I, Judas the 5th Gospel (20 page)

Gates was confused. “So if you think it’s real but full of lies, why does it have us here?”

Hyland sighed. “We’re here for two reasons. First, in his gospel, Judas writes that he was indeed cursed by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The curse was that Judas would wander the planet until the Second Coming.”

“How do you know he wandered
here
?” Gates asked.

“That’s the second reason,” Hyland said. “There’s another document. One written by a non-believer, a member of the Illuminati. The Lost Manuscript of Sir Richard Francis Burton, which some say is another version of the Fifth Gospel.”

“You mentioned Burton before,” Gates said. “You said he was the last one to go past Devil’s Fork and come back alive.”

Hyland nodded. “Yes. And he wrote about what he encountered up-river. Do you know that when Burton died, his wife Isabella, burned a manuscript over his body?”

“No,” Gates said.

“Not many people do, but it’s true. However, it was a ploy, a misdirection, to make people think the manuscript that detailed some of his journeys was destroyed. But she was burning a copy. The original was hidden away. Somehow, and
how
I was not told, the Brotherhood got hold of a copy. What they discovered written there echoed what Judas had written about his curse in the Fifth Gospel, because Burton claims to have met Judas. Here in the Amazon, up above the Devil’s Fork.”

Gates processed that as he eased back on the throttle as the first boat slowed slightly. “So we’re here based on a Gospel written by someone the Brotherhood thinks is a liar, and a manuscript written by a member of the Illuminati, who are our enemy?”

“Judas exists,” Hyland said.

“How do you know that?”

“Because he’s mentioned in enough places throughout history. Not by his name. But it’s him. I’ve spent my life studying this. I have no doubt he exists.”

“And you have no doubt he’s here?”

Hyland nodded. “He has always tried to hide, knowing that if his true identity was ever revealed, he would be doomed. He came here a long time ago to hide in the jungle.”

“How do you know?” Gates pressed her.

“History,” Hyland said. “The study of history.”

Gates waited.

“Have you ever heard of Viracocha?” Hyland finally said.

Gates shook his head, as did Lee who had been drawn in to what she was saying. Both were confused by her abrupt shift.

“Kon Tiki Viracocha,” Hyland said. “According to legend he is the mysterious ‘god’ that led a group of white settlers far into the Andes and founded the city of Tiahuanaco in ancient times, sometime around two hundred A.D.. Tiahuanaco is high up in the Andes, which are west of us. Over thirteen thousand feet in altitude. It’s in an extremely remote location. It’s a spectacular place, but you have to wonder why would anyone build such a magnificent city in such a place unless they were trying to hide. The city was long abandoned when the Incas arrived and took it over in twelve hundred A.D.

“I’ve been to Tiahuanaco where Viracocha’s stone face is hewn out of a solid block of andesite, which is the keystone above the Gateway of the Sun. Going through the Gate, you see the Pyramid of the Sun, an earth and stone mound over three hundred feet high. On top of the Pyramid is an altar, where even the late arriving Incas worshipped the legend of Viracocha. They sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people on that altar. Ripped their still-beating hearts out of their chests.”

“Wait a second,” Gates said. “You’re saying that this Viracocha was Judas?”

“I believe so,” Hyland said.

“Then why did he abandon this city?” Gates asked. “And who was with him?”

“He abandoned the city because the Incas were coming. His survival depended on stealth and hiding, not fighting. And he must have come across from Africa or Europe with some followers, seeking to hide as the Christian Church grew in size and strength. Judas hid throughout history, always staying one step ahead of those who would have killed him if they discovered his identity.”

“Impossible,” Lee said. “No one crossed the Atlantic until Christopher Columbus.”

Hyland shrugged. “Thor Heyerdahl, whose first experimental boat was called Kon Tiki, crossed the Atlantic from Africa to South America on a reed raft similar to what the Egyptians had at the time. My research suggests Judas spent some time in Egypt not long after the Resurrection.”

Gates was trying to follow the logic while steering the boat. “So you’re saying Judas crossed the Atlantic around two hundred AD, led some people across the Amazon, up into the Andes and built this great city?”

“Yes.”

“That’s pushing things,” Gates said. “And then you’re saying he deserted the city when the Incas started pressing in on his area and…“ He waited.

“Then he came down here into the deep dark jungle and settled above the Devil’s Fork,” Hyland said.

“Well,” Gates said, “At least we know why you’re here. I suspect we’ll find out the truth shortly.”

*****

Ninety kilometers up-river, the mercenaries had settled in to their ambush position. An M-60 machinegun was in the center, aimed at the kill zone the leader had selected. It was just before the river split, because he didn’t know which arm the targets would take. He had both the river and the small animal trail running along the bank as the kill zone, prepared for movement by water or land.

M-248 squad automatic weapons were on either flank of the ambush, giving him automatic fire preventing an advance or retreat out of the kill zone. Two mercenaries had just finished lacing the far riverbank with antipersonnel mines in a double-layer of death, so that any target that tried to escape to the illusion of safety there would die. Those two men were now back in the ambush line, which consisted of eight of the nine men.

The ninth man, according to proper tactics dictated by every military school around the world, was providing rear security, set up one hundred meters behind the kill line, facing the jungle. The thickness of the trees and undergrowth meant he was out of sight of his fellows. He had an FM radio on his combat vest, with a small receiver in one ear, and a transmitter wrapped around his neck.

