The Sixth Station(36)

“Right. Your boss. Yesterday I couldn’t believe it when Smythe made that fake-spontaneous speech at ben Yusef’s tribunal.”

“Yes, that would be one and the same.”

I had to smile at her candor.

“He walked over to Cardinal Renzi, kissed his ring, stood up, and said, ‘Cardinal Renzi, my friend. It’s a great day for a hanging—eh?’ Then he knelt down and declared, ‘The devil has come to feed among us in the form of our Lord Jesus!’ Yes. He knew everything.”

The reporter in me couldn’t take it one more second, and I jumped up. “Wait a minute! If it was the clone of Jesus, how in hell could they also say it was Satan?”

“According to Smythe and Renzi—and they made a good argument—humans are created with one soul each,” she answered. “And that would apply even to God’s own son. That meant they—whoever ‘they’ were, and we didn’t know at that point—had created a soulless being. Got it?”

“No, not really,” I said, getting up and walking to the window to see if it was dark out yet. That road and grassy thing next to it didn’t look safe during the daylight, let alone the dark.

“I mean, wouldn’t God make an exception in the case of His Son, Ms. Wright-Lewis?” I asked simply as a throwaway question. Her answer floored me.

“That, Ms. Russo,” she said without hesitation, “is a question people have been asking since the First Coming.”

“The First? You mean you think there was more than one?” I responded, spinning around to face her.

Ignoring my question, she simply said, “Anyway, they all wanted it eliminated. And we believed that we had destroyed it, and the rest of them, too,” she said, tears of triumph or maybe regret forming in the corners of her eyes. “Yes, dead before the boy was twenty-four hours on this earth! Or so we thought for sure—until this ben Yusef showed up.”

I walked back to the couch and sat down, my legs feeling rubbery. “Well, whoever ben Yusef is, we know he is a killer and he is without a soul,” I said.

“Is that how you felt when he kissed you?” she said, to my surprise. “That you were kissing a man without a soul? One who may be a sociopathic killer?”

The last thing I wanted to do was share the crazy feelings that that kiss had stirred up in me. My words about that kiss had already cost me my job and, I was beginning to fear, my sanity.

“Maybe he’s a killer? I mean, is there any doubt?” I asked instead.

“There’s always doubt about everything, except what you know about power. When joined, world powers and organized religion can move mountains when they set their collective minds to it. That has only happened once before in history—and now once again. Both times over this man.”

I felt very claustrophobic in that dark house suddenly—and dirty. This was an ugly world she’d inhabited, or still did in her mind, anyway.

“So, you’re saying that the people in power killed innocent folks and caused worldwide panic to defeat an enemy they’re afraid could grow more powerful than all of them?”

She leaned forward. “What do you think?”

My mind was reeling, so I went back to the easier question: “Okay, so even if that were true, how did you manage to find it—that baby—that day?”

She answered coolly, “Our operatives had found that the birth had taken place at the House of the Virgin Mary—supposedly where the Blessed Mother had lived out Her last days on earth—Selçuk, near Ephesus, Turkey. Clever, don’t you think?” she added rhetorically.

“And why exactly would Jesus’ Mother be in Turkey, of all places? Long way for Her to travel, no?”

Wright-Lewis ignored my sarcasm. “She’d been taken there by John the Apostle.”

“So you’re saying the Blessed Mother took up with a disciple of Her Son’s?”

“You really don’t know your Bible at all, do you?” And so she quoted it for me: “‘Jesus said to his mother: “Woman, behold your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother.”’ Gospel of John nineteen, verses twenty-six to twenty-seven.”

“So the disciple John was another son?”

“No. Like a son. Not her son.”

I sat back confused. “I’m not getting it.…”

“The argument that some fundamentalist Christians use to show that Mary did not have other children is that Jesus said this to John as He was dying on the cross.”

“But why Turkey? Isn’t that a Muslim country?”

She looked exasperated at my ignorance. “Organized Christianity as we know it was practically born in Turkey, Ms. Russo! In fact, John established seven churches there. Have you never read Revelation?”