The Armageddon Conspiracy (44 page)

‘
At least Hinduism got
it right about reincarnation.
If we have an eternal soul, why would
we be allowed only one chance to lead a good life?
Why not two,
ten, a thousand, as many as it takes?
Why just a one-time
opportunity, with hell waiting for you if you get it
wrong?’

‘
And what about the
Gnostics?’
Cardinal Sinclair said.
‘What good can come from
claiming the world is evil?
It’s insanity.’

‘
Insanity?
Well, we
don’t believe in sending anyone to hell.
We think hell is already
here.
Our mission is to free everyone.
We want to bring every lost
soul back to the True God.
The Jews, the Christians, the Muslims,
the Hindus, the Buddhists, the atheists – everyone – we want to
save them all, to restore every lost soul to paradise.
Even all the
people who have hated us, persecuted us, fought us, resisted us –
even
they
will be
saved.
Even you, cardinal.
You want to send me to hell and I want
to deliver you to heaven; yet you claim your religion is superior
to mine.
The Muslims want to blow me up while I want to lead them
to heaven.
The Jews want to damn me forever because I tell them
Jehovah is Satan, yet I want them to join me in paradise, to be
bathed in the light of the one True God.
Gnosticism is the only
moral religion, the one true religion of love, peace and
forgiveness.’

‘
What about the
Holocaust?’
Gresnick snapped.
‘Doesn’t that disprove everything
you’ve said?
That was the most horrific act in history and it was
ordered by the Gnostic leaders of Nazism.’

For once, Morson looked
embarrassed.

‘
I agree,’ he said
after a few moments.
‘We’ll always be ashamed of that.
We abhor
pointless violence, and the Holocaust had no point at all.
There
was a particular context for it is all I can say.
It’s not an
excuse, but it explains why it happened.

‘
After Hitler conquered
France, one of the first places SS soldiers went was the Gothic
cathedral of Chartres, where they began digging in the crypt,
looking for the Ark of the Covenant.
Chartres was long suspected of
being the home of the Ark for a very simple reason.
In the north
porch of the cathedral are sculptures depicting the Ark of the
Covenant, and on a pillar is a Latin inscription saying
Hic Amicitur Archa Cederis
, meaning
Here is hidden the Ark of
the Covenant
.
The SS found something buried
below the crypt and had no doubt it was the missing Ark.

‘
Hitler was elated.
Then more incredible news reached him.
He always believed that two
of the Grail Hallows – the dish and the Holy Grail itself – were
hidden in England and that he’d have to conquer England before he
could claim them.
But SS digging operations in the Languedoc
discovered a chalice and dish near the village of
Rennes-le-Château, and they seemed authentic.
Hitler was
astonished.
This meant, he thought, that he had all four Grail
Hallows – the chalice, the dish, the Spear of Destiny from the
Hofburg Palace in Vienna, and a matching sword from the same place:
the so-called Sword of St Maurice – and he also had what he thought
was the authentic Ark of the Covenant.
In other words, he had
everything he needed for the most sacred ceremony of
all.’

‘
Which is?’
Gresnick
said.

‘
You’ll find out when
April 30 dawns.’

‘
So, what happened with
Hitler and his ceremony?’
Lucy asked.

‘
On 30 April 1941,
perhaps the high watermark of Nazism, Hitler and twelve senior
members of the SS went to Montségur.
French peasants reported that
hundreds of German aircraft flew over the fortress in strange
formations.
One of the formations was a swastika, and another the
Cross pattée.
Of all the men who attended the ceremony, only one
was still alive by the end of 1945: SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Lehman.
We’ll be performing the same ceremony within thirty-six hours…with
a few new elements added.

‘
All I can say is that
Hitler’s ceremony failed and he was devastated.
Some say his mind
cracked and he was never the same man again.
He blamed his failure
on Jewish machinations and, that very day, he formulated his plan
for the Final Solution.
It was the act of a desperate man, his
judgment damaged beyond repair.
In June 1941, he launched the
invasion of the Soviet Union, the home of what he regarded as
Jewish Bolshevism, and the Nazis’ long march to defeat
began.

‘
I don’t intend to
defend Hitler’s actions.
After 30 April 1941, he was deranged as
far as I’m concerned.
Lehman believed so too.
But our crimes of the
past are behind us.
On 30 April 2012, there will be no mistakes.
The age of the Demiurge’s false religions, his
reign of terror
, is almost
over.’

‘
The Catholic Church
has seen thousands like you in the past,’ Sinclair said, standing
up.
‘We’ll endure long after you’ve vanished.’

‘
Really?
Let me tell
you what the collective message of the people of the Book is:
hatred, slaughter, division and death.
That’s what the children of
Abraham believe in.
Their two central propositions are:
if you don’t agree with us, we’ll kill
you
, and,
if you
don’t agree with us, you’re going to hell
.
And yet they call themselves good, decent people.

