Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

"You follow him. He leads you. Not to tell anyone, however. The passage is gypsy secret."

  Pegleg grunted again, then gestured toward the nearby hills.

  Five minutes of walking through an abandoned apricot orchard got Ivy a couple of clunks in the head from running the Cross into trees, and a windfallen apricot.

  Pegleg finally gestured to the heavy iron grating over a corrugated drain that stuck out of the mountain.

  "This is it?"

  Pegleg shrugged.

  "How do we get in?” Zack asked. The iron bars looked rusty but plenty solid enough to keep them out.

  Pegleg looked disgusted, but he reached his hand through a couple of bars and tripped a latch, swinging the steel grate outward.

  "Are you coming with us?"

  Pegleg might not speak English, but he was doing a pretty good job understanding Ivy's questions. He gestured at them to enter the two-foot-high opening. Clearly he wasn't going anywhere.

  "Looks like we either have to trust him or not,” Zack said. “You did the Queen a favor. So, I figure we should trust them to pay us back."

  "The Queen said it,” Ivy answered. “If they wanted us dead, they wouldn't be doing anything this complicated.” She crawled into the opening wondering whether this part of Thrace was big on snakes and scorpions.

  Pegleg grunted again, shoved something at Zack, then slammed the grating behind them. They were alone again.

  Dragging the Cross across the bumpy corrugated iron pipe felt blasphemous, but Ivy didn't have any choice. They couldn't stand upright and certainly couldn't just carry their burdens.

  Dawn had provided a gray lighting outside as they'd scrambled through the apricot orchard, but Zack's bulk behind her cut off almost all of the light. What little got through diminished quickly as she crawled more deeply into the tunnel.

  Then, abruptly, light dazzled, almost blinding her.

  "Our one-legged friend gave me a flashlight,” Zack admitted.

  * * * *

  The pipe dumped them out in a stone cave that felt ancient and holy to Ivy.

  The blue tinge to the magic could have indicated Mary worship, but she felt certain whatever had been worshiped here had been ancient before Mary had been born.

  Zack flashed his lantern around, stopping at the hammer and sickle hewn into the rock in one spot, at the lettering in another spot that didn't look like either the Greek, Latin, Arabic, or Cyrillic alphabets.

  "What's that?"

  Zack wrinkled his forehead. “I don't recognize it. Maybe it's Linear B."

  "Linear what?"

  "It's the old Greek alphabet that was lost in the wars during the Mycenaean dark ages before Homer. The Greeks didn't rediscover writing for hundreds of years and then they had to adapt a whole new alphabet."

  Ivy shuddered, reminded again of the vision she'd seen in Mosul. She tried to imagine how a war could be that destructive. It wasn't hard to imagine cities being destroyed. Iraq was full of destroyed cities—some ruined thousands of years ago, others flattened by the American invasion. Even technologies could be lost as had Greek Fire, which had once defended Constantinople against the Arabs. But a loss of knowledge so complete that even the alphabet hadn't survived seemed a huge leap beyond even the massive destruction she'd witnessed.

  "Another archeological dream,” Zack whispered. “I don't think anyone knows that Linear B penetrated so far into Thrace.” He sighed, clearly wishing he could stay and explore. “Still, we'd better go. I don't know how long these batteries are going to last."

  "Good.” Ivy led the way forward hoping that the cavern wouldn't have multiple branches. Without a guide, it would be easy to become lost in a maze. “Say, you don't think those ancient Greeks were Communists, do you?"

  "You mean the hammer and sickle? More likely this was a hiding place and smuggling center during the Greek civil war,” Zack said. “Or maybe part of the resistance during World War II."

  The passage showed occasional signs of more recent use. Perhaps the gypsies, or maybe smugglers, had kept alive memory of an ancient cave system that had once been used to celebrate dark mysteries dedicated to a goddess whose name Ivy couldn't even guess.

  The flashlight batteries gave out just as they saw the green light of day to the west.

