The Armageddon Conspiracy (67 page)

They walked through the
porch and into the
Hekal
: the holy place.
The walls were lined with cedar wood,
bearing beautiful carved cherubim, palm-trees, and flowers, all
overlaid with gold.
The floor, Sinclair said, was made of fir-wood,
again overlaid with gold, making it glint and shine with an almost
supernatural radiance.
At the far end, gold chains sealed off the
next room.

They went past the
Tables of the Showbread, six on either side, representing the
Twelve Tribes of Israel.
These were ornate
goldplated tables bearing gold dishes of bread and matching
chalices of wine, symbolizing flesh and blood.

Sinclair removed the
gold chains and they went up a marble staircase then stopped in
front of the gilt-edged,
olivewood doors of
the
Sanctum Sanctorum
– the Holy of Holies – the last stop on their
journey.

Above the doors was a
Latin inscription
Et in Arcadia
Ego
.
Sinclair pointed at it.
‘That has
nothing to do with the Temple,’ he said.
‘It’s one of Gnosticism’s
most sacred sayings, which is why we put it there.
It translates
as
And in Arcadia I
.
It means that even in an apparent paradise such as the land
of Arcadia, the Evil One is still present.
It’s also an anagram
for
I Tego Arcana Dei
, meaning
Begone!
I conceal the
secrets of God
.
I suppose you could say we
enjoyed the irony of putting that message above this shrine to
Satan.’

Turning to the others,
Sinclair said, ‘We’ve reached the final act, my brothers.
The
curtain is about to fall and never rise again.
I wish we could all
see the last performance, but there isn’t room for everyone.
The
knights, Morson and I will accompany Lucy into the Devil’s lair.
Colonel Gresnick too.
It’s only fitting that one of
them
should be present to
witness the end of all they’ve mistakenly believed in for so long.
He can represent the billions of fools who chose to live their
lives believing Satan’s lies.

‘
The rest of you will
need to remain on guard out here.
If there are any signs of
trouble, don’t hesitate to come in.
Otherwise, let me thank all of
you and wish you God’s speed.
Providence willing, we’ll shortly
meet again in paradise in the company of the True God, with all of
Satan’s horrors consigned to history, with evil forever expunged
from the universe.
Blessed are those who have ended the Devil’s
reign of terror.
This earth was born in evil, from the darkness.
With one flash of righteous light, the Sin of Sins will be
redeemed, all the jailed souls liberated, the eternal crime
expiated.’

The words drifted past
Lucy like ghosts.
They sounded so grand, so certain, yet maybe this
whole enterprise was a stupendous error, itself the work of Satan.
She remembered something the philosopher Nietzsche said:
It’s not doubt, it’s certainty which makes men
mad.

Wouldn’t that be the
real answer to humanity’s suffering?
– for everyone to doubt, to
admit they weren’t sure about anything.
Maybe there was a God,
maybe there wasn’t.
Maybe Satan existed, perhaps not.
Perhaps
nothing was good and nothing evil.
Perhaps all of the Commandments
were debatable.
After all, the Jews preached
Thou Shalt Not Kill
, yet they believed
in capital punishment by stoning, they believed in the mass
slaughter that accompanied warfare, they believed in ritual
sacrifice.
To judge them by their actions, they preached
nothing
but
killing.
Maybe Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, maybe the Bible
wasn’t the Word of God, maybe it didn’t matter in the slightest if
you didn’t keep the Sabbath holy.
Perhaps there was no need to
slaughter others because they disagreed with you, no need to burn
heretics, to cut the heads off infidels, to stone sinners to death,
to set up extermination camps, to blithely condemn endless billions
to eternal suffering in hell because their beliefs weren’t the same
as yours.
Perhaps people simply had to shrug their shoulders and
say, ‘Sorry, I just don’t know.’

Before they entered, Sinclair opened a
gold cabinet and brought out special robes for everyone to wear.
They were beautiful vestments of gold, scarlet and purple, embedded
with twelve precious stones of different colours, each bearing the
name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Apparently these were
the protective garments that the ancient Hebrew High Priests had to
wear whenever they approached the Ark.
Sinclair had left nothing to
chance.

When everyone was ready, he paused for
a moment and then, without a word, pushed open the doors and
stepped inside the Holy of Holies, brushing past veils of blue,
violet, crimson and gold.

Lucy followed with the others.
At first
she didn’t raise her eyes, resolutely staring at the floor and
wainscotting, both made from cedar overlaid with gold.
As she
lifted her gaze, the walls were the same – cedar covered with gold.
The beaten gold sheets were engraved with passages from, Lucy
presumed, the Torah.

‘
Look up,’ Sinclair
said.

Lucy stood up straight.
She was in a
room shaped like a perfect cube, every surface gleaming with gold.
There were no windows.
All the light in the room came from seven
five-branched candelabra.
There was also one seven-branched
candelabrum – the famous Menorah, the emblem of Judaism and badge
of the state of Israel.
Lucy had no doubt that this was one hundred
percent genuine, one of antiquity’s most sacred relics.

