by Linda Stasi
And what if the choice comes down to every child on Earth or mine?
What if?
I got up and opened the door. “Pantera!”
“Yes?” he said, knowing I was about to demand something big. Answers.
“I don’t know what your involvement is in this thing—really—but if you have anything to do with Terry’s kidnapping? I don’t care if you are the biggest secret agent in the universe, I will—”
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me gently. “Stop it! Terry is my son, too, whether you admit to it or not. I would never, never harm him!” Then gently, “Or you.”
“No, but maybe you’d try to steal him so that you could train him up like your father trained you up. Bring him into this black ops world of yours with the secret to resurrection. An army of men who would never die!” I was screaming and out of breath. He reached for me.
“Don’t touch me! Just don’t touch me!”
“I would give up my life gladly for him,” he said. “And you know I would for you.”
“Yes, and with Jesus’ secret to resurrection, you’d never have to. But oh right, I remember how you gladly died for me already. Oops. But here you are!”
“Stop! We don’t have the energy to waste fighting with each other.”
“OK, since you won’t come clean with me…”
“How do I prove I’m not lying?” he said, sounding defeated, which I knew he wasn’t.
“OK, you can tell me what I believe you already know.”
“And what do you believe I already know?”
“Whether it’s true that these pages contain the most dangerous secret in the world.”
“I made a solemn vow when … it’s not something…”
“Yes. It. Is. Something. Tell me what it is!”
He sat on the bed and put his clasped hands between his knees, his head down.
I hovered over him. “Tell me, goddammit! Tell me! My son’s life is at stake.”
He sighed. “Once you know this you cannot unknow it. Do you understand this?”
“Just tell me!”
“The pages, as Acevedo confirmed, do contain the secret to resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection, and the code to resurrect any other person who would put these together with another formula. We always suspected that…”
I turned to face him, my mouth open. “You mean…?”
“Yes. Without this book, the Voynich Manuscript, the pages are useless. Just as without Judas there could be no Jesus story. No betrayal, no so-called resurrection, no grand and glorious story upon which the richest religion in the world could be built.”
“Why would Judas take on that role—to be the most hated man in history?”
“He was fated to it. Look at the other Gospels—the accepted Gospels—Judas was the only apostle taught the esoteric knowledge by his master. The rest were just retellings of what they supposedly saw and heard as a group. Judas was given the secrets of life and resurrection. Therefore he had to be part of the grand scheme because he was the most trusted of them all. He was behind the resurrection and those pages contain most of the secret.”
I sat there, open-mouthed. “What? Are you saying it was all a scam—Jesus’ death and resurrection?”
“No, I’m saying that he knew the secret and gave it to Judas, so that he could complete the process after Jesus died!”
“But why Judas?”
“Like I said, I believe he was Jesus’ most beloved, trusted disciple outside of Mary Magdalene. But Mary was of this Earth. Jesus was not, and perhaps neither was Judas.”
“Why do you say that, Pantera? I thought you were a great believer!”
“I am. But remember, it’s clear in what was saved of the Gospel of Judas when Judas said, ‘the realm of Barbelo.’”
“Is that an acronym for heaven? Or is he talking about another galaxy?”
He didn’t answer, of course. So I said, “Is this proof that Jesus is not the son of God as the Church would have us believe, but a being from another realm, whatever the hell that means?”
“Yes.”
“And the Immaculate Conception?”
“An angel came down to a young girl and impregnated her? An angel? They had no word for what came to Mary back in those days,” he said. “Beings that flew perhaps in a craft of some sort, or could levitate, could pass through dimensions of time and space? A being, who left Mary’s child with the knowledge imprinted on his brain to resurrect. He could not be left here to die.”
“Ah,” I said. “We could be hung out to dry for trying to push that one.”
“You bet. But the truth is still out there…” he said.
I jumped in. “Jesus Himself brought the dead back to life—we know He did. So you’re saying He gave Judas the knowledge, too? So that he could bring Jesus back after the crucifixion?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“My God,” I said, my mind thinking back. “Raylene was raised as a young girl in the Caribbean, and she said her grandmother was a voodoo priestess of some kind. She was deported from Haiti because of something she did. Like what? Failing to raise the dead?”
“The voodoo rites are totally different. They most probably stun the victims and then when they seem as though they’re dead, they miraculously bring them back to life. Or so it seems. That’s why they’re zombies—their brains have been so damaged by whatever they gave the victims in the first place that they seem to be walking dead people.”
“The wax figure in the Judsons’ wall was probably supposed to represent her dead son. They were after the secret to resurrection!”
“That’s what too many people are after and that’s the reason no one should ever have it. Can you imagine the ability to resurrect the dead in the hands of ISIS or Kim Jong-un—the ability to raise an army that could never die—as you had suggested?”
“And you’ve known about these pages for—how long?”
“I’ve known about them since they went missing on the black market. But we—”
I cut him off: “We?”
“Headquarters, the organization I’m associated with.”
I shot him a look. “And they want the pages, I assume? That’s who you wanted to sell them to?”