  They emerged from a tree-shrouded grotto, splashing their way through a narrow stream the last hundred feet, and finally squeezing themselves through a muddy opening small enough that Zack had to contort his shoulders to get through.

  Ivy looked back at the hill behind them and spotted the high fence that separated Turkey from Greece.

  Despite Pegleg's promise, no one was at hand to greet them.

  "Looks like we're one step closer to Venice,” she said. “Now what?"

  "More walking,” Zack said. “The Americans don't have as many bases in Greece as they do in Turkey, but I'm willing to bet that one more border isn't going to stop the Foundation from following us."

  * * * *

  Greece involved a lot more walking. Eventually, though, they made contact with some of the Constantinople Patriarch's allies in Greece and were bundled onto one of the many Greek shipping lines—on a ship heading for Venice.

  "It's not exactly a pleasure cruise.” Ivy filled Zack's bowl with a Greek lamb stew, then dished out another bowl to the Greek sailor behind him.

  "Tell me about it.” Zack looked as exhausted as she felt. Because he couldn't speak Greek and had no special on-board skills, he'd been given the most skutwork jobs on the ship.

  The ship's whistle sounded before they could gripe any more and the dining room where Ivy had been put to work as assistant cook and food-slopper emptied out.

  "Quickly, move.” The cook grabbed her by the arm and dragged her toward his room.

  She heard the telltale rumble of helicopter turbines just in time to keep from decking the aging sailor. Although they were hundreds of miles from where they'd finally broken contact with the Foundation, the Agents hadn't given up. It didn't help that they could have drawn a line from Mosul in Iraq through Turkey and Greece to get an idea of where she and Zack were heading.

  The freighter's engine shifted tone as the captain hove to under threat of attack.

  "No woman on ship,” the cook insisted as he shoved her into his room. “Change."

  That she could understand. Not that the baggy pants or blue workshirt she wore were especially feminine.

  She packed a couple of towels into her shirt, hoping to make her breasts look like fat rather than female, and grabbed the cook's straight razor.

  This wouldn't hurt at all.

  It only took her about thirty seconds to shave off all of her hair, blacken her eyebrows, yank out her earrings, and head out to the deck.

  The cook handed her a greasy sailor's cap which she stuck on top of her shaved head.

  A U.S. Navy frigate rocketed through the gray waters of the Adriatic toward them while an ugly black helicopter circled overhead.

  As she watched, a rope ladder dropped down from the gunship and two sailors scrabbled down.

  The Captain met them at the base of the ladder, screaming at them that he was a registered merchant, that they were conducting an act of piracy and war, that he would notify his government representative, and that the sailor's mother had engaged in sex with a horse's hindquarters.

  The sailor listened to the captain for a couple of moments, then shoved him aside.

  An angry murmur ran through the watching Greek sailors and several stepped forward carrying improvised weapons, but the roar of Gatling gun bullets convinced them to pull back.

  The helicopter crew had fired into the sea, but the warning was clear—they could turn the freighter into so much scrap metal in a few seconds of sustained firing.

  "What cargo are you carrying?” the sailor demanded.

  The captain brushed himself off. “Olive oil, incense, artwork. Some containers delivered by customers. Those are sealed by Customs. I don't have the keys."

  "Yea
h, right. Of course you don't. Well, we can get through seals. Show us where they are."

  The captain protested for a moment, but everyone could see his heart wasn't in it. He didn't want to let the Americans into his cargo, but he wanted to get shot up even less.

  "Tell the rest of your sailors to stay on deck. Anyone else going below will be killed."

  The captain shouted something in Greek and, from the angry murmur from the sailors, Ivy thought he had added his opinions of the Americans, but he must also have conveyed his message because no one moved as the captain led the sailors below.

  "The men from the chopper are dressed as Navy petty officers, but they stink of Foundation to me.” Zack hadn't moved noticeably, but he'd closed the distance so they could talk. “And jeez, what the heck happened to your head?"

  "No women on the ship. I didn't have time for a careful styling."

  "It's, uh, unfortunate."

  "Too bad. Here I was such a fashionplate before."

