Omega rules an evan ryde.., p.15
Omega Rules--An Evan Ryder Novel, page 15
Her nostrils flared, leaking smoke.
Ambrose shrugged. “You married him.” When she made no reply, smoking, silent, he added in a different tone of voice, “Did you know he was closeted when you married him?”
She took several deep drags on her cigarette before replying. “To answer your question, yes … and no.”
“Meaning?”
Her head was wreathed in smoke. “Since I came on board, Sam’s business interests have multiplied like rabbits. I daresay we own more offshore shell companies than anyone. They’re well-named. Vast sums of monies are transferred from one to another in a dizzying acceleration. To the authorities around the world the sums are lost in our own private shell game.” She tossed her head. “Bottom line, it doesn’t matter.”
At Ambrose’s expression her eyes narrowed, the muscles at her jaw hinges standing out, white as bone. “Don’t you dare judge me.”
He immediately looked abashed. “That was not my intention.”
“Really?” Her eyes flashed. “Then just what is your intention?”
He flicked the cigarette out from between her lips, replaced it with his mouth. At once their tongues entwined. He pressed himself against her, but she twisted away.
“Not here,” she said thickly, leading him away. “You know better than that.”
15
NUREMBERG, GERMANY
The late morning sunlight in Nuremberg was off kilter—bright as spring but curiously carrying no warmth at all. Evan had felt a distinct discomfort the moment she exited the train station. After sleeping through an entire day in the perfumed quiet of Camina’s, unable to pull herself awake until the following evening, she had gathered herself, appreciating how much she had needed that uninterrupted rest, and taken a night train to Nuremberg.
Now as she walked down a quintessentially quaint Bavarian street lined with colorful half-timbered houses, storefronts, and Gothic churches made of the local red sandstone, she shivered inside her leather jacket. Glancing up, the sun seemed strange, as if it were cut out of white paper, flat as a disc. It was disconcerting, made her feel as though she was moving through the pages of an Old World children’s book. Her sense of unease only increased the farther into the city she went. She recalled Camina Wagner’s warning, “Plenty of ghosts inhabit those streets at night, just not the children’s storybook kind. It’s no joke, but you’ll probably find out for yourself. The past is particularly strong there, close to the surface, spread across the city; it was never truly laid to rest.”
Now that she was here, inside the medieval walls that surrounded the old city, nearing the Hauptmarkt, Evan had a clearer idea of what Camina meant. The city, the second largest in Bavaria, held great significance for Hitler and the Nazis in general. The city was once the stronghold of the Holy Roman Empire. In fact, the Hauptmarkt was built by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, himself. It was no secret that Hitler worshiped the HRE and aspired to create an empire as powerful and vast. Nuremberg was also of import to the Nazi Party. Due to its position in the center of Germany the city was the site of huge Nazi Party conventions—the notorious Nuremberg rallies.
As she had promised, she called Camina.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Now it begins.”
“Isn’t that a bit melodramatic, Camina?”
“One would hope so, but you know as well as I do that in our business hope is not to be relied on.” There was a momentarily silence. “Peace be with you, habibti.”
“And with you. Always.”
* * *
Horst Wessel, the man Camina had sent Evan to, had his shop in a traditional Bavarian house—what was often mistakenly called a chalet. It was a bauernhaus, a kind of farmhouse. Herr Wessel’s cobbler workshop was on street level. It seemed that his living quarters were upstairs.
Evan entered the shop to the tinkling of tiny brass bells. Immediately she inhaled the scents of leather, wax, polish, and glue. To either side of her were shelves of black-lacquered wood displaying the styles of shoes you could have fitted and made to order. The low ceiling was striated with thick hand-hewn beams, black with age. There were several customers, a couple perusing the samples and a young woman being helped by an even younger salesperson in a much-scarred leather apron. The space had an Old World charm that felt cozy and warm in the manner of a family room with a stone hearth in which a fire blazed merrily.
