The Armageddon Conspiracy (32 page)

‘
What do you think of
the painting?’
Kruger asked.
‘What does it tell you?’

Vernon shook his head.
‘I’m no art
expert.’
He had to raise his voice because the whole ship was
vibrating.
‘It’s some sort of narrative.
A lot of it looks quite
conventional.
You know, traditional Biblical scenes and the like.
I
don’t know how King Arthur and the Grail fit in, though.’

Kruger nodded.
‘My brother said the
Vatican had no idea how to interpret the mural until the Pope read
Lucy’s book.
At once, he realised that what Lucy said about the
Arthurian legends applied to the mural.
It was a coded reference to
the claims of two competing religions.
The Pope said that a moment
would come when the rival religions would clash head on, with the
fate of the world at stake.
If the wrong choice were made, the
world would perish.

‘
That’s what the
painting was showing – the human raced damned to hell for eternity,
or saved and admitted to paradise.
The Pope believed that Julius II
intended the mural as a warning for what would happen if the
Catholic Church should ever allow heresy to spread.
By putting it
inside his own tomb, Julius II intended that other popes, coming to
pray for his soul, should see it.
As they considered their own
mortality, they would see that the world itself was mortal.
Everyone and everything was endangered by heresy.
It was the
greatest danger of all because if mankind placed its faith in the
wrong God, the True God would have no option but to eliminate his
own creation.’

‘
Didn’t you say it was
a secret vault?’

‘
Secret to everyone but
other popes.
They alone were given access.
We don’t know what
Julius II’s immediate successors thought of it, but we know Pope
Marcellus II was shocked when he saw it in 1555.
He died just
twenty-two days after becoming Pope, and some said the cause was
his horror at seeing the mural.’

‘
And what about Lucy?’
Vernon asked.

‘
The late Pope made
enquiries about her.
When he discovered she was a Catholic, he held
a special Mass in St Peter’s to give thanks.’

Vernon was unsure how to react to that.
It was true Lucy was once quite a devout Catholic, but she lapsed
after her mother died, and made it obvious she was heading rapidly
towards atheism.
On top of that, she was always fascinated by the
Gnostics, and once said their ideas made more sense than
Christianity.
If anything, she was in a religious no-man’s land.
The late Pope had made a horrendous error if he believed Lucy was
automatically on the Catholic side.

‘
He was certain God
chose her to save humanity,’ Kruger continued.
‘When he heard from
the Mother Superior at the convent that Lucy was painting pictures,
he asked for photos of them.
When he discovered she had painted a
picture identical to the one in Raphael’s mural, he took it as
proof that she was the Chosen One.’

Vernon stared at the floor.
More and
more, it seemed to be true.
Even the late Pope thought so.
Was it
possible that a struggle was raging for Lucy’s soul and the outcome
would determine the fate of earth?

‘
What are the two
competing religions?’
he asked, but he already knew the answer –
Christianity versus Gnosticism, two religions that couldn’t be more
different.
A believer in one was the automatic enemy of a believer
in the other.

Kruger gave a half-smile.
‘You’ve read
Lucy’s book.
You know the answer.’

The answer?
Vernon had nothing but
questions in his mind right now.
Despite everything he knew about
the Gnostics, it was still hard to accept just how radical their
beliefs were.
To replace the Christian struggle between good and
evil with the Gnostic struggle between spirit and matter involved a
whole new mind-set.
Sins and crimes didn’t matter at all.
What
mattered for Gnostics was gaining the spiritual knowledge that
allowed the soul to escape from the material hell they were trapped
in.

Strangely, some
Gnostics claimed to revere Jesus Christ and even called themselves
Christians, but
their
Christ was nothing like the Christian one.
They didn’t believe
he was ever physically incarnated since that would mean he had
become part of the evil material world.
So, they denied the reality
of the Crucifixion.
It was impossible to crucify Jesus because he
didn’t have a physical body, so the Crucifixion scene was a
phantasm.
Oddly enough, the Muslims believed exactly the same
thing.
His death, they said, was nothing but an illusion to deceive
his enemies.
Not so much the Crucifixion as the
Cruci
fiction
.

Since Jesus didn’t die, nor was he
resurrected.
Since he didn’t have a body, he couldn’t be part man
part god.
The Gnostics denied the Catholic belief of
transubstantiation.
This was impossible, they said, because Jesus
would never become part of the malignant physical world in any way.
For them, Jesus was a divine messenger from the kingdom of true
light, his task to preach love, peace, compassion, and forgiveness
– all the things that Jehovah, the creator of the material world,
despised.

The Gnostics venerated everyone who
opposed Jehovah.
Lucifer, as Jehovah’s great enemy, was their hero.
For them, the identification of Lucifer with Satan was ridiculous.
Satan, patently, was Jehovah.

If the Gnostics were right, everyone
else was wrong.
The human race, by worshipping the creator of the
material world had committed the gravest error conceivable.
Humanity had spectacularly misunderstood the nature of life, of the
world, of reality.
And was thereby condemned to eternal hell.

