Centurion's Rise (30 page)

Octavian pressed a few more palms while he contemplated Cicero’s words.  Finally a smile crossed his
face.  “My lot in life has improved a bit.  One bright spot about having the Consuls join my march is the additional soldiers and cavalry they bring.”

“See, not so bad after all,” Cicero said as he extended his palm to be the last to shake Senator Octavian’s hand.

“You did well, Cicero.  It will not be forgotten.”

Simon grabbed his
purse and fastened it to his belt, and then leaned over to kiss his wife on the forehead, as she held their newborn son in her arms.  “I’ll be back soon, keep an eye on our boys.”

“Where are
you off to, Simon?” his aunt insisted while tending a pot of stew over the hearth.  “You just arrived from Cyrene this morning and it’s a very long journey, especially with an infant.  You need your rest.”

“God has seen fit to bless us with another son this year,” Simon beamed on his way to the apartment’s front door.  “It’s only fitting I repay his gift with a sacrifice at the temple.”

“If that’s where you’re going then you won’t be back any time soon. The Passover Festival starts today and the streets get so crowded you’ll barely be able to move.”

“Be that as it may, I feel compelled to give thanks for our many blessings this year,” Simon said and summarily shut the door behind him to cut off any further debate.

True to his aunt’s word, the streets were unbearably congested.  He held tight to his purse of coins as he moved shoulder to shoulder through the masses.  If he were not in such a celebratory mood, the constant jostling from those around him, and the random drunkard spilling the contents of his flask down his back would have driven him half mad.  Instead, he simply focused his sights on the gold crowned edifice of the magnificent temple that rose high above the city.

After an hour of surfing the tides of humanity, Simon finally arrived at the temple’s outer walls.  He had thirteen doors from which to enter, but only one was appropriate for his visit.  Simon made his way through the Gate of the First Born and stood in the cue to purchase a first born
ox.  It was more expensive than the lamb, but the blessing of a son warranted the extra expense. 

A half hour later Simon reached the front of the line and poured out the contents of his purse.  When the priest saw the Roman copper coins spill out onto the table he immediately sprung to his feet in protest.  “You fool.  It’s sacrilege to buy a sacrifice using Roman coin.  Go to the currency changers so you may purchase your sacrifice using proper Jewish denomination.”

Simon thanked the priest profusely for saving him from making such a grave mistake and proceeded over to the currency exchange line.  While waiting he struck up a conversation with the rather disgruntled individual standing in front of him.

“Ye Gods they bend you over in this place,” the man complained.  “I get less than half the value of my Roman coins in here as I would out in the city.  Then they charge me four times as much for the same animals I could purchase out in the streets.”

“If that’s the case, you could always bring your own sacrifice into the temple and avoid the vendors,” Simon offered.

“You think so,” the man laughed through a cynical snort.  He directed Simon’s head to the right so he could watch a new comer to the temple who carried with him his own lamb for sacrifice.  “Watch and learn my friend.”

Simon wasn’t close enough to hear the words, but clearly the temple priest talking, or rather barking at the man took exception to the animal.

“This mangy thing will not do,” his new friend narrated in a mocking tone from afar.  “Its coat is too dark and it smells funny.  It’s not fit for sacrifice, but not to worry, we can sell you an appropriately noble animal fit for our God to receive.”

Sure enough, the undesirable lamb was carried off, and the man was escorted to the animal purchasing table.

“Looks like you already tried that
trick,” Simon marveled.  The man just smiled and laughed softly as he stepped up to the exchange table to make his contribution to the temple coffers.

Simon was next and then stepped to the back of the now extremely long line to purchase a sacrificial animal.  There he found the same man from the currency exchange cue.  He thumbed through the significantly reduced coin in his hand and said with a thoroughly dampened spirit, “I see what you mean about the exchange rate.” 

“It’s nothing short of robbery if you ask me,” the man said.

An hour later, Simon stood before the same priest he saw earlier with proper coin to make his purchase.  “I would like to purchase a first born ox to praise God for the birth of my son.”

