The Armageddon Conspiracy (9 page)

‘
I thought you ought to
be told right away,’ Wells said to Harrington.
‘The tests we’ve
done on Captain Ferris don’t make any sense.
We haven’t made any
progress in identifying what type of radiation he’s been exposed
to, but it seems to be causing a metabolic transformation.’
He
rubbed his face nervously.
‘I mean he’s changing at a molecular
level.’

‘
I’m not
following.’

‘
Commander, I’ve never
seen anything like it.
The things that are happening to that man –
nothing in medical science can explain it.’

‘
What are you saying?’
Harrington got up from his seat and stood face to face with
Wells.

‘
Do you believe in
God?’
Wells asked.

‘
I’m sure my religious
beliefs are quite irrelevant.
Get to the point, doctor.’

‘
The prisoner’s burns
aren’t getting any worse.
In fact, they’re healing.
He’s becoming
younger again.’
Wells dabbed his forehead with a tissue.
‘All the
charred flesh has flaked off.
The skin beneath is – how shall I say
it –
translucent
.
You can practically see through him.
But there’s something else.
Symmetrical growths have appeared on each of his shoulders, almost
like – Jesus, I know how this must sound.’
He pronounced his next
words very slowly.
‘…
budding
wings
.’
He shook his head.
‘I know it’s
impossible, but…Christ, this can’t be happening.’

‘
Get a grip on
yourself,’ Harrington barked.

‘
I’m not a believer.
If
I were – no, it’s insane.’

Harrington folded his arms and turned
away from the doctor.

Wells stared at the
floor.
‘Commander, I think the prisoner is turning into…’ The pause
was painfully long.
‘…
an
angel
.’

11

I
t was some kind
of trick.
There was no other explanation.
Lucy wanted to get up
from her seat and run.
When Cardinal Sinclair brought her to the
chapel, switched on the slide projector and inserted the slide he’d
brought with him from Rome, she expected to see a conventional
Renaissance painting, but what was in front of her was a miracle:
it simply couldn’t be.
As she stared at the huge image projected
onto the back wall, she trembled.

‘
In five hundred years,
only a handful of people have seen this,’ Sinclair said.
‘No one’s
allowed into the vault where it’s kept without the Pope’s express
permission.
Raphael worked so feverishly on it that it killed him.
It was the strain and exhaustion that led to his death at just
thirty-seven.’

Lucy made a fist and pushed her
knuckles against her forehead.
She got up and stepped, almost
staggered, backwards, trying to absorb everything in the mural.
Twenty-four small panels were arranged around a large central panel
that was split in half, the upper portion showing a traditional
celestial scene of angels bathed in divine light; the lower an
image of the end of the world, focusing on the terrified faces of
masses of ordinary people as they fled from fire raining down on
them from a black, burning sky.

Of the surrounding panels, one showed
the Temple of Solomon, another the Ark of the Covenant.
There was a
picture of the moment when a Roman centurion pierced Christ’s side
with a spear; another showing the beheading of John the Baptist.
The Tree of Knowledge and the Garden of Eden were featured, and
Cain killing Abel.
One showed Jesus drinking from a chalice at the
Last Supper.

Lucy’s eyes darted from panel to panel.
There were several other conventional religious scenes, but then
things turned weird.
One panel showed King Arthur at Camelot,
another the procession of the Grail Hallows in front of the old
Fisher King in the hall of the Grail Castle, another King Arthur’s
final apocalyptic battle at Camlann.
There were a few other
Arthurian images and then several panels depicting scenes whose
significance was entirely lost on Lucy.

Arthurian Art, she
knew, never took off seriously until the Pre-Raphaelites became
obsessed with it in the 19
^th
century.
No art historian had
ever suggested that Raphael painted Arthurian scenes.
If these
images were authentic, they could revolutionise art history, maybe
history itself.

But it wasn’t those panels that kept
drawing Lucy’s gaze back to the mural.
They were improbable but not
impossible.
The mural also contained one feature for which no
explanation was conceivable.
That was the panel in the centre of
the bottom row, a panel that had nothing at all in common with
Raphael’s sublime style.

