The Armageddon Conspiracy (58 page)

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy
noticed Cardinal Sinclair stepping forward.
Morson spun round.

‘
Who told you to move,
holy fool?’

For some reason, Sinclair seemed much
more upright than before, taller.
He held out his right hand, and
the light glinted off a gold ring on his index finger.

Lucy’s mouth fell
open.
Her father’s ring
.

Morson was transfixed.
Like an
automaton, he knelt down, bowing his head.
He took Sinclair’s
outstretched hand and kissed the ring.

‘
I had no idea,
Grand Master
,’ he said.
Lucy gasped.

‘
Who else could it be?’
Sinclair replied.
‘What greater irony could there be than that the
head of the Holy Inquisition was the arch heretic?
– in the midst
of the enemy’s fortress, whispering into the ear of their leader.
The last place anyone would look for the supreme heretic was at the
top of the department charged with heresy hunting.’

‘
Of course.
It seems so
obvious now.’

‘
Now I’ll summon the
others.’
Sinclair walked away and it was obvious this castle was
somewhere he knew very well indeed.
It was
his home
.

Lucy couldn’t help
herself and stepped forward to study the copy of Raphael’s mural.
Even now, it shook her to see her own painting lodged in there in
one of the world’s greatest works of art, created by her in a past
life.
If soul lines truly existed, it meant we were all
inextricably tied to the past.
The memories of our previous lives
were buried inside us, part of our unconscious that bubbled to the
surface every now and again, incomprehensible and terrifying.
We
were haunted by ourselves, by what we’d done in our past lives, by
what others did to us.
One life,
this
life, was problematic enough.
To
add hundreds of other lives was to multiply misery.
It was a recipe
for constructing hell inside our heads.

She gazed at each of the panels,
following them round as they told their strange story, similar and
yet dissimilar to the traditional Christian story of the world.
Only the most brilliantly conceived depiction of heresy could be
smuggled under the noses of the Vatican.
It reminded her of the
story of Hieronymus Bosch.
Some said the Dutch painter was a high
priest of heresy, yet the ultra-orthodox Spanish king Philip II
loved his paintings.
We see what we want to, don’t we?
Only those
who know the code can read it.

Lucy heard an odd clanking sound and
twisted round.
Thirteen knights entered the hall wearing black
mantles emblazoned with the scarlet Templar cross.
Over each of
their hearts was a silver skull and crossbones.
The men had a
terrifying aura, as though they’d brought the brutality of the
medieval world with them.
Even Morson looked uneasy.
One of the
knights carried a black box.

As Lucy retreated, the thirteen knights
took up position in a straight line in front of Raphael’s mural.
The one in the centre took a step forward – Sinclair.

‘
We are the Invisible
College,’ he said, ‘the governing body of the
Illuminati
.
We are the Shining Ones,
the Holy Light.
In the past, a group known as the College
controlled the Illuminati, but a shadow leadership was established
to take over from the College if they should be killed or captured.
In the 1930s, the College had become corrupted and consisted
entirely of members of the Nazi Party.
By the end of May 1945, all
but one were dead, including the Grand Master Adolf Hitler who had
perverted the true message of Gnosticism.
The single survivor
passed control to the Invisible College, all of whom were British.
In fact, we’re all Scottish now, bearing some of the most
illustrious names in Scottish history: Bruce, Wallace, Douglas,
Randolph, Keith, Moray, MacDonald, Fleming, Burns, Stewart,
Maxwell, Hume and Sinclair.

‘
Many of those names
were present at the Battle of Bannockburn, the greatest military
victory in Scottish history.
It was fought on one of the most
special days of Gnosticism – 24 June, the feast day of John the
Baptist.
The Scots won despite being massively outnumbered and up
against thousands of English heavy cavalry, the medieval equivalent
of tanks.

‘
It’s fitting that
Scots should be in control at the end.
After all, a Scotsman
discovered America.
The outlawed Templar Fleet that sailed from
France in 1307 was led by one of my ancestors, Admiral William
Sinclair, the true discoverer of the Americas.
A secret sailing
route was established between the Americas and Scotland, controlled
by my family.
One of the main stopping points on the route was Nova
Scotia –
New Scotland
.
Another of my ancestors, Henry Sinclair, established a
Templar base there.

‘
The Scots have always
been at the centre of world events, and Scotland’s own story
reflects the Gnostic struggle.
When the Scottish king Robert the
Bruce was hiding in a cave from his enemies, he watched a spider
struggling to spin its web and learned the Gnostic lesson of having
to try, try and try again.
The Gnostic mission was to deliver
mankind from hell, to restore every lost soul to the embrace of the
True God.
America was Scotland’s child, the superpower we created
to help us fulfil our destiny.
Fifty million Americans have
Scottish blood in their veins.
The Declaration of Independence is
based on the Declaration of Arbroath, written in 1320 asserting the
independence and freedom of the Scottish people and their right to
make and unmake their rulers.’

