Fifty
The cave opening was narrow and rough, but Marina didn’t hesitate. She slipped through the slender aperture and waited to turn on any illumination. She didn’t want to upset the bees.
Eli was right behind her—she could have let him go first, since he was straining at the bit to see his “lovelies.” But she was the caver, and she was Gaia’s daughter. And he had gestured for her to precede him.
She led the way into the depths of the mountain.
The gentle buzz from the bees surrounded her, and as she eased in further, Marina felt the warmth and comfort of Gaia’s embrace. Here, deep in the mountainside, well into Her womb, there was something like magic. It smelled damp and cool, yet not too cold—surprisingly.
Eli’s breathing was quiet, but she could hear the excitement in it and smiled to herself. For him, this was like the first time she’d seen the Lost Library of Tsar Ivan. They were wonders that were unknown and kept secret from not only the world at large, but also scholars who would study and appreciate them.
A soft light came on—from his mobile phone—but he kept it trained onto the ground rather than blasting it over the bees. The moment reminded her of their experience with the copper beetles in the Amazon—how any sort of light sent them into a frenzy.
Obviously, the Apis patricia—as he’d been calling it—was used to the light. And indeed, rather than shunning it, these rosy-gold insects flocked to it in gentle clouds, as if they were curious about this new development.
She heard the quiet, choking gasp of delight from her companion as he stood unmoving for a moment, enjoying the swarm of the harmless and fragile creatures.
The beam of illumination revealed that the cave had opened from a two-foot-wide passage into one about five feet wide and seven feet tall. The rough, rocky walls were damp, with shiny rivulets trickling to the uneven floor. Following Eli’s lead, Marina turned on the light from her own phone and carefully scanned the area.
With a jolt of excitement, she saw that there were markings—carvings—on one of the walls. Sanskrit for certain, and—whoa—was that Aramaic? Shock rippled through her. Aramaic in a Himalayan cave? That would be…unbelievable. Her chest felt tight as she stared at the letters…and read them.
“There it is,” Eli said in a hushed voice that nonetheless was filled with excitement. “There it is.”
Marina knew he was speaking of the hive, but when she looked where he’d aimed the light, it didn’t look anything like what she’d imagined.
A small clay urn sat on the cave floor, nestled against the wall. It looked similar to the pot that had been in Jill Fetzer’s box—same color and type of mud. This urn was perhaps three feet tall and less than a foot wide.
And there were bees, flying into and out of it and around it.
And above and around the small urn, the hive clung to the wall. It was as if the hive had grown from its original moorings—the urn, or had the hive merely been built around it?—and expanded over the years.
Centuries.
Millennia.
Marina was aware, fully aware, of how shocking and radical this discovery was. It was mind-blowing on so many fronts.
She swiftly, mentally, corrected herself. It wasn’t a discovery. It was a secret. Something that had been kept so for all this time. Gulam and his people knew about it, and had known about it, protected it—probably since the beginning.
Since this urn was brought here by Jesus of Nazareth. Saint Issa—whose name was etched in Sanskrit on the wall, just as it had been on the small clay pot, and could very well also be on the urn.
“It was a traveling beehive,” Eli said, his voice still low with reverence. “I’m sure of it—they—he—would have carried it on his back and traveled around. He probably healed people…visited them and healed them, taking the bees with him… Dear God… I could never have imagined something like this…”
Nor could Marina.
“They’re so social,” he said, crouching in front of the hive. His light didn’t bother the bees. “I need to see the queen… I have to—”
There was a shift in the air, the softest of sounds behind them—maybe not even a sound. Just a presence. Marina spun as Eli tumbled onto his butt, his phone clattering to the ground.
The man standing there was familiar to both of them. Tall, muscular, dark of hair, olive of skin, wearing black from head to toe. The beam of her light landed on his wrist, revealing the tattoo with the letters IEMS.
The priest.