Lucy urged herself to
wake up.
This simply couldn’t be real.
What was in front of her
wasn’t just familiar, it was her
own
work.
The panel was an exact copy of that first
painting she made in her cell.

‘
I know it’s difficult
to accept,’ Sinclair said, ‘but there it is.’

Lucy, standing in her black pyjamas and
slippers, rubbed her arms.
The chapel was so cold.
She kept
rubbing, the motion growing more frantic.
Maybe she could rub away
what she was seeing, erase it from her mind.

‘
If you study the
panels,’ Sinclair remarked, ‘you’ll see that they form a narrative
as you move clockwise.
Pope Julius II died seven years before
Raphael.
We have no idea if he left Raphael with specific
instructions to create these images, or if he permitted Raphael to
use his artistic imagination.
Raphael didn’t leave any explanation
as to what the images meant.

‘
The Vatican showed the
mural to trusted experts, and not one could account for all of the
images.
Many are unlike any Julius was known to favour.
Only one
person offered any clues to what was going on.’

Lucy had taken a seat
in one of the pews.
With a jolt, she sat upright.
One second there
was nothing in her head, the next a name sprang at her, just as it
had earlier with Raphael, as though it had been waiting there for
years.
It was so bright, so vivid, it might as well have been lit
in neon.
‘
Nostradamus
,’ she said.
Why was she so certain?
It made no sense.
She
bowed her head.

The cardinal sat down beside her,
giving her a little nod of confirmation.

‘
What’s happening to
me?’
Lucy closed her eyes.
Words were bubbling up in her mind,
things she didn’t comprehend.
‘Decision…’ she said, ‘…Decision
Point.
Salvation.
Damnation.
Choose.
Destroyer or
Redeemer.’

Sinclair gazed at her.
‘Why are you
saying those things, Lucy?’

‘
I have no
idea.’

‘
Are you
afraid?’

‘
I don’t understand any
of this.
What’s going on?’

‘
It’s all there, in
your subconscious, Lucy.
You know what you have to do.’

‘
I don’t know
anything.’

‘
Lucy, the Vatican has
never revealed that it once consulted Nostradamus regarding this
mural.
They warned him under pain of death not to divulge a word.
The things he wrote down were locked away.
Only Popes and the
holders of my office have ever been granted access to his writings.
Yet, without prompting, you mentioned his name.
Every word you just
told me was used by Nostradamus.’

Lucy cradled her head.

‘
Nostradamus said the
Decision Point was when the world would be saved or destroyed by a
Chosen One.’

Lucy stood up then walked towards the
wall where the mural was being projected.
She stretched her hand
towards the panel that, somehow, belonged to her.
The projection
played over the back of her hand, rippling and twisting as she
moved her hand through it.
‘Either I reproduced an unknown work by
Raphael,’ she said, ‘or he reproduced an unknown painting by me,
five hundred years before I was born.’

‘
The Pope died a few
hours ago,’ Sinclair replied.
‘I’m supposed to be with the other
cardinals in the Sistine Chapel to elect the new Pope.
Now you can
understand why I came here instead.’

The Pope dead?
Lucy snatched her hand
back to her side and turned to face the altar.
She’d once gone to
see the Pope in the days when she was still a good Catholic, when
she still believed in all the things that now seemed so ridiculous
to her.
She’d stood in St Peter’s Square with tens of thousands of
the faithful, waiting for the papal blessing on Easter Sunday.
Now
he’d gone, just like her parents.
They all went, sooner or
later.

She again gazed at the faceless woman
floating in blue.
Why would Raphael deface his stunning work of art
with that guileless piece of work?
It couldn’t have meant anything
to him.
It had significance purely for her.
In the days when she
went scuba diving, the part of the dive she most eagerly
anticipated was being in the blue.
She used to hang there, in that
strange watery limbo, that blue world, feeling weightless, freed
from the pressures of life.
Nothing could touch her.
No one could
demand anything from her.
It was as if she’d found the perfect
place to hide.

‘
I don’t know who that
faceless woman is,’ she said quietly.
‘A figure looking for an
identity, that’s all.
It’s no one in particular.’

‘
But it couldn’t be
more obvious,’ Sinclair replied.
‘It’s
you
.’

