“So you’re saying I can either see my father or go to jail? I’ll have to think about it.”
“Think about this,” Lundstrom said. “Your little friend there might not want to bail you out of jail when she discovers you’ve been using her to smuggle a stolen Egyptian artifact into the country so you can pawn it off to a wanted South American drug lord.”
“Another lie coming out of Luxor. Where did I allegedly find this artifact?”
“The Egyptians say you looted it from the National Museum of Baghdad when the city fell to invading American forces during the Iraq war. They got the Iraqis to confirm it. At least that’s what they’re telling the Peruvians, Bolivians, and anybody else who will listen.”
Conrad tried to muffle his rage at the Egyptians even as he calculated the chances of Mercedes letting him rot in prison. He concluded she’d probably let the guards have a few whacks at him before bailing him out.
“Very nice,” Conrad told Lundstrom. “But all the same, I’m going to have to pass up this wonderful opportunity.” Conrad offered his hand to wish Lundstrom a hearty good-bye.
But the commander didn’t budge. “There’s more, Doctor Yeats,” he said. “We’ve found what you’ve spent your whole life looking for.”
Conrad looked him in the eye. “My biological parents?”
“Next best thing. You’ll be briefed when we get there.”
“‘There’ almost got me killed last time, Commander. Look, why don’t you find somebody else?”
“We tried.” Lundstrom paused, letting the reality sink in that Conrad wasn’t at the top of anybody’s list these days. “But if her disappearance is any indication, it appears that Dr. Serghetti has already been retained by another organization to investigate this matter.”
“Serena?”
Lundstrom nodded.
Conrad’s mind raced through a number of scenarios, all of them entirely unpleasant and utterly thrilling at the same time. Just hearing her name made him come alive. And the thought that he and Serena and his father and the distinct worlds each of them inhabited would for the first time collide made him wonder if the space-time continuum could handle it or if the universe itself would explode.
“This isn’t going to end well, Commander, is it?”
“Probably not. But General Yeats is waiting.”
“Give me a minute.”
Conrad turned and walked back to Mercedes, who had been watching the exchange with a furrowed brow, and kissed her. “I’m sorry, baby. But I’m going to have to go.”
“Go?” she said. “Go where?”
“To visit a real ancient astronaut.”
Conrad reached into her pack again and took out a gold Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian statuette of Ramses II, who was pharaoh during the alleged Exodus. He had found it in the slave city, and it was the one thing left in his life that proved he wasn’t insane. He gave it to Mercedes.
“Now you never knew where this came from, just in case the nice gentlemen coming over the ledge ask you when they escort you back to Lima.”
Mercedes’s mouth dropped as Conrad and Lundstrom climbed into the Black Hawk. The door shut and the military chopper lifted up and away.
Conrad looked down at the shrinking plateau. By the time he remembered to wave good-bye to Mercedes, the militia men had reached the summit and the chopper was over the side of a mountain.
Conrad turned to Lundstrom. “So what on earth does my father want with me?”
“It’s where on earth,” said Lundstrom, throwing him a white polar “freezer” suit. “Catch.”
3
DISCOVERY PLUS TWENTY-TWO DAYS
ACEH, INDONESIA ROME
DR. SERENA SERGHETTI SKIMMED across the emerald rice fields at two hundred feet, careful to keep the chopper steady. The sun had burst through the dark clouds, but thunder rumbled across the lush mountainside, and rain threatened.
She was nearing the town of Lhokseumawe in the war-torn corner of Indonesia that used to be known as the Dutch West Indies. There were twenty thousand orphans in the province, casualties of a decades-long struggle between Acehnese separatists and the Indonesian military. Now Al Qaeda terrorists had injected themselves into the mix on the Muslim side, making the situation even more combustible. She had to do something to help these children whom the rest of the world had forgotten.