  "Whatever. So, what are we going to do if they find the Cross?"

  They'd hidden it as best they could, but the Foundation had proven able to track them down. These Agents, though, didn't seem especially alert. They were going through the motions of inspecting every ship in the area.

  The captain popped up and shouted something else and the cook gestured to Zack and Ivy. “You four, go with the Captain.” He signaled to a couple of others so it wasn't just the two of them. Ivy wondered if the Captain had decided that giving them up would be the safest strategy. Considering how the Foundation Agents treated their witnesses, Ivy didn't he'd be right. Still, it was way too late to warn him.

  The Captain put them to work unbolting the cargo holds and bringing up samples of the cargo from below.

  "No guns,” he insisted as if he really believed that the Agents were U.S. military and that they were looking for terrorists. “No explosion. We carry same cargo we have carry for twenty years."

  "I'm picking up something.” The Agents appeared to have tuned out the captain. “Over to the left."

  If Ivy needed convincing that these weren't real sailors, his use of the word ‘left’ rather than ‘port’ would have done it.

  Rather than the crucifix Smith and some of the other agents had carried, this pair had a small electronic device the size of a palmtop computer, but with a cute little dish antenna on top. More evidence they were putting every agent into the field that they could.

  "Seems to be close."

  "Nothing below, in the hold?"

  "I'm picking up a vague signal down there, too. Nothing big, though."

  "All right. Let's focus on the big one.” He turned to the captain. “Whatchew hiding behind this door?"

  Rather than wait for an answer, he kicked his booted foot through the closed door.

  The ship's chapel was fancier than Ivy would have imagined before she'd seen it. The Greek shipping crew was all Orthodox and, as far as Ivy could tell, relatively devout for a bunch of sailors. Still, she'd been blown away when she'd first seen the gold leaf, the dozens of paintings, and the continually burning and frequently refreshed candles. A huge crucifix with a lifesized but strangely flat-looking statue of Jesus hanging from it dominated the chapel.

  "It's a goddamn church,” the Agent said.

  The senior agent pushed in and looked around. “The so-called Orthodox religion is as badly in error as the Papist faith. Both stray from the true word."

  "Maybe so, but the detector is going crazy,” the Agent said. “This place is full of faith."

  "Let me see that.” The senior agent grabbed the palmtop detector and pointed it around the room.

  Sure enough, the device's proximity locator screamed but its direction sensing seemed completely out of whack. Even without understanding how the palm-sized device worked, Ivy could see that its signals were spiking aimlessly.

  She took a couple of steps and the system squawked. Good. The power emissions from both Cross and Veil were stronger than it was built to deal with. Having them both in close proximity confused it and made it hard to get a fix on either source. Of course the ambient power associated with the chapel just added to its confusion.

  "Just how old is this church?” the junior Agent demanded.

  The captain shrugged. “We move our chapel from old ship to new ship when the old ship retires. This maybe come from a hundred years ago first, when Greece begins to build major shipping. Some changes, some things remain the same."

  The junior agent scratched his head. “Could it be just another church? We've gotten funky signals before."

  "Only one way to find out. Tear the place apart and see what we find,” the Senior Agent demanded.

  Ivy froze, but forced herself to relax. Even if they subdued the boarding party, they could do nothing in the face of the helicopter's Gatling guns.

  The Captain clutched the Senior Agent's arm. “No. This is our special place. It belonged to my father, to his father before him."

  "Don't touch me.” The Agent yanked his arm free, then shoved the Captain against the wall hard enough to, crack the wood paneling.

  Real tears ran down the Captain's cheeks as the senior Agent radioed the frigate to send over a group of sailors with crowbars. The sailors cheerfully demolished the chapel, yanked sandlewood paneling from the walls, cut icons out of their frames, and spilled the liturgical wine and wafers on the floor.

  A couple of sailors kept submachineguns trained on the Captain, who continued to shout curses at them, wave his fists, and threaten to rush them each time they attacked another panel, another old painting.

