The Shroud of Heaven (44 page)

He reached for the bomb, thinking that if he could carry out his original plan to remove the plutonium core, he might somehow undo the moment in which he now found himself a prisoner. Nothing happened. His physical body was completely unresponsive to the commands of his mind, or rather, the electro-chemical impulse that would instruct his limbs to move had not yet happened. Movement required time, and time was something Kismet no longer had. The only thing that could save him now was a miracle.

He once more fixed the churning heavens in his mind’s eye.
Miracle. I guess that would be your department.

But if the entity in the swirling mass of energy heard his implicit request—or if it even existed at all—it gave no indication. Nothing happened, nothing at all. The clock still read zero and time remained at a standstill.

He pondered Chiron’s words, spoken only a few minutes before—what now seemed like a lifetime ago—on the function of the tower in the schemes of the nameless conspirators who had sought to imprison the divine being. He had likened it to a knife in an open wound. Yet, the tower had only been in existence for a century. Did that somehow mean that prior to the emergence of the industrial age, God—if that was in fact what it was—had roamed freely above the terrestrial domain, doing whatever He—or It—pleased? It wasn’t too hard to reconcile the tragic wars of the twentieth century to that time period…

Forget it
, he thought.
Don’t get lost in the spiritual debate. Focus on the problem.

He realized with a start that he’d had the right idea all along. Depolarizing the tower was the solution, but how could he do it from this tesseract of time and space? How could he change the magnetic constant of a three hundred meter iron structure from the confines of a frozen moment?

“How did Thutmosis defeat the other priests who were also tapped into the Telluric energies?” Chiron had asked him in the sands of Babylon. “And how did he sustain his own connection to this power once removed from close proximity to the pyramids?”

How did Moses part the Red Sea?

Kismet’s answer had been flippant and skeptical: “
He used a stick
.”

The Eiffel Tower was that stick, the modern equivalent of Moses’ magic wand. It was the ultimate Solomon Key, built for the express purpose of manipulating the energies of the planet. But having the key was not enough. If Chiron’s supposition was correct, Moses had been privy to all the secrets of Egyptian Geomancy. Nick Kismet was no sorcerer’s apprentice. The most sophisticated tool in the world was little better than a hammer in the hands of an ignorant child.

Then he recalled an earlier conversation.

“
That’s where faith comes in
,” he had told Chiron as they contemplated sunset over Baghdad.

“Ah, yes. Faith. Jesus’ disciples asked for more faith. Do you know that what he told them? ‘If you have faith as a grain of a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.’”

Was it that simple? Did he just have to
tell
the tower—his magic staff—what to do in order to make it happen?

He could not escape the qualifier:
if you have faith
…

He did not have faith. He was a pragmatist, and his opinions and beliefs were shaped by facts—by evidence and empirical reasoning. Faith was for… faith was for people who could believe in something without proof. The simple fact was that Kismet did not have faith even as small as the grain of a mustard seed.

Jesus’ disciples asked for more faith.

He stared heavenward wondering how to phrase his request, but then it occurred to him that he already had what he needed. He had faith that an airplane would not fall from the sky because he had seen it happen. He had faith that the sun would continue to rise and set because his eyes were daily given the proof.
Faith and proof are not mutually exclusive
, he realized, grinning up at the maelstrom.
I guess I can’t ask for better proof than that
.

Okay, I believe I can do this. Now what
?

He reached out again, not for the bomb, but for the tower itself, and in his mind’s eye, there was no impediment. His hands caressed the steel as if searching for the secret switch that would unlock a hidden doorway. And then he found it.

You owe me for this.

A shudder ran through the metal skeleton as every atom of its mass suddenly began to oppose the magnetic field of the planet itself. The transformation was instantaneous—faster even than the speed of light—and the tornado of force spiraling down from the sky abruptly reversed. Something like an eagle taking to flight shrugged out of the tempest and vanished, and at the same instant, the veil separating heaven from earth was drawn aside.

Kismet couldn’t resist a satisfied smile.
Only one thing left to do now
. He turned his attention back to the spot his eyes had never left.

