The Armageddon Conspiracy (54 page)

The full moon, garishly red, threw a
queer light over the water.
A line of beautiful white swans
appeared, making their way upriver.
Even in the red-tinted
moonlight, they seemed brilliantly white, like creatures from
another reality.
They were so serene, oblivious to the chaos of the
world.
Even the river became calmer.

‘
Let’s cross,’ Lucy
said.

‘
You go first,’ James
said.

‘
No, I’ll check it
out.’
Gresnick glanced at James.
‘You don’t look so good, Vernon.
Are you sick?’

‘
I’m fine.’
But James’s
hands were trembling uncontrollably.

We don’t want to take any chances,’
Gresnick said, ‘so no more than one on the bridge at a time,
right?’
He carefully made his way across the five-metres-long rope
bridge.

Lucy prayed nothing
would go wrong.
James was as intent on the bridge as she was.
She
gazed at him and wondered how on earth she could possibly have
kissed Gresnick.
What was
wrong
with her?
She was so confused.
Should she confess?
But James would hate her.
She wanted to cross hand in hand with
him.
In the time when they went out together, she loved the way he
never refused her hand when she wanted to hold his.
So few men
realised how much women appreciated it.

‘
Christ, that didn’t
feel safe.’
Gresnick stood on the other side, looking back
anxiously.
‘You next, Vernon.’

‘
No
, Lucy next.
We need to get her over to the other
side.’

Lucy shrugged.
‘OK.’
Gingerly she stepped onto the bridge and edged her way along,
gazing straight ahead, gripping on tightly to the support
ropes.
Don’t look down
.
The bridge started to sway beneath her feet.

‘
God, it’s giving way,’
Sinclair yelled.

‘
Your hand, quick!’
Gresnick desperately stretched out towards Lucy.

She tried to grab his hand, but as she
was reaching out, one side of the bridge collapsed completely.

Screaming, she thought she was toppling
into empty space.
It took her a moment to realise she was dangling,
not falling: Gresnick had caught her.

‘
Hang on, Lucy.
I can
haul you up.’

She closed her eyes and
began praying.
Out of the
depths
.

When her eyes opened again, she was
lying on her back, with Gresnick crouching over her.
‘Are you all
right?’

She feebly waved her hand in the air
then rolled onto her stomach.
She gazed across the chasm where
James was staring at her, his face sheet-white.

‘
In God’s name, are you
OK?’
Sinclair asked.

‘
I’m all right.’
Lucy’s
voice hardly rose above a whisper.

‘
I knew it was mad to
use this bridge.’
Gresnick glared at James.
Pointing his torch at
the frayed ropes, he squinted hard.

‘
What is it?’
Sinclair
asked.

‘
I think those ropes
have been tampered with.’
Gresnick looked straight at James.
‘You
bastard
.’

‘
Don’t be ridiculous,’
Sinclair said.
‘James was next to cross.’

‘
But he held back,
didn’t he?
He knew exactly how dangerous it was.’

‘
Lucy, you can’t
possibly believe I’d ever harm you.’
James turned to Sinclair.
‘It’s an old bridge…it….’
He sounded frantic.

Lucy wondered why Gresnick would make
such an appalling accusation.
James was obviously telling the
truth.
‘It was an accident,’ she said.

Gresnick turned his back.

‘
What are we going to
do now?’
Sinclair asked.

‘
We’ll find another
way.’
James looked at Lucy.
‘We’ll meet you at the top of Jacob’s
Ladder.
Do you remember?’

‘
I
remember.’

‘
Jacob’s what?’
Gresnick snarled.

‘
It’s a long flight of
steps leading down into the gorge,’ Lucy explained.
‘James and I
went there a few years ago.’

‘
Just keep following
the trail,’ James said.
‘It’s not far.
There’s another bridge a
mile down the track on this side.
We’ll meet you as soon as we
can.’

****

‘
T
hat was a
close call back there.’
Sinclair and James were scrambling over
patches of black ice, making the rough track even more
treacherous.

James nodded.
He was trying to appear
calm, but inside he was a wreck.
When Lucy hung over the ravine for
those couple of seconds, he was simultaneously willing her to fall
and praying she wouldn’t.

