Contents ( 44)
- DAUGHTER OF GOD
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- CONTENTS
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
In the end the abbot prayed and meditated and concluded that God had placed a greater trust in the hands of the men above him, and that truly all that was required of him was his faith and blind obedience. So he had faithfully mailed the tapes to Rome every week since then. And over the years, other men had come and given him newer tape recorders and then gone. They had hooked up devices that automatically recorded all conversations on the telephone. But he didn’t trust the device and he still liked to check on it each time to make sure it was working.
The abbot stared at the machine and saw that the cassette was turning. Then he sighed and slowly closed the drawer and went back to the paperwork. The paperwork, he thought in despair. He wondered if God’s book of life was filled out in triplicate. He crossed himself and asked forgiveness for such irreverent thoughts and began to wade through the piles on his desk.
Seven thousand miles to the east, Seth Ridgeway settled into the window seat on the upper deck of the KLM 747. He always flew KLM because they were the last professional airline still flying to Europe. With a smile he remembered how the international arrivals terminal at JFK Airport had been turned over to the same people who run Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam—essentially the same people as KLM. Now, he thought American air travelers would have a really sweet time flying, if only the FAA would just turn all American air traffic over to KLM so they wouldn’t have to ride the cattle cars and urine-stinking rattletraps that pass for airplanes in the United States. Dream on, he thought as he plugged in his headset, put it on his head, adjusted the volume, and curled up next to the cabin wall as comfortably as he could with his seat belt fastened.
He closed his eyes and saw Zoe’s face. She was there. He knew it in his heart. He knew she was still alive and that he was going to find her this time. He drifted off into welcome sleep as the giant 747 began to pull away from the gate. He had no inkling of the chain of events he had ignited halfway around the world.
FOURTEEN
The American sat in the luxurious suite at the Nochspitze and reread the material Cardinal Neils Braun had given him upon his return from the States. The American was a troubled man.
He walked over to the door and stepped out onto the narrow balcony that overlooked the valley of the Inn River. The night was deep and the cold air cut through the pasty haze in his mind. He leaned against the railing with both arms straight, looking like a preacher braced against the pulpit ready for a sermon.
He thought again of Braun’s bizarre briefing. A second Messiah, a woman, a murder—no, he thought, a mass murder by a Pope, the rewriting of scripture, the revision of history—easy enough to do those days when so little had been written to begin with, to cover up the existence of the new Messiah.