“You bet. I feel like I haven’t showered in three years.”
As she turned the car around she began peppering me with questions about what Sister Grethe had to say. I had the impression that it was a mere formality on her part and that she already knew everything we’d said.
“You were listening in somehow, weren’t you?”
“Of course. She’s quite insane. And violent. I couldn’t let you be alone with her. God only knows what she’s capable of. Well, I take that back. We know what she’s capable of. Dr. Frankenstein in Carmelite clothing.”
“But I thought you now believed that ben Yusef—”
She cut me off as we rounded a particularly sharp curve on the mountain road. “I believe it, yes, but that doesn’t mean she had the right to create a human clone—no matter whose DNA it was. What they did was monstrous. But what I did on orders from the CIA—and I know this to be true now—was monstrous as well. Now I have no choice but to try to help you save the life of the Son of the Son—do I?”
“You do, yes, but it seems that I don’t. Have a choice in the matter, I mean. So, if I haven’t said it before, I want you to know that I appreciate that you are here for me. For Him. For whoever.”
As we made the next severe curve on the one-lane mountain road in the dark, we barely escaped a brush fire that was starting up on the hill right next to the road.
“I hope Sister Grethe is all right,” I said, getting my breath back. “I think we should turn around and force her to come with us.”
“She’ll be fine. She knows these hills and woods better than a tracking dog. If she senses danger, I’m sure she’s fully prepared.”
“Why would you think such a thing? I mean, she’s an old lady.”
“Because I’m an old lady, too. We were both soldiers on different sides of the same war, and she’s about the toughest lady I’ve ever come across.”
“I thought you never met—”
“We never have. But when you’re on opposite sides of a conflict, you had better know not only exactly how your enemy thinks, feels, and moves, you had better for damned sure know exactly what she looks like—no matter what disguises she puts on.”
Truly, I was still an infant in this grown-up game that had been going on for at least two thousand years. Who was my enemy? And what disguises were they wearing? Oh, right, no disguise. Just a naked muscular body on a man at least fifteen years my senior.
Moron!
“I wonder how Grethe would feel if she knew you were on her side now.”
“She’d never believe it. And that’s why I don’t want her to know I’m here. If she saw me, I’m afraid her delicate mental state would tip over into a full psychotic episode. You’d never get your hands on the source blood.”
As we pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, she turned off the car. We could hear explosions and gunfire in the distant hills.
“I appreciate your putting your life in danger like this.”
“This isn’t an entirely selfless act on my part,” she responded. “As I indicated back in Rhinecliff, I truly do not want to die with this horrible sin on my soul. I’d forever be remembered as a modern-day equivalent of one of the execution squad that killed Jesus. There were four soldiers at Jesus’ Crucifixion, just like on the modern executive committee, but ultimately? I was the one in charge of the Infant’s elimination.”
The word elimination again. Why doesn’t she just say assassination, for God’s sake?
We took our few belongings and walked to the aluminum front doors, which were locked. The light of the vending machine was all that illuminated the tiny lobby.
We rang the bell, and eventually a beleaguered-looking woman in a maid’s uniform unlocked the door, opened it just enough for us to enter, and closed and locked it right behind us.
She said nothing, asked for no identification nor even payment, and led us to a room on the same floor.
The accommodations consisted of a small room with only two narrow beds fit for monks, a dresser, and a small bathroom. I was so achingly tired, however, that it felt like the Plaza Athénée in Paris. Maureen let me use the bathroom first, and I climbed under the shower and was done in two minutes. I had to make it quick—the whole country was blowing up and shutting down around us—and the water had only been lukewarm. I knew there wouldn’t have been enough water for two if I hadn’t made it quick.
I pulled on a T-shirt and clean underpants, and fell into one of the beds as Maureen took her turn in the bathroom. When I heard her turn on the shower, I sunk into the pillow.