“That will be thirty pieces of copper,” the priest said while looking extremely bored with the whole affair.

“I had thirty pieces, but after the exchange I only have twelve,” Simon said in dismay.

“You look like a fine young man,” the priest replied.  “A first born lamb costs fifteen copper pieces, but I will let you have it for twelve for such a joyous occasion.”

Simon didn’t want to offer his God a puny sheep, he wanted to honor him with a magnificent ox.  “I thank you for the kind gesture,” he managed while suppressing the urge to climb over the table and strangle the man in robes.  Instead, he bit his tongue and handed over his coins, all of them.

For his troubles Simon was handed a sheep that could not have been born more than a few days prior.  He didn’t want to pass judgment on its suitability, but he was pretty sure it looked exactly like the sheep he saw taken from the individual an hour earlier.  He carried the docile animal over to the Outer Altar to make his sacrifice.  The butcher didn’t even bother to look up as he took the lamb from Simon’s arms.

He flopped the innocent animal on a blood soaked table.  A priest gave a brief blessing that sounded like gibberish to Simon, and then the butcher chopped off the animal’s head with a meat clever and tossed the remains into the
altar fire.

“Next,” the butcher hollered and brushed Simon aside with a hand still wielding the murder weapon.

That was it Simon asked himself?  He entered the temple carrying a month’s wages in his purse and all he had to show for it was a half sized decapitated lamb roasting in a fire.  He pacified his anger with the knowledge that he entered the temple to make a sacrifice at the cost of thirty pieces of copper and that is what he’d done, but somehow it wasn’t enough.  He felt dirty walking out of the temple rather than cleansed and fulfilled.  Something was terribly wrong with the whole ordeal.

Simon made his way down the twelve temple steps and was pulled out of his morose mood by shouts of delight coming from the crowd
ed street in front of him.

The random commotion soon coalesced into a repeating chant, “Hosanna, Hosanna!”

At the center of all the commotion was a man wearing a brilliant white robe riding side saddle on a young colt led by a full sized donkey, presumably its mother considering how calm the colt was among the crowd. 

Those who wore cloaks removed them and lay them down to pave the man’s path.  Others plucked palm branches from nearby trees and tossed them in the donkey’s path so its hooves would not touch the dirty ground.

When the man riding the ass passed Simon, the woman next to him dropped to her knees and quoted the scripture everyone in the crowd was clambering about.  “Behold, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious.  He is humble and riding on the colt of an ass.  So said the prophet Zechariah.” 

“Messiah,
” a man hollered from behind Simon.  “Save us from these troubled times.  Cast out at last our Roman oppressors and restore the nation of Israel to peace and prosperity.”

The man riding the donkey said nothing.  He simply waved and acknowledged the crowd while his mount was led into the temple.

“Who is he?” Simon asked of the nearest person as he followed the procession into the temple.

“He’s the one, the one everyone is talking about: the miracle worker, the healer, the Messiah.”

When Simon made his way through the temple gate his ears were treated to an enraged wail that echoed off the temple walls in perpetuity.  To his surprise, Simon saw the quiet man in white hollering at the top of his lungs.

“You petty thieves, be gone from my father’s house.  This is a house of worship and praise, not profit to the priests.  Do not defile my father’s house by turning it into a place of commerce.”

“How dare you,” one of the priests shouted back, and soon his fellow priests, merchants, and other profiteers joined in.

The man in white grabbed a fist
ful of small cords and used them as a whip to drive them all out of the temple and then turned his attention to the money changers.

Seething with an unbridled anger the man in white overturned the money tables causing the coin to scatter about the courtyard.  So profound was everyone’s shock at the sight of this
brazen behavior that not a single observer made a move to scoop up part of the treasure now spilled across the temple grounds.

