The Lost Apostles

by Brian Herbert

  The tunnel sloped slightly upward and widened, and they came to the four heavy iron doors they had reached on the earlier reconnaissance mission . . . and the door Lori had already selected as the route to take. This was a point of great danger, because none of them knew for certain what lay beyond, not even Lori with her apparent second sight, though she didn’t want to admit her flickering doubts to anyone. Instruments told the soldiers they were near the Vatican Palace.

  Any moment could be the last for all of them. Just opening the door, or blasting through, could set off explosives that Dixie Lou claimed to have planted all around the Vatican.

  We need to trust in a higher power, Lori thought.

  A demolition team began drilling into the door and surrounding wall, and inserted muted charges into the openings. They set up a protective shield, and ordered everyone back.

  Lori had been told that the charges were a new, almost entirely silent technology, with very little wasted energy. The charges, when activated, created muffling buffers all around them, and then went off inside those protected areas.

  Explosions knocked the heavy door off its hinges.

  The NATO force, with Lori at the rear, surged through the doorway. . . .

  * * *

  Even though they were supposed to be close to the Vatican Palace now, known to be one of the most protected buildings in the holy city, this subterranean region did not appear to have been visited by human beings for centuries. Lori smelled a mustiness that wrinkled her nose, and unpleasant companion odors that she thought might be dead rats and sewage.

  Just ahead, soldiers were forming into mission squads, while others shined helmet beams up two staircases, leading in different directions on either side of the passageway. Lori heard the clicking of rifles and handguns as the men checked their weapons. She checked her own, slipped it back into the shoulder holster.

  “Can’t see the tops of the stairways,” an officer said.

  “Martha is that way!” Lori said, pointing to the stairs on the left.

  Pushing past them, she ran ahead, up the worn rock steps. Her father and Alex called for her to stop.

  The steps under Lori’s feet were slick and damp, which she saw in the illumination of her helmet lamp, so she had to watch her footing. She heard men running behind her, saw their lights coming up the stairs behind her.

  One of the men said, “We may as well go with her. Can’t tell which way to go anyway.”

  Another man agreed. “She has a sixth sense.”

  At the top of the stairs, Lori tried the lever handle of a door, but it didn’t budge. The stubborn barrier would not move.

  “I’ll take care of it,” a soldier said. “One side, please.”

  The demolition expert set the charges and activated them, creating a soft percussive thump. The door gave way, and Lori ran into what looked like the basement of a large structure, with a corridor that extended for hundreds of meters.

  A soldier beside her fiddled with his compass, trying to determine the direction of the southwest corner of the third floor, where Deborah Marvel had said the last she-apostle was being kept. He was having trouble with it, some sort of magnetic disturbance, he said. Bringing out a plan of each floor, he studied it.

  Even though she had never been here before, Lori knew which way to go without looking at the plan. It was as if this ancient maze was as familiar to her as her own home. In her mind’s eye she saw a complete diagram of the palace and surrounding structures, every floor, every passageway and staircase.

  * * *

  Dressed in a gold robe trimmed in black, Dixie Lou Jackson carried the legendary Sword of She-God. She strode into a third floor room that centuries before had been the bedroom of a papal mistress, and which now contained a white wooden crib where the baby Marta Santos lay sleeping beneath a blanket. Morning light seeped into the room, and table lamps were on, left that way by the child’s mother, who had a Mexican superstition that Marta should not sleep in darkness, lest evil spirits take her away. The matron assigned to watch the woman reported that she had been terribly upset one night, when Dixie Lou turned off the building power and wandered the darkened corridors and rooms for her own personal enjoyment. She might do that again, if she ever felt like it.

  For now, the Grand Messenger locked herself inside the room, and sealed off the door to the adjoining room as well, where she had permitted the mother to live, under supervision of the matron and the guards. A small kindness that no one gave Dixie Lou credit for. She set the Sword of She-God on a table, heard ongoing construction noises in the background.

  Gliding silently to the crib, Dixie Lou held the smoothly painted top rail and listened to the barely audible breathing of the child. She could smell the perfume of baby powder, evidence that the mother took good care of her. Such a sweet smile on the little brown face, dreaming unknown delights. So innocent in appearance, but Dixie Lou sensed something extremely dangerous about her. She was at once fascinated and terrified.

  After taking a deep breath for courage, she touched—timidly at first, then firmly—the side of the child’s neck, intending to obtain the elusive truth, no matter the pain she had to endure to do so.

  From somewhere far off, but seemingly within the child, a subtle trembling began, and moment by moment it intensified, like an earthquake but not quite like one, because it was not sudden and not external. When the vibrations became so severe that Dixie Lou thought she could endure no more, a reverberating, rumbling shock knocked her loose and hurled her across the room, slamming her into a wall. She hit her head hard, nearly passed out.

  The mother was awake now, pounding on the side door and chattering hysterically in Spanish.

  Her head throbbing, Dixie Lou shouted, “Shut up, you fool! The baby is fine!”

  But the women kept up the commotion, to the point where Dixie Lou felt like killing her, until she heard the voice of the matron in the other room, talking to the peasant woman. The Grand Messenger tried to focus on something else, on the reason she had come to this room in the first place.

