God's Lions - House of Acerbi (43 page)

The old man exhaled before he stood and walked to the window. The sun was just beginning to rise over the mountains in the east, its orange glow infusing the room with the sleepy light of morning as the old man watched the shadows being erased from the crevices in the side of a nearby mountain.

Leo poured some more tea into his cup, wishing instead that it was coffee. “So you chose to leave your family over a matter of faith?”

“There were other reasons. You’ve probably guessed by now that I had grown very close to the woman who translated the scrolls for me. Her name was Colette, and to put it simply, we fell in love. It was a very hard time for me, because despite the fact that I was married and the head of a vast multi-national corporation, I had undergone a spiritual transformation that made it impossible for me continue leading the type of life I had been born into. I felt the tendrils of Rex Mundi trying to tear me away from the God of Light, and there was no way I was going back to my previous existence again.”

“So you just walked away?” Leo asked.

“Not exactly ... I had a plan. Over the years, the Acerbi family had made many powerful friends, friends who were not only powerful, but ruthless as well. They were capable of great evil, and if they had ever learned about my newfound faith, they would have killed not only me, but also my family. It was an easy decision, actually. I decided to simply disappear, leaving everything to my wife and child.”

“Why not take your family with you?”

Eduardo cast an understanding smile at Leo. “It was more complicated than just picking up in the middle of the night and running away. You probably don’t know this, Cardinal, but marriages in the Acerbi clan are always arranged to prevent outsiders from infiltrating our inner circle. My relationship with my wife had never been a passionate love affair, but even so, I had grown to love and respect her for the person she was, and I honestly believe she felt the same about me. I agonized for months about telling her the truth, but in the end, I realized that she would never give up her life as the pampered wife of one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. She would have shouted from the rooftops that I was insane, and my Cathar friends would have been exposed to the outside world ... something I couldn’t allow. Finally, Colette and I concocted a plan. When it came to faith, she was the stronger of the two of us. We decided that I would leave ... disappear and never return, while she would move into my chateau and become the nanny to my son. In this way, I would have someone I trusted watching over Rene, while at the same time, Colette and I would be kept apart, thus ensuring that I would not break my marriage vows ... a huge sin in the Cathar religion.”

“You never saw Colette again?” Lev asked.

“My wife remarried and was later killed in a car accident with her new husband. After she died, Colette and I were secretly married here in this very house, but she continued to live at my chateau in the Loire Valley in order to keep an eye on Rene and ensure that he was being raised properly. We rarely saw each other until Rene turned twenty-one and Colette moved back here to the valley. It was because of her love that I am here today, Gentlemen. She died ten years ago, and I have remained here in Foix all of this time, awaiting the day when we will be together again.”

Silence descended over the room as Lev pulled a cigar from his pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Make yourself at home, Professor. I love the smell of a good cigar.”

Shaking out the fire at the end of the match, Lev’s eyes narrowed as he glanced through the swirling blue smoke. “We don’t mean to rush you, Mr. Acerbi, but we’ve been led to believe that you still have contacts inside the Acerbi clan and that you have some sort of plan to stop your son. We’d like to hear it.”

The old man’s eyes took on the focused look of a warrior. “We will stop him through his greatest point of weakness ... his religion.”

“His religion?” Alon leaned forward in his chair. “I thought the Acerbi clan worshipped this Rex Mundi character.”

“They do, but they’ve concealed that fact from the rest of their followers. Those outside the family believe they are part of a new-age religion dedicated to the accumulation of wealth and power for the common good. It’s an egotistic and modernized aberration of the old Cathar religion turned inside out, with Rex Mundi secretly at its core.”

“I’m still not following you,” Leo said. “Are you saying that the Acerbis have propagated their own church, and that their followers have no idea who it is that they are really worshipping?”