Simon felt a rush of excitement flow through his veins and settle into his heart.  Every cell in his
body wanted to cheer the man because he took the actions Simon himself didn’t have the courage to do.  He put an end to the blatant thievery masquerading as religious practice.  It was glorious to witness, but everyone in the temple knew there would be a reckoning.

Behind him, Simon overheard one man say to another in a mildly amused tone, “I think our job just got a lot harder.”  What an odd thing to say at that moment.

All Mark could
think about was the wrath he’d bring down upon his captor once he got free.  Mark could accept his own death; in fact, he fully expected to die in the line of duty some day.  If he harbored any other ambitions then he was in the wrong line of work.  His brother was another matter.  Jeff was a good man in a noble profession and he didn’t deserve the danger he now faced.

Mark’s rage gradually abated, allowing him to mentally grant Alfred the kudos he deserved.  He had control of the interrogation and managed to elicit an emotional outburst already from his subject.  Mark knew he needed to up his game to
gain the information he needed.

Mark cracked a knowing grin and confidently looked up at his captor once more.   “Well played.  Tapping my phone and integrating the contents of a conversation with my brother into this interrogation.  I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Interrogation?” Dr. Kranz repeated.  “Haven’t you noticed all the information is flowing your direction rather than extracted?”  Alfred suddenly staggered backwards and made a dramatic show of enlightenment hitting him.  “Oh I get it.  You thought that was all due to your clever manipulation of the conversation.” 

“What do you want?” Mark
demanded.  “If you truly are aliens, then why are you troubling yourself with little old me.” 

“We know all about you
Mark.  You’ve personally inspected the ship that crashed in Roswell New Mexico.  You’ve even performed an autopsy on one of the bodies recovered from that crash.  That’s how you came to know about the radiation frequencies Alpha and Beta as you call them.  If I’m an alien then of course I need to deal with you and your partner Frank.” 

With a flick of his head Mark gestured to the captivity cage behind him, “What about this fine pair of archeologists behind me?  Why are you involving innocent people in all of this?”

“Careful pot, you’re about to call the kettle black,” Alfred responded with all the frost of an arctic blast.  “Your crimes against the innocent are what bind us together you and I.”

“I’ve never harmed an inn
ocent person.  Threaten and intimidate perhaps, but actually harm, no; never!”

Alfred slowly took the beat up baseball cap from his head.  He examined every inch, relishing the frayed edges and discolored hues with a regretful eye.  He ran his fingers across the brim several times and looked to be on the verge of tears.  Quietly he asked, “Where were you on November 9, 1989, and what were you doing?”

Mark’s mind shifted into overdrive to recall anything remarkable about that date.  It didn’t take long for him to recognize it as the only time in 45 years that frequency Beta transmitted off its full moon schedule.  He didn’t want to divulge that information just yet so he went with the more noteworthy event of that particular date in history.   “As fortune would have it, I was at the epicenter of world events that day.  I was in Berlin and got to witness the single greatest celebration the world will ever know - the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

“We were there too,” Alfred added, still admiring his dingy headgear.

“You and Dr. Andre?”

“All of us, even my wife,” Alfred confirmed.  “Why were you in the city that day?”

“Sightseeing,” Mark unabashedly lied.

“Not on official NSA business?” Alfred pressed; an accusation rather than a question.  “You weren’t in the city investigating a certain radiation frequency reading, one that inexplicably broadcast off its usual cycle?  You didn’t detect the frequency repeatedly coming from an apartment close to the East Berlin boarder?  While Gunter Scabowski gave his fateful press conference that evening, you didn’t ransack the apartment and kidnap a woman and proceed to torture her for information about the frequency?”

Mark felt the blood in his veins run ice cold.  Alfred couldn’t know the truth.  Mark never told anyone about that night in Berlin and the only witness was dead.  He completely and thoroughly buried his error.  Mark knew he needed to sell his next lie so he went big and bold.   

“Of course not,” Mark challenged.  “I was in the press room making sure Politburo member Sca
bowski’s announcement of the border opening came out as expected.”