  Crossing to the crib, she knelt beside it and stared through the slats at the baby, who was awake now and stared back at her with intelligent brown eyes.

  The child smiled in a condescending manner, as if in possession of secrets that were unfathomable to Dixie Lou. She found this deeply disturbing. Then, through an opening in the slats, the baby reached out and touched the back of Dixie Lou’s hand. This time their skins seemed to lock together and meld into one. The trembling resumed and intensified, but now it drew Dixie Lou deep into the memory of this child-that-was-not-a-child, to the ancient time of Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate.

  “I must know the truth,” Dixie Lou murmured.

  Long dormant thoughts and word fragments filtered into Dixie Lou’s brain in ancient Aramaic, but which she understood in a translation process that she could not explain. An adult female voice announced, “You are forgiven.”

  “Forgiven? What are you talking about?” Inexplicably, Dixie Lou felt a terrible guilt, but about what?

  “I am the true Martha of Galilee, Apostle of Jesus,” the voice said. Then she kept talking, explaining scenes while they reeled across Dixie Lou’s awareness liked the damaged copy of a movie, forming unclear images: the Savior at the Sermon on the Mount . . . at the Sea of Galilee . . . in the Garden of Gethsemane. These images, though of poor quality, were electrifying to Dixie Lou.

  Excitement and fear surged through her. This was the twelfth she-apostle! But the images remained clouded, and Dixie Lou hungered to see more, to know more.

  Suddenly all went black, and Martha’s adult voice stopped.

  Her mind roiling in confusion and terror, the Grand Messenger withdrew from the child. Questions surfaced, important ones: Why had she experienced a vision of Lori having a child? That conflicted with what she’d just been told. If this truly was Martha of Galilee, the missing she-apostle, who would Lori’s baby be?

  And why did Dixie Lou feel
such intense personal guilt, that she had done something horrible and unforgivable?

  A loud explosion jolted her to awareness, and she ran alone into the corridor of the palace, shouting for her guards. Unnoticed by her, a brown-skinned woman stepped out of an alcove and slipped into the room, closing the door behind her.

  Chapter 41

  For everything a person senses, there is always more, just beneath the surface. This is true for all people, no matter their extrasensory abilities. It is like this with every aspect of life, and accomplishment. You can always do better, can always attain more.

  —Lori Vale, Philosophies

  Deborah Marvel had expected NATO to attack the afternoon before, the moment the seventy-two hour deadline expired. When it didn’t happen and the evening passed, she slept poorly all night, wondering when they would come, or if they would come at all. Had they only been bluffing?

  Just as she finally fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning, she awoke at a loud noise, and came to consciousness with the feeling that she was emerging from a bad dream. Hearing another loud noise, this one like an explosion, she bolted out of bed and dressed hurriedly.

  Carrying a handgun, the blonde woman lunged into the corridor on the fourth floor of the Vatican Palace and sprinted toward the Pope’s room, faster than she ever jogged, rounding corners so fast that she almost fell down.

  At his door, she passed through the saffron light of an identity scanner. The wooden door opened and she and burst into the room. Gunfire sounded downstairs, perhaps on the ground floor of the palace.

  “It has begun,” he said, calmly, in his slight Spanish accent. Pope Rodrigo was fully dressed, wore a simple white robe. He held a Bible open, which he now closed and slipped into an oversized pocket. Through a window behind him, orange flashes lit the morning sky. Deborah heard a fusillade of machine-gun fire outside, and the shouts of women in the palace.

  “Come with me, Your Eminence,” Deborah said. “I don’t think you should remain here.”

  He looked at her inquisitively with his old green eyes, and smiled. “Where do you intend to take me?”

  “To safety, Your Eminence. Please, we need to hurry.”

  “Leave your weapon behind, please.”

  “It’s only set to stun, can’t really hurt anyone.”

  His eyes looked deeply into hers. “All right,” he finally said, and rose to his feet. She was struck by what an elegant, infinitely calm and emotionally centered old gentleman he was, especially in his terrible time of trial.

  She led him into the corridor, where partially dressed councilwomen, matrons, and servants were running and screaming. As Deborah and the Pope approached a stairway, two burly female guards emerged from it, brandishing snub-nose assault rifles.

  “Come with us,” one of the guards yelled. “We have standing orders from the Grand Messenger to take the Pope to her office.”

  “I have a better place for him,” Deborah said. She recognized the guards.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the other guard said, lifting the barrel of her rifle, but only a little. She looked warily at Deborah’s pistol. “We have our orders.”

  “You know who I am,” Deborah said in a level tone, “and you will do as I say. My orders override any standing orders. It’s not safe to take Pope Rodrigo that far.”

  The guards looked at each other. One of them tried to grab the Pope by the arm, but he pulled away.

  Deborah fired twice, one stun pellet at each of the women. The projectiles hit them squarely in their torsos, and both of them fell backward onto the top of the stairwell, crying out and dropping their weapons. Then, abruptly, they became rigid, with their eyes staring and unfocused.

  Obviously concerned, the Pope knelt over one of the guards, felt the carotid artery on her neck.