“Exactly, Cardinal. I couldn’t have said it better myself. While the Acerbis pray to Rex Mundi, their followers believe they are worshiping a god of love in gatherings that look more like corporate retreats. Away from prying eyes, their rich and powerful friends gather together in the countryside to network and indulge in secret ceremonies. In fact, their ceremonies are based on those of real Cathars ... they’re almost identical ... even down to the titles they bestow upon their leaders. They wear Cathar robes to mock us, but they’ve lost sight of what the real Cathar faith is all about. In short, the Acerbis have created a cult of power and money ruled by evil, while camouflaging their entire enterprise under the guise of a new religion of peace backed by money and power.”

The three men stared at Eduardo without speaking. He had just opened up to them about a world none of them knew existed, and the reality of it had taken them all by surprise. The old man appeared to be totally honest and open in everything he had said, but he had still not revealed his plan.

“We still need to hear how you plan to stop your son.”

“I’m coming to that, Professor, but first let me say that it’s important to me that you all know I made one last attempt to save my son’s soul before agreeing to meet with you. He has received copies of the translated scrolls, and I have been praying that he would read them ... that their words would have the same effect on him as they did on me. Unfortunately, I learned that he threw them away and has even stepped up the timetable for continuing with his plan to wipe out half the world’s population. I was prepared to stop him myself, even if it meant spilling the blood of my own son, but my chance to do so has passed.”

By now, the sun had risen above the distant mountains, and as the old man turned to gaze out the window once again, his eyes glazed over. It seemed that he was looking inward instead of outward, as though nothing on the outside mattered anymore. When at last he looked back at his guests, he tried to smile, but the effort seemed too great. His face was filled with a look of total exhaustion.

“You’ll have to forgive me, Gentlemen. My mind tends to wander more frequently these days. It appears that, in my effort to prove to you that I was being truthful, I’ve left out an important part of the story.”

“What part would that be, Mr. Acerbi?” Lev asked.

“Last week I saw my son for the first time in over forty years.”

Silence descended over the three shocked men as Acerbi’s mind seemed to drift. He was looking through the window at the twisted, shadowed branches of the trees across the road. Suddenly, he jerked forward and brought his face close to the glass, as if he were trying to see through the early morning mist, looking for something hidden in the distance, waiting for him to lower his guard.

Leo was beginning to wonder if the old man was as insane as his son.

“Eduardo,” Leo waited. “Eduardo ... I don’t understand. Did you just say you saw your son?”

Acerbi leaned back from the window without answering. His expression remained vacant as he wandered over to the stove and turned on the burner to boil more water for tea. With the darkness outside now gone, their Israeli protectors were in danger of being exposed.

Was Acerbi stalling for time? Was that the reason he kept looking out the window?

As if he could read their thoughts, Acerbi suddenly switched off the fire on the stove and sat down at the table.

“I apologize for insisting that our meeting take place here. I know you are pressed for time, but you must realize that this has been very difficult for me. As a father, I have come to the realization that I must betray my own son to those who will end his life and send his soul to where it must go.”

Lev nodded sympathetically. He could see the pain in the old man’s eyes.

“Please,” Acerbi continued. “There is more you must know before I tell you of my meeting with my son. Cathar society is divided into two general categories, the
Perfecti
, or Perfects, and the
Credentes
, or Believers. Although Cathars in general reject the idea of the priesthood, the Perfecti function in some ways as the clergy in our faith. The path to entering the ranks of the Perfecti is through a ritual known as the
consolamentum
, a rite that grants redemption and liberation from this world and bestows upon the recipient the baptism of the Holy Spirit, absolution, and ordination all at the same time. The ritual consists of the laying on of hands, which symbolizes the transfer of the Holy Spirit in the manner believed to have been passed down in unbroken succession from the time of Jesus Christ. After the laying on of hands, the new Perfectus undertakes a life dedicated to following the example of Christ and the Apostles through an ascetic life of simplicity, frugality, purity and prayer. Above all, the Perfecti are dedicated to helping others find their way out of a dark land ruled by a dark lord, to a realm of light which they believe is mankind’s first source and ultimate end.”