Herr Wessel sat behind a waist-high cabinet facing the door. He looked up from his cluttered workbench, lifted his metal-rimmed spectacles onto his wide forehead, and rose from his stool. “How may I help you, good Fraulein?”
Evan smiled, crossed the shop, and handed Herr Wessel the slip of paper Camina had given her.
He slid the spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose to read the note. He was a barrel-chested man in his early sixties with a corona of hair around the edges of his otherwise bald pate. He had clear blue eyes, a Roman nose, and a square jaw. The age lines in his cheeks looked more like crevices, cracks in a parched land. Evan imagined him as a younger version with thick curling blond hair, a muscular build, and a calculating stare. He might have been formidable then. There was still a touch of that about him.
“Ah, yes,” he said in a deep rumbling voice. “You have been expected, Fraulein.” He moved an outsized beaten copper ashtray nearer to him, fired a gunmetal lighter, held the flame to a corner of the slip of paper and watched it carefully as it curled and blackened. After dropping it, he used a corner of the lighter to grind the remains into powder.
A careful and exacting person, Evan thought, automatically cataloging him in her memory, as she did with everyone she met. And yet there was something deeply disturbing about him, a sense that behind his eyes lurked pain as indelible as it was old, and if not fear then certainly apprehension.
“Herr Wessel, may I ask—”
“You must be hungry, Fraulein.”
Understanding that he didn’t want to talk here, she nodded. “Starving actually. I can’t recall the last time I ate.”
A smile cracked apart the deep lines of his face. “Then by all means we must take a meal.” Setting aside his leather smock, he grabbed his tweed coat and came out from behind the cabinet. After a word to his assistant, he ushered her out onto the bustling street.
The restaurant he chose was Ecco Una Cucina, neither Bavarian nor American. So, then, Italian—a kind of a compromise, Evan thought as Herr Wessel asked for a window table. As it was only the beginning of the lunch service, that proved to be no problem. The restaurant was only a quarter full as opposed to the street, which was fairly packed. Hardly surprising as they were barely a block from the center of the Hauptmarkt. Shoppers, holiday makers, a flute of children laughing and pushing each other, the center of Nuremberg looked just like any European city. On the surface, that is. Once Evan looked more closely at the faces of the passersby, she saw a shadow around them and was once again reminded of the restless ghosts of victims of past atrocities, who had not been buried deep enough or long enough to have flown to happier planes of existence.
They were handed menus, ordered, and a bottle of red wine appeared on their table, was uncorked. They each drank half a glass.
“You know why I’ve come,” Evan said as she set down her glass.
“Indeed.” Herr Wessel refilled his glass. “Omega is a modern-day incarnation of Gnosticism. As does Omega the name Gnosticism comes from the Greek language. Gnosis means ‘knowledge.’ On the surface the basic tenet of Gnosticism is just this: salvation is transformational. Like its Judeo-Christian forbear, it is of course entirely faith based. It arose in the late first century after Christ, as these things are calculated. But in an irreparable break with both older religions what the Gnostics fervently believe is that salvation can only be attained through the discovery and dissemination of secret, inner knowledge. A central piece of that secret knowledge is that the death and suffering of Jesus were things that only appeared to happen. A modern-day analogue would be, oh, I don’t know, science. To the Gnostics—and to Omega in particular—scientific facts are not facts at all; there is inner, secret knowledge only they have that rejects science. This numinous knowledge proves that, like Jesus’s suffering on the cross, science only appears to exist. It’s a screen, a false narrative. When Gnostics look behind that screen, they see the Truth.”
Herr Wessel paused as their shared appetizer was set between them, along with a basket of fresh-baked bread. They spent some time eating, while, outside, the crowds, thickening, seemed to rush back and forth with a singular determination like waves anticipating an oncoming storm.
“So, about the Gnostics—or more to the point—Omega,” Evan said, wiping her lips. “Where do they get this secret, esoteric knowledge they see as the Truth? From God?”