As she passed over the wetlands, she glanced down and saw the sun glint off the oil slick. A discharge from an oil well in Exxon Mobil’s Cluster II had contaminated the local paddy fields, orchards, and shrimp farms. It had happened before, but this leak looked far more threatening. The widows and orphans in the nearby villages of Pu’uk, Nibong Baroh, and Tanjung Krueng Pase would be devastated. They would have to move to another area for at least six months, maybe a year, their sustenance wiped out.
She was about to flick on the onboard remote camera when a voice spoke in her headphone in heavily accented English. “Welcome to Post Thirteen, Sister Serghetti.”
She glanced starboard and saw an Indonesian military chopper with side-mounted machine guns keeping pace with her chopper. The voice spoke again. “You are going to land on the helipad in the center of the complex.”
She banked to the right and started to climb when four bullets raked the side. “Land immediately,” the voice said, “or we’ll blow you out of the sky.”
She gripped the joystick tightly and dropped lower toward the helipad. She lightly touched down on the platform as soldiers in field greens surrounded her chopper, fingers gripping their M-16s.
They were Kopassus units—Indonesian special forces—based at nearby Camp Rancong, she realized as she stepped out of the chopper with her hands up. Camp Rancong, the site of many reported tortures, was owned by PT Arun, the Indonesian oil giant, which was itself partially owned by Exxon Mobil, which facilitated Post Thirteen.
The wall of Kopassus forces parted as a jeep drove up. It braked to a halt and an officer, a colonel judging by his shoulder boards, stepped out and sauntered over. He was a slim young man in his twenties. Behind him straggled an older, bloated Caucasian civilian, whom by his lethargic and nervous demeanor Serena guessed to be the site’s token American oil executive.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“The infamous Sister Serghetti,” the colonel said in English. “You speak Acehnese like a native but certainly do not look like one. Your pictures in the media don’t do your beauty justice. Nor hint of your skills as a pilot.”
“I learned on the job, Colonel,” she said dryly in her native Australian accent.
“And which job would that be? You seem to have so many of them.”
“Dropping food and medical supplies to the poorest of the poor in Africa and Asia because their governments are so corrupt that U.N. shipments rarely make it to their intended villages,” she said. “They either disappear or rot on the docks because the roads are impossible to drive.”
“Then you’re in the wrong place, ma’am,” said the American in a southern drawl. “I’m Lou Hackett, the chief executive for this here operation. You should be in East Timor helping the Catholics stand up to Muslims. What the hell are you doing here in a pure Muslim province like Aceh?”
“Documenting human rights abuses, Mr. Hackett,” she said. “God loves Muslims and Acehnese separatists too. Maybe even as much as American businessmen.”
“Rights abuses? Not here,” Mr. Hackett said. He was keenly watching her chopper, now being stripped by a crew of Kopassus technicians.
Serena looked him in the eye. “You mean that’s not your oil slick out there soaking the local shrimp farms, Mr. Hackett?”
“I would hardly call an innocent accident a human rights violation.”
Mr. Hackett wiped the sweat from his brow with an old, worn handkerchief. Serena had to remind herself that he was an exception to big oil’s remarkable progress in recent years.
“So your company didn’t build the military barracks here at Post Thirteen wher
e victims of human rights abuses claim to have been interrogated?” she went on, glancing at the Indonesian colonel. “Or provide heavy equipment so the military could dig mass graves for its victims at Sentang Hill and Tengkorak Hill?”
Mr. Hackett looked at her as if she were the problem and not his oil discharge. “What do you want, Sister Serghetti?”
The Indonesian colonel answered for her. “She wants to do to Exxon Mobil and PT Arun what she did to Denok Coffee in East Timor.”
“You mean break the grip of a cartel controlled by the Indonesian military and let the people sell their goods at market prices?” she asked. “Hmm, now that’s a thought.”
Hackett had clearly had enough. “Hell, if the East Timorese want to be slaves for Starbucks, that’s their business, Sister. But when you threw the military out of the coffee business, they took a special interest in mine.”
