The Armageddon Conspiracy (31 page)

Vernon didn’t respond.
How could he
answer a question like that?
He stared instead at a projector
sitting on a table, pointing at the far wall.
He guessed it was the
same projector he’d noticed the SAS soldier carrying at Lucy’s
convent.

‘
What’s that doing
here?’
he asked.

Kruger went to one of the small
portholes and gazed out.
‘God works in mysterious ways, his wonders
to perform.’
He explained that one of the SAS survivors had
insisted on saving the projector from the helicopter wreckage,
despite the fighting going on all around him.
‘The trooper said he
was given specific instructions from someone called Colonel
Gresnick.’

I knew it, I
knew
.
It was obvious to
Vernon that Gresnick was following his own agenda.
‘What did
Gresnick say?’
he asked.

‘
He told all of the SAS
men to look for anything unusual in the convent.
He said he was
particularly interested in strange paintings, parchments and books.
Above all, antique objects such as swords, cups, dishes and
spears.’

The Grail Hallows!
Did Gresnick
seriously think they had somehow found their way into Lucy’s
convent?
Why hadn’t he discussed it with him?
As for pictures, did
Gresnick mean Lucy’s?
There were dozens of them.

Kruger turned and
pointed at the back of the room.
A collection of amateurish
paintings was pinned to the wall, all showing a female figure
against a blue background.
Lucy’s
paintings
.

‘
The trooper said he
grabbed a few from behind the headboard of Lucy’s bed,’ Kruger
explained.

They had large crease marks on them.
The trooper must have simply folded them and stuffed them inside
his jacket.

The ship was struggling in the heavy
sea, and Vernon again had to hold on to prevent himself toppling
forward.
The engines seemed much louder, working overtime.

Kruger gestured at a chair and invited
Vernon to sit down.

‘
It’s not Lucy’s
paintings I wanted you to see, Mr Vernon, but the slide that was
inside this projector.
My guess is that Cardinal Sinclair brought
it from the Vatican to show Lucy.’
He paused.
‘I assume you knew
the cardinal was in England.’

Vernon nodded, but it
still astonished him that such a prominent figure was mixed up in
this given what was happening back in Rome.
Sinclair, as the
Vatican’s Number Two, was a strong favourite to become the new
Pope.
Why would he jeopardise his chance, probably lose it
completely, to be with Lucy?
Was she
that
important?

‘
We found the cardinal
in the convent with Lucy,’ Kruger went on.
‘He said he was on a
special mission from Rome, just as we were.’

‘
But you didn’t know he
was there, did you?
And nor did he know about you.’

Kruger didn’t reply, but motioned at
Vernon to face forward.

Hours earlier, Vernon imagined, Lucy
must have sat just like this, waiting for Cardinal Sinclair to show
her his slide.
It felt comforting somehow, as if he were physically
connected to her again.

‘
Lucy…she’s all right,
isn’t she?’
Vernon tapped the side of his head.
‘I mean up
here.’

‘
We weren’t sure what
to expect when we arrived at the convent.
It was hard to imagine
that Lucy could be of any use to us if she were mentally ill, but
it was obvious right away that she’d made a good
recovery.’

Good
recovery
, Vernon mouthed.
He’d begun to
form a convenient theory that when Lucy dumped him it was the first
sign of her breakdown.
If she were back to anything like her old
self – God, what would he do if she wanted to take him back?
He’d
throw his wife aside and even his beautiful baby to be with Lucy
again.
No point in denying it.
What sort of person did that make
him?
Selfish?
Callous?
Disloyal?
A fraud?
Those were the least of
it.
A terrible husband, a terrible father, a man who broke the most
sacred of vows.
No kind of hero.
But to spend a few hours – maybe
his last – with Lucy, he was prepared to become the vilest of men.
Love’s price, he supposed.
Nothing is more guaranteed to debase a
man than love.

In his schooldays, he
had a particular dislike of poetry.
Only one poem ever made an
impression on him.
La Belle Dame Sans
Merci
by Keats:
The
beautiful lady without mercy
.
An
unidentified passer-by asks a distraught knight what’s wrong.
The
broken knight tells his woeful tale.
He loved a beautiful lady who
abandoned him.
Now, in the darkness of a great forest, he’s fading
away, the will to live stolen from him by the mysterious beauty.
All the birds in the trees have stopped singing.

Even as a school kid, even though he
knew nothing of love, Vernon felt that knight’s pain.
Maybe that
was the way poetry worked – it predicted your future.
When Lucy
dumped him, he stepped into that tragic knight’s armour.
He was in
the same iron prison, locked in the same strange, twilight forest,
vainly waiting like the knight for the birds to sing.

Kruger switched on the projector and an
image of a stunning Renaissance painting appeared on the far
wall.