“No, not at all.” Herr Wessel shook his head, called for more wine. “There have been, down through the ages, Gnostic demiurges—humans who are purported to possess the internal pathway to salvation, who know the Truth. But here we come to the widest divergence of Gnosticism. To them the Holy Spirit is female.”
And for one brief, frightening instant there rose in Evan’s mind the visage of her last remaining sister, Lucinda Wells.
And just as quickly it vanished, a trick of smoke and mirrors, as Herr Wessel raised a finger. “And this is essential to their core beliefs because in one of their heretical Gospels, Mary could not have been impregnated by the female divine being. There is no progeny possible from a lesbian interaction.”
“There is no progeny possible from an immaculate conception either,” Evan pointed out.
Herr Wessel gave her a skeptical look. “My dear, you are looking for logic in religion?” He shook his head.
“True enough,” she said. “But what exactly is the Gnostic Truth?”
“If I tell you that the Gnostic Truth is the exact reverse of what is said you will say, ‘But Herr Wessel, this I do not understand.’ Well, most do not.”
Evan once again felt the anxiety—or possibly fear—emanating from him and was disquieted. Something in the pit of her stomach began to stir and she felt her gorge rise. Something was coming, she could feel it. What—?
“A living example of their Truth must suffice: ‘Do not be ignorant of me/For I am the first and the last/I am the honored one and the scorned one/I am the whore and the holy one/I am the wife and the virgin/I am the mother and the daughter.’”
He poured them both more wine. Evan didn’t even want to look at it. Her eyes kept straying to the street beyond the window glass, the faces of those passing, strained, hard, distressed. Or was she only seeing a reflection of her own mounting agitation?
“I just quoted several lines from a core Gnostic work, ‘The Thunder, Perfect Mind.’ No one knows who wrote it, only that the poem is ancient. To understand fully, you need to hear more, Fraulein.” And he returned to quoting the poem: “‘I am the staff of his power in his youth/and he is the rod of my old age/And whatever he wills happens to me/I am the silence that is incomprehensible/and the idea whose remembrance is frequent/I am the voice whose sound is manifold/and the word whose appearance is multiple/I am the utterance of my name.’”
Evan felt lightheaded, all the colors around her seemed bleached of saturation, becoming pastels, as if she were seeing a scene from another time, another place. “The sayings of the first demiurge?” she said without conscious volition.
“Quite possibly.” Herr Wessel nodded. “You see, I was right to tell you these things. I think you’re beginning to understand. The most fascinating part of Gnosticism, what marks it as different from other major religions, is that it is also a philosophy. As I said, at its core it is transformational. You enter into it, accept it, and are transformed into Other.”
“So blind devotion.”
“Precisely.”
Evan’s lightheadedness abruptly escalated. She was terribly dizzied. She felt herself falling through her chair, through the floor of the restaurant, through the earth beneath, into the dark fastness of water. And now she was back in the flooded tunnel beneath the Cemetery of the Forgotten, being pushed under by Pasha Shutkov, lungs on fire, drowning …
… She gasped and Herr Wessel was by her side, one arm around her shoulders. “My dear,” he said, “what is happening to you? Your hands are as cold as ice.” His face was close to hers, the fissures on his skin deepening with the extent of his concern. “Are you ill? Shall I call a doctor? Take you to…”
That was when the glass in the window grew a spiderweb of cracks in the instant before it blew inward.
PART THREE
LOCUSTS
16
WASHINGTON, DC
“When I was growing up my greatest wish was to fly,” Ben said. “Now my desires are more prosaic.”
An Binh, the physical therapist Evan’s father, Dr. Reveshvili, had recommended, bent over Ben, who was lying facedown on a massage table, naked but for a Speedo, while An Binh needled him.