  "Even the infidel Turks do not do such damage when they inspect us. Why do you do this?"

  Evidently the senior agent had heard enough. He grabbed the Captain and twisted his lapels so tightly the Captain's swarthy face turned blue. “The end-times are here, Captain. The Gog-Magog war is already under way. You'd better start getting yourself right with the Lord. These icons aren't going to help you."

  He dumped the Captain on the floor, then turned to supervise the damage.

  "We haven't seen anything,” the junior Agent reported. “I think we're wasting our time. Again."

  "Maybe,” the senior Agent admitted. “Still, there is a certain satisfaction from destroying these symbols of the Antichrist."

  He looked around. “Tear up the floors."

  The Captain hadn't learned his lesson from the choking he'd gotten. “No! These are priceless mosaics, ancient floorboards. Surely—"

  "Surely nothing,” the Agent said. “Down to the steel bulkheads."

  For thirty minutes, six sailors and two agents used crowbars, electric screwdrivers, and a small jackhammer to tear out the floors and walls of the chapel, leaving the entire cabin a steel box with a large pile of litter in the middle.

  They finally stopped when the senior Agent got a call on his cell.

  "We've got another ship to inspect. Let's go,” he reported.

  "But the damage to my ship,” the Captain protested. “It will cost many thousands of Euros to repair."

  "The love of money is the root of all evil,” the Agent responded. “Think of this as a small sacrifice toward your, admittedly unlikely, salvation. You Orthodox still believe in indulgences, don't you?"

  By the time they went back on deck, the helicopter had vanished, possibly to refuel, and the Agents joined the sailors in the open boat for the ride back to the frigate.

  "The Lord has given us idiots for enemies,” the Captain said when the sailors motored away. “Unfortunately, their idiocy has not prevented them from doing great damage."

  "Sorry about the mess we got you into,” Zack said.

  The Captain waved a hand. “I will not blame you for what your countrymen have done. Come, we still have many kilometers to cover before we reach Venice. I would rather not experience this kind of interruption again.

  The freighter's engines rumbled as the Captain engaged propellers deep beneath the surface of the ocean and the ship
picked up speed.

  If the U.S. Navy and the Foundation were stopping all shipping like this everywhere in the eastern Mediterranean, the State Department would be getting complaints from every one of their allies and the Defense Department would be running through its budget even quicker than usual. All of which had to mean something.

  The senior Agent had said something about the ‘end times.’ This was another area of Christian belief that the Catholic Church didn't emphasize but that Zack explained many Protestant faiths worried about a lot. But could the Agent have been speaking literally when he'd said that the ‘end times’ were actually here, rather than fast approaching? Perhaps that would explain why he didn't seem worried about offending foreigners or how much money his casual vandalism was going to end up costing his government.

  Ivy wasn't sure.

  "So, where was the Cross?” Zack demanded.

  "You didn't see it? It was hanging right there in the open."

  "You mean the Crucifix?"

  She nodded. “They expected to see a Cross in a Church, so we gave it to them. It became invisible. Even its power, they could justify to themselves as the result of decades of sailors praying."

  She looked into the shattered chapel. The entire chamber was filled with wreckage with only the Cross itself, along with the temporarily attached statue of Jesus, hanging over the shattered alter, unaffected by the carnage.

  Chapter 20

  Venice was magical.

  Since their ship was going to be in the harbor for several days, they left the Cross in the ruined chapel on the freighter and set off to explore the ancient city—and to see if they could figure out what they were supposed to be doing here.

  Ivy described the many colors of power to Zack, but to him, the city was a mosaic of more subtle shades—the dark gray of the water in the canals, the dull brown of motorboats and the inky black of the gondolas clogging up the canals like cars on a freeway, the paler gray of stone buildings, the dusty brick of tiled roofs, and the gleaming whiteness of ancient churches.

  "Venice isn't actually as old as Istanbul or some of the other places we've visited,” Ivy reported from a guidebook. “It was founded in 421 A.D. by Romans fleeing the destruction of that empire."