The Armageddon Conspiracy (16 page)

She was in the rear of
the Land Rover, wedged in beside an armed guard.
Breathing against
the window, she waited for the condensation to form a surface then
traced
Help Me
.
The
Land Rover made a sharp turn and her stomach lurched.
When she was
young, she always got carsick but, reaching her teens, she vowed
not to let it bother her.
If she concentrated hard enough, she
could isolate the sick feeling and pretend it existed outside her.
After that, she’d been able to go on rollercoasters and all the
fairground attractions that had been off-limits to her.
She’d lost
that gift now: the childhood nausea was firmly back.

‘
Who were you shooting
at?’
Lucy wasn’t sure her guard spoke English, but she was
determined to get something from him.

The soldier glanced at her but didn’t
answer.
He seemed uneasy, as if he found her presence
objectionable, even disturbing.
She’d been given a large black
parka jacket to keep her warm and she pulled the hood over her
head.
Her feet were freezing.
When she’d left the convent, she’d
had to run across the damp grass in her slippers.
She had no socks
on.
It was crazy, given the situation she was in, but she really
longed just to have warm feet.

Got to distract
myself
, she thought – to avoid thinking
about dead soldiers and where the living soldiers were taking her.
Her mind went back to Raphael’s mural.
As soon as she saw it, she
thought it might be the proof she’d pursued for years.
The experts
had sneered at her interpretation of the search for the Holy Grail.
‘Embarrassing,’ they said, ‘lacking any credible evidence.’
That
mural could change everything.

Her fingers reached for
the zip of her parka and she started pulling it up and down.
Why
couldn’t these critics
see
?
It was so obvious that the Grail
Quest was a quest for a very different God from the one worshipped
by Christians.
Now, with Raphael’s masterpiece, she had proof
either that her theory was wrong and the Catholic Church had no
problems with the Arthurian romances, or that something was going
on that could shake Catholicism to its foundations.
But if the
mural were perfectly orthodox, why was it shut away in a secret
vault of the tomb of one of the most controversial popes of all?
There was a much likelier explanation.
An infiltrator once led the
Catholic Church:
Pope Julius II was a
heretic
.

22

V
ernon was still
trying to take it in.
First the flash – the searing light –
followed by the thunderous boom, then silence.
Smoke obscured
everything in the TV picture.
The picture started to break
up.

The BBC’s studio anchorman reappeared.
‘I’m sorry, we’ve, uh, lost sound and vision from Washington.
I…as
you saw, there was an explosion…we’re trying to reconnect to our
reporter at the scene.
We…President Adams hasn’t…we have received
no confirmation…the bomb was hidden inside the Ark, it seems.’

‘
Jesus Christ, Adams is
dead.’
Harrington, ashen, stood up.
‘It was a trap all
along.’

‘
I told you,’ Vernon
blurted.
‘The whole thing was a set-up.
Adams couldn’t resist
playing the Saviour.
The easiest fucking target imaginable.’
He
looked at Gresnick then felt guilty.

The American had a film of tears over
his eyes.

‘
I’m sorry,’ Vernon
said.
‘That was insensitive.’

‘
I don’t give a damn
what you thought of him,’ Gresnick snapped.
‘He was my commander in
chief.’

‘
First the Pope, now
the President,’ Harrington said quietly.
‘Who’s next?’

‘
The Vice President’s
an old man with a bad heart,’ Gresnick mumbled.
‘He won’t last
long.’
He slammed his fist on the table.
‘Goddamn it.’

‘
What about the Ark?’
Vernon spoke softly to avoid aggravating Gresnick.
‘Do you think
they blew up the real thing or a fake?’

‘
We’ll have to wait for
the FBI’s forensic reports,’ Harrington answered.

Gresnick and Harrington amazed Vernon.
They had wanted so much to believe the Ark was real, to believe
that God himself would appear on his throne above the Ark and
announce that the world was saved.

‘
I need to clear my
head,’ Gresnick said, looking like he was on the verge of throwing
up.

‘
I’m sorry, colonel,’
Harrington said.
‘It must have been a nightmare to see your
President dying like that.
I can’t say I liked the man,
but…’

‘
This ends right
now.’

‘
We’ll take a half hour
time-out.’
Harrington picked up the green orb.
‘I’ll, uh, take this
to the lab.’

****

V
ernon gazed at
the phone in his private office, wondering if he should contact his
wife, but there probably wouldn’t be a working connection to
Sweden.
Besides, he would probably hear his baby gurgling in the
background and he couldn’t cope with that.
Deep down, he was
convinced he’d never see little Louise again.
Anyway, what would he
say to his wife?
The right words, any words, had long since dried
up.

Caldwell had given him the latest
situation report.
Each passing hour brought grimmer news.
Seismologists across the world were saying their equipment was
going haywire.
The Governor of California ordered the evacuation of
San Francisco after being informed the San Andreas Fault might
rupture catastrophically at any moment.