0:00

***

A shrill, electronic bleating noise filled the night, startling Kismet out of his reverie. A denial was still on his lips, but his whisper had already been caught away by the unrelenting wind. The timer continued to issue a rapid-fire series of beeps, signaling that the end of the countdown had arrived.

And that was all.

No explosion. No nuclear cataclysm to destroy the Eiffel Tower or the rest of Paris. Just a kitchen timer, trilling away cheerily as though the world had not just about ended.

He took a step back, wondering what to do next, and caught sight of Chiron. The Frenchman’s hands were clutching the wound in his chest, a futile effort to stem the geyser of blood that carried away his life force with each prodigious spurt. But something about his eyes told Kismet that Chiron had finally found peace. He found himself compelled to kneel at the dying man’s side.

Chiron’s mouth moved, trying to form words, but there was no sound. Kismet leaned close, and the old man smiled weakly. “So much to tell you,” he whispered.

Kismet felt an inexplicable rage well up. The old scientist was as good as dead, yet he felt no pity. Chiron had come within a whisper of carrying out an unimaginable atrocity—at the very least, the death of tens of thousands in a nuclear fireball, at worst, the eradication of all life on earth. “Why?”

“I had to know, Nick. She always believed, but I could not. I had to put Him to the test.”

“Him? You did all this to see if God really exists?”

“Rather arrogant of me, don’t you think? Challenging God to show himself and save the world?” He coughed and blood streamed between his lips. “I’ve certainly paid the price, don’t you think? Do you suppose I’ll go to Hell?”

Something in the simple question broke through Kismet’s wrath. He tried to answer, but there were no words. There was nothing he could say to ease the man’s passage. He shook his head, unsure of what he meant by the gesture.

Chiron managed a chuckle. “All this to see God, and instead it seems I’ll meet His opposite number instead.”

Kismet felt his throat tighten. “Was it worth it?”

Something changed deep in the old man’s eyes, and Kismet knew his last breath was not far off. “I got my answer, Nick. He revealed himself. He used you to save His world.”

Kismet decided not to waste Chiron’s remaining seconds of life arguing the point.

“And now I am at peace, Nick. I know that she is with Him. She is in a place of sublime happiness. I know that now.” Another gurgling breath was drawn. “Oh, Nick. She must be so proud of you. There’s so much I should have told you. So much…”

Kismet reached out to take his hand, not caring if the old man misinterpreted the action as a sign of forgiveness. Maybe it was. As Pierre Chiron slipped out of the world, Kismet understood why even the condemned murderer is granted absolution. No one should die unforgiven.

He stayed there a long time with the man who had been for many years his close friend and mentor, and for a few brief hours, his greatest enemy. Later, much later, he remembered that the rest of the world was still waiting for news of its fate. He eased Chiron’s cold form to the steel deck and moved to the edge of the observation deck where he waved the “all clear” to the anxious observers stationed below.

It didn’t take long for Rebecca and her team to reach him at the summit. Her hard eyes were expressionless as she surveyed the aftermath of the struggle with Saeed. “What happened?”

It was too simple a query to address the events of the last few minutes. He shook his head wearily. He knew he would have to explain everything, and fully intended to do so, but there was one last bit of unfinished business to attend.

Every night, crowds of tourists flocked to the Butte Montmartre, both to visit the splendid Basilique du Sacré Coeur and to take in the awe-inspiring view of the city of lights. None of the vacationers there that night were aware of the crisis at the Eiffel Tower, nor would they ever know any more than that a fire had occurred at the summit of the monument and that the tower had been briefly closed to the public. They did however get a taste of the excitement when a French military helicopter descended on the lawn and shattered the quiet with the thunderous beat of its rotor blades.

