The Armageddon Conspiracy (30 page)

Camlann was like an echo of Megiddo.
It
was the battle that marked the end of old Britain, the end of a way
of a life.
Was that why they were here?
Was this the place where
everything would end under a blood-red sky?
She sipped her orange
juice, and tried to stay calm.

Sergeant Morson emerged from amongst
the other soldiers.
He was wearing a scabbard, containing the sword
Lucy had found at Tintagel.
He must have seized it from Sinclair.
‘Everything OK?’
he asked.

Lucy, tuning into his
accent, realised how well spoken he was.
Ivy League
, she thought.
She’d
encountered that accent often enough at Oxford and at international
conferences.
But there was something even more odd.
It wasn’t just
the sergeant who was Ivy League; all of his men were too.
This had
to be the most unusual Special Forces unit ever – a group of Ivy
League graduates, and not a single black man amongst them, assuming
Gresnick was telling the truth and wasn’t one of
them
.

Morson looked at her in a peculiar way,
almost as if he were gazing at a famous statue in a museum,
weighing up if it lived up to expectations.

‘
I don’t suppose you’re
going to tell me what you want with me?’
Lucy surprised herself by
how unafraid she was.
When Captain Kruger made her look down into
the sea at Tintagel, she’d never known fear like it.
She doubted
she could ever be that afraid again.

‘
Later,’ Morson
replied.
‘We can’t get our trucks any closer to where we’re
heading, so we’re going on foot.’

‘
Where?’

Morson turned and walked away, barking
orders at his men.
They formed into a column, with Lucy and
Gresnick wedged in the middle, and set off along a narrow track
edged by hedgerows.
Lucy wondered where Cardinal Sinclair was and
looked up and down the line of soldiers.
She spotted him near the
back, looking grim, his hands cuffed behind his back.

Lucy breathed in hard.
There was a
delightful smell of lavender.
It took her by surprise; it was too
early for lavender, and she didn’t think it grew here anyway.
Was
everything changing somehow?
She’d always loved the Somerset
countryside.
Even now, in the sickly light, it still looked like an
idyllic rural setting, full of meadows and orchards.

After making their way past several
fields, they found the track petering out and were confronted by a
vast field of dandelion clocks.
When she was a child, Lucy loved
blowing the hairs off them and making wishes.
Now there were so
many of them they were frightening.
It was as if nature had started
to overproduce.
Growing cycles were becoming shorter.
A more
fertile world in its final hours?

A gust of wind blasted past them.
All
the dandelion seeds lifted into the air, creating a flurry that
resembled a snowstorm in one of those shake-em-about children’s
toys.
She gazed at the swirling white clouds.
They had a mesmeric
quality.
Was the whole world like this?
People could become
addicted to dying worlds, to last things, couldn’t they?

‘
Let’s go,’ Morson
yelled and they plodded over the field until they reached the
bottom of the slope.

The last time Lucy was here, she took
James for a picnic in a small clearing in the woods on the
hillside.
She told him about the history of this hill fort, about
how the Romans came here in the first century CE, destroyed the
fort and slaughtered its entire Celtic population – men, women and
children.
Arthur supposedly rebuilt the fortifications four
centuries later and created a beautiful palace in the centre of the
hill’s flat top.
Even now, the plateau was known as King Arthur’s
Palace.

They followed a winding mud track
through the woods, with steep banks on either side.
The trees
seemed much darker than she remembered.
Almost sinister.
The forest
was named Ravenswood.
After the destruction of the fort, thousands
of ravens came to live in the trees.
For centuries afterwards,
people were scared to come here.

Lucy felt something
nudging her elbow.
She turned and found Gresnick looking at her.
He
gestured upwards with his eyes.
She tilted her head up.
On the
upper branches of the trees were thousands of ravens, neither
moving nor making any sound.
They simply stared.
She’d never seen
so many together before.
The birds of
death
.
She always found them terrifying.
She recalled stories of ravens darkening the sky as they descended
on battlefields to eat the rotting flesh of the fallen.
It was the
surest sign of disasters to come.

The whole group moved quietly, as if
terrified of making any sound that might disturb the birds.
Even
though it was spring, all the leaves had fallen from the trees.
The
soldiers’ boots scrunched on the decomposing leaves.

Lucy breathed out hard
when they emerged from the trees.
She prayed she’d never see ravens
again.
They went past several large ditches and earthworks and
finally reached the plateau.
It was empty apart from the
picturesque chapel in the far corner.
Its name was most unusual
–
St Gaius
.
Lucy
had researched it several years earlier and discovered it was named
after a Roman Centurion, Gaius Cassius Longinus, the soldier who
thrust his spear into Jesus’ side as he hung on the cross, to prove
he was dead.
Some of the Saviour’s redemptive blood fell on him and
miraculously cured him of his failing eyesight.
Soon after,
Longinus left the army, became a Christian and was martyred.
One
legend claimed he came to Britain in the same party as Joseph of
Arimathea, meeting his death at this very location.
The legend
claimed he had all of his teeth pulled out, and his tongue cut off,
yet he was able to go on speaking clearly, praising Jesus right up
to the moment of his death.

