Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  "Guess you were right,” he growled. “Sorry."

  "I would have settled for being wrong and safe."

  "If I lose the hashish, the drug makers will kill my parents,” Cejno wailed. “This is very quite horrible."

  Zack turned onto a dirt road, then shifted into four-wheel drive and wallowed along a dry creekbed until he came to another dirt road.

  He followed that until he came to an apricot orchard, then went off-road under the trees.

  "Here's where we bail.” He switched off the engine and reached into the back for his Kalashnikov. “Let's get the Cross."

  "But what about me?” Cejno demanded.

  "What do you want? You can come with us if you want to. But if our theory is right, they'll be tracking the Cross, not the van."

  "But they will recognize the van. The Army will know what to stop. Even if they don't find you, they will find the hashish. And they'll keep it for themselves."

  Zack shrugged. “I owe you, Cejno. You saved our lives and I'd save yours if I could. But right now, I think the safest thing is for you to lay low for a couple of days. Find an abandoned barn or garage to hide in. Call your friends back home to come and give you a change of license plates and maybe a new paint job for the van."

  Cejno nodded. “This is a good plan. Then I can meet up with you when you are safe."

  "We owe you too much already, Cejno."

  "We are friends, no? Of course I will help you get to Istanbul."

  He nudged the GPS system, scrolling across the map of Turkey. “We meet in Isparta. In one week. I shall find you outside the central mosque. There is always a mosque."

  Ivy nodded. “A mosque would give us some cover. If we make it, we'll be there. Good luck, Cejno."

  "You as well have good luck, Miss Ivy. I hope Allah will speed your journey.” Cejno shoved a packet at Zack, waited until Zack and Ivy had taken their sections, and then grasped the keys from Zack.

  * * * *

  Zack hefted his section of Cross, watched Cejno head off toward the north, then turned deliberately west. “It's just us again."

  Ivy nodded.

  "Did I tell you I was sorry I didn't trust you?"

  She shrugged. “Who would?"

  He didn't have an answer for that, so he walked along with her, first on the road and then, when a sheep-trail headed off the road, he followed that.

  It had been a horribly long day, but Zack was still surprised when the glare of the setting sun partially blinded him.

  "We need to find someplace safe to rest,” he said.

  "I haven't had much luck with that."

  He shuddered when he remembered that monster sheep. “We're still alive."

  She had to think about that before finally nodding. “Guess that's one way to look at it. I'll see if I can sense anything."

  She stopped walking and closed her eyes.

  Zack studied her. The strain of their disastrous adventures was telling on her. She hadn't had much excess weight to start out with and now she looked gaunt rather than merely slender. Still, her face demonstrated a strength more subtle than the purely physical.

  "Pretty much straight ahead,” she said, finally opening her eyes. “We can follow this path. It looks like it will lead us somewhere."

  Night came quickly in the hills of southern Anatolia. Stars were beginning to creep out when he finally saw the lights.

  "There are people here,” he whispered. “They'll turn us over to the police."

  Ivy shrugged. “Turkey isn't like Texas, Zack. There are people everywhere."

  That wasn't especially reassuring. Still, the last time he'd overridden Ivy's judgment, he'd driven into an Army checkpoint. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to walk forward.

  The village wasn't much. Maybe twenty houses, a couple of small shops, and a tiny mosque.

  Ivy headed straight for the mosque.

  He grabbed her arm. “We can't go in there."

  "This isn't Mecca,” she reminded him. “And it's not Iraq where clerics use their mosques to arm their militias. A Mosque is like a church. Most of them welcome everyone."

  Still, he was relieved when she leaned her Cross piece against the outside of the mosque and sat down on it. “At least it doesn't look like rain."

  He edged his own section next to hers. “Why don't we take a look at whatever Cejno thought we needed to have?"

  What Cejno thought they needed turned out to look pretty useful. There was the blanket he'd wrapped Ivy in, a thin wad of hundred dollar bills, and a water bottle. Nothing to eat, unfortunately, and Zack was hungry, but the water helped.

