Reckoning (12 page)

"Yes."

"And why did Gage allow this man to live?"

Stern shook his head. "I don't know."

An ice-blue stare fixed on him. "Was it an error, Charles? A mistake?"

Stern took his time to reply. "Gage is not the kind of man who makes mistakes," he said slowly. "I believe he made a conscious decision not to kill the operative. I don't know why. It goes against his training, against the actions of his past. But it is the only explanation that aligns with facts."

Augustus's face reflected deepening thought. He looked down again, his fingers resting lightly on the face in the photograph as if to somehow capture thoughts of the mind contained within.

"Members of The Order are already in New York," Stern continued. "Within hours they will be waiting for Gage at Simon's cathedral. And then they will wait for him to come retrieve the letter that reveals where Santacroce hid the manuscript. At that point we will capture him, as I said, and obtain the letter. Then we interrogate him to find the location of the rest. And after that we eliminate them all according to the containment plan."

Augustus continued to focus on the face in the photograph. He asked softly, "And why do you believe Gage takes a stand against us, Charles?"

The voice was so quiet Stern strained to hear it against the waves roaring beneath the cliff.

"Vengeance," Stern replied. "He wants to avenge the old priest. Or, perhaps,
Halder has convinced Gage that destroying the manuscript will also destroy our plans. It is difficult to know, for certain. But, for the most part, I believe it is vengeance. That's why Gage never worried about us monitoring his meetings with the old priest. He knew that Simon was involved in something and wanted us to know that Simon was under his protection. The old man only met with Gage to talk with him about spiritual matters, to encourage him not to return to his old life. I am convinced that Simon did not even know we were monitoring their meetings. But I believe Gage knew. He would have seen the surveillance team. He sees everything. And he met with the old man, anyway. To send us a message."

"Yes," said Augustus meditatively. "He was telling us that Simon was family. And that is why you believe Gage comes against us? For vengeance?"

"Yes," replied Stern, considering. "But vengeance is an uneven motivation. Gage's emotions will make him less effective. Although he is still proficient enough to neutralize D'Oncetta's toy soldiers, The Order will eliminate him."

"Perhaps, old friend," Augustus said quietly, still not looking up from the file.
"But I do not believe it is vengeance which motivates Gage."

Augustus stared at the photograph even longer, finally breaking his silence in a cryptic voice. "No, not for
vengeance does Gage come against us. It is absolution that he seeks."

Stern stared at the robed form. "Absolution, Augustus?"

"Yes, Charles. Absolution. Freedom. His own redemption is the treasure Gage seeks, and not vengeance."

His aristocratic face
hardened in concentration.

"Yes
, Old Simon taught him well. It is for his own salvation that Gage takes a stand against us. And he will not stop until he finds it. Not for fear, or pain, or however much suffering he must endure. His love for Simon was great, but his love for his newfound God is something more. Something more altogether."

Augustus gazed into the cold gray eyes.

"Yes ... a very dangerous man."

* * *

FOURTEEN

"A grand conspiracy, professor?"

Gage tossed another stick of wood into the fireplace with the skeptical question, sending a shower of sparks upwards into the chimney.

Malachi laughed softly, amused. "There are no grand conspiracies, Gage. Only small ones. And even the servants and emissaries, who perform their tasks so readily, do not themselves truly understand what dark forces have mastered their fate. The truth is an apparition within a fog, a specter hidden behind a haze of ancient and modern legend."

Gage settled onto the floor, leaning against the couch where Sarah casually reclined, nursing a cool glass of wine. Hours earlier they had gathered in the rustic cabin's front room, watching the somber night settle beyond the windows with oppressive cold.

Barto, a pacific calm gracing his wildly bearded face, munched meditatively on a marshmallow that he had roasted in the fire with a straightened coat hanger. A half-bag of marshmallows rested on the floor beside his chair.

Malachi leaned against the mantel, staring into the flames.

In the glow of the fire the old man seemed younger than his seventh decade. But Gage knew that the strain of their ordeal had extracted a sure measure of strength from the tall, thin frame.

"That's really not much to go on, professor," Gage muttered, not looking up. "I sort of need a name."

Malachi shook his head, apologetic. "I have none, Gage. There is a priest. Father Stanford Aquanine D'Oncetta. He is the emissary of a small, unknown consistory of cardinals. But the cardinals are only the servants of someone else, and D'Oncetta is, in truth, the lackey of whoever that may be. He is the only one I can identify. Simon could never persuade Pope Clement to tell us anymore."

"So you don't know any of these people?"

Malachi sighed. "No. I do not. I have tried. But I do not know. Neither Simon nor I have ever been able to discover even a single name besides D'Oncetta. It might be an entire council of people, or it might be only a single man. No one knows."

"Someone knows," Gage said.

Malachi looked at him. "Who?"

"Clement," replied Gage coldly.

