The Armageddon Conspiracy (37 page)

Lucy twisted away from him, breathing
in hard.
A thin layer of snow now covered the plateau, but
everything was tinged red, as though the world were being viewed
through some bloody prism.
Even her white winter uniform looked as
though a fine film of blood was sprayed-painted over it.

‘
Have you never thought
about your name, Lucy?
Names are of crucial importance.
Take mine –
Samuel Morson.
Of course, Samuel could scarcely be my real name.
What would a Gnostic be doing with a popular Hebrew name?
But we
played the game, trying not to draw too much attention to
ourselves.
My Gnostic name is actually Sammael – one of the names
for the Angel of Death.
As for Morson, that means
son of Mors
.
Mors was the
Roman god of death.’

Lucy gazed at Morson’s face, a tough
soldier’s face.
He must have seen a lot of action, witnessed death
at close quarters too often.
He had those eyes that seemed to stare
permanently into the far distance.

‘
Your name has a lot of
death in it, doesn’t it?’
she said.
‘Hardly what one would expect
from a follower of Cain given what you were just
saying.’

‘
The
death
in my name refers to
an altogether different type of death: a glorious, desirable death,
one that will set free the whole human race.’

‘
I don’t
understand.’

Morson smirked.
‘What’s your opinion of
Yehoshua ben Yosef?’

‘
Who?’

‘
Isn’t it odd how so
few people know the name of the god they supposedly worship?
Yehoshua ben Yosef is Jesus Christ’s real name.
Jesus
is simply the Greco-Roman
version of the Hebrew name Joshua.
Joshua is itself an anglicised
version of Yehoshua, and means
Yahweh is
Salvation
– no name could be more repellent
to a Gnostic than that one.
As for
ben
Yosef
, that means son of Yosef – Joseph.
So, Jesus Christ is plain old
Joshua son of
Joseph
.
Josh to his friends.
Or maybe
Yehosh.’
He grinned and traced a smile in the snow with his
boot.

‘
How long do you think
Christianity would survive if every Christian were forced to call
Jesus by his real name?
How many Christians would kneel to Yehoshua
ben Yosef?
Within hours, Christianity would crumble.
Only by giving
a Jew a Greco-Roman name was it possible for Gentiles to worship a
Jew.
A whole religion founded on a fake name.
It’s almost funny,
don’t you think?’

Lucy thought of all her
hours in church, saying prayers, going to confession, seeking
absolution.
All in the name of Yehoshua ben Yosef?
Morson was
right.
It sounded strange, wrong.
Did it mean she was anti-Semitic?
Maybe, deep down, no matter how much the thought appalled her,
that’s exactly what she was.
And when she was shocked or upset, she
often said
Jesus
.
It wouldn’t work if she had to say
Yehoshua
.

‘
Take Christianity
itself,’ Morson went on, ‘now there’s another strange word.
Christ
comes from the
Latin
Christus
.
That derives from the Greek
Kristos
, meaning anointed one.
And
that’s the Greek translation of the Hebrew
mashiah
.
From mashiah we get Messiah.
So, Christianity is the religion of the worshippers of the Anointed
One, the followers of the Messiah.
But Joshua Christ or Yehoshua
Mashiah doesn’t have the right ring, does it?
They just don’t cut
it.
No one would want to be
that
type of Christian.
Would they rather be Mashiasts
instead?
I don’t think so.
Maybe they’d prefer to worship a new
Messiah – you, for example.’

Lucy stared at the red-tinted River Cam
wending its way north.
Maybe she should have laughed at Morson’s
suggestion, but she didn’t.
‘I don’t have the right name either.
There’s nothing special about Lucy Galahan.’

‘
You really have no
idea, do you?’

‘
I’m at the bottom of
the food chain.
No one tells me anything.’

‘
Lucy comes from
lux
, the Latin word for
light.’
Morson’s eyes gleamed.
‘It’s no mistake you’re called Lucy.
Only the light can defeat the darkness.’
He scrunched his foot in
the snow.
‘I love snow.
It renews the world, temporarily wipes away
the ugliness.
The air is much fresher.’

‘
But snow turns to
slush,’ Lucy said.
‘My name
is
just an accident.
My father liked it, that’s
all.’

‘
There are no
accidents.
Has it never surprised you that your surname is so
similar to the name of one of the successful seekers of the
Grail?’

‘
Galahad?’

‘
He found the Holy
Grail, and you will too.’

‘
I told you.
It’s pure
coincidence about my name.’

‘
Is it?
Your mother’s
name was Perivale, right?
Perivale – a corruption of Perceval,
another of the three knights who found the Grail.’