  He shared the bottle with Ivy, then wrapped the blanket around both of them. Away from the coast, and in the altitude of the hills, it got cool in the night, even in August.

  Ivy resisted a bit when he moved closer to her so they could share body heat.

  Her fear and discomfort with his proximity was his own fault, he knew. He'd been an idiot to let himself get carried away in the temple.

  "You know they're going to catch us sooner or later, don't you?” Ivy finally relaxed enough to let him near to her.

  "We've stayed ahead of them so far."

  "But we haven't done anything. We're running around without a plan and they are triangulating and narrowing down the kill zone."

  "We're heading to Istanbul and then to Venice?"

  "Those seem like impossible dreams to me."

  Zack had never been to Venice, but he'd seen pictures and movies. From them, he had the idea of a sort of fairy tale city, all canals, ancient palazzos, and singing gondoliers.

  "We'll make it."

  Ivy laughed. “I know I'm just an NCO, Zack, but you don't have to give me the officer pep-talk."

  He took another sip of water, then leaned back against the mosque's walls and closed his eyes. He didn't have much hope either, but they were still alive and still free. Considering the alternatives, he couldn't complain.

  Chapter 10

  The monster swept a clawed hand at her face and Ivy held up her sword in response. But it wasn't her sword: it was the Cross.

  The monster's foot struck the cross and vanished in the glare of an explosion.

  She jerked awake.

  "It was just a truck backfiring,” Zack said.

  "Huh-uh. My dreams are trying to tell me something. We've been so busy running that we haven't really thought about what's going on."

  "We know what's going on. The Foundation wants the Cross and is willing to kill to get it."

  "But we've learned more than that. We know it's the key.” She stood, yanked the blanket away from Zack, and folded it into a pad that she could rest the Cross section on.

  "For what that's worth.” He looked around. “Let's get going."

  With the sun's light peaking over the horizon, a call to prayer sounded from loudspeakers within the mosque.

  "Don't move.” Zack whispered directly in her ear, his lips so close they tickled against her lobe.

  As if she would. He'd spent more time in Iraq than she, but it didn't take long to realize that many Moslems were extremely devout. Strolling around during morning prayers would make she and Zack about as popular as a Moslem walking into a Catholic church and washing his hands in the holy water.

  The town came to life when the prayer ended. Farmers kissed their wives goodbye and headed for the fields, a shopkeeper pulled open the corrugated metal opening to his shop, and a couple of women headed there, one of them with a clutch of eggs in a basket, the other with an empty basket.

  "Let's see if we can buy something to eat,” Zack suggested.

  A voice spoke inches behind them and Ivy almost jumped out of her skin. She grabbed her Kalashnikov and spun around.

  The mosque's imam smiled, holding his hands in a peaceful gesture.

  Ivy felt like an idiot. She slung the rifle behind her back and gave a martial arts bow. It was the least she could do for taking advantage of his mosque's hospitality the previous nig
ht and then threatening a holy man with a weapon.

  He said something else but Ivy could see his words meant as much to Zack as they did to her—which is to say, nothing.

  "Do you speak English?” she asked.

  He shook his head. He probably understood enough to recognize the word and that was about it.

  Zack tried German with no better success before finally launching into Arabic.

  The imam smiled. “Yes. Of course I speak Arabic. Would you and your wife break your fast with me?"

  Zack nodded. “We would be honored."

  That brief conversation had stretched Ivy's Arabic, but Zack seemed comfortable. And the imam didn't speak as quickly as the Iraqis had. Which made sense, she realized. Arabic wasn't his native language either. But as a Moslem, and a religious leader, he would have had to learn it to read the Koran, just as Catholic Priests learn Latin and Jews learn Hebrew. It was easier for her to understand another foreign speaker of Arabic than it was to understand native speakers.

  "Our Army is looking for you,” the imam said after they'd all finished their first cup of coffee. It was, Ivy decided, probably the best coffee she'd ever tasted, thick and dark and so bitter it gave her a delicious shiver.