Inside the basilica, a few eyebrows were raised, but the thick marble walls muffled most of the tumult. Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Buttrick was intimately familiar with the sound, but failed to grasp its significance. He continued playing the part of the tourist, idly taking in the majesty of the elaborate depiction of Christ with arms outstretched, reputedly one of the world’s largest mosaic artworks, situated above the choir. Nearly two hours had passed since Marie had received the call directing them to proceed with all haste to Montmartre, and he was itching to know why. Marie had been perfunctorily silent, but he had barely noticed. His thoughts were repeatedly drawn back to the trouble his inquiry into Kismet’s past had caused.

“Nick!”

Marie’s subdued cry startled Buttrick, but he whirled on his heel, searching for the man she had identified. Kismet stood framed in the entry, a grave expression on his haggard face. Buttrick didn’t know the other man that well, but he knew that look. He was instantly on his guard.

Marie moved away from his side and glided toward Kismet, evidently unaware of any tension. She unhesitatingly gave him a gentle hug. “What did you learn?”

Kismet replied softly, almost too softly for Buttrick to hear. “Pierre is dead. Saeed killed him.”

“Saeed? Who is that?”

Buttrick didn’t know the answer to Marie’s question, but thought that she had asked it a little too quickly.

“It’s over, Marie. Or should I call you Miriam?”

Her demeanor reflected appropriate confusion at the statement, but neither man was fooled. Buttrick stepped closer. “What the hell’s going on here?”

Before Kismet could answer however, Marie’s mask fell away, to be replaced by a smile that was at once both guilty and mocking. “It was the helicopter, wasn’t it? That’s when you figured it out.”

“I think I knew all along. I knew the person who killed Aziz was a woman when we fought at the museum.”

Buttrick suddenly understood, and the gravity of the revelation sent him reeling. “Museum? You….”

“I’ll admit, your shrinking violet routine had me fooled. It didn’t help that there was a better suspect. But when it came down to survival, your true colors came through. You produced a gun out of nowhere and started using it like you knew what you were doing. When you shot that man in the cavern where we found the helicopter, it was exactly the same way you killed Aziz: two shots to the chest, one to the head. But you let the other man live.”

“He was unarmed.”

“He was also your accomplice. Colonel Saeed Tariq Al-Sharaf, a former Iraqi intelligence officer who had retired to a life of luxury on the Riviera after discovering a trove of artifacts dating from the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian emperor who conquered Palestine in the sixth century BC and razed the Temple of Solomon.

“Saeed needed someone in a position of authority to grease the wheels of his black-market artifact trade, and when he was approached by Marie Villaneauve, personal assistant to the director of the GHC, he must have thought it was a gift from God.” He chuckled mordantly. “I suppose in a way it was.

“Your story about learning to fly in the military set off the warning bells. France didn’t have compulsory military service for females when you would have been of age, but Israel did. You should have seen Saeed’s face when I told him you were a Mossad agent.”

“You killed my men,” Buttrick snarled. Kismet’s revelations had torn away the bandages of his own guilt and the shared trust Marie had been cultivating now seemed like so much salt in the wound.

When she turned to him however, her expression had shed every trace of condescension. “I never meant for that to happen, Jon.”

Kismet continued. “Saeed ordered you to kill Aziz because he knew that Aziz would point us toward him. You were still playing Saeed, hoping to get a line on where those artifacts might be stored, hoping against hope that somewhere in his treasure house, you might find the holy relics of Solomon’s temple. Alive or dead, Aziz was of no consequence, so you accepted the assignment. But then I walked in and ruined everything.”

“Everything that happened after that was a horrible mistake,” she admitted, still directing her words to Buttrick. “I did not intend to harm anyone but the target. What happened to your men was… regrettable.”

Even now, confronted with the terrible truth, Marie was still trying to win him over. Kismet saw it, too. “Just tell me one thing. You had a silenced weapon. Why didn’t you just kill me and save yourself all that trouble?”

Her eyes swung to meet his gaze. “I don’t know. I never understood why it was so important to him that I not harm you.”

Buttrick drew in a sharp breath, and Marie realized too late that she had played into Kismet’s hands. She took a step back, and then seemingly from out of nowhere, drew a small automatic pistol and aimed it at Kismet. “But I’m not following those orders any more.”