfortunately, her father was wrong.
She’d come to that realization shortly after he died. For a daughter who’d worshiped her father, that had been hard to accept. But there was no divine plan. No eternal salvation. No Heavenly Father. It was all a story, concocted by men who wanted to fashion a religion where others would obey them.
And that galled her.
Mormon doctrine taught that neither sex should be upset if privileges and responsibilities were bestowed on one but not the other. That seemed especially true when it came to women. Every woman was supposedly born with a divine purpose. Foremost was her role as mother. Serving in the home was tagged the highest of spiritual callings. She assumed such rhetoric had been designed to mask the fact that women could never attain the priesthood, or any position of church leadership or authority. Those were exclusively bestowed on men. But why? It made no sense. What was she, twenty-six, when she realized the implications? Just after her mother died. Men had created her religion and men would dominate it. God’s plan? Hardly. She was not going to dedicate her life to raising children and obeying a husband. Not that there was anything wrong with either. Just that neither was right for her.
An old intentness burned inside. She thought back to a concert in Barcelona. Josepe had chosen the place. El Teatre més Petit del Món. Once the private home of a renowned artist, it had become the world’s smallest theater—Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart played in a romantic candlelit garden with 19th-century ambience.
It had been lovely.
Afterward, they’d dined alone and talked of the church, as Josepe liked to do. She recalled how, increasingly, that topic came to repulse her. But she’d indulged him, as she’d then thought was her place.
“There was an incident last week, in southern Spain,” he said. “My father told me of it. A member of the church was attacked and beaten.”
She was shocked. “Why?”
“When I heard I thought of Nephi, who came upon a drunken and passed-out Laban, lying on the streets of Jerusalem.”
She knew the story of Laban, who refused to return a set of brass plates, which contained the scriptures needed for Nephi’s family to remain obedient.
“Nephi realized the fallen drunk was Laban himself, and he felt commanded by the Spirit to kill him. Nephi struggled with that feeling. He’d never shed blood. But the Spirit repeated the order twice more. So he killed Laban and wrote that it was better that one man should perish than a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.”
She could see he was troubled.
“Why would Heavenly Father order Nephi to do that?” he asked. “It seems contrary to all that is good and right.”
“Perhaps because it is merely a story.”
“But what of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac? He was commanded to offer his son, even though it was written, Thou shalt not kill. Abraham did not refuse. He was ready to kill Isaac, but an angel stopped him. God, though, was proud of his obedience. Joseph Smith himself spoke of that.”
“Surely you see that as a parable, not an actual event?”
He stared at her, perplexed. “Nothing in the Book of Mormon is without truth.”
“I didn’t say it was false, just that it might be more a story with a lesson than an actual occurrence.”
She recalled his reluctance to bend.
For him the Book of Mormon had been absolute.
“I’m not saying that I would have killed my son,” he said. “But Abraham was brave to obey Heavenly Father. He was prepared to do as commanded.”
Cotton and Stephanie both had said Josepe killed an American agent.
Was it possible?
She’d not heard much of the conversation in the Salzburg chapel, except the last few words spoken just before she made her appearance. Never had Josepe been violent. As far as she knew, that simply wasn’t his character. His forceful denial about killing anyone sounded true. So she had to wonder if she was being manipulated. She wasn’t happy with either Cotton or Stephanie. One had no business being here, treating her like she was helpless—and the other was a liar. She’d hated the friction last night when she went to see Cotton, regretted calling him an ass, but she was angry then and remained so now.