Eduardo paused for a moment to let his lesson sink in. “I tell you all this because last week a ceremony was held at a secret location a few hundred miles from here in the French Alps. The Acerbi clan and their followers came together to witness Rene’s ordination into their inner circle in a ceremony that mimicked the sacred rite of a true Cathar
consolamentum
. Even though their little show resembled a real Cathar ceremony, the entire affair was an abhorrent and deviant excursion away from the true beliefs of the Cathars. It was dedicated instead to a god of darkness who lies in wait for us all if we shy away from the light. They had evidently gone to great lengths to copy everything down to the last detail ... even to the disgusting extreme of calling their leaders
Perfecti
.”

The old man glanced over at Leo. “Think how you would feel, Cardinal, if a group suddenly started calling themselves Catholics and began mimicking your sacred Mass and calling their leaders cardinals. Then imagine that that same group was dedicated to Satan instead of God, and that they were hijacking your religion so that they could use it to deceive. To an outsider, it would be impossible to differentiate between the two, and in the end it would destroy the true church.”

“Eduardo, please, if you don’t mind,” Lev said, watching the sun rise higher in the sky.

“I’m coming to the part you are waiting to hear, Professor. It was at this secret gathering of the Acerbi clan that I saw my son.”

Lev let the cigar droop at the corner of his mouth. “How? I mean, appearing in front of a group of people who believed you died almost forty years ago. Wasn’t that a little risky?”

“My days on this earth are rapidly coming to a close, Professor. The fear of death is not what motivates me to remain in hiding. I remain here to protect others.”

Eduardo’s eyes were suddenly blazing. He was growing weary at having to divulge sacred Cathar beliefs and explain his actions to these outsiders. It went against everything he believed in ... like an old Cold War CIA officer who was being told by his superiors to cooperate with the KGB. Although he had obviously mellowed over the years, it was becoming obvious that this former captain of industry was not enjoying his present task and that his patience was wearing thin. The look in the old man’s eyes gave warning to Lev that he should tread lightly.

“In answer to your question, Professor, I never spoke to anyone. In fact, they didn’t even know I was there. My identity was concealed by the fact that I was dressed in the hooded white robes of their leader.”

Eduardo stopped to cough some red-tinged sputum into his napkin once again before continuing. “In every ceremony, there is one leader and twelve Perfecti ... an obvious reference to the twelve apostles. The leader wears white, while the remaining twelve Perfecti wear the traditional blue robes. On the night of their ceremony, there were only eleven men dressed in blue robes, because one of them had recently died, thus creating an opening for Rene to be ordained as the twelfth member of the circle, an essential step to becoming the eventual leader. In the Acerbi clan, the twelve men they refer to as Perfecti are really more like a board of directors than a representation of the twelve apostles, and their leader is more like a CEO. In fact, he is a CEO in real life.”

“What happened to him?” Alon asked. “How did you keep the real leader from showing up so you could take his place?”

“Let’s just say he was incapacitated for the evening. It was a simple matter of intercepting him before he made it to the ceremony, allowing me to slip in at the last moment dressed in his white robes.”

“And you were able to approach Rene without raising suspicion?” Leo asked.

“During the ceremony, the leader lays his hands on the one who is about to become a new Perfecti. That’s when I slipped a copy of the scrolls to Rene, but we never spoke. However, despite my better judgment, I couldn’t resist looking into my son’s eyes. I was searching for something ... anything ... a clue. I wanted to see what kind of man he had become. That’s when I suddenly realized that Rene had somehow recognized me after all these years. I never imagined that looking into the eyes of a child I had once loved would send chills up my spine, but that’s exactly what happened before I turned and quickly left the stage.”

“And the two of you never spoke?” Leo asked.

“After I looked into his cold, black eyes, I knew there was nothing for me to say. As far as my son is concerned, I’m sure he was too shocked to speak. Seeing me must have shaken him deeply. I can only imagine the emotions he must have felt. From now on, Gentlemen, we must proceed with caution. Rene’s guard is up, but he’s off balance. I’m afraid he’s now capable of anything. Although it may seem hopeless at this stage of the game, I still find myself hoping that the words within the scrolls will have some effect on him. I’ve seen their message of love change men ... they changed me, but I’m deeply afraid that what I saw in my son’s eyes was something no words will ever change.”