He gave a signal and the knight holding
the black box walked over to the round table, placed it on the edge
of the table and opened it.

Lucy was revolted when the knight
brought out a preserved head and laid it on top of crossed bones on
a crimson velvet cushion.

‘
That’s the
caput mortuum
,’ Sinclair
said, ‘the dead head of the most mysterious man in history.
Those
are his thighbones.
This is where the Skull and Crossbones
originated.’

‘
Whose
head?’
Gresnick asked.

Sinclair smiled.
‘Your
grandfather’s lifework was to understand
The Cainite Destiny
.
He passed the
task to his daughter and she to you.
Well, here in Carbonek you’ll
find all the answers.

‘
Contrary to what
Sergeant Morson believes, we’ve deciphered the Voynich manuscript.
The man who looks after it in Yale University works for us.
He made
a breakthrough a few years ago, one he kept secret from the
academic community.
When he was on holiday in Carcassonne in
France, an antiquarian book dealer offered him an original
manuscript of Chrétien de Troyes’ book
Conte del Graal
, the source of the
first Grail story, together with a second unknown manuscript.
The
main manuscript was written in old French, the second in gibberish
as far as the book dealer was concerned.
What he didn’t know was
that it was exactly the same “gibberish” that appeared in the
Voynich manuscript.
Our inside man was certain the second
manuscript was also the
Conte del
Graal
, but written in the Cathars’ secret
language.
By comparing the two manuscripts line by line, our inside
man was able to finally decode the language of the Voynich
manuscript and provide a full translation.’

Lucy gazed at Gresnick.
Despite
everything, his eyes were gleaming.
He was hanging on Sinclair’s
words.

‘
The Voynich manuscript
says that after the disaster at Atlantis, the religion of Cain was
almost destroyed.
All of the high priests died, and the religion
was extinguished with the exception of a few fragmentary pages of
the
Book of Cain
.
A
few survivors reached Scotland.
From there, a few ventured back to
the Middle East, in an attempt to rediscover their
religion.

‘
The man to begin the
task in earnest was John the Baptist.
He used baptism to symbolise
the process of embracing Gnosticism.
To immerse yourself in water,
he said, was to show your willingness to bathe in the sea of true
knowledge.
But John always maintained that a second, greater man
was to follow him.
He made his famous statement:
After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and
I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His
sandals
.’

‘
That was about Jesus,
wasn’t it?’
James said.

‘
Don’t be absurd.’
Sinclair’s face instantly darkened.
‘John the Baptist despised
Jesus.
He called him a liar, a deceiver, an occultist and sorcerer
who led astray his followers.
One of his most famous quotations
about Jesus was:
He perverted the words of
the light and changed them to darkness and converted those who were
mine and perverted all the cults
.
On
another occasion, he said:
Do not believe
him because he practises sorcery and treachery
.’
Sinclair pointed at the preserved head.
‘
That’s
who John
thought the Messiah was.’

‘
It’s Simon Magus,
isn’t it?’
Gresnick said.

‘
Very good, colonel.
Simon Magus is the most overlooked figure in history, the lost
prince of humanity, a man so brilliant, so knowledgeable, so
capable of extraordinary feats, that people thought he was a
magician.
The Simonians, the Gnostic sect that most revered him,
said he was God come to earth, just as the Christians said about
Jesus.
Irenaeus, one of the early leaders of the Christian Church,
branded Simon Magus “the father of all heretics.”
Eusebius in
his
Ecclesiastical History
declared Simon the “first author of heresy.”
He
was accused of being the founder of Gnosticism.

‘
Some experts think
that the beliefs of the Cathars and the Knights Templar can be
traced back to the Johannite Gnostic sect.
In fact, the Johannites
were only a minor influence.
The Simonians and the Cainites were
the true forbears.
Both were inspired by Simon and were based on
the lost religion of Atlantis, the religion Simon
rebuilt.

‘
The Templars were said
to worship a head called Baphomet.
The head right in front of you
is the very object.
They didn’t worship it because they would never
have worshipped any material object, but they thought it brought
them closer to the True God.
If you apply the code-breaking Atbash
Cipher to
Baphomet,
you get the ancient Greek word
Sophia
meaning
wisdom
.
That’s what Simon was – the
Father of Wisdom, the man who recovered the lost knowledge of
Atlantis, who restored Cain to his pre-eminent position amongst
men.

‘
Simon was the
reincarnation of Cain, just as Hitler was.
Jesus Christ was the
reincarnation of Abel, and so was Stalin.
When Cain and Abel are
reincarnated at the same time in history, the world is always
plunged into terrible conflict.

‘
If things had turned
out differently in the conflict between Simon and Jesus,
Simonianism would now be the official religion of much of the
world, and Christianity would be a forgotten cult.
But Jesus,
tragically, won.