This was only their third day of sessions, but An Binh had already performed hours of treatments on Ben’s injured body. Today’s acupuncture was a surprise, as was An Binh herself. She was an athletic-looking woman with a meticulously sculpted face that was at once lined and radiant, which confused Ben, chiefly because it seemed to him that each line in her face belonged there, was meant as some sort of message. He had the strange feeling that her entire history was presented in her face, and yet he could read not one line of it; its language was entirely unknown to him. He had never before encountered a woman so small who was so powerful. Her power, much contained, came from within, he knew that much, and this, among other things about her, intrigued him. She could be anywhere from thirty to fifty as far as he could tell. But then as he grew older it seemed more and more difficult to judge other people’s ages, possibly because age had little to do with the extreme experiences and pressures of the people with whom he dealt. And anyway what did age matter? She had a winning smile and hands that his body responded to the moment she touched him. She employed chiropractic, acupuncture, osteopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine on him. But it was clear to him from the start that she also was a master of a number of non-traditional methods, unknown in the West. The moment she first laid hands on him, her fingertips ran not to the place where he had been shot, but to, as she said, “points in your nervous system that nourish your impairment.” When the first two-hour session was finished, she said, “You will walk, Mr. Butler.” And then she left the gym in Isobel’s basement without another word. She never said when he would walk or how she would effect such a miracle that flummoxed the Western surgeons who had exhaustively examined him.
She didn’t say “Hello” or “Goodbye” when she entered or exited the gym. It was not, he quickly realized, that she was rude or even curt; she was simply all business.
But now, surprising him, as she added needles to his back, she said, “Tell me about growing up.”
“Why do you want to know? I’m simply curious.”
“Of course. You are a curious being by design.” She took a breath. “Well, my knowing is part of your treatment.” Her smile was crooked, like a young child’s. “What comes before influences us in the present. For the weak and unlucky it comes to define them.”
Since nothing she said or for that matter didn’t say surprised him overmuch, he told her. “My story is not so terrible. It’s hardly unique.”
“Mm.” An Binh added another needle. He felt a tiny prick then a flow of warmth running along an invisible stream inside his body. “Your story is unique to you, Mr. Butler. It is what led you to being here now under my ministrations, so it will inform and shape your treatment. Speaking thus is often an unlocking mechanism for the body.” She took up each wrist in turn, measured his pulses. “Ah,” she murmured to herself under her breath. Then, “Please continue.”
“My mother was a Polish Jew. Her father—my maternal grandfather—was a merchant, and a clever one at that. At an early age he married his teenage sweetheart and while she was in her first trimester moved them to Beirut, Lebanon.”
“To learn from the best,” An Binh said, taking out one needle, applying another in an entirely different spot. Immediately, he felt something shift inside him.
“Exactly. So my mother was born in Beirut, as was I. She married an American lawyer, a WASP from Main Line Philadelphia.”
“An unhappy marriage,” An Binh said in her non-judgmental manner.
“Not in the beginning.” Ben considered. “But, eventually, yes. They were, how shall I put it—incompatible.”
“Is that the word you wished to use?” When he made no reply, she went on as if nothing untoward had happened. But she adjusted the needles again; she was decoding him. “What did their incompatibility mean for you?”
“I never wanted to be home with the two of them. But it was difficult being out in the city on my own.”
“Why was that?” Having left five needles in him to marinate his nervous system in his own body’s healing energy, his qi, An Binh placed a pinch of moxa on the small of his back. When she lit it he felt the heat immediately, and the incense-like fragrance of the curl of smoke lifting from a dried Asian plant not unlike mugwort, boosting the flow of his qi.
“I was tainted three times. I was a Jew, I was an American, and I was pale of face. I stuck out like a sore thumb, a pariah, baited, harassed, beaten, sometimes. There were days I wished I could be the Lebanese equivalent of Clark Kent, so I could fit in.”
“And fly at night.”
“Like Superman. In Beirut I felt like I was from Krypton, an outsider, a stranger in a strange land. I longed for a secret identity, where I could pass my tormentors in the street and they wouldn’t give me a second look.”
“I think, Mr. Butler, there is more to your past—much more.”
He made no reply; she continued her work. “I too am a stranger in a strange land,” she said at length, “here in your nation’s capital.”