  “They won’t be able to move for about five minutes,” Deborah said. “Don’t worry, Your Eminence, they aren’t seriously hurt.”

  He rose to his feet, but looked very worried, and anguished.

  Grabbing the guards’ assault rifles, Deborah shouted for Pope Rodrigo to follow her down the stairs. The pontiff murmured a quick prayer over the motionless guards, then caught up with her.

  At the first landing, Deborah halted, and with the barrel of her pistol she pressed on the wall, near a corner. A panel slid open with a hard thump, and she led Pope Rodrigo inside, closing the panel behind them.

  Entering a narrow corridor that ran parallel with the wall, a passageway barely wide enough for one person to get through, she led him to a low-ceilinged, windowless room. “We are between floors now,” she said.

  “You’ve certainly done your homework,” Pope Rodrigo said, hunching over since he was taller than the ceiling. “But you may not know that I also have access to this area from my apartment, even though it is only servant’s quarters.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Every apartment in the palace has access to safe rooms such as this one, for those who know about them.”

  “You and the Roman Catholic cardinals?”

  He nodded. “The most trusted of the trusted know about these secret passageways and rooms.”

  The Spartan chamber, whose ceiling was only an inch or two above Deborah’s head, featured two beds, a pair of chairs with thin cushions, a simple kitchen, and a toilet, seen through an open door.

  Deborah slumped into one of the chairs and dropped the weapons on the hardwood floor beside her. “I’m sorry we did this to you,” she said. “I don’t want to make excuses because I am part of the organization, but I didn’t know Dixie Lou intended to capture the Vatican and kill your people in the takeover. None of the councilwomen knew. She only told us that she had a meeting with you, and then all hell broke—Pardon my language, Your Eminence. It is all so painful.”

  “I do not blame you, my child.”

  “I’m also sorry I had to stun those two guards, but I needed to protect you.”

  His face filled with sadness. “I abhor violence.”

  “Of course you do,” she said, “but sometimes it is necessary.”

  “There may be historical examples to support your view,” he admitted, “but I think we should take every possible step to avoid harming anyone.”

  With a scowl, Deborah picked up one of the assault rifles, and slid it across the hardwood floor, to him.

  He stared at it blankly. “As a man of peace, I could never accept that.”

  “You could become a man of pieces if you don’t defend yourself.”

  Shaking his head stubbornly, he said, “You see only my corporal form, not my eternal soul. I shall never touch a gun, or any other weapon. God will protect me.”

  With a rueful smile, Deborah said, “I didn’t expect to see you running into the plaza with an assault rifle.” She sighed. “OK, I’ll do the fighting for both of us.”

  * * *

  Reaching the third floor of the Vatican Palace, Lori ran for the southwest corner, knowing which way to go without looking at a compass. Unholstering her automatic pistol, she released the safety and rested her forefinger on the trigger guard. There were women in the corridor, running this way and that, emerging from doorways, disappearing into them. Some were barefoot, in their night clothes. As if playing a video game or undergoing a test in a police academy, Lori focused on each as they popped into view, and made an instantaneous decision as to whether or not they were a danger.

  No enemy combatants appeared to be among them, and no visible weapons. As she rushed forward, the women got out of her way, and out of the way of the uniformed NATO soldiers who ran just behind her, their helmet lights still glowing.

  Abruptly, everything changed. Lori felt herself freeze up, for only the briefest of moments, but it was almost too long. As she and her comrades rounded a turn, the way was blocked by soldiers of the Holy She, in pale gold uniforms.

  “Get down!” Zack shouted. He pushed Lori to the floor and knelt in front of her, firing his automatic rifle, just as the enemy opened
a barrage.

  Then, like a warrior hurling himself into battle, Alex ran ahead of the others, firing his gun. Lori cried out to him, but her words were drowned out in the din of combat. To her horror, her father took a bullet, and fell back over her, grabbing his shoulder. But he didn’t let go of his rifle, and climbed in front of Lori again, firing non-stop. With her own pistol Lori fired past him herself, and thought she knocked one of the female soldiers down. Then her gun jammed, and she couldn’t get it to work. She re-holstered it.

  With NATO soldiers right behind him, Alex waded into the midst of the female fighters, firing right and left, hitting them and knocking them down. He seemed invulnerable, refused to fall and didn’t appear to take a hit. Despite his own injury, Zack jumped to his feet and fought beside Alex. The NATO forces were driving their opponents back.

  “Go ahead!” Alex shouted to Lori. “Get Martha!”

  Seeing an opening, Lori ran past the men, leaping over fallen bodies and scattered weapons. At the end of the corridor, she saw a door that looked as if it belonged on a church, covered with raised gold religious carvings. She ran straight to it, through a wash of saffron light, and tried the handle, but it would not open.

  The light changed color, began to flash pink. The identity scanner had rejected her.

  Her eyes focused on a control panel mounted on the wall, and she visualized the override code, numbers and letters dancing in front of her eyes. Lori tapped the proper keys, and the thick door opened. She pushed it shut behind her. Just before it closed, she heard Alex shout to her that he would guard the door.

  * * *