Lucy couldn’t blame him for thinking
that.
He needed it to be her.
After coming all this way, he had no
room for mistakes.

‘
Nostradamus said
Raphael’s mural was a prophecy about the end of the world,’
Sinclair said.
‘The individual pictures are a code.
If it’s solved,
the world will be saved.
If not, everything ends.’

‘
I can’t help,’ Lucy
said.
‘Look at me: I’m in an asylum.’

Without warning, an unfamiliar noise
interrupted them and they went quiet.

Lucy was first to speak.
‘Firecrackers?’

The sounds were distant, but clear
enough.
Staccato bursts, loud bangs.
But why would anyone be
celebrating at a time like this?

Sinclair stood up then hurried to the
door, bolting it shut.

‘
What are you doing?’
Lucy felt panic rising through her.

‘
Those sounds,’
Sinclair said.
‘
It’s
gunfire
.’

12

V
ernon was
struggling to take it in.
An angel?
Of all his colleagues, Hugh
Wells was the most rational, but now he watched in astonishment as
the doctor’s hands trembled.

‘
There must be another
explanation.’
Wells flopped into a seat, clutching his
head.

Vernon glanced around the room and, for
a moment, imagined that the walls were closing in on every
side.

Commander Harrington shook his head.
Wearing his pinstriped suit like a City financier, he seemed to
Vernon to be in the wrong place and the wrong job.
Colonel Gresnick
was the only one maintaining any calm.
Wasn’t he rattled by the
thought that there might be an angel in the cell next door?

‘
What do you think,
colonel?’
Vernon asked.

‘
I haven’t filled you
in on everything I know about Section 5.’
Gresnick rolled his pen
back and forth between his fingers.
‘Originally, it had twenty
members.
By 1945, they’d been together for two years and hadn’t
suffered a single casualty.
Within a month of starting the
interrogations of the Nazi officials, nine were dead.’

‘
But wasn’t the war
practically over?’

Gresnick nodded.
He explained that
shortly before the death of the ninth man, that same man made an
astonishing accusation to General Patton.
He claimed his eight
colleagues were murdered, and his most incredible claim concerned
the identity of the murderers: the other members of Section 5.

The next day he was discovered hanged
in his room.
The official verdict was suicide.
An inquiry found
that he had been depressed for some time.
Unfiled interrogation
notes discovered amongst his possessions related a crazy story
involving a conspiracy going back ten thousand years, of which the
Nazis were supposedly the current inheritors.
The other
interrogators denied that any such questioning ever took place and
said the claims were preposterous.
The victim’s notes were taken as
firm evidence that he’d lost his mind.
There was no reason to
question the inquiry’s findings.

‘
But now things are
different, huh?’
Vernon interrupted.

‘
It’s my job not to
rule anything out.
All we can do is go on facts.
Something
unexplained is happening to Captain Ferris.
Of that, there’s no
doubt.
Anything else is speculation.’

‘
That’s right,’
Harrington said, ‘pure speculation.’
He turned back to Dr Wells.
‘Doctor, I want you to continue to monitor Ferris’s condition and
let us know immediately if there are any significant changes.
In
the meantime, I’ll post extra guards.
And Colonel Gresnick, I want
to know exactly what Section 5’s task was in 1945.
What were they
trying to discover?’

‘
Section 5 reported
directly to General Patton,’ Gresnick said.
‘Patton was obsessed
with knowing what Hitler did with the Spear of Destiny.’

‘
We’re talking
about
the
General
Patton?’
Vernon said.

‘
The man
himself.’

‘
Why would a brilliant
soldier like Patton care about an old spear?’
Even as he asked the
question, Vernon felt sweat running down his back.
He already knew
something about the Spear of Destiny.
It featured prominently in
Lucy’s book, but in a peculiar way.
It was her belief that it, and
not crucifixion, killed Jesus Christ.

‘
Mr Vernon, Patton
wasn’t a conventional general.
He believed he was the reincarnation
of Hannibal.
Also, he had highly unorthodox ideas about the
post-war situation in Europe.’

‘
Like what?’

‘
He wanted to re-arm
two Waffen SS divisions, incorporate them in his army and attack
the Soviet Union.
He believed Communism was the biggest threat
imaginable.’

