The Doomsday Key (39 page)

“He was born about the same year as the Doomsday Book was written.” Wallace let the significance of that sink in before he continued. “He started out as the abbot of Bangor but grew to become archbishop. He spent much of his time on pilgrimages.”

“So he most likely came here?”

Wallace nodded. “Malachy was an interesting man, kind of a reluctant archbishop. He preferred to travel, mingling with both the pagans and the pious of the region, spreading the word of the gospels. He moved easily between both worlds and eventually brokered a lasting peace between the Church and those who adhered to the old ways.”

Gray recalled Wallace’s earlier belief that the last of the pagans waged a final war against Christendom, possibly using the bioweapon acquired from the ancients. “Do you think a part of that brokered peace might have been knowledge of the plague and its cure, the proverbial key to the Doomsday Book?”

“His fingerprints are definitely here.” Wallace gestured toward the book. “Then there’s also the reason Malachy was canonized, why he was considered worthy of being made a saint.”

“Why’s that?”

“Ah, now there’s the rub,” Wallace said. “Malachy was known throughout his life for the miracle of
healing.
A long litany of miraculous cures is attributed to this saint.”

“Just like the history of Bardsey Island,” Gray said.

“But I also recall another story told about Malachy. From my own bonny Scotland. Malachy came traipsing through Annandale and asked the lord of the land there to spare the life of a pickpocket. The lord agreed, but ended up hanging the thief. Outraged, Malachy cursed him—and not only did the lord die, but so did everyone in his household.”

Wallace glanced significantly at Gray.

“Healing and curses,” Gray mumbled.

“It sounds like Malachy learned
something
from his new Druid friends, something the Church decided to keep secret out here.”

Rachel interrupted. “But you skipped over what Malachy was best known for.”

“Ah, you mean the prophecies,” Wallace said with a roll of his eyes.

“What prophesies?”

Rachel answered, “The prophecies of the popes. It’s said that on a pilgrimage to Rome, Malachy fell into a trance and had a vision of all the popes from his time to the end of the world. He dutifully wrote them all down.”

“Bloody nonsense,” Wallace countered. “The story goes that the Church supposedly found Malachy’s book in their archives some four hundred years
after
the man died. Likely the book was a forgery.”

“And some claim it was just a
copy
of Malachy’s original text. Either way, the descriptions of each pope have over the centuries proved to be oddly accurate. Take the last two popes. Malachy describes John Paul II as
De Labore Solis.
Or translated, ‘From the toil of the sun.’ He was born during a solar eclipse. And then there’s the current pope, Benedict XVI. Described as
De Gloria Olivae.
‘The Glory of the Olive.’ And the symbol for the Benedictine order is the olive branch.”

Wallace lifted a hand dismissively. “Just people reading too much into cryptic snippets of Latin.”

Rachel turned to Gray for understanding. “But what’s most disturbing of all is that the current pope is number one hundred and eleven on Malachy’s list. The very next pope—
Petrus Romanus
—is the last pope,
according to the prophecy. That pope will serve when the world comes to an end.”

“Then we’re all doomed,” Seichan said, voicing as much skepticism as Wallace.

“Well, I certainly am,” Rachel spat back, silencing her. “Unless we find that damned key.”

Gray kept silent. He avoided weighing in on the matter. But Rachel was right about one thing. They needed to find that key. As he stood, he contemplated the significance of finding this dead saint’s Bible sitting in a pagan sarcophagus. And more important—

“Do you think it was Saint Malachy’s finger inside that Bible?” Gray asked.

“No,” Wallace said firmly. “This sarcophagus is too old. Much too old. My guess is that it dates to the time of Stonehenge. Someone was buried here, but not Malachy.”

“Then who?” Gray asked.

Wallace shrugged. “Like I said, possibly some Neolithic royalty. Perhaps that dark pagan queen. Nonetheless, I suspect that finger bone is all that’s left of whoever was first buried here.”

“Why do you think that?”

“And where’s the rest of the body?” Rachel added.

“Moved. Probably by the Church. Maybe by Malachy himself. But they left the bone here as was traditional back then. It was a sin to move a body from its resting place unless you left a small piece behind.”

“A relic of that person,” Rachel said with a nod. “So they can continue to rest in peace. Uncle Vigor talked about that once. It was considered sacrilegious to do otherwise.”

Gray stared into the sarcophagus. “Malachy used his own Bible to preserve the relic. He must have believed that whoever was buried here was worthy of that honor.”

Gray also remembered Father Rye’s description of Marco on the day he returned from the island all upset. The young priest had spent the night praying for forgiveness. Was it because he stole the relic, thereby desecrating
a grave that had been sanctified by a saint of his own Church? And if so, what possessed him to do that? Why did he think it was so important?

Rachel raised another question of significance. “Why was the body even moved?”

Wallace offered one explanation. “Perhaps to keep safe whatever was hidden here. During Malachy’s time, England and Ireland were under constant attack by wave after wave of Viking raiders. The island, with no fortifications, would have been especially vulnerable.”

Gray nodded. “And if this crypt was where the key was kept, it must be somehow tied to the body interred here. So to preserve the knowledge, both the body and the key had to be moved to a safer location.”