“Yes. They will destroy them, or perhaps consecrate them. Whichever they would see best to do with them.”
“And—what?—they get to decide?”
“They get to decide many things.”
“Like?”
“Like many things you think happen naturally.”
I thought about what I was doing to Roy. “This was all supposed to be for Roy. Now he’ll rot in jail because of me. But it’s not a choice.”
“No. It’s not a choice,” he repeated.
“You know, Raylene, the wife. She and her husband, Dane, claimed to have been manufacturers of organic medicines. Probably voodoo and black-magic potions. Who knows? But I’ll bet when the boy died, she tried to raise him from the dead with her grandmother’s help or maybe her grandmother’s spells or whatever, and failed. Maybe she never forgave herself. Dedicated herself to finding the cure—for death.”
“That sounds right.”
“I don’t even think Dane was the boy’s father, so I don’t know what skin he has in this game.”
“Alessandra,” Pantera said, looking away. “Don’t you get it? Whoever has all the marbles wins. All the power and money in the world. The owner becomes the new Jesus—for good or evil. That person would have the power over life and death. Can you imagine? They could keep dictators alive forever. Every lunatic with their fingers on the bomb; every cult leader, terrorist, you name it—whoever was in their fold. But they’d present themselves as spiritual beings to the public—never admit that there were still pages that could be stolen by others. They’d always be safe—because they’d always be alive. And Terry will be safe as long as we can hand them what they want.”
“The choice, then, is between my son and all the children
on Earth.” There—I’d said it out loud. He just looked down. “And then they’d come for us anyway.”
“Yes.”
I felt like J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
“Yusef, if I do this, I am not just becoming Death, the destroyer of worlds. I become the modern-day Judas.”
Then I heaved up everything in my stomach.
33
I scraped the guano off my dirty clothes as best as I could and strapped myself in for landing. The second we were on the ground, I immediately turned my cell phone back on to see if my parents or Detective Barracato had called. They had. Several messages in fact—all from earlier today. Well, technically, yesterday—it was after two A.M. All said the same thing: following up all leads, call the minute you land, blah, blah.
“They haven’t found him!” I cried. Pantera didn’t look surprised.
As we were deplaning I got a text:
You have returned from Israel. Were you successful in obtaining the necessary items?
I showed Pantera the text as we walk-ran toward customs and immigration.
“The kidnappers tracked you,” he said, nearly at a full gallop, “but they don’t know you are with someone. They don’t know you are with me.”
“Is that good—or not?”
“I think so,” he said in his usual “this could mean this and that could mean that” undercover-speak.
“Stop the cloak-and-dagger. Should we let them know I’m not alone in this or not? I don’t even know if it’s good that I’m with you…” Was Pantera in it for himself and his mysterious group, or was he in it for his son and me?
“If you can text them back,” he said, “say ‘Leaving airport, will text from cab.’”
This time the text went through. They had opened the lines of communication.
We bypassed the snaking taxi line and jumped into a black car. The driver had been holding a sign saying MR. & MRS. LAPOINTE.
“Don’t ask,” Pantera said. I did. “I have no idea who Mr. and Mrs. LaPointe are,” he whispered, settling into the backseat.
“Oh geez…”
He took his phone out, punched something in, and told the driver, “Ninety-Sixth Street and Second Avenue.”
“What the hell? Ninety-Sixth?”
“The text was generated from Ninety-Sixth and Second Avenue.”
A silence descended between us as we sped along, finally entering the Midtown Tunnel—where we came to a complete standstill.
The driver turned around, “Sorry, Mr. LaPointe, tunnel maintenance.”
Pantera then texted back the kidnappers on my phone:
Show me proof that my baby is alive and well, and I will hand over the pages.
He hit “send” but the phone beeped. The signal had been lost. So we waited and waited. After twenty or so minutes, we finally exited at Thirty-Seventh Street, and the text was sent.
Within seconds, as we moved up Third Avenue, a text came back:
Display the pages & see the child.
He texted back:
I can show you the tube and the keys. I haven’t opened the tube.
Not good enough.
I was frightened that they’d know the cops were involved after being told, warned, and threatened not to involve them.
I had once trusted Pantera, more than I trusted the authorities. I was a rogue myself—never played by the rules. Until recently.
And look what had happened. When I had played it strictly by the rules—being a good mommy, never giving Terry anything that wasn’t organic, and not even leaving him before this with anyone who wasn’t family or his beloved sitter, Anna—well, technically, Donald wasn’t family any longer, but he had been more of a father to Terry than Pantera ever was, and would have, like Pantera claimed, killed for Terry.
I’m a reporter; my instincts about people are usually spot-on, but yes, the Judsons had fooled me. Just because they looked my parents’ age didn’t mean they were my parents. Trust no one.
Pantera broke my train of thought—he was always good at that. “How old were you when you and Roy became friends in Hicksville? Were you there when the old man went from mild-mannered bank manager to a nightmare father and husband?”
“What?”
“I’m trying to track this thing in my mind.”
I grabbed his jacket lapels and tugged like a madwoman. “How did you even know that I knew Roy as a kid, let alone that there was any connection to his father? That we grew up in Hicksville, Long Island?”