Fifty-One
“How did you find us?” Marina said, uttering the first words that came to mind. There were many more questions, but that one came out first.
The priest glanced at Eli. “He wears those sandals everywhere, doesn’t he? Even mountain climbing. Still,” he said, looking back at Marina, “I didn’t need a tracker to come here.”
“You know—knew—about this place,” she said as Eli pulled himself to his feet.
“Of course.” He shined the light in the space, slowing its movement over the urn hive and then settling on the Aramaic on the wall. “This is the closest one can come to Him, to being where He once was. To feeling it…” The priest’s voice was quiet, hardly above a whisper.
Eli nodded next to her; she felt the same reverence and awe emanating from both of these men.
“And it’s a secret,” she replied.
“As it must remain,” said the priest. “Surely you understand that.”
“But why?” Eli burst out—still keeping his voice low. “It’s a discovery that should be shared instead of kept to itself. It’s—it’s amazing. It’s earth-shattering. It’s—it’s beyond anything I could ever have imagined—the connection of Jesus to the Buddhists, to Asia, the Silk Road—and the bee. She’s unique and she should be studied—”
“To what end?” The priest’s voice was cold and hard, and Marina felt a quiver of nerves. He hadn’t killed them back in Ann Arbor, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t now.
After all, someone had killed Patty Denke to keep this secret. And Jill Fetzer, and Tina Janeski…and who knew who else?
And she understood why.
Eli didn’t respond. Marina felt the tension in his body and wasn’t certain whether it was from anger or simply strong emotion.
“It cannot happen,” replied the priest. “This can never be made known for many reasons I’m certain you understand. The least of which is—what would happen to this most holy and sacred of places? People would come here, droves of them, pilgrims, and then tourists, and then the big corporations—and the governments would get involved and they would fight over this land. So much of this area is already in dispute between the Chinese and the Tibetans, the Indians and the Pakistanis. We cannot draw attention to it. All of that—and it wouldn’t be long before the place was destroyed. The habitat of these precious creatures would be dismantled. Surely you understand that, Dr. Sanchez.” He turned his attention to Marina. “As I know you do, Dr. Aleksandrov.”
She nodded. Everything he said was true. She understood it. She knew it. She agreed with it…and yet the scholar in her fought against it.
But her heart, her head, her soul understood.
“Your own grandfather sent you here, did he not?” the priest went on. “Because he wanted you to see the connection—to understand it—between that which is sacred, that which is holy…how it is all connected, all the same, all from the One.”
Marina’s heart was thudding so fast and so hard that she was certain the noise was echoing off the sides of the cave. The sound filled her ears like a drumbeat…a shamanic drumbeat.
“But the honey,” Eli said desperately. “It’s—”
“Miraculous,” supplied the priest. “Yes. Of course it is. Everything here is miraculous. And that is why it cannot be revealed. Think what would happen, Dr. Sanchez. You know the faults of man. You know the greed of humans. You know what would happen. You know.”
Silence fell among the three of them. The only nois
e was the gentle, incessant buzzing from the bees as they went about their business.
“Are you going to kill us?” Eli asked as he idly watched one of the bees trotting along his hand. “To keep the secret?”
“Do I need to?” replied the priest. “I truly despise confessing mortal sins.”
Marina nearly laughed at the unexpected wit, and she saw the flicker of a reactive smile from the priest.
“The penance would be brutal,” Eli replied.
The priest didn’t respond, leaving Marina to wonder whether he knew about such penance from firsthand experience.
As the silence stretched, Marina caught a movement from the corner of her eye. She looked over toward the hive.
Gulam was there. He hadn’t come from the entrance of the cave. He stood silently, unmoving. There was a faint glow around him…or maybe she was imagining it.
Marina glanced at the priest and found him watching the old man—the shaman.
Her heart pounded harder inside, thudding strongly, reminding her again of the beat of a drum. She touched the nearest wall of the cave and felt Gaia’s presence as the drumbeat of her heart grew ever stronger and more powerful.