Lucy felt her face flushing.
It had
never even occurred to her before.
Perivale and Galahan.
How could
those names be coincidental?
There was only one other knight who
found the Grail – Bors, the most ordinary of the three knights.
Maybe Morson was right.
Maybe her destiny was to be some sort of
female Bors.
An ordinary woman fated to find the Grail, bearing the
names of the two most famous of the Grail finders – Galahad and
Perceval.

‘
How do you know so
much about me?’
she asked.

‘
Nothing about your
life is accidental.
It’s no accident who your parents were, what
their names were.
We’ve tracked your life from the very moment you
were born.
Everything you’ve ever done is known to us.’

Lucy’s head throbbed.
Her life, she
felt, was being stolen from her.
Others knew more about her than
she did.
If these people were watching her all the time, why
weren’t they watching when her father jumped off a cliff?
Why
didn’t they help?
Why didn’t they stop it?
Why didn’t they spot her
mum’s cancer?
Big deal if they watched.
They certainly didn’t
help.

‘
Only one name is as
special as yours, Lucy.
My former captain’s name is
Lucius
, the male
equivalent of Lucy.’

Lucy began to shiver.
She had an
intuition.
They were going to pair her with this Lucius, weren’t
they?
A marriage?
In this chapel?
The unholiest alliance of
all.

46

V
ernon stood on
the foredeck and gazed out to sea.
Kruger had told him to go and
get some air, to try to clear his head.
The ship was some sort of
pleasure cruiser painted battleship grey.
Kruger jokingly referred
to it as the ‘Vatican’s Navy.’

A fog was descending over the Bristol
Channel and it was almost impossible to see anything.
The ship had
been forced to slow right down.
Kruger’s men were all asleep in one
of the lounges where tourists must once have laughed and chatted as
they headed towards some scenic attraction.

‘
March to the sound of
the guns,’ was the advice of an old military maxim.
Here, they were
doing the opposite, heading away from Lucy.
Vernon thought it was
ridiculous.
He put his hand in his pocket, took out his mobile
phone and stared at the screen.
No
Signal
.
The whole network was probably
down.
By now, the country’s infrastructure must be falling apart.
Fuel running out, motorways blocked by abandoned cars, trains at a
standstill.
All the old certainties, all the conveniences of
civilisation, everything that had been taken for granted for so
long, all finished.

‘
We have a satellite
phone,’ a voice said.

Vernon spun round and found Kruger
behind him, looking pale and exhausted.
This dim light made
everything seem worn out.
A fading world.
Everything sliding,
bit-by-bit, into oblivion.

‘
I spoke to the Vatican
a few minutes ago,’ Kruger said.
‘The Conclave is deadlocked.
There’s no sign of a new Pope.
How we need one in this hour.
It’s
almost midnight for humanity.’
He put his hand on his forehead.
‘The things that are happening out there…too much to
bear.’

‘
What do you
mean?’

‘
All of the volcanoes
around Indonesia, the so-called Ring of Fire, have erupted.
The
eruption clouds are glowing white-hot and have merged into one
huge, fiery ash formation, thousands of square miles in size.
No
one underneath it could possibly have survived.
Relief agencies
can’t go near.’
He bowed his head.
‘Those poor people.’

It was obvious from Kruger’s expression
that there was more to come.

‘
America hasn’t been
spared this time,’ he said.
‘What they feared most has happened.
Twelve category-5 hurricanes came together to form a
superhurricane, more powerful than anything seen before on earth.
It blasted through the southern states of the USA, and the whole of
Central America.
Everything in its path was obliterated.
They’re
talking about tens of millions of dead.
In the Canary Islands,
after a volcanic eruption on the island of La Palma, a chunk of
land slid into the sea, triggering a mega-tsunami.
It generated a
wall of water over one hundred and sixty feet high that crossed the
Atlantic, devastating the Caribbean and most of the southeastern
seaboard of America.
All across the world there’s famine, drought,
and pestilence.
It’s as if the Riders of the Apocalypse have come
in person.’

Vernon didn’t know what to say.
Words
had become absurd.

‘
I’ll show you to the
satellite phone,’ Kruger said wearily, and led him to the ship’s
bridge, where there was a special booth for the satellite phone and
an accompanying satellite dish.
Kruger turned and walked away, his
shoulders sagging.

Vernon felt sick.
This was already way
past critical.
No matter what happened now, the world would never
be the same.
Given the severity of the natural catastrophes,
hundreds of millions were probably dead.
Maybe billions by now.
Anyone in far-flung locations who managed to survive wouldn’t be
receiving any help.
In days, they’d be dead too.
A long, lingering
death.
No wonder the sky was blood red.
It was reflecting the scale
of human agony.

