Daughter of God
Rave reviews for Daughter of God
“Highly recommended.… An action-packed thriller.… Although the action never slows down, the characters drive the plot to its triumphant conclusion.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Fascinating.… The concept and plot of this novel are very unusual, and the author has a deft hand with pace and character, so this is both an interesting and a suspenseful, exciting book.”
—Sullivan County Democrat
“Persuasively written, fact-based fiction that takes on an endlessly gripping subject.”
—Kirkus Reviews
FORGE BOOKS BY LEWIS PERDUE
Daughter of God
Slatewiper
DAUGHTER OF GOD
LEWIS PERDUE
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DAUGHTER OF GOD
Copyright © 2000 by Lewis Perdue
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 0-812-58971-8
EAN 978-0812-58971-9
First edition: January 2000
First mass market edition: May 2001
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4
To Katherine and William
My son and daughter, without whose help this book would have been completed long ago and without whom life would be vastly emptier. Every passing day, I am astonished at how your love expands the boundaries of my heart and your eyes reveal to me miraculous wonders of a world that I have never seen before.
To Megan
My wife, friend, partner, soul mate. I’m the kite, you’re the string. Neither soars without the other. We didn’t meet by accident.
Thanks to God our Creator
Her strength and His inspiration are behind these words.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my editor, Natalia Aponte, who helped me to see this book through new eyes and guided my writing and my faith exploration to places I never before imagined. Being this well edited is an all-too-rare experience for an author.
Also to my agent, Natasha Kern, who never lost her faith in me or my writing. I have never been blessed before with such a relentless and unflagging advocate.
Many thanks to Kathleen Caldwell of Readers Books in Sonoma whose sharp eye on the final proofs caught so many things I had missed. Kathleen, I’m glad you enjoyed it so much.
So teach us to number our days, that
we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
(The Greek word for wisdom is Sophia.)
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
ONE
Zoe Ridgeway smelled it, felt it the instant she crossed the threshold of the imposing Swiss mansion. She tried to convince herself that she was imagining things. But even the long-lost Rembrandt hanging casually in the entryway couldn’t distract her thoughts from the conviction that death lived here.
“Herr Max is eager to see you,” said a tall, formal man in accented English as he gave her a short, stiff bow from the waist. “Please follow me.”
She followed the muscularly broad man through elegantly appointed rooms with high ceilings and white walls covered with masterpieces. Zoe knew he was more than just a butler when he bent over to pick up a fallen piece of paper and revealed the straps of a shoulder holster pressing against the fabric of his coat. She was married to a man who used to wear one and had learned to spot concealed firearms almost unerringly.
As Zoe followed the bodyguard through the house, she struggled to conceal her excitement. As a fine art appraiser and broker, she was used to having the priceless art treasures of the world pass through her hands with an almost banal regularity. Masterpieces were her daily bread. But now she struggled to keep the awe from her face as she recognized the paintings of one great master after another hanging casually about the drawing room as they passed through. On the wall above a gilded harpsichord, she spotted a Tintoretto that she knew had been missing since the early years of World War II. And next to that a Chagall thought to have been burned during the Nazis’ campaign against decadent art Music, a string symphony of joy, filled her head as her eyes took in one astounding work after another.
They reached a sitting room and the bodyguard motioned her to wait At the far side of the room, Willi Max slumped in his faux-Bauhaus wheelchair, looking more dead than alive.
In a silence broken only by Max’s ragged breathing, the bodyguard went to the wheelchair. He bent over and whispered. Willi Max sat up, suddenly animated like a puppet jerked to life. The bodyguard turned the wheelchair around to face her.
“Welcome to my home,” Max said warmly, his voice surprisingly strong. The bodyguard wheeled him toward Zoe. As he drew nearer, she made out a wizened old man with eyes the icy luminous blue of glaciers backlit by the sun. He held out a shaky hand. “I am so glad you could come on such short notice.”
Zoe took his hand. It felt dry, light, insubstantial, as if the life had already left this part of the man’s body.
“It’s my privilege,” Zoe said sincerely.
Max’s face was nearly immobile but his eyes flashed his approval.
“But come now!” Max said with a nod to his bodyguard. “I have little time left and there is much to accomplish.” The bodyguard turned the wheelchair and pushed it across the dark-wood-paneled drawing room toward a wall of bookshelves. Zoe followed, then stood a respectful distance behind them, absolutely still on the hand-knotted Persian carpet as the guard slid aside a hinged section of bookshelves to reveal a hidden door. The bodyguard knelt on one knee before a wheelchair-height security keypad and paused as if to reassure himself that he remembered the proper sequence.
Soft tones filled the room as the guard punched in the security alarm combination. Zoe’s palms were damp with the tension. She spread her fingers and, as casually as she could, made as if she were smoothing out the wrinkles in her long gray pleated skirt. She looked about her and listened, the music in her head changing as she gazed first at one painting and then another.
She tried to fix in her mind what she had seen so far. Notes were not allowed at this stage. Max was keenly aware of the effect his art had on people and he had expressed his desire that she experience the art first without the prosaic intrusion of work. It was not the first time a client had tried to influence her appraisals this way and, as usual, she had prepared herself for this contingency. With the guard occupied with the keypad and Max facing away from her, she slipped one hand inside her blazer to make sure the minicassette recorder was still running. It was not the first time someone had tried to dazzle away her objectivity. It was, however, the first time someone had succeeded.