“So he just stood in the middle of that press conference, turned on the microphones and broadcast to all of East Germ
any that the borders to the west were opening that night?” Alfred innocently asked.

Mark didn’t know the specifics of the announcement since he was busy investigating the transmission, but he pressed on with his lie.  “I don’t recall the specifics considering how long ago it was, but what you describe is pretty accurate, and what followed directly led to the end of the cold war.  It was the
NSA at its best.”

Alfred let loose a terrorizing cackle that could only have been inspired by a fun house clown.  “That press conference was to be a closed circuit broadcast so virtually no one could see or hear it.  That’s becau
se buried in the usual hollow public relations fluff from the central committee was a vague mention of an eventual opening of the East German border.

“We s
et up a transmission to hack the Fernsehturm television tower and broadcast the press conference for the entire country to bear witness.” Alfred concluded and then looked at his partner.  “What were Scabowski’s exact words to your loaded question?”

“Posing as an Italian journalist, I asked when the new regulations would take effect,” the older man answered.  “Per the script we ‘encouraged’ Scabowski to go by, he answered ‘As far as I know effective immediately; without delay.’  That night citizens of East Berlin flooded the border checkpoints insisting they be allowed to cross, per the press conference.  That night the 28 year tyranny of that infernal barrier ended and the Soviet Union crumbled soon after as a result.  That was us at our best, and you have to admire the simple elegance of the plan don’t you?”

“Why would bringing an end to the Communist bloc concern an alien like yourself?” Mark insisted.

“That’s what we do, that’s what we’ve done for millennia on this planet,” Alfred responded.  “The competition between two superpowers provided an unparalleled leap forward in technology, but tensions were coming to a head.  One side needed to win but an all-out nuclear war would have brought four thousand years of hard work to a screeching halt.  Of course we stepped in.”

Considering how much Alfred already knew about Mark, he decided to confirm his accusations that he worked on alien affairs.  What did he have to lose at this point? 

“I always wondered why
that frequency Beta transmission went off schedule, and broadcast multiple times from the same location.  It allowed me to find the transmitter, which unfortunately self-destructed a few hours later.  A woman walked in on me in the apartment and I needed to know what she knew.”

Following his admission Mark heard nothing from his captor, not even the sound of him breathing.  He looked up at Alfred and saw a pair of eyes resting in front of a hollowed out soul.
  Earlier there was a sense of amusement in Alfred’s demeanor, but that was now gone - long gone.

“SHE WAS MY WIFE!” Alfred bellowed and then slapped Mark back and forth across the face with his tattered baseball cap.  “She gave me this cap the day before you kidnapped and tortured her to death while we set in motion the end of the Cold War.

Chin to chest Mark tried his best to dodge the whipping blows to his face.  The fabric wasn’t the problem, it was the hard plastic button on the crown doing the damage.  Finally Mark gave up the effort, held his head still, and shouted back.  “You’re lying.  You’re so young you probably weren’t even born yet when that happened; let alone married.  If you truly believe you’re a reincarnated alien, then you really are insane.  It’s impossible.”

“The Nexus makes it possible,” Alfred hollered in-between blows to the top of Mark’s head.

“This is all in your head, it is pure fiction,” Mark challenged. 

“Fiction!” Alfred repeated and then kicked Mark square in the sternum with the heel of his foot sending the chair backwards and landed Mark on the ground with his arms painfully pinned beneath the backrest. 

Alfred stormed over to a storage locker.  He threw open the door with a crash and withdrew a small handgun.  This was the end; Mark knew it for a fact.  Murder was in Alfred’s eyes, retribution would be his.

Dr. Andre moved to intercept, “No, we need him alive,” but he was too far away to alter the outcome. 

Alfred put the  muzzle to Mark’s forehead, pausing just long enough to say, “This is as real as it gets,” and pulled the trigger.

For a fraction of a second Mark heard a high pitched whine.  An instant later the searing pain in his pinned arms and cracked sternum vanished along with the spark that lit his world.  Then there was nothing, nothing at all.