The Sixth Station(95)
“Yes, good morning. I see you are up early.”
“Early? Not really, it’s five forty-five.”
I had several cups of café au lait and one croissant (I was sort of embarrassed to eat like I had four stomachs in front of all these people), while Pantera took his sweet time about finishing off two cups of espresso and one croissant.
Finally, he said, “You should see this,” and he handed me yesterday’s edition of the International Herald Tribune.
Front-page story: by Dona Grimm; photos by Donald Zaluckyj.
Accompanying the story were photos of Donald and me at our makeshift Baghdad wedding. There were also photos of an older man identified as Dr. Mikaeel Hussein.
Tears sprung into my eyes.
“What?”
Pantera said nothing.
“Sorry if we were both of legal age and there are actual photos of our nuptials.”
He pointed to the story. “You need to read this.”
The article described a bomb scare outside the UN tribunal the day before and the details of the day’s proceedings, which had begun hours late due to the scare.
The package turned out to be nothing other than a medical bag with a priest’s stole and six empty transfusion bags marked “NYU Hospital: #4th, 6th.”
There was also the testimony of Dr. Mikaeel Hussein, the astrophysicist who recanted the testimony I’d read in that old newspaper article wherein he first said it was a star, then a comet they discovered in 1982. Now he was saying that the heavenly body was in fact a star.
The article stated:
Dr. Hussein, under examination by ben Yusef’s counsel (and without the cooperation of the defendant) admitted that he had lied in 1982 about the sighting of a comet.
Dr. Hussein had testified back then that the heavenly body in the skies over Turkey had been in fact a comet, after first claiming it had been a star. He testified, “Under intense pressure in 1982, I lied to the scientific community, and to the world.
“My colleagues went along with me in the ruse,” he said. “It was in fact the emergence of a new star, which disappeared as quickly as it had arisen over a small area of Ephesus, in Turkey.”
On redirect, lead attorney for the prosecution Lawrence Finegold pounded the timid scientist, demanding to know why he’d lied back in 1982. “If you had told the truth, and had actually discovered a star, wouldn’t you have, A: recognized it as such, being an astrophysicist?…” His voice was dripping with sarcasm, causing the courtroom to break out in stifled laughter, as Chief Justice Fatoumata Bagayoko slammed down her gavel.
“… and, B: hailed your discovery to the world? Instead, you expect this court to believe that you, an eminent astrophysicist, along with your colleagues Dr. Gaspar Bar-Cohen, of the University of Tel Aviv, and Dr. Balaaditya Pawar, now of U.C. Berkeley, went along with this lie of yours? Or was it—what did you call it?—ah, yes, a ‘mistake’?”
“But it is the truth that now I speak.”
“And who forced you to compromise your principles back in 1982, may I ask?”
To the astonishment of the court, Hussein stood up and pointed toward the front “distinguished spectators” row. “That man, the Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe,” he said, his accent making it at first hard for anyone to understand.
When the reality sank in, Finegold spun around, approached Hussein, and said, “You say that this man of God asked you to lie? And, even if we were to believe you—an admitted liar—that you, a Muslim, along with your colleagues, an Orthodox Jew and a Buddhist, capitulated to the wishes of a Baptist minister?”
Since Finegold asked the question in a rhetorical manner, he was visibly shaken by the answer, which also shocked the courtroom, and by now the world.
“The minister told us that he came at the behest of the White House.”
“What did you say?” Finegold said, stunned.
“I took that to mean the president of the United States as well as the prime ministers of many countries, perhaps as many as sixty. He said that revealing this would have caused a worldwide panic, because the star signaled the birth of the ‘soulless one,’ a baby born in the House of the Blessed Mother in Turkey. A black mass ritual.
“I told him we saw the boy, or as he called it, the ‘creature’ and the ‘soulless one.’ And that he was a beautiful little brown baby boy. The minister threatened our families and ourselves.
“He said they would not live to see the week out.
“So, yes, we lied to protect our families, and we lied because it was all the power in the world against three scientists who just wanted to be left to ponder together what we had seen and what we had experienced.”