Veil of the Goddess by Rob Preece Read Free Book Online

then stood and looked out at the highway, maybe a quarter of a mile away.
    With sunrise, the locals would be moving around. There would be traffic on the road, but not much.
    In the distance, a battered jeep cut off the road and headed into the hills.
    Iraq was supposed to be the location of the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of Abraham and Jonah. But up here at least, it was desolate hilly country.
    "Once we're out of Iraq, I'm clueless. If we can believe what Smith told you, we've got one of the most historic artifacts in history in the back of a farm truck. We already know that the U.S. government is going to do whatever it can to get the Cross from us. From the way Smith turned on you, I'm guessing they won't want witnesses. If we're lucky, they'll disappear us to some CIA torture camp. I don't think we'll be that lucky. They won't want us to talk to anyone ."
    Newland ran her hand over the scar on her throat when he mentioned Smith. Zack didn't have problems buying into the miracles in the Bible, and from the Saints. But he had a lot more trouble seeing miracles happen with his own eyes.
    "Sorry I had to remind you about that, Newland."
    She shook her head. “If I have to call you Zack, you can call me Ivy. And the way I figure it, the U.S. Government doesn't have any special right to the True Cross, if that's what it is."
    He was perversely glad that she'd invited him to use her first name. “I'd have to agree with that. If anyone has a claim to it, it's the Church."
    "Maybe that's what the Foundation is. A Church."
    He hadn't thought about that but it made sense. “Maybe. But what kind of church would it be? I'm thinking we need to give it to the Church that's been around since the last time The Cross was in public. The Church that traces its roots back to the apostles."
    "Orthodox? That why you want to go to Turkey, Zack?"
    "The Greeks might have owned the Cross for a while, but the last Christians who had it were Crusaders. They would have been Catholic. I'd admit I might be prejudiced since I'm a Catholic myself."
    Everyone in Iraq remembered the European Crusaders as if they'd just been through a generation before instead of hundreds of years earlier. Saladin was a hero to Turks, Kurds and Arabs. Even Saddam had claimed some sort of descent from him. And he'd been the one who'd captured the real True Cross.
    "Speaking of crusades, if The Cross got turned over to modern-day crusaders, it could really bust things open. The entire Middle East would become even more of a battleground than it is now.” Ivy shuddered. “I wonder if that's what my vision was supposed to mean."
    "Hmm?"
    "Back there.” She waved in the direction of the city, a cloud of smoke and the distant crunch of explosives marking it on the horizon. “It seemed like I could see the whole world stretched out. And it was all like Mosul—bombs and fires and death."
    Zack wasn't a philosopher and had never put much credence in visions—except in ancient visions by saints, of course. But now, all the rules were getting torn up.
    "I'm pretty sure nobody is going to send crusaders in here."
    "Oh, yeah?” Ivy looked around. “What, exactly, do you think we are, then? Christian occupiers in the heart of the Moslem world, that's what. One thing I agree with. The Catholic Church is a better bet than the Foundation. The former Pope spoke against this war. I figure the new one wouldn't turn the Cross over to crusaders, whether they're us Americans or anyone else."
    Newland was right. The modern Catholic Church wasn't going to call for any crusade against the Moslem world. “So we somehow get the Cross to Italy and turn it over to the Pope. No problem, huh?"
    As if.
* * * *
    Ivy woke up suddenly. Although she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, the artifact hummed with a strange harmonic, sending subsonic disturbances that had blasted her from her sleep.
    "We've got to move."
    "Huh?” Herrera was awake, but he seemed groggy, almost drugged.
    "Grab