If, as Kruger insisted, Lucifer really
existed and had come to the earth, did that prove that the Gnostics
were right, or the Christians?
Was that the reason why the weather
was so turbulent, why so many disasters were happening?
– the
planet was gearing up for the final apocalyptic struggle between
Lucifer and Jehovah.
Although Vernon was desperate to be on the
side of good, he was no longer sure which side that was, and he
suspected Lucy was equally uncertain.

40

A
s he stared at
one of the panels on the left of the mural, Vernon recognised
something.
When Sergeant Morson stared down at him after the
helicopter crash, he noticed that the sergeant was wearing strange
insignia on his uniform.
In a line, above his breast pocket, were
four different badges.
One showed a blue swastika on a white
background, one a red rising sun on a white background, one a
silver skull and crossbones on a black background, and the final
badge was black and white, divided into two halves, black above
white.

These exact badges were displayed on
the panel in front of Vernon.
When he pointed it out to Kruger, the
Swiss soldier wasn’t surprised.

‘
Those badges are
Gnostic symbols.
The blue swastika on a white background was the
flag of the Gnostic sect, the Cathars.
The Rising Sun symbolises
that the Gnostics believe in the True God’s universe of light.
The
skull and crossbones is a symbol that the physical world is a place
of darkness, decay and death.’

‘
And it’s one of the
flags used by Knights Templar,’ Vernon said, recalling what
Gresnick told him.

Kruger nodded.
‘You’re well informed.
In that case you probably know what the fourth is.’

Vernon gazed at the black strip over
white.
He had no idea.

Kruger squinted at him.
‘No?’
Vernon shrugged.
‘That’s called the
Beauseant
,’ Kruger said.
‘It’s the
most sacred banner of the Knights Templar.
It shows that in the
hellish world we live in, darkness triumphs over light.
The
Templars’ task, as they saw it, was to fight their way through the
darkness to the light.’

‘
So, you think the
Templars were Gnostics?’

‘
That’s why the Pope
dissolved the Order.
The Templars were planning to overthrow the
Catholic Church.
Their preparations were well advanced.’

Preparations?
The word reverberated in
Vernon’s head.
What preparations had Kruger made for Lucy?
‘Where
did you plan to take Lucy?’
he asked.
‘Rome?’

Kruger turned away.
‘It’s no accident
that the deserters are Americans,’ he said after a moment.

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
You’re not a Catholic,
are you Mr Vernon?’

‘
What has that got to
do with anything?’

‘
If you were a
Catholic, you’d know that the Vatican has always opposed
Freemasonry.
If you knew American history, you’d know Freemasons
founded America.
Practically everyone who signed the Declaration of
Independence was a Freemason.
Paul Revere, the man who rode to warn
the Boston colonists that the British army was coming, was a
Freemason.
The general the Americans chose to lead their army
against the British was George Washington, a Freemason.
He was
their first president, of course, and nearly every subsequent
president was overtly or covertly a Freemason.

‘
In fact, the first
confirmed non-Masonic president was JFK, a Catholic, and he won by
only a handful of votes.
The Freemasons tried everything to stop
him, but Kennedy’s father knew how to fight back and he mobilised a
huge political machine to harness the votes of all the immigrant
Catholics – Irish, Italians, Poles, Hispanics, and so on – to get
his son into the White House.
It wasn’t the Cubans or the CIA or a
lone nut who killed JFK, it was the Freemasons.
Who replaced JFK?
LBJ – a high-ranking Freemason.
When anything terrible happens on
the world stage you ought to ask
cui
bono?
– to whose benefit.
The Freemasons
were the ones who profited from Kennedy’s death.
They killed RFK
too, and Martin Luther King.’

‘
That’s ridiculous.
You
don’t have any evidence.’

‘
Mr Vernon, the
Catholic Church has long expected America to wage a war of
aggression against the world.
When the War on Terror began, it was
no surprise to the Vatican.
It was only a question of time before
the Freemasons made their move.
When you hear the word “neocon”,
you ought to translate it as Freemason.
Their plan is world
domination, and to make their Freemason God the universal God of
the earth.’

‘
You can’t be serious.
This is mad conspiracy stuff.’

‘
But there
is
a conspiracy.
There
always has been.’
Kruger turned and pointed at the panel showing a
pyramid with an eye above it.
‘Haven’t you seen that
before?’

Vernon did think it looked familiar,
but he couldn’t place it.

‘
It’s one of the most
powerful symbols in the world.
You see it everywhere, all the
time.’

Vernon shook his head.
‘I’m certain
I’ve seen it somewhere, but I just can’t…it’s so familiar.’

‘
It’s familiar because
it’s on the back of the U.S.
dollar.
And on the back of the
official Great Seal of the United States of America.
It’s the
symbol of the secret society the
Illuminati
whose sworn mission is to
topple the Catholic Church.
You’ll hear all sorts of weird theories
about the Illuminati – that they began as a group of disgruntled
scientists in Rome in the 1500s, that they were formed from the
last few survivors of the Cathars and the Knights Templar, that
they were black magicians and worshippers of Lucifer.
I’ve even
heard a theory that the Illuminati are alien reptiles wearing human
disguises.