The Armageddon Conspiracy (27 page)

The soldier who’d guarded her in the
Land Rover was first to reach her.
She thought he was going to
scream at her, but instead he bent down to look at Kruger.
Two
soldiers grabbed her and dragged her back the way they’d come.
Other soldiers took cover behind the castle’s ruined walls and
fired machine gun bursts into the darkness.
Some of the bullets
formed glowing arcs across the sky.
Lucy tried to remember what
name was given to bullets like that.
Tracer?
They were incredibly
beautiful, like speeding fireflies.
The night glowed.

The soldiers pushed her down the rough
path towards the little beach that lay beneath the cliffs, adjacent
to ‘Merlin’s Cave’, the great hollow under Tintagel Castle where
legend said Merlin was born.

Cardinal Sinclair was already there on
the beach with several soldiers.
Waving torches, they were standing
beside five motorised dinghies that had been dragged onto the
beach.
Kruger must have arranged for them to be picked up here so
that they could continue their journey by sea.
There was probably a
ship waiting for them off the coast.
Lucy shook her head.
If they
thought she was getting on a ship, they were crazy.
The sea was a
forbidden zone, a graveyard with waves for headstones.

Staring at her bloody hands, she wanted
to throw up.
Kruger would still be alive if it weren’t for her.
She
had to get the blood off, but she didn’t want to go near the sea.
Turning with her torch, she spotted a pool amongst the rocks.
Something glinted in the water.
The soldiers shouted at her as she
hurried towards it, but she ignored them.

Kneeling down at the edge of the pool,
she dipped her hands in.
The water was freezing cold and she let
out a gasp.
After rinsing off the blood, she scooped up the water
and splashed it over face.

‘
Get into the dinghy,’
one of the soldiers yelled at her.
‘Stay low, for Christ’s sake.
There’s a sniper out there.’

Again, she ignored him.
Shining her
torch into the water, she looked for the glinting object.
She had
an inkling of what it was, but it seemed impossible.
Her heart was
pounding.

There
.

It had got itself
tangled amongst some pebbles.
She breathed in hard.
Frantically at
first, then more slowly, she cleared away the pebbles until the
object lay in clear view.
Mother of
Mercy
.
First Kruger, now this.
She didn’t
want to look at the object, to be reminded of everything it
represented.
Tears welled in her eyes, stinging and burning.
A
single word was engraved on the silver medallion gleaming up at her
from the pool –
Lucy
.

Could she bear to touch it?
Maybe it
would take some of her pain away.
Closing her eyes, she pulled it
out.
Perhaps she should hurl it into the sea where it belonged.
It
needed all the water in the world to dilute the emotions it
contained.
She still remembered how amazed she was when her
father’s body was found without his medallion on its chain.
She
never saw him without it.
Even when he went diving, he wore it.
Now, clasping it against her heart, she bowed her head.
All over
again, she was in the blue, being dragged down to oblivion.

Her eyes flashed open.
The water in the pool was rippling.
She felt something strange in
the air, just as she had on the clifftop.
Something
was here,
watching
.

She glanced back at the dinghies.
She
needed to get out of here, but the sea was out of the question.
Even if she had the nerve to go near the water, the conditions were
getting wilder.
The soldiers in the dinghies screamed at her to get
in.
All around, bullets slammed into the sand and sea from
machine-gun fire from the clifftops.

A flare exploded high over the beach,
throwing a pink glow over Tintagel Castle.
The front of Merlin’s
Cave lit up.

Someone gripped one of Lucy’s arms: her
guard from the Land Rover.
His face, caught in her torchbeam as she
twisted round, was raging.

‘
What do you think
you’re doing?
We can’t let you be captured.’

He had the same intensity as Kruger.
Were all the Swiss Guards like this?

‘
I’m not going with
you.
‘The water…I can’t do it.’

The soldier stood
there, seemingly unsure what to do.
‘Only one person believed in
you,’ he said.
‘The rest of us thought the whole thing was crazy,
but the captain said that the moment he saw you he knew there was
no mistake – you were
the
one
.’

‘
What?’

‘
What really gets me is
that he admired you.
You had an inner strength, he said.
Now he’s
given his life for you.’

Captain Kruger admired her?
Lucy shook
her head.
As for inner strength, she couldn’t imagine anyone
weaker.

The soldier stared up at the cliff
where Kruger died.
‘I wish the sniper had got you instead.’
Grabbing her hand, he tried to pull away.

Lucy dug her heels into the damp sand.
Got to get away.
Kicking the soldier in the leg, she broke free and
ran towards Merlin’s Cave.
She heard a shout from above and all the
shooting stopped, but all of her attention was focused on the cave.
There, she would be safe, away from the hissing sea, from all of
the soldiers, from whatever monstrous thing was out there.
Several
Swiss Guards leapt out of the dinghies and sprinted after her.