He was content with his position, lying behind a log with his weapon at the ready on top of it. According to the intelligence they’d received, at least one of the members of the target was Special Ops trained. Which meant he wouldn’t stay in the kill zone, jump into the mined far bank, or try to escape up-or downstream. He’d turn into the ambush and use every skill he had to try to “break” it with an assault. That he was heavily outgunned and the element of surprise would be against him indicated it was likely he, and the rest of the target team, would die quickly. But there was a chance he might inflict a casualty or two. Being rear security got the mercenary out of that possibility, and he actually hoped there would be a casualty or two in the kill line, thus exponentially increasing his share of the bounty.

He was doing the math in his head when the small crossbow bolt hit him in the thigh.

He looked down at it in a moment of surprise, as he tried to form words to transmit the alarm to the rest of the team. The words didn’t come as his muscles shut down from the nerve agent coursing through his bloodstream.

It also stopped his lungs from working.

But that was merciful, as a native dressed in a loincloth stepped up next to the body and lifted a well-sharpened machete and separated head from body with one clean blow.

New Mexico

Sergut leaned against the SUV, watching the numbers on the gas pump rack up the dollars and cents. Abaku was coming out of the convenience store, drying his hands so fastidiously that the Russian found it amusing, thinking of the saying: Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

“Isn’t that full yet?” Abaku asked.

“It’s got a big tank. God only multiplies loaves and fish, not gasoline.”

Abaku shook his head at the blasphemy and got into the passenger seat.

The pump clicked off and Sergut removed the nozzle, putting it back into place. The machine asked him if he wanted a receipt and he chuckled at the inanity. As if the credit card bill would ever arrive.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and left Interstate 25 and Socorro, New Mexico behind, and got onto Route 60, heading west. They’d landed in Albuquerque two hours ago and picked up the black SUV that had been waiting for them in the valet parking lot. A helicopter would have been quicker, but a helicopter was easily tracked. This was one plan the Illuminati could not learn of. Sergut had quickly spotted the security vehicles from the Brotherhood trailing at a distance to make sure they were not followed from the airport.

They drove a few miles in silence, and finally Sergut spoke. “I did not mean to be, how do you say it…’flipped,’ back there.”

“Flippant,” Abaku corrected.

“Ah yes, ‘flippant,’” Sergut said. “There are so many words in English. Not so many in Russian. Even though I have been here many years, I am always learning.”

“Don’t you have a hundred words for snow in Russian?”

Sergut laughed. “No. That is the Saami, the people who live on the ice in the very north of Russia and the Scandinavian countries. They are surrounded by it all the time so they must spend much time discussing it. We Russians have a hundred words for sorrow.”

The highway was curving to the right as they ascended into the hills of the Cibola National Forest.
So different from Siberia
, Sergut thought.

Abaku shook his head. “Any country cut off from God would indeed have a need for a hundred words for sorrow.”

Sergut was watching the road for the desert creatures that stray onto pavement. He was driving too fast to be able to swerve, and would be sad to flatten even a snake. “Russia was never cut off from God. But the great Soviet Union found it convenient to remove religion occasionally, because a collectivist society operates best without hope of the everlasting. For wars and such troubling times, religion was returned to give people the strength to hope for victory. It was a conditional thing, as most things are.”

Abaku sighed. “How God must have cringed to be reduced to being the carrot on a stick.”

“Can God cringe?” Sergut asked. “You speak of God cringing as if he were a man.”

“I know that you were raised without the true faith, and came to your priesthood late in life, so you must find all of this hard.”

“Not hard,” Sergut said, “but confusing maybe. For me God was in the prayers of my orthodox grandmother who kept her faith no matter what the Politburo decided. She was not, as you say, ‘conditional.’ I am a scientist, and was schooled and trained as such, but I always thought it most brave to believe when it could cost you something.”

“Not believing costs you everything,” Abaku said. “Your eternal salvation.

Sergut snorted. “I was thinking more of a few nights in Lubyanka with the KGB.”

“I'm sure your grandmother would have been happy to pay such a small price to spend eternity at the right side of Jesus.”

Sergut felt a throb between his eyes. He'd talked with men like this before and he found no fault in their blind faith and absolute certainty about their role as men and of God and Jesus, but he wondered about their understanding of reality and the human condition.

As if reading his mind, Abaku continued. “Science and religion are not opposites. They are for each other much like a piano and the music it makes are different things but of the same thing.”

“Perhaps the opposite of a piano concerto is an old woman screaming in the basement of Lubyanka?” Sergut did not wait for an answer. “Which is science: the piano or the music?

“Either and both,” Abaku said. “God is in the music, and God is with the screaming woman. God is everywhere.”

“So you believe God is in everything?”

“I don’t believe it,” Abaku said. “I know it. That is why I am a scientist. To see and hear as much as God has provided to be seen and heard.”

Sergut eased off the gas so that a slow-moving lizard could make it across the road. He noted that Abaku did not even see the creature until the speed changed.

“It's just a lizard,” Abaku noted. “We have a tight schedule to meet to make the Great Commission happen.”

Sergut slowed the SUV further. “God is in the piano but not the lizard?”

Abaku sighed.

Sergut knew that for the African his doubt wasn’t a threat, merely tiresome. Many who believed blindly felt that way. They felt that those who doubted were like the character in his favorite American movie, “Groundhog Day,” reliving the same day fruitlessly until one day they would see the folly of their ways and suddenly change. Sergut had neither the time nor the inclination to be Abaku’s groundhog.

He watched the lizard move to safety in his rearview mirror. “You did not answer, my friend. Why not the lizard? Are we more important than the lizard?”

“God sent Jesus as a man,” Abaku said. “Jesus was God's form as man. Jesus was His son and therefore while God is in everything, His particular interest is in us—humans.

“So God is not particularly interested in women?”