An unprecedented number of Category-5
hurricanes were forming off the east coast of America, from Boston
to Key West.
Twelve had been counted so far.
Each one released in a
day the same energy as one million Nagasaki atomic bombs.
An expert
said that if all the hurricanes merged into one superhurricane
they’d annihilate everything in their path.

Vernon still couldn’t
believe Lucy had any role in what was happening.
What would he do
if he met her again?
Those old feelings, they would overwhelm him,
wouldn’t they?
He dreaded that the last images in his mind, the
last feelings in his heart, might not be for his family but for the
woman who rejected him.
How many had suffered that same fate,
thinking of the
wrong
person at the end?

Someone hammered on his door: Gresnick.
The colonel tried to speak, but couldn’t get his words out.

Vernon smelt whisky on the American’s
breath.
‘Are you all right, colonel?
Come in and take a seat.’

‘
I don’t want a goddamn
seat,’ Gresnick snapped.
‘Both prisoners have vanished.
The green
ball has gone from the lab too.
What kind of ship are you people
running?’

‘
What are you talking
about?’

‘
Are you hard of
hearing, mister?
The prisoners have disappeared.’
He waved his
hand.
‘
Into thin air
.’

23

V
ernon, still
bristling at Gresnick’s outburst, checked the CCTV tapes for the
third time.
Engineers had confirmed there was no malfunction.
He
sat in the guardhouse studying the pictures on two monitors, one
showing the footage from Sergeant Morson’s cell and the other the
footage from Captain Ferris’s.
He froze both tapes at the same
frame.
It was impossible to concentrate with the alarm blaring out.
The corridors were full of people scurrying around, pistols in
hand.
Every exit had been sealed.
Somehow, he knew it wouldn’t make
any difference.

He scrutinised Ferris’s tape.
The
captain was alternately lying still in his bed, with the sheets
pulled over his head, or writhing underneath.
The odd thing was he
had stopped making any sounds.
On Morson’s tape, the sergeant
stared straight at Ferris through the special glass wall separating
their adjoining cells.
Far from showing any concern, he was
smiling.

Vernon moved both tapes forward, frame
by frame.
He studied Ferris’s tape in particular.
At one point,
everything was normal then a point of intense light appeared
beneath the sheets just where Ferris’s head was.
On Morson’s tape,
the sergeant was getting to his feet at that instant.
In the
background, one of the soldiers shouted something and started to
raise his Heckler & Koch machine pistol.

Vernon cursed.
Just
when he needed to see exactly what was happening, the tape showed
nothing but a dazzling light, so bright he had to turn the
monitor’s brightness down to minimum.
At the same time, the sound
cut out.
Apparently, the same thing had happened to the CCTV
pictures in the archive section just before it was destroyed.
He
was certain it was a technical problem but now he’d been assured
the equipment was in perfect working order.
That meant…what
did
it mean?
All he knew
for certain was that neither prisoner could be found.
Their guards
were dead though there wasn’t a mark on their bodies.
It appeared
they’d suffered heart attacks.
Whatever they saw, it left their
faces disfigured with – only one word fitted –
terror
; the same terror visible
earlier on the face of the dead archivist.
The two incidents had to
be related, but how?
The prisoners were unquestionably in their
cells during the attack on the archive.

The bars of Ferris’s cell weren’t
damaged.
As for Morson’s, it looked as though the door-lock had
melted, allowing the door to swing open.
There were no signs that
the prisoners had left the building, and none that they were still
inside.
So, where?
A digital keypad was used to open and close the
cell doors.
The keypad for Morson’s cell was destroyed but Ferris’s
was intact.
Vernon checked the logs to see if anyone had opened the
door since 6 p.m.
when Dr Wells last inspected the prisoner.
There
was no unauthorised access.
In fact, no access of any type.

Maybe I’ve missed
something
.
Vernon rewound the tapes to the
time of the attack on the archive.
He’d assumed that because the
two prisoners were in their cells
after
the attack they must have been
in there
during
the
attack.

Nothing strange happened on Sergeant
Morson’s tape, but Captain Ferris’s was a different matter.
Shortly
before the attack on the archive, a wisp of what looked like black
smoke emanated from under the sheets where Ferris lay.
It was
visible for only a moment then vanished.
It had either dispersed or
moved away exceptionally rapidly, too fast to be recorded on the
video.
He couldn’t make any sense of it.

‘
They’ve gone, haven’t
they?’
a voice said.

Vernon turned to see who’d entered the
guardhouse.
Hugh Wells was standing there, his face
chalk-white.

‘
I’m just checking the
tapes,’ Vernon said.

‘
You won’t find
anything.’
Wells gripped a piece of paper.
‘These things can’t be
true.
They’re myths, legends, primitive superstitions.’