He punched in the number for Commander
Harrington, but wasn’t confident of getting a line.
The fog was as
dense as he’d ever encountered, and the atmospheric conditions had
been poor for days in any case.
He was amazed when he got straight
through on a clearish line.
Harrington sounded tired, not with
it.

Vernon spent the first few minutes
explaining the status of the mission, the loss of the helicopter
and the fact that Lucy was now in the hands of the Delta Force
deserters.
Harrington didn’t seem to take much of it in.
His tone
suggested he thought the whole thing was a waste of time.

‘
Things are bad here,’
Harrington said.
‘We’ve had no fuel deliveries.
No oil tankers have
reached the UK.
The gas pipes from the continent have been cut off.
We’re rapidly using up the country’s emergency reserves.
In two
days, we won’t be able to supply any electricity and gas to
domestic households.
We’re expecting chaos.’
There was so much
weariness in his voice.
‘Shit’s happening all over the planet.
Everywhere is affected.
The estimate of the number of dead keeps
rising.
Scientists still can’t agree on any course of action.
The
world is desperate now.
No matter what, the DG wants you to keep
going.’

Vernon rubbed his
head.
Clutching at straws
came to mind.
There was no doubt incredibly weird
things were happening on this mission, but could they really be
linked to the devastation happening across the globe?
Kruger
claimed Lucifer was walking the earth.
In medieval times, no one
would have required any further explanation.
Now, in the age of
science, it was too hard to credit.
No matter the evidence of his
own eyes, Vernon’s mind wouldn’t accept it.

‘
I have some
information about the case,’ Harrington said.
‘I don’t know how
much use it will be to you, but you might as well have everything
we’ve got.’

Vernon was astonished by what
Harrington said next.
‘Let me be clear about this, commander,’ he
responded.
‘All these Delta Force guys are test-tube babies?
Why
the hell should that be?’

This revelation freaked him out.
It
suggested something cold and clinical, almost inhuman.
As if this
whole Delta Force thing was planned by mad scientists long ago.

‘
I’ve been told that
test-tube techniques make it easy to select the sex of a baby,’
Harrington said.
‘I guess that explains how their parents made sure
they didn’t have any female offspring.’

‘
But why did the wives
cooperate?
Why didn’t they want to have girls?’

‘
We can’t second guess
people like these.’

Harrington passed on fresh discoveries
the DIA had made about the members of Section 5.
Apparently, every
one of them became immensely rich.
The assumption was that they’d
managed to help themselves to a share of the Nazis’ looted
treasure.
Several of them became powerful industrialists, with a
particular interest in mining operations.
One of their operations
was at Oak Island, Nova Scotia.
They also had mining interests near
Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, and Tara in Ireland, but their main
interest was in the vicinity of Glastonbury.
In each case, they had
a licence for exploring for precious metals, particularly gold.
Many of the world’s finest goldsmiths were on their books, but not
one of these goldsmiths was willing to tell the DIA what they’d
been working on.
‘Artworks of a religious nature for rich clients,’
was all they were prepared to say.

‘
While we were clearing
up the mess in the archive section,’ Harrington went on, ‘we
discovered additional notes from the interrogation in 1945 of
SS-Sturmbannführer
Friedrich Veldt, the
author of
The Cainite
Destiny
.
A lot more happened at his
interrogation than was written up for the official report.
Veldt
was apparently upbeat until he was told of Himmler’s suicide.
He
demanded to know what Himmler’s last words were.
He was told that
Himmler made crazy comments in broken English.
“
All fakes
,” Himmler said.
“
The real ones are lost
forever
.
It’s
finished
.”’

‘
What were fake?
Vernon
asked.

‘
No one knows.
But
Veldt’s mood apparently changed immediately.
He became extremely
depressed.
After asking for a glass of water, he made an enquiry
about a fellow SS-Sturmbannführer called Hans Lehman.
When he was
told that Lehman was dead, Veldt had some sort of fit.
He made a
comment about being the last of the priesthood.
If he died,
the
Secret Doctrine
would be lost forever.

‘
We discovered he
didn’t kill himself.
In fact, he was desperate to live.
Two Jewish
officers forced a cyanide capsule into his mouth and murdered him.
Everyone had seen the horrific film footage from Dachau and Belsen
concentration camps, so no one condemned the Jewish officers.
The
whole thing was hushed up and made to look like suicide.

