When I got to the top, there was a road with houses on one side, and a grassy area on the other that ended in a cliff that looked like it fell straight down to the Hudson River. There weren’t many houses, and they didn’t have numbers for the most part, so I drove as slowly as I could with my head out the window.
I saw an old metal number “20” on the doorjamb of a house on the right, although the sun was beginning to set, so it was hard to know for sure.
I drove the car up its steep driveway, set the emergency brake, got out, and walked across the lawn to a little cedar-shingle cottage with a vine-covered trellis over the dark green wooden door. I lifted the old brass knocker and knocked.
In a few seconds, the door opened and a quite tall, thin African-American woman, still gorgeous in her (my guess) mid-to-late sixties, stood before me. Not the bent old lady I was expecting. She was barefoot, wearing a beautifully cut navy blue pantsuit and starched, expensive-looking white man-tailored blouse, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back severely in a ponytail.
“Miss Russo?” she asked, opening the door wider after inspecting my face. “I’m Maureen Wright-Lewis. Won’t you please come in?”
I followed her into what felt like another age. Her spotless living room was filled with American antiques, authentic-looking Hudson Valley paintings. A black lacquer Steinway upright piano had an enormous jewel-encrusted cross on an elaborate stand placed on top, the way Liberace had kept that giant candelabrum on his grand piano.
Without asking, she left and came back carrying a small tea tray and a plate of cookies. She poured out two cups of tea and actually asked, “One cube or two?” as she wielded a beautiful antique set of silver sugar tongs. “It’s apple tea, so you may want to taste it first.”
Must be from one of those organic granola-cruncher farms up here.
“It’s not made here,” she offered, seeming to read my mind.
“It doesn’t need sugar,” I politely answered, refraining from asking about its origin. Secrecy and intimidation were clearly still part of the old dame’s game.
She offered the plate of cookies. “Very good, by the way.”
I took one, and suppressed my reporter’s urge to ask her to skip the small talk and tell me what I was doing nearly one hundred miles from the city. Or, more important, what she was doing here—a spy convicted in absentia.
She put down her teacup and looked at me. I reached into my bag and pulled out my reporter’s notebook, knowing she was about to spill whatever beans she had, and hoping she wouldn’t tell me to put the notebook away.
Instead, she said, “Fine, but no recording. Do you mind?”
By that she meant, “Do you mind if I frisk you?” which she did, indicating that I stand. After the pat down, she searched my red satchel.
When she was satisfied that I wasn’t carrying, recording, or whatever-ing, she looked me in the eye and began. “Ms. Russo, when Demiel ben Yusef kissed you yesterday? It was the sign that many in the world have been waiting for—the one he’d choose.”
“What do you—” I started to say, but she cut me off quickly.
“Excuse me, I’m not finished. Thirty-three years ago, President Reagan was in office and I was at the agency.”
“Yes, I know.…”
Ignoring me, she went on, “We did something that I still haven’t come to grips with.…”
“I assume—”
Again she cut me off. Slow down, let her talk.
And she did: “No, it’s not what you assume at all. At any rate, at first I knew—knew—this ben Yusef person couldn’t be who—what—he says he is.”
“Sorry, but I don’t understand. You mean that business about how he’s the Second Coming? Like the communion host, he represents the flesh and blood of Jesus?”
“No, not represents, Ms. Russo. He, or someone, was actually born from the blood of Jesus.” I tried not to let what she’d just said knock me over. Had this woman of the steel-trap mind gone senile?
“Real blood? You mean like that kid in India who has the stigmata, or that girl in Florida who cries blood?”
“I’m trying to be clear here, so I’d appreciate it if you would knock off the mocking tone,” she sniped.
She got up, walked to the wooden wall cabinet, found a bottle of Scotch, and poured herself half a tumbler, then said matter-of-factly, “You see, Ms. Russo, I was in charge of the elimination.”
“Elimination?”
“Don’t act dense. The assassinations.”
“Plural? Who were you in charge of killing?”
“Jesus and His family.”