“Here’s another thought, Sister Serghetti,” the colonel said, handing her a sheet of paper. It was a fax. “Leave.”
She looked the fax over twice. It was from Bishop Carlos in Jakarta, winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize. It said she was urgently needed in Rome. “The pope wants to see me?”
“The pope, the pontiff, the Holy See, whatever the hell you call him,” said Mr. Hackett. “Just call yourself lucky to walk out of here.”
She turned toward her chopper in time to see several soldiers carry away the dismantled cameras from its belly.
“And the people of Aceh?” she pressed Mr. Hackett as the colonel nudged her toward his jeep. He was apparently keeping her chopper. “You can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”
“I don’t have to pretend anything, Sister,” Mr. Hackett said, waving her a smug good-bye. “If it ain’t in the news, it ain’t happening.”
Twenty-four hours later, Serena leaned back in the rear of the unmarked black sedan as old Benito nudged it through the angry protesters and camera crews in Saint Peter’s Square. That she could arouse such strong sentiments seemed impossible. And yet the demonstrations outside were meant for her.
She was only twenty-seven, but she had already made a lifetime’s worth of enemies in the petroleum, timber, and biomedical industries or anyone who put profit ahead of people, animals, or the environment. But her efforts inadvertently left a few of the people she had hoped to save jobless. Well, maybe more than a few, judging by the mob outside.
Dressed in her trademark urban uniform of an Armani suit and high-top sneakers, she hardly looked the part of a former Carmelite nun. But that was the point. As “Mother Earth” she made headlines, and with recognition came influence. How else would the style-over-substance media, the secular world, and, ultimately, Rome take her seriously?
God was another matter. She wasn’t sure what he thought of her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Serena stared through the rain-streaked window. Vatican police were pushing back the crowds and paparazzi. Then, out of nowhere, whap!—there was a loud crack, and she jumped. A protester had managed to slap his placard against the glass: FIND ANOTHER PLANET, MOTHER EARTH.
“I think they miss you, signorina,” said the driver in his best English.
“They mean well, Benito,” she replied, looking at the throngs with compassion. She could have addressed him in Italian, French, German, or a dozen other languages. But she recalled Benito wanted to work on his English. “They’re scared. They have families to feed. They need someone to blame for their unemployment. It might as well be me.”
“Only you, signorina, would bless your enemies.”
“There are no enemies, Benito, just misunderstandings.”
“Spoken like a true saint,” he said as they left the mob at the gate and curved along a winding drive.
“So, Benito, do you know why His Holiness has summoned me to the Eternal City for a private audience?” she asked, casually smoothing her pants, trying to hide the anxiety building inside.
“With you it is always hard to say.” Benito smiled in the mirror, revealing a gold tooth. “So much trouble to choose from.”
Too true, she thought. When she was a nun, Serena was usually at odds with her superiors, an outcast within her own church. Even the pope, an ally, once told Newsweek magazine, “Sister Serghetti is doing what God would do if only he knew the facts.” That made good copy, but she knew that no court of public opinion could protect her within these gates.
Born of an illicit affair between a Catholic priest and a housemaid outside Sydney, Serena Serghetti was filled with shame as a little girl. She grew up among sordid whispers and hated her father, who denied his patrimony to the end and died a drunken fraud. She silenced the whispers by pledging sexual purity at age twelve, excelling in her study of linguistics and, most shocking of all, joining a convent at sixteen. Within a few years she had become a living example of redemption to the Church and a walking, talking reminder to humanity of its ecological sins.
It was a good run while it lasted, which was almost seven years. Then, a few months after a personal crisis in South America, she returned to Rome for moral guidance and instead discovered that the Vatican was refusing to pay its water bills, hiding behind its status as a sovereign state and the obscure Lateran Treaty of 1929, which established that Italy must provide water for the 107-acre enclave for free but made no provision for sewage fees. “We neither render unto Caesar the taxes we owe Caesar, nor render unto God the honor we owe God as his stewards of Creation,” she said when she publicly renounced her vows and embraced the environment.