‘
The DIA discovered
another thing.
The man Veldt asked about – SS-Sturmbannführer
Lehman – was one of the Nazi officials in charge of the looted
treasures in Nuremberg.
He wasn’t dead at all.
It turned out he was
the person interrogated most frequently by the men of Section 5.
In
fact, they spent nearly all of their time with him.
He died ten
years ago, in Britain.
And, listen to this – just before his death,
he was in charge of converting a convent into an asylum:
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour
in Glastonbury.’

47

B
ack inside the
chapel, Lucy struggled with a bad headache.
She didn’t want to ask
for aspirin, to show weakness in front of Morson.
Why all this
waiting around?
Sometimes she thought she was in a dark room,
waiting for a photograph to develop – the photograph of her whole
life.

Where was the captain, this Lucius,
Morson had mentioned?
It might have been a common name in Roman
times, but she’d never come across a Lucius in her life.
Was he the
one they were waiting for?

Colonel Gresnick was nowhere to be
seen.
As for Cardinal Sinclair, he hadn’t spoken for hours.
He just
sat there, resolutely staring at the altar, as if he expected it to
open and God’s host of angels to emerge to rescue him.

Morson tapped Lucy on the shoulder then
led her to a small side room.
Colonel Gresnick was sitting in a
plastic chair in the corner.
On one wall was a large framed oil
painting of Longinus piercing the side of Jesus with the Spear of
Destiny.

‘
So, Lucy, I don’t
believe you’ve been properly introduced to Colonel Gresnick,’
Morson said.
‘He works for the Defence Intelligence Agency in the
United States.
He came over here to liaise with your former
boyfriend in MI5.
They wanted to know why we deserted from Delta
Force.
Above all, they wanted to know why we were so interested in
you and the Holy Grail.
But you know the answers, Lucy, don’t
you?’

‘
I think you’re
collecting all four Grail Hallows,’ Lucy said.
‘I think you plan to
use them in a special ceremony.’

Morson smiled.
‘Who knows?
– maybe
you’re bang on the button.’
He turned to Gresnick.
‘I thought the
colonel here might be interested in our little chat.
You never
know, maybe he’ll share some of his knowledge with us.
From what I
can gather, Mr Gresnick has been studying my organisation for quite
some time.’

‘
What organisation is
that?’
Lucy asked, but she didn’t get an answer.

‘
Well, we have a lot of
time to kill until nightfall,’ Morson said.
‘That’s when the action
begins.’
He gazed at the painting of Longinus.
‘I’d like to tell
you a story while we’re waiting.’
After finding plastic seats for
Lucy and himself, he cracked his knuckles before
beginning.

‘
There’s a special
mountain in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees in the Languedoc
region of France,’ he said.
‘It’s almost four thousand feet high
and commands spectacular views.
Last year, I climbed up to the
fortress on the summit.
The mountain is called Montségur, meaning
‘Mount Safe’, but in the spring of 1243, it was anything but safe.
It was the site of the last stand of the Cathars against the
Catholic Crusaders.
Ten thousand soldiers besieged the stronghold,
but although there were only a few hundred defenders, the siege
went on for ten months thanks to the terrain being so intractable.
It was impossible for the Crusaders to completely surround the
mountain and cut off supplies to the Cathars.
The Cathars had
several expert mountaineers in their ranks who were able to come
and go from the fortress, climbing down the sheer rock face on one
side of the castle, easily evading the besiegers.

‘
Three peculiar
incidents happened at the end of the siege.
When the defenders
finally realised their position was hopeless, they negotiated with
the Crusaders and were offered abnormally good terms.
All of the
mercenaries hired by the Cathars were to be set free and the
Cathars themselves would all be pardoned if they recanted their
heresy.
Any heretic who refused would suffer the normal penalty of
being burned at the stake.
The defenders asked for two weeks to
consider the terms.
It appeared they were trying to buy time to
allow them to hold one last special ceremony inside Montségur, a
ceremony that would take place the night before the official
surrender.
Some people have claimed the special date was the vernal
equinox, 14 March 1244.

‘
There’s no record of
what happened that night, of what the ceremony entailed.
What
is
known is
that many of the mercenaries who would have been allowed to go free
the following day instead converted to Catharism, knowing certain
death awaited them.

‘
The following day, 15
March, over two hundred men and women who had refused to abandon
their Cathar beliefs were led down the mountain to a stockade
erected in a field.
They were tied to stakes and burned to death en
masse.
That place is known to this day as “The Field of the
Cremated.”

‘
But the incident that
lies at the heart of the mystery of the Cathars concerns what four
members of the garrison did immediately after the end of their
sacred ceremony.
The four were the Cathars’ most expert climbers.
They had a very special job to do, one that has ensured that the
Cathars have been veiled in mystery ever since.