"Yes." Malachi raised an eyebrow, regarded the muscular form reclining against the couch. "Yes, Clement knows." He stared at Gage a moment, as if divining the intention behind the quiet words.

Gage shifted, staring into the flames. "Tell me why this group wants this manuscript so badly."

A soft, bitter laugh echoed from Malachi. "That is not easy to say."

"Why?"

"Because you must first understand what they believe, Gage. Then you will understand more clearly why it is that they want the manuscript."

Gage was indifferent. "Alright. Tell me what they believe. We can start from there."

Malachi was silent, considering. "It seems clear to me some-times," he began, "and then sometimes it becomes obscured by the complexity of a million moving parts." He stared at the crackling, hissing fire, his old face bright with flame. "Did you know, Gage, that the ancient Egyptians considered the Pharaoh to be God?"

Gage nodded.

"How easy it has been for men, even from primitive times, to seek immortality in themselves," Malachi continued. "Immortality. Power. Freedom. Strength to accomplish whatever man's will would desire."

Outside, an owl's booming howl echoed in the night.

"We have traveled so short a distance in so many years," he said. "Today men stand on the shoulders of formulaic logic that leads them, without alternatives, they say, to the ultimate decision that man alone, within himself, contains the power and the secrets of Godhood. And they lean heavily upon their complicated reasoning to explain why such a decision is the only true destination of high and critical thought. But if that is true, then why have profoundly primitive cultures, inhabiting vanished civilizations long lost to the Earth, forever held this same conviction? Why? I will tell you why. Because fearful man is forever destined to approach the void, to move towards that verge which separates the now from the unknown. It is the human tendency, as Kant explained. Yet man, because he is inherently selfish and self-serving above all things, will travel no road without the full measure of what he might possess. In his self-centered dominion, man will surrender nothing that must not absolutely be surrendered. So he is faced with the dilemma of entering the next world without losing what he has gained in this one." Without humor, Malachi laughed. "A difficult thing, to be sure.

"So in ancient times men studied the Cosmos to find the bridge across the ocean of death. And he saw that the sun, in all its life-creating power, was what gave the Earth continual sustenance. Therefore, to him, the Cosmos became the source that he might use to escape death, creating within himself the power to claim eternal life while at the same time possessing all that he loved,
surrendering nothing."

Malachi glanced at them.

"A powerful temptation, if primitive. The Pharaoh was considered to be God because of his soul's divine union to the sun. He was considered more than mere man, and more than Nature. He was the ultimate Sun-Man, or Man-God, in the most natural sense. He was one with the Cosmos, holding the keys of life by the power of his will and by the power of the sun. For his very will was his life, both for the here and the hereafter. Seemingly, it was the ultimate escape from death and from moral limitations.

"You see, evil did not exist, at least not for the Man-God who found his freedom in the vast and infinite universe
, for Nature itself was neutral to good and evil. The only moral limitations that might be imposed on the Man-God were the limitations of his own, divine will. And evil could be defined as that power that prevented him from exercising that free moral will. The end purpose of his existence became, therefore, the power to create that thing that was the object of his desire.

"But at the emergence of the Hebrew God, the Man-God was confronted by his ultimate nemesis. An enemy that perfectly
defied his deific claim. So Yahweh, the Ancient of Days, became the scorned and rejected scourge of the world, despised as an enemy of the ultimate free man. The ageless collision of forces. Man and God. And men who would not kneel accused the God of Israel of being the waste product of a condemning moral code propagated by foolish men who must create an imaginary God that is beyond themselves. And Yahweh was condemned in the old world as the foolish false creation of weak men who were simply unable to survive or rule by the power of the Cosmos and by their own hand. A conflict of decision, of decided faith or non-faith. And it was on this ground of the unknowable that the battle first began."

Malachi cast Gage a frowning glance.

"I call it unknowable because this ground is ultimately the dominion of faith, Gage, where nothing can be completely under-stood empirically, and a man must decide for himself alone to believe as he would believe," he continued, solemn. "I am old, now, and I have forgotten much of what I knew. But I still understand the limitations of empirical thought. I recall all the questions of fundamental certainty that evaded the critical reason of Descartes, Augustine, Hegel, Pascal, and Kant. So I do not claim to completely understand ultimate truth, nor do I stand alone in my ignorance of it. I know that I can defend my faith as far as reason may ascend in any discipline of thought be it philosophy or theology or science or archeology. And I am certain that I hold a perfectly and ultimately reasonable faith. But, in the final plain of human reason, faith is faith and knowledge is knowledge. God always has been, and always shall remain, the ultimate mystery.

“
Always there will be fundamental questions of uncertainty that only faith may bridge. And it is because of what I know of these fundamental questions, and faith itself, that I say with confidence that reason will never fully close the void between the known and the unknowable. Faith, alone, is forever the final step." He paused. "It's true, you know, that the secret things belong to God. And yet those who worship the Man-God, or this Sun-Man of the Cosmos have, since time immemorial, fought to destroy the restricting moral influence of men who would live by the words of Yahweh. And this is because the Man-God, from the very beginning, has regarded Yahweh's very existence as a hated and mortal threat to his moral autonomy. And, for certain, the very idea of an omnipotent and holy God is an attack upon the ground of what he holds most dear: Himself.