“But what the hell is this key?” Seichan asked. “What are we even looking for?”

Gray looked toward the only other clue left to them by Father Giovanni. He moved over to the wall and studied the charcoal notations next to the cross. He laid a hand on the wall. What had Marco been trying to figure out?

The others gathered behind him.

He looked up at the Celtic cross. Only now did he realize something. “The cross,” he said, running his fingers down it. “It’s made out of the same stone as the sarcophagus. It even feels scoured like the crypt.”

Wallace stepped closer. “You’re right.”

Gray turned to him. “This wasn’t put here by Malachy or some other pious Christian to mark the grave.”

“It was already here.”

Gray looked at the cross with new eyes, not seeing it as a
Christian
symbol but a
pagan
one. Did it offer some clue to what the key actually was? From the notations on the wall, Father Giovanni had been trying to figure something out.

Needing to know more, Gray pointed his light at the bottom of the cross. “The set of three spirals near the base of the cross. Is there any special significance to them?”

Wallace moved over to join Gray and Rachel. “It’s called a tri-spiral. But it’s actually not
three
spirals. Only one. See how the three of them join and blend to form one sinuous pattern. This same triple pattern can be found marked on ancient standing stones across Europe. And like many pagan symbols, the Church appropriated this one, too. To the Celtic people, it represented eternal life. But to the Church, it was the perfect representation for the Holy Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. All entwined together. The three who are one.”

Gray moved his gaze up to the single spiral that sat in the middle of the cross, like the hub of a wheel.

He remembered Painter’s original briefing about the symbol. How the pagan cross and spiral were often found together, one overlapping the other. The cross was a symbol for Earth. And the spiral marked the soul’s journey, rising from this world to the next, like a curl of smoke.

Gray’s attention shifted to Father Giovanni’s markings drawn on the wall. He sensed some meaning behind the notations and lines. He could almost grasp it, but it remained tantalizingly out of reach.

Stepping closer, Gray put down his flashlight and reached to the circular section on the cross. He ran his fingertips across the scored markings.

Like spokes on a wheel.

As the thought popped into his head, he was still staring at the spiral in the center of the cross. He had compared it earlier to a wheel hub. It even looked like it was turning.

Then suddenly he knew.

Maybe he had sensed it from the beginning, but he couldn’t get past the Christian symbolism. Now, considering the cross anew and pushing aside preconceptions, he recognized what was nagging at him.

“It
is
a wheel,” he realized.

Reaching more firmly, he grasped the stone circle and turned it counterclockwise, in the direction of the curl of the spiral.

It moved!

As he turned the wheel, his eyes shifted to the calculations drawn on the wall. The cross hid a clue about the key, but to unlock it you had to know the proper code. The wheel must act like a combination lock, protecting some hidden vault where the key was once stored.

From all the calculations on the wall, Marco had been working on that proper sequence, trying to figure out the numbers to the combination.

Unfortunately, Gray realized something too late.

You only got one guess at the combination.

And he got it wrong.

A loud
boom
shook the ground under his feet. The floor suddenly dropped from under him. He grabbed for the cross and hooked his fingers onto the crossbar. Looking over a shoulder as he hung, he watched the back half of the chamber floor rise up. The entire floor was tilting—tipping away from the only exit.

The others screamed and scrambled to brace themselves.

The stone lid slid off the sarcophagus, skittered across the tilted floor,
and toppled into the gaping hole under Gray’s feet. His flashlight had already rolled into the pit. Its shine revealed a bottom covered in vicious bronze spikes, all pointed up.

The stone lid crashed and shattered against them.

Behind Gray, the floor continued to tip, going vertical, trying to dump everyone below.

Wallace and Rachel had managed to get behind the sarcophagus and brace themselves. The coffin remained in place, anchored to the floor. Seichan couldn’t reach the refuge in time. She went sliding toward the pit.

Rachel lunged out with an arm and caught the back of her jacket as she slid past. She pulled Seichan close enough so the woman could grab the edge of the sarcophagus.

Rachel continued to hold her. At the precarious moment, each woman depended on the other for her life.

As the floor tilted to full vertical, Seichan hung like Gray.

But Gray had no one holding him.

His fingers slipped, and he plummeted toward the spikes.

22
October 13, 1:13 P.M.
Svalbard, Norway

The warhead detonated on schedule.

Even hidden behind two steel doors and walls of bedrock, Painter felt the blast as if a giant had his hands over his ears, trying to crush his skull. And yet he still heard the other two seed banks’ air locks blow. From the concussive sound of it, the same giant had stamped his foot and crushed the other chambers flat.

Crouched beside their air lock, Painter heard the outer door give way and slam into the inner one with a resounding clang. But the last door held. The overpressure in the air lock had been enough to hold off the sudden blast wave.

Painter touched the steel door with relief. Its surface was warm, heated by the thermobaric’s secondary flash fire.

The lights had also been snuffed out by the blast. But the group had prepared for that. Flashlights had been passed out, and they flickered on across the chamber like candles in the dark.

“We made it,” Senator Gorman said at his side.

His voice sounded tinny to Painter’s strained ears. The others began picking themselves up off the floor. Cries of relief, even a few nervous laughs, spread through the assembled guests and workers.