When Eli collapsed without warning, slumping to the ground, she gave a cry…but found she couldn’t move to see to her companion. She looked at the priest, but he watched the shaman. The old man’s eyes were wide and unseeing. His toothpick arms had moved slightly away from his body and his fingers were splayed, outstretched, in front of him.
The walls of the cave closed in around her—cold, hard, strong…alive. The buzz of the bees filled her ears, the drumbeat pounded inside her, and the mountain embraced her.
And she slipped away.
Fifty-Two
When Marina opened her eyes, she was sitting on the same boulder on the same ledge where she’d met Gulam for the first time, and where she’d returned from her journey to seeing Lev and the other holy ones.
Eli was lying on the ground next to her, looking decidedly uncomfortable with the way he’d landed—or whatever the term was for how they’d traveled back to this location.
Marina knew they hadn’t been on a shamanic journey to the hive. She knew they’d really walked there themselves, really found the place, really seen the markings on the wall, read the Sanskrit and Aramaic that were truly real…spoken with the priest.
But somehow, they’d returned here—to where she considered the starting point of her connection with Gulam.
It didn’t matter how they got here; the message was clear.
Marina not only understood it, but accepted it as truth. The bee and the hive would continue to be a well-kept, sacred secret.
Whether Eli would come to the same conclusion remained to be seen, but Marina suspected that even if he didn’t or couldn’t acknowledge it, he wouldn’t be able to find his way there again.
Not without Marina.
At that moment, Eli groaned and his eyes fluttered open. He pulled himself to a sitting position on the ground, wincing as his palm settled on a sharp rock.
“What the hell was that?” he muttered.
“That, I believe, was your first experience with shamanism,” Marina replied with a smile.
His face fell. “Do you mean that was a journey? It wasn’t real?”
She wasn’t going to lie to him—it had been real—although allowing him to believe otherwise would be the simplest way to ensure he didn’t divulge the secret. But Marina had far more respect and affection for Eli than that.
“It was real,” she replied.
He began to push to his feet and then stilled. Gingerly he settled back onto the ground while staring at the top of his hand.
She saw it then too: the small, rosy-gold bee, picking its way over the ridge of tendon on the back of his hand.
Eli drew in a low breath and carefully shifted to a comfortable position, staring down at the bee. “She’s so beautiful,” he murmured, moving a finger next to the roving insect so she’d crawl onto it. “So unique. Sacred.”
He watched the Apis patricia for a long while, and then looked up at Marina. There was sadness in his eyes. “She has to be protected.”
Marina nodded. There was a lump in her throat and she swallowed it back. There was something about this place that heightened every one of her emotions and awareness. And now she understood its power and sacredness.
It was the Seventh Chakra of Gaia.
Epilogue
Vatican City
Theodore Villiani jolted in his chair as the door to his office opened unexpectedly.
He looked over, furious, prepared to berate whoever had the gall to invade his privacy so appallingly…but the words died in his throat. His entire body went numb, then flushed hot, then turned cold.
Very, very cold.
The man who’d stepped through the door closed it behind him, and Villiani heard the distinct snick of the lock being turned. The intruder, who was dressed all in black except for the neat white tab of his collar, strode silently across the plush rug to stand in front of Villiani’s desk.
“Who are you?” Villiani demanded, although he had a horrible suspicion that he already knew the identity of the interloper. He’d never met him, but he knew of him. Who here in the upper echelons of the Holy See, privy to all the secrets of the Vatican, did not? “Wh-what are you doing here?”
“I come with a message, Your Eminence,” said the priest. His tone was properly deferent, his demeanor calm. But Villiani’s bowels were churning, and he could hardly think over the roaring in his ears. The look in this man’s eyes…
Dear God, Heavenly Father, please…please spare me…
Nonetheless, Villiani must at least attempt to remain in control. Surely the man wouldn’t kill him in his own office. “H-how did you get past…?”
