The Sixth Station(78)

“My name is Gaspar,” the man said with an accent that sounded Israeli in a voice surprisingly deep for a man so young and so slight.

“You have exactly thirty seconds to tell me what you’re doing here and how you got in.”

I’m not imagining this. These things are really happening.

“You’ve used up fifteen of your thirty seconds.…”

Gaspar answered him in a voice that was quiet but firm. “We were guided here,” he said, oblivious to the semiautomatic pressed to his temple. “To see it for ourselves, study it—”

“Study? What? The Baby?” snarled the soldier.

“The star. It guided us here. We are just astronomers.”

He grabbed the Jew and put the pistol to his temple. “What is in the boxes? Anthrax? Botulism? You have five seconds…”

The Jew, unusually calm, simply whispered, “Myrrh. Just myrrh.”





25





I vaguely heard someone yelling, “Grab the Baby! Get the Baby!” But it was far, far off as I again slipped into a blessed form of blackness.

Once more, I had no clue of time passing—or not passing.

I began to wake after a while and realized I was no longer shaking and my head was no longer screaming in pain. I felt for blood on the back of my head. Nothing. I crawled out from under the bench totally disoriented in the blackened room.

Where the hell am I? I smelled the thick scent of hashish mixed with some sort of incense.

I walked a few steps and heard a crunch under my feet. I reached down and felt the satin cloth and the shards of glass beneath it. The test tube! It had dropped out of my bag and onto the floor at some point.

If ever there was evidence of Demiel’s otherworldliness, it’s gone now. Not your problem right now. Now your problem is getting the hell out of this place.

I tried feeling my way around. I could see the glow of the hash pipe and the shadows cast by a candle through the arch in the other room. I got up. Father Paulo was sitting on the far side of the arch smoking the shisha with a bottle of wine before him.

“Where are they, Father?”

I felt around for my red satchel and found it lying on the floor—had I left it there?—and realized I may have been robbed.

Sadowski’s phone, the new ID, passport, credit card, money—all were in there.

I checked the time and the phone’s digital clock showed me that it was “17:24:53,” that it was almost out of juice, and that there was zero signal in the house.

Nearly 5:30 P.M. An entire day had passed!

I started rooting around in my bag. Wallet? Check. Credit card? Check. Money? As closely as I could remember, it seemed to be the same amount of euros as I’d had earlier. Check. Passport? Check. I opened it. There was my picture with the crazy moniker “Alazais Roussel.” Check. Even my old Gap scarf was still in there—although, really, I couldn’t imagine who’d want that ratty thing. The answer I later learned was “everyone.”

I felt the leather binding. The book.

No eReader, no iPad, no holographic tablet reader—nothing on earth—feels, smells, or gives comfort like the luxury of a well-bound book. Thank God, it was safe.

“You destroyed the blood,” Paulo said, his voice choked with anger and with tears. He got off his stool and stood hovering over me, seething. “You destroyed the blood.”

“What the hell just happened back there? What the hell is going on?”

“You were to see the holograph of the event. That was the plan. But then…” He started to drift again. “You began speaking in tongues before I could do that.”

“I don’t speak in tongues. Where is the girl? What have these people done with that child and her baby?”

“Headquarters had the technology way back then to produce it,” he said, as though I hadn’t asked him a question. “They needed to capture the magnificence of the moment, but you didn’t need any of that, did you?”

“You mean it was a holograph? You showed me a holograph?”

“No. It’s always the least deserving who see what others fail to see,” he sneered at me jealously and pulled a deep toke.

What the heck is he jealous of? I nearly had a heart attack.

“I don’t know why you were chosen,” he went on contemptuously. “I don’t even know why that animal was chosen to be the husband of the Girl. I only know that I was honored to be part of the Great Experiment. Then when you showed up … But you have ruined everything. Common people shouldn’t be sent to do uncommon jobs.

“Astonishing, really.” He took another deep drag; the smell of hashish filling the tiny walls was giving me a contact high. Or had I been drugged already?