The Sixth Station(119)
“How popular is the blue-eyed woman behind the veil? As of ten A.M. this morning, before the start of today’s proceedings, il Vettore’s video had clocked in over nine hundred million views!
“As for the trial itself, Kerioth took the stand for the prosecution and called his former leader Demiel ben Yusef, quote, ‘Hitler, Milosevic, Idi Amin, and bin Laden rolled into one.’
“Defense attorney Randall Mohammed grilled Kerioth on the consortium-for-testimony theory, accusing Kerioth of being a turncoat for profit, a man who is now in the pocket of several world organizations, including a DC-based secret right-wing Christian organization called the Face of God Fellowship or Black Robe, a radical breakaway branch of the Fellowship, whose members include senators and many recent U.S. presidents.
“Since this is a World Court slash United Nations tribunal and not a trial as we know it, he asked Kerioth if he was familiar with a news story in which Fellowship leader Doug Coe had indicated that a personal commitment to Jesus Christ is comparable to the blind devotion that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot demanded from their followers.
“Kerioth denied ever hearing that claim or having ever met any leader of the Fellowship, its radical arm, the Face of God Fellowship, otherwise known as the Black Robes. Mr. Mohammed then asked the most explosive question of the day—an accusation seemingly without basis: If Kerioth had been contacted or contracted by any group anywhere in the world, including the Light of God Tabernacle, headed by the Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe, in exchange for revealing the location of ben Yusef’s camp or for testifying against him. Again, Kerioth denied the allegations.
“Finegold then asked him if it was not true that he had knowledge that a so-called consortium of world leaders and secret organizations was in fact actually responsible for the bombings that brought on the quote ‘wanton injustices, executions without trial, and ceaseless and grievous cruelty, which have brought an innocent man to this point.’
“‘No!’ Kerioth countered, jumping from his seat and declaring, ‘I do not know any of those groups. It is Demiel ben Yusef’s Al Okhowa Al Hamima that is responsible.’
“He further claimed that he witnessed a mass execution of ben Yusef’s inner circle, eleven men who had tried to escape. He had been the twelfth member.
“‘They were, each and every one, carried out by the soldiers of ben Yusef, in the extreme southern portion of Israel, a desert area,’ he declared. However, he provided no photographic proof that ben Yusef or the ‘Little Big Man,’ as some have started calling him, committed a massacre in the desert or that one had even taken place.
“Judge Bagayoko immediately requested an investigative team of United Nations specialists be dispatched to search the area. This is Dona Grimm reporting from outside the United Nations building in Manhattan.”
Dona said “Little Big Man!” They’ve got a bead on you. Get the hell out.
I walked around the winding streets of the Vatican area until I found a car-rental place, and using the bogus credit card, I managed to secure the last rental car they had—another tiny Smart car.
I was grateful for whatever I could get, but would it be powerful enough to get me over the mountains and into Manoppello if I had to move faster than the—who?—the CIA, Interpol, this Black Robe God Squad, and everybody else on my ass? Not that I would ever have the DNA so-called proof I needed, now that the white Gap scarf had been incinerated along with Pantera.
The tears of blood just now? Maybe the tissue has something of value on it.
I opened it up and, when unfolded, it formed as perfect a heart as the one on my cappuccino.
I tucked it into my bra to keep it close to my heart, got into the car, old-fashioned paper map in hand, refusing to even turn on the GPS tracking system. The traffic of Rome was as bad as I’d ever seen it, and negotiating my way out could have earned me a spot on a NASCAR team.
Once I got on the mountain highway heading toward the Abruzzo region, I was able to turn on the radio to the BBC news station. It would be a straight run pretty much from here, and that meant I wouldn’t have to check the map every second.
If Dona’s testimony report had been a tossed grenade, the next report was a nuclear attack. I had to hold tight to the wheel and shift into a lower gear to keep from careening right off the slim mountain road.
“Interpol is reporting,” said a male voice, “that internationally wanted terrorist Michael Forsythe was killed in a motor vehicle accident in a tunnel at La Turbie, France, this morning.
“The victim, originally identified as Edward Gibbon of Carcassonne, France—one of the many aliases the terror suspect had used in his thirty years on the lam—was involved in a high-speed car chase at the time of the crash.”