When he caught her
gazing at him afterwards, with shock in her eyes, he felt
stomach-churning guilt, yet it infuriated him that Gresnick was
playing the hero.
The American had declared his willingness to be
Lucy’s assassin.
Now, it seemed, he was not only willing to do
anything to save her life, he wanted to take her as a lover.
The
Lucy Effect
–
everyone succumbed to her in the end.
The Devil’s
daughter.

‘
Strange, the bridge
collapsing like that,’ Sinclair remarked.

James was glad it was too dark for the
cardinal to see him clearly.
His eyes would betray him, he was
sure.
Sinclair was the Vatican Enforcer, the head of the
organisation once called the Inquisition.
He was certain to see his
sins, lit up in neon.
That was the purpose of the Inquisition,
after all.
To force your secrets out of you, one by one.
Nothing
concealed, the truth dragged out, ready or not.
He had to change
the subject, get the cardinal to think about something else.

‘
Cardinal, I’ve heard
people claiming that the Knights Templar discovered something in
Jerusalem – incontrovertible proof that Jesus was married to Mary
Magdalene and had a child – and that they used this evidence to
blackmail the Catholic Church and extort money to guarantee their
silence.’

Sinclair laughed.
‘It’s amazing what
credence is given to the most crackpot of theories.’

‘
What’s the
truth?’

‘
The truth is much
stranger than any fiction, and nothing is odder than the story of
how the Knights Templar were formed.
In 1118, Hugh de Payens and
eight other French noblemen turned up in Jerusalem.
King Baldwin I
greeted them warmly and, amazingly, allowed them to set up their HQ
in a prime location on Temple Mount.
For nine years, the knights
didn’t recruit a single person to fight the Muslims.
In fact, they
never left their HQ.
There’s practically no evidence of what they
actually
did
do
during those years.
Everything was shrouded in secrecy, but it
seems they spent the whole time digging in the foundations of
Solomon’s Temple that lay directly beneath their HQ.
There had
always been rumours that Solomon built secret passages, in which he
hid his great treasure.

‘
It was clear that
these knights were more interested in archaeology and treasure
hunting than in protecting any pilgrims.
What were they digging
for, that’s the question.
Something that they knew was buried in
Solomon’s secret passages?
The Ark of the Covenant, perhaps?
Remember that the sole purpose of the Temple was to house the Ark.
The Ark vanished from history over two and a half thousand years
ago, and no firm trace of it has ever been discovered, though
rumours abound.’

‘
What did they find?’
James asked.
‘I mean, the Templars were famous for their wealth.
Did they find Solomon’s treasure?’

Again, Sinclair laughed.
‘The wealth of
the Templars is no mystery.
Every recruit had to donate all of his
possessions to the Order, and many of these recruits were very
rich.
Noblemen from all across Europe made vast donations of money,
goods and land.
Don’t forget, the Templars were the celebrities of
Christendom – the poster boys to use the modern jargon – famed for
never retreating and always fighting to the last man.
They
attracted all the patrons, all the sponsors, all the money.
In
addition, they were international financiers, inventors of the
modern banking system.

‘
Far from threatening
to expose shocking revelations about Jesus to the Pope and having
their silence bought in return, the Templars didn’t breathe a
single word of what they discovered in Jerusalem.
They acknowledged
that they had looked for the Ark, but maintained they didn’t find a
thing.

‘
They were lying, of
course, as the Inquisition eventually discovered.
They confessed
that what they’d actually been searching for was a set of ancient
Gnostic parchments.
These promoted the Johannite heresy that John
the Baptist and not Jesus was the true Messiah.
It transpired that
the original nine Templars were all related to Cathar families and
it seems they were sent on a mission by Cathars to retrieve lost
documents that shed light on various Cathar mysteries.’

‘
You’re saying they
made no attempt to blackmail the Pope?’

‘
Of course not.
The
idea that they found proof of Jesus’ alleged marriage to Mary
Magdalene is laughable.
What would constitute proof?
A dusty
document?
The Vatican is full of dusty manuscripts seized from
heretics propounding every weird and wonderful heresy conceivable.
A painting of Jesus kissing Mary?
Anyone can paint.
Bones?
So what?
The world is full of them.
Nothing could possibly prove that Jesus
was married.
Even if it were written in capital letters in bold red
ink in a document called
The Gospel of
Jesus
, it still wouldn’t be credible.
Heretics have always faked evidence to spread their
lies.