  "They may be,” Zack admitted. “But we have done nothing wrong. Nothing but flee for our lives when they were threatened."

  "The Army says you were smuggling drugs. And I see you are armed."

  Ivy closed her eyes and studied the imam's aura. He radiated a pink glow of contentment, faith, and goodness.

  "Tell him everything,” she said in Arabic. “I trust him."

  The imam smiled at her. “Trust is often better than mistrust."

  That hadn't been Ivy's experience, but she didn't disagree out loud.

  Zack gave her a doubting look, but for once he didn't argue. Instead, he quickly summarized their discovery and their flight.

  She hadn't expected the imam to believe them. To her surprise, he took in everything Zack told him and nodded.

  "May I see the Cross?"

  With their agreement, he bent over the two pieces of timber, spoke a prayer so quickly that Ivy could catch only a few words, and then rose. “This is a holy object indeed."

  "For our religion,” Zack said. “Not for yours. Didn't Saladin drag it through the streets of Jerusalem like garbage behind his horses?"

  The imam shrugged. “Is that what your legends claim? I wasn't there, but perhaps it is true. In warfare, people lose sight of what is important and seek to cause pain. Even men who have become heroes may do so. But Jesus, peace be upon him, is not the sole property of the Christian faith. He is a prophet, acknowledged by all Moslems. While Moslems do not fetish relics the way some Christians do, this is still a holy object.” He paused and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I do worry, though, about this pagan temples. Tell me more."

  Zack struggled with the words, and Ivy wasn't much help. How do you say ‘mutated sheep monster’ in Arabic? He made Ivy give her own descriptions of how she had seen the temples as a sort of color—yellow for one and blue for the other.

  "And my Mosque,” the imam gestured at the walls to his small building. “Does it have a color as well?"

  "You know, that's the strange thing. It's red. Which is the same color as the Christian monastery and the remains of that cathedral we found in the abandoned city."

  "Not so strange. Allah is our word for the one God. The God you call Jehovah and that the Jews call YHWH. Perhaps red is the color of Allah."

  * * * *

  The imam insisted that they move into his clean home, bedded them down for twenty-four hours, then took Ivy for a long tramp through the hills around his village.

  Nine thousand years of civilization had dwelt on these hills, he explained. Hittites, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Thracians, Trojans, Armenians, Kurds, Greeks, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks, and Ottoman Turks had all lived, built, worshipped, and died here.

  The imam seemed as interested in Ivy's views of Christianity as he did in her ability to see the power traces left behind the worship and sacrifice of thousands of years of civilization. Her Arabic improved dramatically under his patience.

  "This Foundation is intent on finding the Cross,” he observed.

  "They've chased us for hundreds of miles."

  "Mesopotamia is full of ancient holies. If the Cross were just one more, I wonder if they would be so intent."

  Ivy shrugged. A couple of days of good meals and plenty of sleep had let her regain her strength. “They seem able to order the U.S. Army and CIA around. With a few hundred thousand fighting men and women, plus a thousand or so aircraft, they can go after more than one relic at a time."

  "True.” The imam picked up a small rock—one carved, Ivy noted, into a rough shape of a pregnant woman. He examined it briefly, then put it down carefully but quickly, as if afraid it would burn his fingers. “But they call the Cross ‘the key.’”

  "When I read that in their papers, I thought at first it meant the most important. But after what happened at the temples, I think I know better. The Cross can unlock certain powers. Of course nothing says there can't be other keys."

  "Like the sword of the Prophet, peace be upon him,” the imam laughed. “True. But think of this. What is the Cross?"

  "A piece of wood. I have heard that the wood came from the tree of life."

  The imam smiled at her. “Exactly. I don't know if that is literally true. Perhaps your American scientists could do DNA analysis and find if the wood came from something unique in our world of suffering. But after the Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, was sacrificed on the Cross, it became special, even if it wasn't before. It became a link between life and death, between the world of man and the world of Allah."

  Ivy wasn't going to argue religion with him. But just knowing that the Cross was important didn't seem too helpful.

