The Armageddon Conspiracy

The Armageddon Conspiracy

Mike Hockney

Published by Hyperreality Books at
Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Mike Hockney

The right of Mike Hockney to be
identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and
any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

Second Edition

‘The madman sprang into
their midst and pierced them with his glances.
“Where has God
gone?”
he cried.
“I shall tell you.
We have
killed him
– you and I.
We are all his
murderers.”’

Nietzsche

Foreword

T
he archive
section of MI5’s headquarters in Thames House, London, contains a
document referred to as
The Cainite
Destiny
that to this day has never been
explained.
On 22 May 1945, shortly after the end of WWII, British
soldiers arrested SS-Sturmbannführer
Friedrich Veldt, an adjutant to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich
Himmler.
The soldiers found a document concealed in a compartment
in the heel of one of Veldt’s shoes.
As soon as MI5 officers
questioned him about it, Veldt committed suicide by biting down on
a cyanide capsule that he’d hidden in a fake tooth.

The document is a single page from
Veldt’s personal diary.
The rest of has never been recovered and is
presumed lost or destroyed.
The entry describes the moment on 12
March 1938 when Hitler took possession of the Spear of Destiny –
the lance thrust into the side of Jesus Christ at the
Crucifixion.

Reinhardt Weiss, the
German-born Cambridge University History professor employed by MI5
to translate and interpret the page, said its contents defied any
conventional version of history, or of Nazism, of which he was
aware.
He believed it was the most significant document on earth
and claimed the world’s very future depended on it.
When MI5
rejected his conclusions and dismissed
The
Cainite Destiny
as the fantastic ramblings
of a Nazi madman, Weiss gave up his job and moved to America to
prepare for what he was certain was coming.

1

24 April 2012,
London

E
ven before it
happened, people knew it was coming.
At three a.m.
GMT, everyone in
the world in every time zone felt the same sudden dread, as though
the planet had stepped over its own grave.
Not a single person
chose to speak about it.
Those who’d been woken from their sleep
closed their eyes and prayed it was just a nightmare; those who
were in their offices went back to their computers; those who were
in the middle of conversations tried to continue with what they
were saying.

By seven a.m.
in London, the city was
getting ready for what everyone prayed would be an ordinary
Tuesday.
Londoners went to work as usual, had the usual
conversations with the usual people, made all the usual journeys on
trains, buses and the Tube, performed all the usual routines.
For
the last month, a heat wave had gripped the southeast of England
and today followed the same pattern.
Most workers wore light summer
clothing to try to make the sultry conditions more bearable.
The
next few hours passed normally.

At one p.m., Senior Analyst James
Vernon left MI5’s HQ overlooking the River Thames and went for
lunch with his assistant Gary Caldwell.
As always on these hot
days, they went to the nearby open-air Italian café on the
riverbank.

Vernon tried to take his mind off the
task he and Caldwell were assigned first thing that morning.
He’d
seen many frightening intelligence reports over the years, but none
to compare with the one that had landed on their desks five hours
ago.

‘
I can’t stop thinking
about it,’ Gary Caldwell said.
‘That report…it…’

Vernon put his hand on his younger
colleague’s shoulder, trying to be supportive, but the gesture was
half-hearted.
He could barely support himself.
As he looked around,
everything appeared normal, but he knew there had never been a day
like this.

He and Caldwell, following their normal
routine, ordered identical lunches: penne arrabiata accompanied by
mineral water.
After a few minutes, Vernon excused himself and went
to the toilet.
Ever since three a.m., he’d been feeling unwell.
Not
in any specific way, in the sense that his whole life was somehow
wrong.

When he rubbed his hands together, he
was disgusted by how clammy they were.
At 5’11” and 170 pounds, he
was an athletic man – MI5’s current squash champion – and people
often commented on how rarely he sweated, but now his shirt clung
to him.
Even though he was only thirty, he liked to portray the
image of a tough, unruffled senior member of the secret services.
His colleagues nicknamed him Captain Scarlet after the TV puppet
character because of his blue eyes and short, neat black hair.
Before three a.m., he thought he was as unfazed and indestructible
as the good captain, but it was long after three and everything had
changed.

Trying to urinate, he
couldn’t manage a drop.
He turned away, went to the basin, washed
his hands then stared into the mirror.
Just for a second, he
thought he caught a glimpse of his own ghost.
F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s
line ran through his mind:
In the real dark
night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the
morning
.
Somehow, he’d become that three
o’clock man.

He stood there, his
hands shaking.
Was he having a breakdown?
Over and over in his
mind, the details of the intelligence report rewound themselves.
Vulcanologists all across the world had reported a dramatic
increase in volcanic activity.
There were approximately 1600
volcanoes in the world and they were producing alarming signs of
pre-eruption activity.
All of
them
.

Leaving the toilet, Vernon made his way
back to his table.
As he weaved between tables, several things
happened at once, almost blurring into each other so that when he
later tried to recall the precise sequence, he couldn’t.
All the
lunchers, including Caldwell, had stopped eating and were staring
at the sky.
Some were open-mouthed, others reaching for their
mobile phones.
All along both banks of the Thames, thousands of
Londoners and tourists stood perfectly still, their gaze fixed
upwards.