The story of Longinus and his spear
fascinated Lucy for an odd reason – she thought it proved that
Jesus wasn’t dead before the spear pierced his side.
Jabbing bodies
with a spear was the standard Roman custom for checking who was
dead on a battlefield.
Dead people have no heartbeat, no blood
pressure, and so no blood flows.
Yet, in the Bible, it clearly
stated that blood and water spurted out of the wound in Jesus’
side: impossible for a dead man.
She wondered why no one had
pointed this out before, but when she checked it on the internet,
she discovered that a debate had raged for years over this precise
point.
Some people agreed with her that the spear and not the
crucifixion killed Jesus.
Others said that Jesus was indeed dead
but the spear thrust pierced his pericardium – the sac containing
watery fluid that surrounds the heart – and then entered the heart
itself, from which blood might conceivably spurt even after death.
Others produced even more elaborate medical explanations.
Nonetheless, the possibility remained that Longinus was Jesus’ true
killer.

It would be a hard
trick to turn Christ’s killer into a saint, but that’s exactly what
Longinus became.
He was the man who ensured that the scriptures
were fulfilled.
Jesus was crucified on Friday and the Jewish
Sabbath is on Saturday.
It was profane for executions to take place
on the Sabbath, so the traditional remedy was to make sure that any
crucified men died on the Friday.
The usual method was to break
their legs so they’d be unable to support their weight, their lungs
would collapse under the pressure, and they’d die of asphyxiation.
The High Priest Caiaphas intended this fate for Jesus.
But the
scriptures made two unambiguous statements about the
Messiah:
“Not one bone of his will be
broken”
and
“They
will look to the one whom they have pierced”
.

If Jesus’ legs were broken, it would
prove he wasn’t the prophesied Messiah.
Equally, if he wasn’t
pierced, he was no Messiah.
Longinus solved both problems.
Some
people claimed that as he held the spear, Longinus controlled the
fate of the world, and that all those who wielded it after him also
held destiny in their hands.

Lucy and the soldiers trudged across
the grassy plateau towards the old chapel.
The view was
spectacular, somehow enhanced by the gaudy red light.
Lucy wondered
if the sky had been red like this when the battle of Camlann took
place, if King Arthur gazed up and saw a scarlet sun.

It was obvious that
they were heading for the chapel, but why?
Were they on some sort
of pilgrimage?
What possible significance could St Gaius Longinus
have for these Delta Force deserters?
Something clicked.
Lucy
realised it wasn’t St Gaius they were interested in.
It was his spear
.

38

‘
L
ucifer?
– you
can’t possibly believe that.’
The ship was being tossed about as it
ploughed through rough water.
Vernon thrust his hands against the
walls to steady himself.

‘
So many people are in
denial,’ Kruger retorted.
‘When will they realise this is
really
happening?
Only
miracles can save us now.’

Vernon stared at
Kruger.
The signs that the world was ending were indeed everywhere.
At some level, he was convinced it was true, yet still he refused
to acknowledge it as an absolute fact.
There had to be rational
explanations for all of this, scientific solutions that could be
implemented in a short time by smart people to save the day.
It
couldn’t be all over, it just couldn’t.
And the world crisis
couldn’t,
mustn’t
,
have supernatural origins.
The idea of the Devil being behind it
was unthinkable.

‘
The helicopter got
caught in turbulence.’
Vernon feebly waved his hand.
‘A swarm of
birds hit the rotor blades.’
Desperately, he tried to construct
explanations, but each died as it came out of his mouth.

Lucifer
.
Was it possible that the
prisoner in the detention cells had transformed not into an angel
but the ultimate demon?
Then the Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub, the
Prince of Darkness had tracked them all the way from London.
All
the old, terrifying names flooded Vernon’s mind.
Nothing was darker
than that thing which had appeared in the sky in front of the
helicopter.
Maybe the creature had carried Sergeant Morson with
him, outpacing a helicopter.
What rational rules can you apply to
the irrational world of the supernatural?

‘
You
know
it’s true,’ Kruger
said.
‘You saw it as clearly as I did.’

‘
I don’t know what
you’re talking about.’
Vernon turned away.
‘I didn’t see anything.
It was too dark.’

‘
Come with me.’
Kruger
took a few steps along the narrow corridor and pushed open a door.
He disappeared into a room.

Just as Vernon was about to follow him,
the lights in the corridor flickered.
He stopped and listened.
Over
the thrumming sounds of the engines, he heard the wind howling.
The
sound was terrifying, like thousands of creatures baying.
Orchestrated by Lucifer?
The ship was creaking and shaking.

‘
What state is your
soul in?’
Kruger said as Vernon joined him in a large,
wood-panelled dining room.