The man gave him a patronizing smile. “I have a wide range of resources and talents, Your Eminence, all made available to me by His Holiness. As you surely are aware. Which is why I was startled—to be clear, startled in an unpleasant way—to learn that someone had contacted Ludo Rastinoff about a particular matter involving a bee.”
A trickle of icy sweat ran down Villiani’s spine, and from his armpits on both sides. He’d hoped no one would find out—he’d prayed and fasted and begged…but God had not listened.
And now Villiani’s mistake was about to catch up with him.
“I-I trust the matter has been taken care of,” replied Villiani in a voice that squeaked only a little.
“It has,” replied the priest. “But not without some interference and some unnecessary unpleasantries.” He placed both hands on the desk and leaned over it toward Villiani.
Terrified, Villiani tried to keep breathing and to keep his bowels from releasing at the same time. He bounced his eyes around wildly, fearful of meeting those of the man in front of him, and finally his attention landed on the priest’s wrist. He saw the markings there, the large dots representing the decade of a rosary circling the dark wrist, and the band of letters—IENS—that connected them.
There was no question of the man’s identity. Not any longer.
Dear God, it was him.
It was Leo Colón.
Villiani struggled to swallow. He truly thought he was about to faint. His shirt was soaked. He knew the stories about this man. What he was capable of.
“Three people died,” Colón went on evenly, starkly. “Unnecessarily. Because of that clumsy, inelegant dolt. You’ll confess those lost lives as sins, Your Eminence.”
“Yes,” Villiani whispered, his throat squeaking as he swallowed.
“You’ll do penance,” Colón continued. “And you will never contact Ludo Rastinoff or his like again. For any reason.”
Villiani could only nod.
Did this mean he might live after all?
Colón eased back. A small smile played on his handsome face, reminding Villiani of a cat toying with a trapped mouse. “Because if you do, I will know.” That was a definite promise. A
cold one.
Villiani nodded again, swallowing hard.
Colón pulled a folded purple stole from his pocket, kissed it most reverently, and draped it over his shoulders. He sat in the chair that faced the desk and turned those dark, intense, all-knowing eyes to Villiani.
With shaking hands and trembling knees, Villiani rose from his desk and came around toward him. He knelt at the priest’s feet.
With a quavering voice, he began, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”
A Note from the Author
Thank you so much for reading the latest Marina Alexander adventure. It took me far longer than I ever anticipated to pull this story together, but I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it—at least, once I got near the end and could see how everything fit together.
If you enjoyed the book, I would greatly appreciate it if you would spread the word about the book. Word of mouth is the first and best way to ensure and promote the success of a series, and the more readers of the series, the more books that will be written. I also appreciate reviews of any length posted on Amazon, Goodreads, or anywhere else.
I always like to take a few moments at the end of the Marina books to let you know which parts are true and which parts are, shall we say, scientifically possible but not necessarily probable. (That’s the phrase I use when talking to my “experts” when doing research on these books, and the “what ifs” that I posit.)
The first thing you should know is that Nicolas Notovitch absolutely did exist, he lived in Paris, had traveled to Tibet, and he did write the book called The Secret Life of Jesus Christ (which really was translated into English by Alexina Donovan for Rand McNally in Chicago). The book is still available (I’ve read it), and although the titillating idea that Jesus of Nazareth lived in India has been debunked by many people over the years…I’m not necessarily convinced it’s not true.
I have close friends who’ve studied with the scholar, philosopher, and Jain leader Chitrabanhu, who claimed that it’s quite well-known in India that St. Issa was Jesus of Nazareth, and that he did live there both during the “lost years”—between the age of twelve and thirty—and possibly even after his death by crucifixion. I also believe what Eli said when confronted with the idea: that the Catholic Church and other Christian leaders would be very determined to keep such information under wraps, for any number of reasons.
Sanskrit Cipher: A Marina Alexander Adventure Page 32