  "I am troubled by the Priestess,” the imam said when he realized Ivy wasn't going to say anything more. “And by the story of the Temple of Aphrodite."

  There was no reason for Ivy to get defensive. She was a Catholic, not a follower of Ishtar or Aphrodite. Still, the hairs on the back of her neck stood in reaction to the imam's cautious criticism.

  "Both the cave and the temple were places of refuge. Unlike that place in the mountains, I didn't feel any danger there."

  He nodded. “The Prophet, peace be upon him, warns against the worship of false gods. Think what happened to your young friend and that French harlot. And I suspect that there is more to your story that you did not tell. Perhaps something happened to you and your young husband as well?"

  Ivy blushed. She did her best not to think about Zack's strange reaction to the unlocking of Aphrodite's temple, the way he'd kissed her.

  "I fear that you have been unleashing demons into our world,” the imam concluded.

  If she hadn't seen that sheep-monster, Ivy would have argued with him. As it was, she couldn't.

  "There are those of the Christian faith,” the imam went on as if she'd answered him, “who claim that Islam hides its own goddess worship. That the crescent moon is a symbol of the goddess. That the Kabala stone itself is the ancient throne of Ishtar on earth. Such beliefs are wrong, of course, but I have heard people proclaim them."

  "Zack knows a lot more about this religious stuff than I do,” Ivy said. “Maybe you could have this conversation with him."

  "But Zack is not a Saint,” the imam corrected her.

  Ivy couldn't help laughing. “I know my Arabic is rough, but I didn't know it was that bad. Because I'm no Saint."

  "You were dead and you live again. You see the divine with your eyes closed. You have spoken to a priestess dead for thousands of years.” The imam shook his head slowly. “Ivy, of course you are a Saint. That doesn't mean you are perfect, of course. Only Allah is perfect. But you are special, touched by Allah in a way that I have trouble understanding."

  "You're not the only one."

  * * *
*

  Ninety years of avoiding militarily enforced secularism in Turkey had given Moslem religious leaders ample training in moving undetected through the country.

  After four days of rest, recuperation, and interminable discussions with the imam about faith, God's role in religions that faded long before the Prophet walked the sands of Arabia, and Ivy's role and duties in being a Saint, the imam equipped them with false papers, transformed them into a mythical Romanian couple visiting Turkey on their honeymoon, and handed them off to the imam in the next village to the west.

  "I don't know any Romanian,” Ivy had reminded the religious leader when he handed her the passport.

  His white teeth glistened through his long beard. “No one in Turkey knows Romanian: that's the beauty of it. If anyone questions you, use your Church Latin. It's close enough to fool anyone here. Just don't go to Romania. Neither your papers, nor your Latin, are that good."

  A series of midnight transfers, rides bundled in secret compartments under cars, trucks, and farm wagons, and the occasional guided hike through unmapped mountain passes avoiding Army checkpoints, brought them to Isparta, a good-sized city that seemed anchored on the production of roses.

  The Isparta Mosque was ancient and far grander than that in the first village where they'd huddled while waiting to be discovered by the military, but the imam of this Mosque seemed in awe of the time they had spent with their imam.

  "He is famous as a holy man,” he explained in pretty good English. “For him to name you a Saint is exceptional, almost impossible. Traditional Moslems do not venerate Saints of any kind."

  "That's what I told him,” Ivy said. “I'm no angel."

  The imam considered that, then smiled. “Modesty is a positive trait, but it is not necessary for a Saint to be unduly modest. Still, I have taken the liberty of creating for you a list of Mosques along your way. Mosques where our brother's words will be heard and respected.” He handed her a fairly thick stack of paper, still warm from his laser printer.

  "Are any of these in Istanbul?"

  "Oh, yes. Steer clear of the larger Mosques, of course. They are too closely tied to the government. Those who hold to the right path are often pushed into smaller venues. Visit the Blue Mosque if you want to be inspired by architecture. Visit a more humble Mosque if you wish enlightenment."