The Armageddon Conspiracy (19 page)

The American deserters
were stealing religious artefacts; the Catholic Church was the most
powerful religious organisation on earth.
Put those two facts
together and what did you get?
Maybe the Americans had stolen
something of special significance to the Catholic Church.
Whatever
it was, Lucy must have expert knowledge of it.
Maybe she was the
world authority.
Given the book she’d written, the identity of the
artefact seemed all too obvious –
the Holy
Grail
.

When he mentioned his idea to Gresnick,
the American nodded and grinned.
‘Could be.’
Gresnick had one of
those dazzling Hollywood smiles, with the sort of perfect teeth
that seemed impossible to an Englishman.
Vernon hated smiles like
that.
He didn’t have bad teeth exactly, but nor did he have a smile
worth mentioning.
It wouldn’t seduce women, that was for sure.
But
Lucy had a beautiful smile.
He wondered how she’d managed it.

‘
Our number one
priority is to find her,’ Gresnick said.
‘Then we’ll learn one way
or another why she’s causing so much fuss.’

As the Chinook cleared London, Vernon
felt motion sickness kicking in, but he didn’t want to show signs
of weakness in front of the others.
Something else was contributing
to his sick feeling.
He hated the idea, didn’t want it to be true,
but every time he thought of Lucy, he found himself replaying the
old emotions he hoped he’d killed.
It was horrifying to realise
that all he’d done was bury them.
Things like that couldn’t be
relied upon to stay buried – like the Holy Grail itself maybe.
Would Lucy enjoy the irony?

Perhaps there was a bigger irony.
Lucy
might be more than just depressed or traumatised.
If it turned out
she was hopelessly insane, what then?
The deserters would have no
use for her, so they might as well kill her.

Would Lucy understand what was
happening to her?
Surely that brain of hers could fire up one last
time.
She was so impressive when she was in full flow, seeing
connections where others saw chaos, cutting through pomposity and
illogic.
She didn’t care about hurting feelings when others were
wrong, which was why they treated her so viciously when they got
the chance to retaliate.
If she refused to help the deserters,
they’d threaten her, maybe torture her.
Out of sheer cussedness,
she might not cooperate.
She would have no idea how much danger she
was in.
These people wouldn’t stop.
They were ruthless killers,
veterans of many lethal missions.

And there was something particularly
odd about them.
Vernon could hardly believe it when Gresnick
revealed this singular fact, but the American assured him it was
true.
The deserters’ grandparents only wanted male children and had
handed over any daughters for adoption, while the deserters’
parents had taken active steps to ensure that they only had male
offspring: any female embryos were aborted.
They seemed to belong
to some cult of misogynists.
The lives of women, it seemed, didn’t
hold any value for them whatever.
Would Lucy’s?

27

P
roject Armageddon
, Lucy mouthed as she
stared out from the Land Rover.
Many people imagined the end coming
in shades of black.
For her, the world could end in only one way –
a blue flood.
In Orwell’s
Room
101
, she would be standing at the edge of a
blue lake, being pushed into the water.
Blue, and only blue, was
Armageddon’s colour.

‘
Where are you taking
me?’
she asked, thinking the guard would ignore her, but the reply
was instant.

‘
Tintagel.’

At first, the name
passed through Lucy as though it was never said.
She tried to
pretend it was just another name, a place on the map like any
other.
The Land Rover went over some bumps and Lucy’s head banged
against the window.
Blue rushed into her mind, a tidal wave.
For a
second, the wave froze and she saw thousands of people trapped
inside, their bodies sticking out at odd angles.
Then it moved
again, so fast it became a blur, shaking out the drowned bodies
like salt and pepper.
Tintagel
.
She’d spent so long blocking
it out of her mind, persuading herself there was no such word, no
such place.

‘
My medication,’ she
said.
‘I have to take my medicine.’
Still that torrent of blue
swirling in her mind.
The Land Rover accelerated and her stomach
lurched.

The soldier didn’t respond and just
stared out of the other window.
Earlier, he’d forbidden her from
taking anything without his permission.

Lucy pictured herself as a tiny, remote
dot in the centre of a blue ocean.
Helpless, hopeless, a speck of
dust in eternity.
If she didn’t get her medicine, she was finished.
‘I’m going to die,’ she yelled, grabbing the soldier’s arm.
The
ocean in her mind had turned to blood, a red sea under a yellow
sun, lapping onto a white beach.

The soldier glared at her then pushed
her away.
‘OK, OK, take them.’

In a flash, Lucy’s hand was inside her
pocket, snatching for her bottle of pills.
She stuffed two into her
mouth and swallowed, praying they’d kick in right away.
Within
seconds, she was feeling that familiar drowsiness.
Her mind started
to drift.
Yellows and oranges, no blues.

There was a time when Tintagel didn’t
have the same meaning for her that it did now.
Then it was just an
academic curiosity, another of the sites in southwest England that
claimed a connection with King Arthur to hook the tourists.