Guarding the doorway were two giant
solid gold cherubim with outspread wings that touched the walls on
either side and met in the centre of the room.

At the rear was an
extraordinary glimmering curtain made of gold leaf, drawn right
across the room.
A few feet in front of it, at the precise centre
of the Holy of Holies was the gold Ark of the Covenant itself,
every bit as wondrous as the legends proclaimed, shining like the
sun.
She’d seen many representations of it in paintings and movies,
but nothing came close to capturing its beauty.
It was
simply
divine
.
It
rested on top of a breathtaking crystal altar, transparent yet full
of shimmering iridescent lights as though a living rainbow were
trapped inside.

Around the altar, a silver pentagram
was inscribed on the floor.

‘
We’ve placed the Ark
inside the most powerful black magic symbol of them all,’ Sinclair
said.
‘Legend says Jehovah has a pentagram on his forehead.
We’re
using his own weapons against him.’

As Lucy studied the pentagram, she
realised that the interior lines of this famous symbol formed a
very familiar shape – a pentagon.
A shiver passed through her.
Was
it possible that the American military chose the pentagon design
for their most famous building because their leaders were secret
Gnostics?
It was no accident, no coincidence, was it?
This was all
real.
Thousands, tens of thousands, of men and women had conspired
over ten millennia so that she could be here at this moment to
perform this duty.
The child of destiny.

Directly beneath the Ark’s altar was an
ugly boulder that seemed inappropriate amongst so much beauty, yet
it was also magnificent and earthy.
She wondered what it was and
why it was here.

‘
So, this is it,’
Sinclair said, ‘the dwelling-place of the Creator: God, Jehovah,
Yahweh.
Or, to give him his right titles, the Demiurge, Rex Mundi,
the Lord of the Flies, the Prince of Darkness, the Devil,
Satan.’

Lucy didn’t know what to say.
She was
overcome with emotion.

‘
Everything’s in
place,’ Sinclair said.
‘In minutes, it will all be
over.’

‘
I never imagined it
would be so beautiful,’ Lucy said.
Tears were filling her eyes.
James’ voice refused to leave her head.
There’s so much beauty
.
It was almost
as though he’d seen this Holy of Holies before he died, a last
vision to take with him on his final journey.

‘
It transcends beauty,
doesn’t it?’
Sinclair said.
‘That’s how Satan works.
He makes his
material world seductive beyond our ability to resist.
This is the
sparkling net into which so many of us have fallen.
Nothing looks
as gorgeous, as
tempting
, as Satan’s world.
Only when the net closes around us do we
get the first inkling that we’ve condemned ourselves.
We are the
self-damned, those who passed the Last Judgment on ourselves.
And
only you can redeem our error and save us.’

Lucy pointed at the strange stone under
the Ark.
‘What’s that?’

‘
It’s the Bethel Stone
on which Jacob laid his head: the Stone of Destiny upon which the
Scottish kings were crowned.
We brought it here from its hiding
place in Scone in Scotland.’

‘
But what’s its
connection with the Ark of the Covenant?’

‘
In the original Temple
of Solomon, the Ark rested on a great flat limestone rock, which
still exists on Temple Mount today.
The rock is known as
Even ha-Shetiyah
.
It’s
said to be the most significant spot on earth, the exact centre of
the world.
It was the foundation stone of creation, the first brick
of the material world.
Standing on that rock, Satan summoned all
the rest of his dark creation into existence.

‘
When he was done, he
wrote his secret name on the underside of the stone then joyously
took a lump of the rock and threw it into the air.
It fell on
Bethel, and when Jacob laid his head on it long afterwards, he had
a vision of Solomon’s Temple, and of the Ark resting on the
foundation stone
.
What could be more appropriate in our recreation of Solomon’s
Temple than to place the Ark over a block of
Even ha-Shetiyah
?
– to undo creation
from where it all began.’

He signalled to his knights and four of
them, the bearers of the Grail Hallows, stepped forward.
They
placed the chalice and spear on the left of the Ark, and the dish
and sword on the right.
Sinclair himself went forward and placed
the Lucifer Stone, the true Holy Grail, on top of the Stone of
Destiny, to symbolise, he said, Lucifer’s triumph over Satan’s
Creation.

‘
There’s one more thing
you need to know about,’ Sinclair said.
‘Jehovah is
two
entities.’

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
There’s a thing called
the
Shekinah
.
Some
call it the glory or radiance of Jehovah; others say it’s the
divine manifestation of Jehovah in the material world, implying
that Jehovah doesn’t enter fully into material existence.
Some say
it’s the feminine side of Jehovah, or something akin to the
Christian Holy Spirit.
We say it’s the mask Jehovah wears to
conceal his true, repulsive nature.
When he appeared in ancient
times to Moses and the High Priests of the Temple, he used the
Shekinah to speak on his behalf.

‘
But even the best mask
slips.
The Shekinah will disappear and Jehovah will appear in his
true form.
Lucifer has said this is the moment when you must
strike.’
Sinclair pointed at the Grail Hallows.
‘The hour of
destiny is here.
Pick up the Spear of Destiny, Lucy
Galahan.’