Conrad took a closer look at the gates of Troy in the background and saw a swastika. He knew it had been an ancient symbol of Troy long before the Nazis misappropriated it. But given the circumstances of the evening, it creeped him out just the same.
'What makes you think he's scared of me?' Conrad asked.
'He's not scared of you. He's scared of anybody in the Alignment who sees you here tonight,' Packard said. 'He'll know that we know he's got the Flammenschwert and that we can tie him to whatever happens with this thing. More important, he'll know his friends in the Alignment know it and that you just made him their fall guy.'
They were on the second floor, which led outside to a sweeping veranda and the gardens overlooking the bay. This was where the lights and music were coming from, as the women in gowns and men in sleek tuxedos mixed among the life-size statues of Greek gods.
A floating tray with drinks came by. Packard grabbed two and handed one to Conrad. It was a Mount Olympus. Conrad tasted it. Not bad. He nodded and took another sip. They walked outside into the gardens, preparing to separate, and Conrad scanned the faces for Mercedes.
Packard seemed to read his mind. 'Looking for her?'
'Gotta play my best hand if Midas is holding all the cards,' Conrad said.
'Her Highness is even more of a player than when you last saw her,' Packard said. 'Never looked better, or more powerful and influential on the world stage.'
Conrad knew Mercedes was thin, rich, and French. But 'Her Highness' and power and influence never quite fit his picture of her, even when she was his producer playing with her papa's money.
'There's Midas,' Packard said, gesturing outside. Conrad couldn't see through the small crowd of Bilderbergers. 'He's talking to Her Highness right now.'
Conrad wondered which royal princess Packard was snidely referring to. Then two guests parted like the Red Sea to reveal Midas holding court with several admirers around a stunning brunette in a backless black dress.
It was Serena.
7
Serena stood by the bronze statue of the dying Achilles, having traded her parka in the Arctic for a backless Vera Wang. To her left was Roman Midas, the man she had come to meet, representing the Bilderbergers' back channel to Russia. To her right was General Michael Gellar of Israel. Neither man was particularly pleased with the other, as Gellar had essentially accused Midas of providing the uranium for a Russian-built nuclear reactor that Israeli jets had bombed the month before. Now the mullahs in Tehran were threatening to attack Israel through their Palestinian proxies in Gaza and the West Bank.
'Any direct attack on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv will invite a devastating response on Tehran,' said Gellar, his hawklike, craggy face looking like it had been cut from the rocks of Masada. 'Israel has a right to exist and to defend herself.'
Serena eyed Midas as he calmly sipped his vodka and nodded. She had been invited by the Bilderbergers as a Vatican back channel between both of them in hopes of averting the latest Middle East crisis. But she also wanted to get Midas alone to press him about his mining in the Arctic.
'As you know, General Gellar, I'm a Russian expatriate often at odds with my homeland.' Midas affected an odd British accent that Serena thought made him sound like a roadie with Coldplay. 'I can vouch from personal experience that these are thugs running Russia now. The government itself is a mafia-like criminal organization. They are looking for any pretext to punish Israel through their Arab allies. If you attack Tehran, you will be handing them that pretext. And then what are you going to do? Nuke Moscow?'
'If our existence as a state is threatened, of course,' Gellar said.
'Then Russia attacks America, and we have Armageddon,' Midas said. 'No more oil. And I'm out of business.' He was trying to make a joke out of it, and Gellar grudgingly cracked a half-smile.
Seeing an opening, Serena made her move. 'I hear there's always oil in the Arctic,' she said, looking at Midas.
'I think the ice would have something to say about that,' he said. 'But I'd be there in a second if we could drill and ship. It would be the fifth-largest field of oil in the world.'
'But what about the damage to the environment?' she asked.
'Moot point,' he said. 'By the time we ever drilled the Arctic seabed, the ice cap would have already melted completely, and we'd be drilling to fuel the rebuilding of whatever was left after the global floods.' As an afterthought, he added: 'Global warming is a tragedy.'
'Nothing that fossil fuel consumption in the form of oil has anything to do with, I suppose?'
Midas smiled and pushed the conversation back at her. 'That medallion,' he said, noticing the ancient Roman coin that dangled just above her gown's sequined neckline. 'What is it?'
'Oh, it's a coin from the time of Jesus,' she said, touching it with her fingers. The medallion designated her status as the head of the Roman Catholic Church's ancient society Dominus Dei, which had started among the Christian slaves in Caesar's household near the end of the first century. It was also a sign, she was convinced, that as head of the Dei, she was one of the Alignment's legendary Council of Thirty. She had begun to be more public in her display of the medallion in an effort to ferret out the faces of others in the council. 'My order's tradition says that Jesus held it up when He told His followers to give to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's.'
General Gellar said somewhat dubiously, 'That's supposed to be the actual coin?'
'You know some traditions,' she said, smiling. 'There are enough pieces of the cross for sale at churches in Jerusalem to build Noah's ark.'
Gellar nodded wanly.
So did Midas. 'Jesus suffered terribly at the hands of the Jews.'
Oh God, Serena thought, watching for a sign of outrage on Gellar's face, but there was none. His face was a craggy slab of stone. But then Gellar had fought anti-Semitism from the Nazis, Russians, Europeans, Arabs, and regrettably, even the Church his entire life. He had mastered the art of overlooking the small offenses and forgoing the small battles so long as he won the war. And he had never lost one.
Midas, meanwhile, seemed delighted with the direction the conversation had taken and asked with feigned earnestness, 'Tell me, Sister Serghetti, what is Caesar's and what is God's?'
Serena sighed inside, having realized she was foolish to believe Midas would be a gusher of information about his Arctic expeditions. 'Basically, Jesus said to pay our taxes but give God our hearts.'
'See, this is the problem with the world's monotheistic religions,' Midas said quite passionately. 'And I include the Russian Orthodox Church. They demand people's hearts. Then they demand people's hands. Then wars start. The world would be better off without religion.'
'Wars rarely start over religion,' she said diplomatically. 'Usually, they start over something two or more parties want.'
'Like land?' Midas asked.
'Or oil?' Gellar echoed.
'Yes,' said Serena. 'They simply use the cloak of religion to disguise their naked ambitions.'
'Then let's remove the masks and solve the problem. Like I am doing. By creating more oil.'
All at once Midas had made himself and technology the uniter of the world and Serena and her presumably backward faith its divider.
'Technology is no cure for evil, suffering, or death,' she reminded Midas. 'It is but a tool in the hands of fallen men and women. It cannot redeem the human heart or reconcile the peoples of the earth.'
At that the blood drained from Midas's face, as if he had seen a ghost, and the hair on the back of Serena's neck stood on end even before a familiar voice behind her said, 'Gee, Sister, how does reconciliation happen?'
Slowly, Serena turned to see Conrad Yeats standing before her in an elegant tuxedo, holding a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other. She blinked and stared at him. There was a smile on his lips but hatred in his eyes. She had no idea what he was doing there, only that with Conrad Yeats, there was no telling what he would do, and she was genuinely frightened.
