“You’re sure they’re going to execute him?”
He looked at me as though he were looking straight through some bonehead blonde. “Doesn’t this Headquarters place have samples?”
“Probably. But even so, that wouldn’t prove that it’s His, you see. And they won’t interfere. There was never to be any interference to change the divine plan. It was all to play out as it is destined to play out.”
“No interference?” I was almost shouting. “These sons of bitches cloned a baby, for God’s sake! Isn’t that interfering on an extreme level?”
“No.” He left it at that and continued: “But the source blood has to be found now and it has to be compared to Demiel’s, and done in a way the world will believe.”
“I thought there was to be no interference.”
“This wouldn’t have been interference—just proof.”
“Jeez, I’m sorry I stepped on the blood after being drugged—or whatever the hell that demon priest did to me.”
“Don’t be. It was wrong to begin with.”
But marrying a child of thirteen after abducting her and impregnating her with a clone is right? Lunatics.
“I never worry about what I can’t change,” he said icily. “No?”
“I guess…” I said, even though I completely believe the opposite. “So even if I could find this head—which may not even exist—you’re telling me two different stories. One is about Cathars and one is about Templars.”
“The Templars, I believe, put the object into the possession of the Cathars, who were—are—the most trustworthy people on earth. The Templars used the Cathars literally as their safety-deposit box.”
“But weren’t the Templars the bankers for the nobility or something?”
“And in turn the Cathars were the Templars’ bankers, so to speak. Yet, ironically enough, the Albigensian Crusade was begun by Pope Innocent the Third, who in 1208 exhorted all Christian knights to expunge the ‘Provençal heretics’ from all the lands of Count Toulouse.” He made a sweeping motion with his hand around the room.
“It was all about wiping out the Christian sects that did not adhere to the wanton filth of the Vatican. He justified this because he declared he was ‘below God but above man, who judges all things but who no one judges.’ It almost worked, too.”
“Almost?”
“Almost. Many of the Templar Knights ended up converting to Catharism and went to their deaths for it.”
“Are you one of the ‘almost’ who remain?”
He ignored me. “Thus, the reason so many Templar Knights walked willingly into the fire with the Cathars: Their mere presence and the chaos it created in the king’s troops diverted attention from the four escapees. Those Knights Templar died as men of honor—at the end. Thus the mystery of the so-called Cathar treasure.”
“The one that also may or may not exist.”
“The one that does exist.”
“How did I know you’d say that? What’s your job, then?”
“To protect you on the trail.”
“But you don’t know what trail I’m supposed to even be on,” I said, getting more exasperated by the second.
“Each of us who were part of the Great Experiment had been given only the information necessary to complete our jobs. Too much information in one person’s hands was too dangerous, of course.”
“Need to know?”
“Correct. But that, Ms. Roussel, I promise you, is where the blood from which my son, or the boy who came to be as a son to me, was created.
“Find it and match the DNA, and you’ll save his life.”
“Even if I were somehow to find it—impossible, by the way—before the end of the tribunal, how am I supposed to get Demiel’s DNA to prove a match?”
“Too bad you washed your face,” he said in all seriousness. “You are the one he chose to kiss.”
“Sorry. I’m funny like that.”
“But that is the very DNA that belongs to the Divine Being who is today on trial.”
“You mean the DNA contained in the embryo that was put inside that child, your wife?” I said, my sarcasm beginning to overtake my reporter’s cool.
Don’t forget the disgusting thing he did.
As though he hadn’t noticed, he simply stated the facts. “Contrary to what He’s being falsely accused of, the boy grew up as the kindest, most loving person I’ve ever known. At six years of age, He began to have the ability to heal with his touch. Never would He be capable of an evil deed. But the point of the new resurrection would be to see if history would be forced to repeat itself, and of course, it has.”