‘
If nine knights
arrived in front of the Pope to claim Jesus was a married man with
a child, they wouldn’t have left the Vatican laden with treasure to
buy their silence…they wouldn’t have left the Vatican at all.
They
would have gone straight to the stake.

‘
Besides, if they had
anything remotely like proof of these crazy claims, don’t you think
they would have made them public as soon as the Vatican ordered
their arrest?
At that point, there would have been no possible
reason to hold back.
Yet not a shred of evidence appeared,
demonstrating conclusively that they didn’t have any in the first
place.

‘
No, the Templars’ game
was to pretend to be the most faithful and loyal Catholics of all,
while secretly spreading their vile heresy.
Far from claiming that
Jesus was married, they would have been the first to denounce such
an idea, thus seemingly proving how orthodox they were.
But the
Catholic Church is always vigilant, and we eventually penetrated
their secret world and exposed their heretical beliefs, practically
indistinguishable from those of the Cathars.’

‘
But didn’t I read
somewhere that the Church actually absolved the Templars of
heresy?’
James asked.

Sinclair smiled sardonically.
‘The
Church was infested with friends and allies of the Templars.
Their
corruption was everywhere, even in the highest echelons of the
Vatican.
But the Pope saw through the pro-Templar propaganda and
overturned that false verdict and rightly condemned them.’

James felt an uncomfortable affinity
with the Templars.
He knew exactly what it was like to lead a
double life.
When you conceal secrets, they start to burn through
your soul.
Sooner or later, they would melt all the way through and
out into the open where the whole world would see them.

72

L
ucy, straining
to see in the dark, gazed down the hillside.
Her parents brought
her here to Cheddar Gorge when she was ten years old and her dad
said he’d buy her ice cream if she could get to the top of Jacob’s
Ladder in under fifteen minutes.
Although she slipped a couple of
times, she made it in fewer than twelve and got a delicious
Knickerbocker Glory as her reward.

She always thought racing up the 274
narrow steps of Jacob’s Ladder was a big achievement: it was a feat
certainly beyond her now.
Even going down the steps looked
strenuous.

Up here, on a clear day, tourists got a
fantastic view of the Mendip Hills and the 300-acre Nature Reserve
on the clifftops.
The view was even better from the wooden lookout
tower.
On a summer’s day, you could glimpse the peregrine falcons
that nested in the high cliffs.
She wondered if any were still
here, or if they’d fled like the people.

It was also possible to see Glastonbury
Tor in the far distance.
In a strange way, her life had always
revolved around Glastonbury.
Her mum was always keen to tell her
about Glastonbury’s great myths and legends.
To a child, they
seemed wondrous.
It was then that she developed her lifelong
interest in esoterica.

On the summer’s day when the family
came here, they sat on the grass and had a picnic from a hamper.
Lucy’s mum told her the tale of the original Jacob’s Ladder.
Jacob,
the patriarch whose twelve sons became the founders of the twelve
tribes of Israel, was camping outdoors as he made a long journey.
He rested his head on a stone and tried to get some sleep.
He had a
dream in which he saw a ladder extending from earth to heaven, with
angels ascending and descending.

Lucy had longed to see
those angels.
As for Jacob, she disliked him when she discovered he
bought the birthright of his brother Esau for ‘a mess of pottage.’
To her child’s mind, she thought it strange that messy porridge
featured in the Bible.
Besides, it seemed nasty to steal your
brother’s birthright.
Even worse, he impersonated his brother to
get the necessary blessing of his blind father.
It was the act of a
sneak who’d do anything to achieve his goals: a cheat, a liar, a
man without a shred of morality.
The very name Jacob meant
deceiver
.

‘
The Gnostics hated
Jacob,’ Gresnick commented.

Lucy gazed at him for a moment.
They’d
hardly spoken since the incident on the bridge.
She couldn’t
believe how vile he was for accusing James.
Now, she was glad to
return to some sort of normal conversation.

‘
I didn’t know that.’
But it was no surprise.
She wasn’t a fan of Jacob
either.

‘
Israel was named after
Jacob.’

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
Don’t you remember the
Bible story about Jacob and the angel?’

‘
Of course.
Jacob
wrestled with the angel all night long.
Neither could gain any
advantage.’

‘
That’s right, but what
happened next?’