She reached the cave just ahead of
them.
She only had a second or two to sweep her torchbeam round the
stone walls to find a hiding place.
Spotting a small recess in the
cave wall, she threw herself into it, forming herself into a tight
ball.
But the Swiss Guards saw her immediately, grabbed her legs
and tried to haul her out.
Ferociously, she kicked back.
Her hands
reached for anything to grab onto.
As her fingers stretched out,
they made contact with something.
It was hard and regular,
man-made, jammed into the wall of the recess.
The very moment she
touched it, an electric current surged through her.

She closed her eyes, trying to shut out
the images that now flooded her mind: arid landscapes, Roman
soldiers, ancient palaces, bearded prophets.
What was happening to
her?
This object was concealed here many centuries ago, she
thought.
Someone had created a perfect hiding place for it using a
natural fault in the cave wall.
She kept pulling, and more and more
of the object slid out with practically no resistance.
She scarcely
knew what she was doing, but she couldn’t stop herself.
The object
was getting heavier, and she guessed it was several feet long.
As
the Swiss Guards dragged her out, her hands fully locked round the
object and she pulled it with her, freeing it from its hiding
place.

When her eyes opened, the Swiss Guards
were staring down at her.
Their mouths had fallen open.
No one
moved.
They just stood there.
Cardinal Sinclair was with them.
Without warning, he lowered himself onto one knee and made the sign
of the cross.
All the others did the same.
They had a reverential
look in their eyes.

Had they gone mad?
Lucy was still
holding whatever it was she’d pulled from the recess.
Several
torches pointed down at it, and it glinted in their light.
She
wanted to rub her eyes.
In her hand was a sword in mint condition.
She knew the Arthurian legend better than anyone.
Arthur was the
rightful king because he drew a sword from a stone.
Now she’d done
that exact same thing.
But this sword didn’t belong to any English
knight.
It wasn’t even European.
The grip was made of gold plates
engraved with ornate designs.
There was no crossguard
characteristic of medieval European swords.
The gleaming blade had
Latin writing down one edge, and Aramaic down the other.
Lucy
suspected it was from ancient Judea when the Romans ruled
there…from about two thousand years ago.

‘
There’s no doubt now,’
the cardinal said.
‘She’s the one.’

‘
It’s not what you
think.
I found it, that’s all.’
Lucy was terrified of that look in
their eyes.

‘
No one but you could
have found that sword,’ her guard said.
‘Right in front of us, you
pulled it from the stone.’

‘
Stop resisting, Lucy,’
Sinclair said.
‘There’s no mistake.’
He leaned down and gently
released her fingers from the hilt of the sword.
Raising the sword,
he kissed the blade.
It was such an odd gesture for a cardinal, a
man of peace.
‘The
One
,’ he said again.

The One?
Lucy Galahan –
the Messiah, the saviour of the world, the Redeemer?
Insane
.
She’d come from a
mental asylum, but that didn’t make her any crazier than these
people.
The world needed a saint, a genius, a leader of men.
It
didn’t need her.

‘
Get back to the
dinghies,’ her guard shouted.
‘We’re leaving.’

The others got to their feet and ran
out of Merlin’s Cave.
Sinclair trailed behind, clutching the
three-feet-long sword.

Lucy was left alone with her guard.
His
eyes were filling with tears.

‘
Captain Kruger said
that once we reached Tintagel you’d answer every doubt,’ he
said.

Lucy trembled.
Captain
Kruger’s words came back to her:
Only the
chosen one can do what no other can
.

‘
Oh my God,’ she
said.

The guard seemed transfixed.
‘My
brother didn’t die in vain.’

Brother
?
Lucy gazed at the soldier’s
face and only now did she see the resemblance.
She felt herself
choking.
Taking the soldier’s free hand, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry.
Your brother…’

‘
Come on.’
He helped
her to her feet.

She was dazed as they
emerged from the cave.
The din was incredible.
Bullets were again
peppering the sand and water.
Tracer fire lit up the night.
Trapped
.
It was impossible
to escape from here.

When they tried to reach the others,
Lucy’s boots sunk into the boggy sand and she slumped forward onto
her face.
The shooting from the cliffs immediately stopped.

All she wanted to do was lie there.
She
was soaked through and the wind was freezing her to the bone, but
anything was preferable to going near those dinghies.
What sort of
Messiah was she?
Scared of the sea, scared of going back and even
more scared of going forward.

Kruger’s brother hauled her to her
feet.
‘If you’re afraid of the sea, don’t look.’
He grabbed the
hood of her parka and pulled it over the front of her head.
Manhandling her, he bundled her into the nearest dinghy.

Lucy closed her eyes and tried to shut
out every sensation.
A second later she heard Sinclair screaming
that the sword had been shot out of his hand.
He was desperate to
retrieve it.