It was then that the media dubbed her “Mother Earth.” Ever since, she couldn’t stop people from addressing her as such, or as “Sister Serghetti.” She was probably the world’s most famous former nun. Like the late Princess Diana before she died, Serena was no longer part of the church’s royal family and yet somehow had become its “Queen of Hearts.”
Swiss Guards in crimson uniforms snapped to attention as her sedan pulled up to the entrance of the Governorate. Before Benito could open the door for her and offer her an umbrella, she was already climbing the steps in the rain at a leisurely pace, her sneakers splashing in the puddles as she looked up to the sky and enjoyed feeling a few drops on her face. If her history with the Vatican was any guide, this was probably the last breath of fresh air she’d be enjoying for a while. A guard smiled as she passed through the open door.
It was warm and dry inside, and the young Jesuit waiting for her recognized her instantly. “Sister Serghetti,” he said cordially. “This way.”
There was the buzz of activity from various offices as she followed the Jesuit down a maze of bureaucratic corridors to an old service elevator. To think it all started with a poor Jewish carpenter, she thought as they stepped inside and the door closed.
She wondered if Jesus would find himself as much a stranger in his church as she did.
She frowned at her reflection in the metal doors of the elevator and smoothed out her lapels. So ironic she should care, she realized, knowing the silk and wool were spun by the sweat of some poor child in a Far East factory to feed the global consumer market. The clothes and the image they projected represented everything she hated, but she used them to raise money and consciousness in a media age more obsessed with a former nun’s look than her charity. So be it.
But would Jesus wear Armani?
It was an insane world, and she often wondered why God had either made it that way or had simply allowed it to mutate into such an abomination. She certainly would have managed things differently.
The office she was looking for was on the fifth floor and belonged to the Vatican’s intelligence chief, a cardinal named Tucci. It was Tucci who would brief her and escort her to the papal residence for her private audience with the pope. But the cardinal was nowhere to be found. Still, the young Jesuit ushered her inside.
The study seemed older and more elegant than befit Tucci’s reputation. Medieval paintings and ancient maps graced the walls rather than the more modern, contemporary art tha
t Tucci was reputed to favor.
Older and more elegant still was the man seated in a high-back leather chair with a pair of seventeenth-century Bleau globes on either side. The white regalia with the gold lace at the throat perfectly offset the silver hair. He looked every bit an urbane, handsome man of the faith, and the eyes, when he glanced up from the file he was reading, were clear and intelligent.
“Sister Serghetti,” said her Jesuit escort, “His Holiness.”
The pope, whom Serena instantly recognized, needed no introduction. “Your Holiness,” she said as the Jesuit closed the door behind her.
The great man seemed neither stern nor beatific to her. Rather, he radiated the businesslike aura of a CEO. Except that this corporation was not traded daily on the exchanges of New York, London, and Tokyo. Nor did it forecast its future growth in terms of quarters, years, or even decades. This enterprise was in its third millennium and measured its progress in terms of eternity.
“Sister Serghetti.” The pope’s voice conveyed genuine affection as he gestured to a chair. “It’s been too long.”
Surprised and suspicious, she sank into a leather chair while he looked over her Vatican file.
“Ozone protests outside the United Nations headquarters in New York,” he read aloud in a quiet yet resonant voice. “Global boycotts against biomedical companies. Even your Internet home page registers more hits than mine.”
He looked up from the file in his lap with quick, bright eyes. “I sometimes wonder if your obsession to save Earth from the human race is motivated by some deeper, inner desire to redeem yourself.”
She shifted in her leather seat. It felt hard and uncomfortable. “Redeem me from what, Your Holiness?”
“I was acquainted with your father, you know.”
She knew.
“Indeed,” the pope went on, “I was the bishop to whom he came for advice upon learning that your mother was pregnant.”
This Serena did not know.
The Atlantis Legacy - A01-A02 Page 3