“You told me once. Where you grew up.” He’d answered too quickly.
“When? When first we met so romantically last year,” I answered, sarcasm dripping, “did I tell you that tidbit when we were running from the French police? Or was it when Interpol was chasing us? Between shooting those men atop Montségur at the castle and killing Maureen? When did I stop to tell you the story of my frigging life, Pantera—when?”
I knew for sure I had never discussed my growing-up years with him. He had known about Roy when we first discussed it in Israel, yes, but not where I’d grown up. Had he slipped?
Pantera tried to mollify me, saying, “You told me that night in, well, in Carcassonne.”
Yes, I’d definitely had too much vin de pays that night, that’s a fact, and we had ended up in bed, which is also a fact, but still …
He interrupted my train of thought with, “It’s my business to find things out before I go off blind into a situation. You forgot.”
“I didn’t forget what you do for a living, because I don’t actually know what you do for a living. Spy? Professional assassin? International man of mystery? Asshole?”
“All of the above,” he said.
“Jesus.” I wasn’t convinced that I hadn’t caught him in a lie, but right at this moment, he was the only shot I had of getting Terry back. I’d deal with the consequences later, kill him if I had to, to get my son home.
Maybe he set up the Judsons for some bizarre scheme of his own. What? Plus he already had the pages in hand. Who in hell could I trust? Right. No one.
Then in—what?—an attempt to mollify me, he added, “The truth? We were provided everything about you the minute Demiel chose you from the crowd.”
“Shut up, please.”
The driver’s phone rang and I could hear a furious voice coming through. Ugh. The dispatcher. The poor driver turned around, frantic. “Aren’t you Mr. and Mrs. LaPointe?”
Pantera handed him two hundred dollars over the seat. “Yes, we are,” he said, and the driver went back to the phone and shut the plastic safety panel between us.
Pantera wasted not a second more—we had a signal again—and sent off the two high-res photos. An immediate text came back.
We need to see the pages.
I grabbed the phone and texted back,
I need to see my boy.
Nothing. As we pulled up to Ninety-Sixth Street and got out of the car, I mumbled a brief “Sorry, but it was life or death” apology to the driver, and re-texted the kidnappers again.
I need to see live feed of my baby.
A patrol car slowed down to have a look at us, and parked across the street. Maybe it was because there was so little action on the block at this time of day and the Second Avenue Subway tunnel was still under construction and therefore vulnerable to terrorists or something, or maybe Detective Barracota had a tail on me.
“Not good,” I said.
“Not good,” Pantera repeated back to me. He took my arm and walked over to the Merrion Square sports bar, which was still open, and sat down at the bar where we could still see the patrol car.
He ordered us a couple of beers and waited. A half hour later, my phone rang, breaking the quiet of the bar at this hour. I answered it and a live feed popped up. It was a baby all right, but he/she was facing away from the camera and screaming.
The screaming baby was placed in an old-fashioned black pram with black drapery
over it in what looked like a wet, dark, and terrible tunnel. “Oh my God!” I cried out, my hands to my mouth, causing the bartender to come rushing over.
“Everything all right, lady?”
Pantera waved him away, laughing. “Real Madrid is down,” he said, which the bartender inexplicably accepted as a normal reaction to a soccer loss.
“Where is he?” I said into the phone. “Where is he?”
The answer came back—a man’s voice this time. Or so I thought it could be. Dane? They were using an electronic voice modulator this time. He/It said, in that horrible, horror-movie voice, “The boy is right underneath you. In the tunnel.” Then came a horrible screech of metal. The kind of screech the subway makes as it’s roaring into the station, metal against metal.
34
The screeching of metal abruptly stopped, but in the immediate quiet that followed, so did the screeching of the baby.
“Let me see my baby!” I cried. Pantera looked at the bartender, and I looked at Pantera, then back at the bartender. Shit. I thought a look of recognition came over the barkeep’s face. Had I been made? I hadn’t even thought that the story of the baby’s kidnapping might have made it to the news. How? That meant Terry might already be …
Pantera went over to deal with the bartender. Would the man behind the bar on this slow night be able to keep quiet—knowing what was at stake? Would he call the tabloids for cash—or the cops, even? Maybe surreptitiously start taking his own video, which would go viral in seconds, making him the most famous bartender in the world and destroying any chance we had of getting Terry back?
In the meantime, the person on the other end wouldn’t let me see Terry—or whichever baby was in that carriage—and turned the camera instead to what looked like a man in a hoodie—it must have been the person from whom the voice had come. The face was hidden in the darkness of the tunnel’s dim light.
“We’ll be waiting,” Hoodie said as the filthy water dripped all around and dangerously close to the pram. “The pages must be intact, and they must be authentic. If the police show up or are aware of this in any way, the boy dies. If you try to play fast and loose, the boy dies. If you attempt to do anything other than what you are instructed to do, we tip over the carriage,” he said, and someone else’s hand reached out to grab the handle. The hand on the pram—an older woman’s hand—began to rock it, first gently, then harder and harder. Raylene!