The Artifact (63 page)

“Speaking of testosterone, I’ve always thought the penman of the Genesis fable got it backwards, blaming Eve for seducing Adam.”

“Men have perceived women as second-class citizens, if not worthless, from the beginning of time. It would have been unacceptable to saddle humanity with an Original Sin committed by a man. And who do you think conceived Genesis?”

“If the Garden of Eden had any credibility at all, it would have been Adam’s lust that

seduced, if not raped Eve, whether she had a headache or not.”

“Invalidating the theory of Creationism, that held sway until Darwin proposed the

equally fantastic hypothesis that we evolved from tadpoles.”

“Cassandra, give me credit. I haven’t slipped into atheism as the result of a few denied prayers. I’ve witnessed tragedy and evil firsthand for twenty years. Nothing could change my mind in the next few months about the absence of a benevolent God.”

“I respect your intellectual position.”

“How can anyone, man, woman or deity criticize me for concluding that a virgin birth or resurrection are patently incredible?”

The blizzard was tapering off to lazy flakes falling on hard-packed highways, bare tree limbs and conifers already bearing inches of wet snow. Paula and Jerry were having breakfast in a truck stop off Route 91 in Leominster. Jerry asked, “Are you sure they’ll go live from the same location they’ve been broadcasting from?”

Paula made a fist over her half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs, flicking a finger out at each point. “First, they’ll want to be flexible until the very last minute, to address contradictory panel comments or unanticipated external problems. So they won’t pre-record and downlink via satellite. Second, you can bet your badge they’ll want to field questions from the press, and doing that by telephone or remote video will not seem open or forthright. Third, the only way they can hope to elude arrest and jail time is to plead their case to the masses.”

“How the hell are they going to win public sympathy for upsetting the biggest religious apple cart in history?”

“Callaghan is not stupid, Jer. He’s been ten steps ahead of us, the Iraqis, the mob, the press, probably a dozen more sleazy treasure hunters we don’t even know about.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Paula looked around from their secluded booth at the nearly empty diner as she pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed a number.

“Good morning, Kev,” Paula replied sweetly, pressing the speakerphone button while Harrington responded. “I’m just dandy, how are you?”

“When I catch up with your wrinkled ass,” Kevin’s voice intoned, “you’ll be fending off dykes in Leavenworth for the next twenty years!”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Kev. They’re going on the air in eleven hours. Can you take them before then?”

“That’s privileged. And you’re out of the loop, Girl.”

Paula expelled a weary sigh into the phone. “Well, I know a couple of places they probably are. If you don’t want to hear them, fine with me.”

Jerry slid out of the booth and went to the cashier to pay for their breakfast. When he returned to their table her phone was ringing.

“FAX that to me in your handwriting and signature.” She reached out to take the piece of paper from Jerry and read off the diner FAX number. “I’ll call you back as soon as I get it.”

Clyde Callaghan stood gazing out the bay window of the Rowe lodge at the large white flakes almost obliterating his view of the stand of birches surrounding the hewn-log building. His associates were seated around the living room perusing his broad back in silence.

Although demonstrations by Christians and non-Christians continued, they began to turn from violent to agitated the day following the last segment of Shimon’s treatise. The finality of the ancient document seemed to have removed some of the anger from the autobiography for many thoughtful Christians, replacing it with awe and trepidation at its implications. Even lax Christians were humbled at the potential ramifications of Shimon’s eyewitness account of his brother’s first century existence, and followed their devout brethren into churches around the globe to pray for guidance. Local police and militias had begun to quell demonstrations by Christians, riotous looters, felons and arsonists. Members of other religions remained smug and ebullient at the Christian dilemma, and the entire world seemed to be waiting for some definitive conclusion to the revelations made in the writings of Shimon.

“I have prayed for this respite,” Cassandra said. “The thought of continuing riots and deaths because we released the document saddened me greatly.”

Callaghan spoke without turning. “We couldn’t keep it from them in good conscience.”

Andrea’s wheelchair stood in the warmth from the fireplace. “IT BELONGS TO THE ENTIRE POPULATION,” her mechanized whisper told them. “DESTROYING OR HIDING IT, LETTING CHRISTIAN LEADERS CENSURE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CRIMINAL.”

“Well, it’s done,” Geoff observed. “Now we have other concerns.”

“One of which is how to wrap this up,” Pulaski said, “so we don’t get lined up and shot for treason.”

Alvarez lifted his hand like a schoolboy requesting permission to speak. “They know we’d accuse them of complicity if they tried us in court.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Conté said.

“We go on camera telling our story,” Gerlach told them, “we’re gonna sound like wimps making excuses.”

“We don’t have a story,” Crandall grunted, “without admitting the whole scam was authorized and by who. Names, titles, and dates.”

CAN. MY SWAN SONG.”

“The satellite log showed that somebody had traced the transmission location of our final uplink,” Sammy said. “They can shut us down any time they want.”

Geoff stood, stepped to the center of the room, and explained the contingency plan he and Callaghan had worked out the previous night.

Sammy wheeled Andrea out of the large central common area to her room at the rear of the lodge. He lifted her onto the hospital bed, propped the pillows behind her head and pulled the spread over her inert body up to her shoulders.

They lay quietly side by side, and Andrea’s eyes closed in a light sleep. Sammy remained immobile on the bed, his mind churning, his moist eyes glued on the flocked plaster ceiling. The importance of the Shimon autobiography had paled for him compared to the rapid progression of Andrea’s terminal illness. He had absorbed the doctrine of the Catholic religion without question in the New Jersey household of his first-generation, hard-working Polish parents. Until his misdirected sojourn in the seminary, after which he stopped going to Mass and hadn’t thought much about God at all since. Was the resurrection of Jesus a hoax that had been perpetrated on the so-called faithful for two thousand years? Is the Supreme Being an uncaring Deity as Shimon contends? Or nonexistent, as Andy believes, even near death.

Sammy rose carefully from the bed and walked to the window. The snow was still falling in earnest beneath plots of mown grass heaped with an accumulation of at least two feet. He hadn’t expected anything like this when they began searching for the artifact almost a year ago. He couldn’t help feeling some responsibility for foisting the contentious document onto the public; but what could he do? He couldn’t stop them. Rat them out to the Feds? Or did the world need to grapple with this, bring the issue of God into the forefront of our modern-day concerns, maybe even become a better place for having done so.

He turned away from the falling snow to contemplate the inert woman on the bed. Previously active and full of energy, lying there shrunken, helpless, desiccated by a horrible disease. Why? Why her? Why Brian, an innocent child, or any premature death for that matter? Is that supposed to be part of God’s great plan? Or is Shimon’s contention valid: that The Almighty has lost interest in mankind and has left us to our own machinations and random fate?

They were seated side by side in the Jeep with the motor running and heater on in the parking lot of the Leominster truck stop, for nothing better to do, field-stripping their Glock automatics, waiting for the plows to get a head start.

“Now that Harrington knows Callaghan’s been televising from Rowe,” Jerry said, “we’re going to be hard-pressed to get there before he does, or Callaghan goes on the air.”

She picked up her cell phone, and pressed an instant dial number. Maria Hernandez answered her personal line on the first ring. “Can you talk?” Paula asked in Spanish.