Zoe had loved art all her life with a passion that had driven her to make it her profession. But despite the satisfaction of spending her life surrounded by the world’s most beautiful objects and historical antiquities, she had always dreamed of discovering buried treasure: unearthing a hitherto-unknown trove of priceless art that would be nearly impossible to value.
Instead, it had discovered her.
Less than forty-eight hours ago, Willi Max had phoned her, apologizing when she told him that it was still the middle of the night in Los Angeles, something he seemed well aware of.
“I am dying,” he had said without any trace of emotion. “Faster than most people. I have little time remaining and I needed to call you before I changed my mind or…” He left the obvious unstated.
Zoe had never heard of the man and had nearly hung up on him, half convinced it was a prank call. But his precise English, the imperious German accent, and his obvious sincerity kept her listening despite the sleep that clouded her thoughts.
“I wish personally to make the arrangements for the care of my legacy,” Max had said. Legacy. Not collection. Zoe remembered his words now, finally starting to grasp their true meaning.
The sleep had cleared instantly that night when Max offered her nearly ten times her normal fee to drop everything and fly to Zurich.
“I have heard that you are the best art historian and broker in the world,” Max had said. “And honest… honest. I want my collection handled honestly… morally.” There had been a long silence. Zoe wondered if the man had suffered a stroke and died, but then he broke into a spasm of coughing. Finally, “I have read all of your published works,” be said, “even the books… and”—he coughed again, briefly—”and all of the articles about you.… I believe that you will understand. It is vital to understand.”
As if Max had sensed her continuing reluctance, he had sealed her commitment that night by mentioning that there was a substantial consulting fee in it for her husband as well, since his collection included items that needed the attention of a scholar versed in the ways of religious manuscripts and reliquaries—things Max’s research would have told him were not her strong points. As a result, she often worked with her husband, Seth Ridgeway, who was a professor of philosophy/comparative religion at UCLA. He specialized in a particularly fertile period of religious development from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 700.
A long, low tone sounded from the alarm system and interrupted her reverie. Zoe watched as the bodyguard opened the door. Max seemed energized by the opening and with a great effort sat nearly upright in the wheelchair. “After you, my dear,” he said chivalrously. Zoe looked at the bodyguard who beckoned her forward with a slight bow and a nod of his head.
Instants later, Zoe stepped through the door and looked about. The room had a ceiling that had to be forty feet high, walls painted off-white in order to focus on the room’s objects. Like almost every room she had seen in the vast mansion, this one was almost a cross between a gallery and a warehouse—too filled with art to have a clear focus. Then, as Zoe began to look closely at the art around her, her skin came alive with great electrical coils of astonishment. Here was a legendary Vermeer that had been written about in the artist’s letters but never seen.
Music like the most exquisite orchestral strings filled her heart and demolished the last wisps of the her scholarly objectivity. Instead she opened her soul to the beauty of the art and the music it created in her.
She approached the Vermeer and let its remarkable shadows speak to her. The incredible depth and perspective invited her to step bodily into the scene. Zoe tore her eyes away from the Vermeer and found herself looking at a case containing a Leonardo codex that, as far as she could tell, was not among any previously described or known. Zoe turned slowly, her eyes finding in rapid succession a previously unknown van Gogh, a Picasso thought to have been destroyed, a Gutenberg Bible, and the Torah from King Solomon’s Temple.
Zoe dream-walked her way around the great room. Rare books lined mahogany bookshelves; priceless manuscripts and scrolls from antiquity jammed a glass case. Religious writings gathered from caves and ruins in secrecy by night-prowling Bedouins who peddled them on the underground market hundreds of years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were revealed.
Zoe knew that any single item by itself could be the centerpiece of a great museum. But all of them together? Her head spun. A symphony filled her every thought.
Her circumnavigation brought her back face-to-face with Max, and when she looked at him, Zoe saw his face shine at the awe that his art had inspired in an expert who was widely acknowledged as unimpressible.
“I’m not sure what to say.” Zoe searched for words. She felt her cheeks burn as she struggled to resurrect her composure.
“I believe that words are mostly inadequate,” Max said. His head doddered as he looked up at her. To make it easier for him, Zoe Ridgeway seated herself on a nearby Mies van der Rohe sofa and struggled to assimilate the overload.
Max glanced up and with a nod dismissed the guard, who closed the security door behind himself.
“As you are beginning to grasp, this is a legacy, not a mere collection,” Max began, his words coming in small bursts between deep rattling breaths. “I wish for you to help me atone for my legacy.”
Zoe looked at him questioningly.
Max closed his eyes for a long moment and then continued. “More than half a century ago, I was a conscript in the Wehrmacht—the army of the Third Reich. I was one of many who were pressed into service in the Austrian mountains south of Munich, in the region known for its salt mines.
“Hitler had looted many of the great collections and it was here in the mines that the art was brought for safekeeping. I saw many awesome things and one thing in particular which has been a burdensome secret for me since those days.”
A coughing fit racked the man’s frail body, bringing the guard back into the room. Max took a deep breath and waved the man away.
“When the Allies came, I—and many of my comrades—fled, taking with us each as much of the art, gold coins, manuscripts, religious reliquaries as we could carry.
“I made my way to Zurich and with the help of a network of those who had preceded me set up a new life. I sold some of the art I had brought with me. But instead of simply living on it, I used the proceeds to buy the art and rare objects from those who came after me.
“It was a desperate time,” Max explained. “The market was flooded; cash was scarce; survival was paramount What you see around you was acquired for pitifully little for someone like me who was prepared to take a chance. I kept what I could and disposed of what I needed to in order to obtain the funds for my own survival… and to acquire more.”