"It is nothing unique to the history of man," Malachi sighed. "One side elects to believe that the Cosmos, or Nature, or the Superior Man himself holds the keys of eternal life. They believe that man himself should be the ultimate measure of Good and Evil. While we believe that a holy and righteous God has given man the commandment that we must worship Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and spirit, abide by this Law, and claim no moral sovereignty for ourselves. One side claims that they themselves are God as Man, the ultimate expression of what is good and right and true. The other side simply chooses to worship and serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, who proclaimed that we must worship no other God before Him."

Malachi paused, frowning.

Silence hung like a heavy cloak over the room.

"The dream of the God-Man is to decide his own moral dominion, and by the freedom that he claims, extend that moral dominion over the Earth," the old man said, distant eyes on flame. "It is a perversion of a solemn truth, for man was, indeed, created to have dominion over the Earth. But not by the might of his own hand. No, and not by the power of the politics or money or a sword." He shook his head. "No, it was by the mercy of God that man was born to subdue the Earth, remaining within the justice that God ordained.

"And it was against this dark dream of mortal cosmic dominion that Simon died resisting. Because he knew what the end of that dream would be. He remembered what oppression was wrought in the holocaust of ancient empires who held the God-Man as a
supreme being. He remembered the dynasties of Mesopotamia which worshipped the gods of the Earth; evil monarchies that forced the predatory will of the strongest upon the weak. For always the strongest rule where there is no dominion higher than man himself.

"We should learn from history; it reveals former things. In ancient worlds there were many religions that held man himself to be the all-embracing Absolute of good and evil, the decider of his own destiny by the strength of his arm. They rejected the concept of an invisible, omnipotent God who created man and then revealed Himself to man, a God who established codes of conduct that could not be altered in the fleshly domain. And, even as it is now, it was a time of decision. A time to decide by an act of will to serve the God-Man or serve the Hebrew God that, alone, breathed life into dust to make flesh, and still retained the right to decide life or death for that flesh."

Malachi shifted, released a long breath.

"Measure a god by the sacrifice he seeks. Measure a man by the prey he selects. Is it revealing that the ancient empires who worshipped the free moral mind of a master race always selected their sacrifices among the weak, the defenseless, or the poor? Is it a coincidence that all the past dynasties ruled by the God-Man, or Sun-Man, mortared their altars with the same blood? And it's true, you know.
Just as it is true that modern politicians crush down the weak to impose the perverse will of a few followers.

"From the Druids to the Massalians to the keepers of demonic Baal to Dagon to the priests of the Aztec's Xipe Topee, the Sun-God, it was always children and the weakest
that were selected for death. Always the weakest. Never the strong, no. And why is that?" Malachi turned towards them, vivid and bright. "I'll tell you why. It's because man without an omnipotent God to restrict his actions will forever serve the beast that lives so strongly within, becoming a predator over a fallen world. And, as nature demands, the strongest men become the strongest predators. And as any predator, men will select easy prey before strong. And the poorest among us, and our children, are always among the weakest, the most defenseless."

Stillness in the room was unnatural, the poise of listeners afraid to move within the dark content of the words.

"Yes, Gage, predation is the final plateau of the God-Man concept. Not love, and not mercy. For a jungle does not recognize mercy; it only recognizes strength. The strong rule and the strongest rule completely. And it is this cruel fate that has always been the end of those who find their god in Nature, or in themselves, or in the Cosmos or the Sun. Man as God. Nature as God. The Sun-Man. They cunningly devise whatever ideology that will allow them to justify their moral autonomy and their predatory lusts. A thousand faces for the same being. A thousand names to personify a god who is exactly what they want him to be. And they violently reject the unyielding moral code imposed upon man by Yahweh, a God who has always enforced a code of justice that would defend the weak, and punish the cruel."

Gage noticed that Malachi's face seemed tired. But he still needed some answers.

"And how does the manuscript work into this?"

"Our enemy believes that the manuscript reveals the names, the family lineage, and the place of birth of the ultimate God-Man, or Sun-Man," Malachi answered steadily, evenly. "And he is the one they have waited for during the long centuries. They believe that this God-Man, this superior being, will bring into reality the
perfect kingdom, their kingdom, on the Earth. They believe that this ultimate being will conquer the world by the strength of his arm, and the universe by the superiority of his mind. They believe that he will drive the archaic concept of Yahweh from the entire world, rebuilding the Earth in the image of himself. We shall all be one, they say." He shook his head. "Yes, we shall all be servants of the God-Man, which is much better than simply being servants of God. Though it seems to me a petty jealousy. The God-Man would simply have us worship him, instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He grunted, “"And this, they call
social enlightenment
..."