‘
He was a Nazi
sympathiser?’

‘
Many people thought
so.
He died from injuries sustained in a car crash in Germany at
the end of 1945.
On an empty road in foggy conditions, his
chauffeur-driven car collided with a U.S.
military truck coming in
the opposite direction.
For no apparent reason, it swerved right
into the path of his car.
Some people didn’t think it was an
accident.’

‘
What about the Spear
of Destiny?’
Once, Vernon asked Lucy questions like that.
He
remembered how excited she became whenever she found a new piece of
evidence to fit into her jigsaw.
She was so full of life and
energy.
It was horrific to think of her now as a lunatic being
pushed around in a wheelchair.

‘
Patton supposedly
wanted to take it to America,’ Gresnick said.
‘He declared that if
the Americans owned it they would rule the world.’

‘
So why did he give it
back to the Austrians?’

‘
He didn’t.
Rumour has
it that Patton arranged for a convincing replica to be made.
That
was the one sent to Vienna.’

‘
In that case, what
happened to the real one?’

‘
From what we can make
out, it was shipped back to America and hidden in a safe location
in North Carolina.’
Gresnick put down his pen.
‘Fort Bragg, to be
exact.’

Vernon turned to Harrington, expecting
his boss to be as amazed by that revelation as he was.
Instead,
Harrington’s face had blanched.

‘
Is something wrong,
sir?’

‘
I never thought I’d
see the day,’ Harrington said slowly.
‘I assumed it was the purest
madness.
It can’t be true.’

‘
I don’t understand,
sir.’

‘
Don’t you see?
All of
this; it’s all linked.
Somehow, Hitler is reaching out from the
grave.’

‘
I beg your
pardon?’

‘
Mr Vernon, I want you
go to the archive section immediately.’
Harrington took out a
handkerchief and cleaned his spectacles.
‘I need you to bring back
one of the black files, together with its official translation.
When you get there, ask the archivist to phone me for the
authorisation code.’

‘
Which black file?’
Vernon asked.

It was Gresnick who
answered.
‘
The Cainite
Destiny
.’

13

T
he gunfire had
stopped.
Cardinal Sinclair stood at the chapel’s main door,
listening for sounds in the corridor outside.

Lucy sat in the pews, facing the altar.
She had briefly looked at the cardinal to see what he was doing,
but now she just focused on her knees, wishing she could curl up
into a tiny ball.
She was the one in the asylum, wearing just
pyjamas and slippers, but there were people out in the corridors
with guns and grenades who were much crazier than she could ever
be.

According to Sinclair, a squad of
soldiers had come for her.
He said others knew how significant she
was.
Significant?
She couldn’t imagine anyone less important.
If
she took her medication, would it all go away?
Maybe she’d taken
the wrong pills that morning.
One time she took too many and they
pumped her stomach.
Sometimes she pretended it was just an
accident.
More usually, she painted new pictures, bluer than ever,
trying to find the shade that captured her feelings that day, but
she never got close.
What colour is suicide?

‘
What soldiers?’
she
asked.

‘
If I know about you,
Lucy, then so do others.’

‘
Everything was secret.
You said so.’

‘
What we know, the
other side knows too.
That’s always been the way.
God must test us.
What would be the point otherwise?’
Sinclair glanced at the door
again.
‘I have to get you out of here.’

‘
The other side?’
Lucy
repeated.
‘What are you talking about?’
She knew this was a good
time to move, but she stayed where she was.
‘I’m not going
anywhere.’
She hadn’t left the convent for six months.
The idea of
being out
there
.
It
was bad before but now it was unthinkable.

‘
Good and evil,’
Sinclair said.
‘The other side is always just a step
behind.’

When the cardinal gripped her arms,
Lucy screamed.
‘I didn’t ask for any of this.
Get away from
me.’

There was a flash of
emotion in the cardinal’s eyes:
hate
.
Startled, Lucy tried to get to
her feet but Sinclair held her down.

‘
God Almighty.’
Lucy
recoiled.
‘You detest me.’

‘
Come on now, Lucy,
you’re frightened.
You don’t know what you’re saying.’