Vernon gazed at it in
amazement.
He twisted round to look at Lucy’s pictures on the wall
behind then stared again at the masterpiece in front of him.
Almost
involuntarily, he raised his hand and pointed at the central panel
on the bottom of the projected image.
‘
How
?’
he said then fell
silent.

39

‘
I
t’s a miracle,
isn’t it?’
Kruger’s voice was full of wonder.
‘What you’re looking
at is a five-hundred-year-old mural by Raphael, hidden in a secret
vault in the tomb of Pope Julius II.’

‘
But…’ Vernon still
couldn’t take it in.
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
This
couldn’t be.

‘
I can’t even begin to
guess how this is possible,’ Kruger said.
‘Lucy couldn’t have known
anything about Raphael’s mural.
But just look at that panel.
It’s
the first thing you look at because it’s so out of place.
It
certainly isn’t in Raphael’s style.
It’s inconceivable that he
painted anything so amateurish.
Yet there it is.
The
impossible
panel.’

Vernon opened his eyes again, his gaze
switching to the small portholes at the side of the room.
The sea
was smashing against the ship as if it were trying to break in.

‘
Even Cardinal Sinclair
wasn’t supposed to know about this mural,’ Kruger said.

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
We were told the Pope
forbade him from looking at it.’

‘
I don’t understand.’
Vernon was shocked.
If the Pope didn’t trust the enforcer of
Catholic doctrine, how could anyone be trusted?
But maybe there was
more to it.
Had Sinclair trusted the Pope?
These Swiss Guards were
on an exceptionally unusual mission.
It stank, frankly.
The Swiss
Guard never left the Vatican.
Could
they
be trusted?

‘
Wasn’t Sinclair the
Pope’s right-hand man?’
Vernon asked.
‘Everyone said he was a
shoe-in to become the next Pope.’

‘
The Pope only allowed
one other man to see the mural.
My brother – Captain Jurgen
Kruger.’

‘
Is he here
too?’

‘
My brother’s dead.’
Kruger’s face blanched.
‘He was the leader of this mission.
A
sniper shot him while he was with Lucy on the cliffs at Tintagel.
You arrived in your helicopter soon afterwards.’

‘
I’m sorry.
It must be
hard for you.’

‘
It will be hard for
all of us.
My brother was an exceptional man.
He always knew what
to do.
The rest of us are lost without him.’

‘
What did your brother
think about Sinclair?’

‘
He didn’t trust him.
My brother found the Pope’s death highly suspicious.’

‘
You can’t be
suggesting Sinclair had anything to do with it.
The Pope was handed
a note with bad news and he suffered a heart attack.
It’s not
mysterious.’

‘
These are the
strangest of times.
Soon all of our loyalties will be tested.
This
is when we will find out who we really are, what we truly believe
in.’

Vernon shuddered.
He was already
finding out who he was, and he didn’t much like what he saw.

‘
My brother believed in
Lucy,’ Kruger said.
‘He gave us a detailed briefing on her before
we arrived in England.
We know that you were her only serious
boyfriend.
From what my brother could make out, Lucy never stopped
loving you, despite what you may think.
You’re invaluable to us, Mr
Vernon.
You can help us get Lucy back.’

Get Lucy
back
.
That was everything, wasn’t it?
Sergeant Morson said Lucy was the most special person in the world.
When he first heard those words, Vernon thought they were absurd.
Now it was obvious how true they were.
He remembered one of the
best days he spent with her.
They sat on a bench gazing out towards
one of Cornwall’s most famous sights – St Michael’s Mount.
It was a
wondrous castle on a high mound, a couple of hundred yards out to
sea, and could only be reached at low tide.
It was such a lovely
day.
They sat for hours holding hands, hardly speaking.
Then Lucy
kissed him and told him how much she loved him.
Was that the kiss
of a Messiah?

She was his very own
Holy Grail.
It was odd that she spent so much time thinking about
it, writing about it, discussing it.
When you became obsessed with
something, did you become
it
?

But everyone wanted to get their hands
on the Grail.
Lucy was now the most precious commodity of all.
That
was why Colonel Gresnick was so interested in her.
He was another
who couldn’t be trusted – the man who looked like a Hollywood star,
and too well versed in myths and legends.
He and Lucy could no
doubt talk for months on end.
He would fascinate Lucy.
Would she
find him attractive?
The answer was obvious.

Vernon’s face flushed with anger.
In
his mind, he had an image of Gresnick kissing Lucy.
Yet the colonel
had threatened to kill her.
There was no way those two could get
together.
Anyway, maybe Gresnick died in the helicopter crash.
For
a second, Vernon felt a thrill of relief.
Then he was appalled by
himself.
He felt himself becoming capable of the worst things.