It took Vernon a moment to register
that it was no longer sunny.
Also, he could now hear the oddest of
sounds – an ear-grating screeching coming from directly above.
Reflexively, he clamped his hands over his ears.

Caldwell, pushing his
chair back, stood up and craned his neck upwards.
‘
Jesus fucking Christ
.’
The young man pointed his picture-phone upwards and started
to snap images.
‘There must be millions of them.
I swear, the sky
was empty a few seconds ago.’

When he looked up at the sky, Vernon
felt sick.
A witch’s curse had come to life.
There, overhead, was a
seething black mass, like a bubbling cauldron.
Birds – sparrows,
rooks, swallows, jackdaws, seagulls, starlings, pigeons, magpies,
buzzards, thrushes – were wheeling and flocking in countless
numbers.
They were flying in from every direction, huge formations
of them, great V-shapes cutting through the air, squawking,
squealing, cawing.

The sky, so blue a minute earlier, was
now visibly pink in the few places where it could still be glimpsed
through the bird formations, and was rapidly getting redder.

‘
We better get back to
HQ.’
Vernon slapped a twenty-pound note on the table and he and
Caldwell shoved their way through the throng.

As they hurried past a shop on their
route back, Vernon stopped, his attention caught by a TV in a shop
window, showing the lunchtime news.

‘
Don’t you recognise
that?’
He pointed at a building on the screen.

Caldwell shook his head.

‘
We need to hear what
they’re saying,’ Vernon said, leading Caldwell inside.

‘
Axum is Ethiopia’s
holiest city,’ a sweating reporter declared, ‘and the building
behind me its most sacred shrine.
This small, unspectacular
building is known as
The
Treasury
, and has been the centre of
obsessive curiosity for decades.
The Patriarch of Ethiopia’s
Orthodox Church has refused to make a statement, but rumours are
rife.
What is certain is that the people of Axum are inconsolable.
They’re claiming that the odd phenomena being witnessed all across
the world in the last few hours are a direct consequence of this
sacrilegious act.’

‘
Are you following any
of this?’
Caldwell asked.

‘
Sshhh,’ Vernon said.
On vacation last year, he’d had his photo taken outside the very
building now on the screen.
Like every tourist, he’d been dying to
see what was inside, but that was something permitted to only the
person who permanently lived there.

‘
Until we hear
officially from the authorities,’ the reporter went on, ‘I can’t
tell you anything more about the alleged theft of the western
world’s most potent religious symbol.
Ethiopia’s claims to possess
this holiest of objects have always been controversial, but many
experts have insisted there
is
persuasive evidence that this small building in
Axum contained the sacred treasure.’

‘
I don’t believe this.’
Vernon’s three a.m.
feeling was back worse than ever.

‘
However, for the time
being,’ the reporter concluded, ‘we are no closer to discovering if
it has indeed been stolen.
The whole world now anxiously awaits
news of its fate…the fabled Ark of the Covenant.’

2

(Three Days Later)

Situation Room, MI5
Headquarters, Thames House, London

S
ome people were
in tears, others bowing their heads in prayer.
James Vernon stared
at the matrix of TV monitors that were showing pictures coming in
from across the globe.
The Situation Room, with more than a hundred
members of staff crammed inside, was a bland, magnolia-painted
space.
Much of it resembled a call centre
filled with dozens of featureless booths and
black plastic seats.
Enormous screens on the front wall showed
virtual reality computer simulations of whatever situation was the
present focus of analysis.
Currently, several had crashed and IT
consultants were trying to resolve the problems.
The TVs remained
in full working order, though many people in the room wished they
hadn’t.

‘
God help us,’ Caldwell
groaned as a
Breaking News
sign flashed across the
Sky News
feed.
A ticker tape message
ran along the bottom of the screen saying, ‘Vatican confirms death
of Pope.
Time of world crisis.
Election of new Pope to take place
immediately.
Sacred College of Cardinals already assembling in
Sistine Chapel.’

Vernon put his hand to his head.
He
wasn’t a Catholic but somehow this news was more devastating than
the rest.
Hours earlier, he had watched the Pope giving a speech in
front of millions of stunned people packed into St Peter’s Square.
Unlike the UK’s prime minister and the American president, the Pope
had managed to capture the world’s mood.
While the politicians
talked of facts and figures and practical steps to be taken, the
Pope spoke of his own frailty, his private fears, of how he could
hardly bear to think of the suffering being endured by so many.

‘
This is humanity’s
night in Gethsemane,’ he said.
‘Our Golgotha is surely not far
away.
Only God can save us now.’
Then one of his aides handed him a
note.
As soon as he looked at it, the Pope collapsed, clutching his
heart.
The Vatican had still refused to divulge the note’s
contents.

Vernon
shuddered.
Only God can save us
now
.
Days ago he would have laughed but now
he felt like getting on his knees to pray like so many others
flocking into churches, temples, synagogues and mosques all over
the world.