‘
The irony is that the
question of hell is already settled.
According to the Christians,
every dead Jew is in hell.
All those Holocaust victims – straight
to hell.
The same is true of Islam.
Islam’s great Prophet is in
hell.
Not as speculation, as fact.
Even as we speak, all those
Muslims who say
Peace be upon
him
, are referring to a person currently in
hell, suffering all its torments.
If Mohammed
isn’t
in hell at this very moment then
all the Christians are wrong and hell is full of popes and saints.
Don’t you think that’s amazing?
The game is long over, but no one
knows the score even though their eternal souls depend on it.
In
this game of life, with heaven as the reward for winning and hell
the punishment for losing, the right way to play the game is
already known in every detail, yet the creator of the game refuses
to reveal the results of the billions of games that have already
finished.
Only when our lives are over and it’s too late for us to
change our game plan, do we learn the scores.

‘
If Mohammed is even
now in hell, why doesn’t God let the Muslims know so that they can
change their wicked ways?
If the popes and saints are in hell, why
doesn’t Allah put the Christians out of their misery?
If heaven is
full of Jews, why doesn’t Jehovah tell the Christians and Muslims
that they’ve got it fatally wrong?
No game could be more deadly
than this one.
What sort of sick mind devises such a thing?
Only
a
Satanic
mind.

‘
Which sane person
could deny that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the work of
Satan?
They float on a sea of blood, of crosses of the dead
stretching in every direction.
There’s no love, just hate; no
peace, just war; no compassion, just limitless cruelty.
Humanity’s
greatest benefactor would be the person who put an end forever to
these mad Devil-inspired religions.’

‘
And you think she’s
sitting over there?’
Gresnick said slowly.

Morson nodded.
‘In a few hours, Lucy
will deliver us from hell.’

56

T
he door was
unbolted and swung open slowly.
Footsteps receded.
What was going
on?
Morson had left them an hour earlier.
None of them liked to
admit it, but his outburst had unsettled them.
Sinclair declared
that heretics often sounded persuasive on first hearing, but some
reflection soon revealed how absurd their arguments were.
It didn’t
sound as if he believed it himself.

Gresnick got to his feet and crept to
the door.
‘There’s no one here.
They’ve all gone.’

Amazed, Lucy and Sinclair joined him at
the doorway.
The chapel was deserted.

Lucy hurried to the
front entrance.
When she threw open the door, she involuntarily
stepped back.
A black carriage with four jet-black, blinkered
horses stood on the driveway – a
hearse
.
Two men in black top hats and
frock coats sat in the seats at the front.

The hearse had glass windows.
Lucy,
peering inside, was confronted by a black coffin, covered with
wreaths of black flowers.

Other men in top hats and tails
appeared from the sides of the chapel and marched in procession to
the rear of the carriage.
They drew out the coffin and hoisted it
onto their shoulders.

Lucy thought the men were wearing white
makeup.
They looked ghostly, like creatures who’d stepped through a
portal from another world.
Many other men now appeared, all in the
same strange garb, with the same chalk-white faces.

Gresnick and Sinclair were right behind
Lucy now.

‘
What’s happening?’
Gresnick asked.

‘
Devilry,’ Sinclair
said, stepping out onto the snow.
One of the mourners pointed a
pistol at him and motioned at him to go back in.
The man came over
and handcuffed Sinclair and Gresnick.

Stillness settled.
There were no
sounds.
The night had died somehow.
There was something odd about
the coffin.
Lucy could tell it was connected to her in some way,
but she didn’t know how.

Eight men carried the coffin into the
chapel, with the others following.
The coffin-bearers marched up
the central aisle and placed the coffin on a black catafalque.
All
of the men saluted.
One of them, with white gloves, removed the
coffin lid.

Lucy realised she was expected to go
forward and look inside the coffin.
Everyone cleared out of her way
as she walked down the aisle.
As she got closer to the coffin, her
legs carried her increasingly slowly, as though she were wading
through molasses.
Yet there was nothing in the coffin that could
possibly scare her.
Her own ghosts were far away.

Reaching the foot of the coffin, she
glimpsed a figure inside, covered by a white shroud, its face
hidden by a white muslin veil.

‘
Who is it?’
she
whispered to the man with white gloves, but he didn’t
answer.

She edged along the side of the coffin,
trying to see through the veil.
Why had the soldiers gone to all
this trouble?
Was it one of their colleagues who’d been killed in
the fighting at Tintagel?
Yet she couldn’t free herself of the
feeling that it was designed for her benefit.
But why?
The last
thing she wanted to do was look at a corpse.

She remembered the day when she and her
father went to the funeral parlour to look at her mother lying in
her coffin.
She and her father held hands as they went inside,
praying for the strength to get them through the ordeal.
Her dad
took one look at his wife’s face then turned away, covering his
face as he started to sob.
She’d never seen him cry.
He sat down on
a seat and didn’t look up again.