Tintagel Castle, in its
time, was an island stronghold built high above the crashing
Atlantic breakers, and connected to the mainland by a natural
causeway.
Some said it was Camelot itself.
Other stories claimed
Arthur was conceived here, or that Merlin the Magician was born in
a cave beneath the castle.
A legend said
that the cave was still walked by Merlin, whose voice could be
heard on stormy nights.
Merlin’s ghost supposedly stood on the
beach outside the cave’s entrance with the infant Arthur raised
high in his arms, holding him up to the moon.

Nearby, at Slaughter
Bridge, Arthur may have fought his final cataclysmic battle of
Camlann, the last of his brave knights dying
that brutal day in the thick mud
.

Lucy felt her arm being shaken and
sleepily lifted her eyes.
The Land Rover had stopped and the door
was wide open, letting in freezing air.

Captain Kruger peered down at her, his
face flushed.
‘Don’t you understand anything?
You can’t take drugs
anymore.
You need to be alert at all times.’
He tried to reach into
her pockets.

‘
Get away from me,’
Lucy shouted.
‘I’ve finished all the pills.
I threw the bottle
away.’
She tried to push him away, but he brushed her flailing
hands aside.
Grabbing her, he dragged her out of the car, lifted
her off her feet and slammed her against the front door.
He frisked
her, but didn’t find anything.
The bottle was in the breast pocket
of her pyjamas.
She almost smiled.
She knew he’d never touch
her
there
.
Not
Captain Kruger.
Not the saint, the Vatican’s superhero.

‘
I’ll never help you.
You’re crazy.’

Kruger’s eyes bulged.
He brought his
head down to hers, until their noses were almost touching.

‘
You can’t lay a finger
on me.’
Lucy felt an urge to goad him.
Hard rain was pelting down
now, driving into her face.
‘You can’t do anything to
me.’

A stinging blow exploded against her
left cheek, and her body lurched involuntarily to one side, her
legs giving way beneath her.
Lying in mud near the front wheel,
with blood in her mouth, it took her a moment to comprehend what
had happened.
‘You hit me,’ she mumbled in disbelief.

‘
I don’t have times for
stupid games,’ Kruger barked.
‘We know the precise moment when the
world will end.
Only you can stop it.’

28

V
ernon was
irritated when he glanced at Gresnick and found the American calmly
reading his files.
‘Doesn’t it get to you?’

‘
What’s
that?’

‘
We’re flying in pitch
darkness.
Aren’t you worried?’

The helicopter was vibrating so much
that Vernon’s teeth were chattering and he felt like he was inside
a washing machine.

‘
I know the pilot,’
Gresnick said.
‘He’s one of your guys now, but he used to be a
Night Stalker.’

‘
What?’
Vernon
struggled to hear over the
thwup
thwup
of the rotor blades and the
helicopter’s powerful engines.
So much for the new NASA
noise-reduction technology.
To be fair, it had made a bit of a
difference.
A year ago, he wouldn’t have been able to hear anything
at all in a helicopter.
Now, with a suitably raised voice, it was
possible to communicate.
Better than being in a nightclub, that was
for sure.
He turned and faced Gresnick straight on.

‘
Come on, you must have
heard of Night Stalkers,’ Gresnick said.
‘Black Hawk down and all
that – elite pilots, the helicopter equivalent of Delta Force,
specialising in night operations.
Some of these guys actually
prefer flying in the dark.
Their navigation systems are state of
the art.
When they look at the LCD monitors on their control
panels, the images are so clear it might as well be noon in Vegas
rather than the middle of the night in London.
They can see
everything that’s happening outside.’
He patted Vernon on the back.
‘Besides, they have those
lightweight
holographic night vision goggles – stereoscopic, total depth
perception, can see in the dark.
Much cooler than the coolest
shades.’

Vernon wasn’t convinced and
questioningly raised his eyebrows.

‘
Don’t sweat it,’
Gresnick said.
‘E
ven at night in bad
weather this bird can do 150 mph.
We’ll be
there in no time.’

Vernon sat back, trying to persuade
himself he was safe.
He couldn’t wait to get out of this helicopter
and feel solid ground under his feet again.
‘That superconspiracy
you were talking about back in Thames House,’ he said.
‘Do you
really believe there’s a group out there that’s existed for
thousands of years?
Puppetmasters controlling everyone else.’

‘
There’s a
superconspiracy all right, Mr Vernon, but these are no
puppetmasters.
They are shadow-people, operating in the darkness,
trying to achieve their aims against overwhelming odds.
That’s why
they’re the masters of codes, and steeped in secrets.
The early
Christians used all sorts of signs to recognise each other, such as
drawing a fish in the sand, but when they became the majority,
there was no further need for secret signs.
Those who control the
superconspiracy have never been in the majority.
In fact, they’ve
always been persecuted.
But they endured, and passed their secrets
down the generations, waiting for the day when their schemes could
come to fruition.’