The Armageddon Conspiracy (64 page)

‘
What the Bible keeps
secret is that the Spear of Destiny was always paired with the Ark
of the Covenant.
The High Priest of Solomon’s Temple used the spear
to direct Jehovah’s energy.
Without it, Jehovah’s remaining power
couldn’t be focused.
That’s why he’s now lashing out so wildly and
indiscriminately, causing catastrophes all over the world.
But
without the spear, he’s blind.
He can’t see us, can’t target us
with his power.
While we have his spear, we’re
invulnerable.’

Sinclair’s explanation made some sort
of weird sense, yet Lucy remained doubtful.
She wasn’t even sure
Sinclair knew what the right spear was.
For her, it was the one she
found in the chapel at Cadbury, not the one Hitler took from
Vienna.

‘
Let’s go,’ Sinclair
said as Morson took a candle and set the petrol alight.

Flames instantly engulfed three sides
of the castle.
They hurried out of the main entrance as the blaze
pursued them.

Sinclair clutched the Lucifer Stone.
It
was an extraordinary object, but Lucy still struggled to accept
that it was the real Holy Grail.
Oddly, that somehow made it the
perfect candidate: unexpected, elusive, enigmatic.
Above all – if
Sinclair was right – it was an object not of this world.
What could
be more appropriate as the Holy Grail?

‘
What about Morson’s
captain?’
she asked as they emerged into the outer courtyard.
‘You
said there was something special about him.’

‘
Special?’
Sinclair
seemed almost amused.
‘If my name is special, the captain’s is
unique.’

‘
Lucius something,’
Lucy said.
‘He has the male version of my name.’

‘
His name is Lucius
Ferris, Lucy.
When he gazed into the stone, it didn’t show his
name.
For him, the effect when he touched it was entirely
different.’

Lucius
Ferris
.
There was something familiar about
the name.
Lucy felt icy cold, despite the ferocious heat of the
burning castle.

‘
Why are you blocking
it?’
Sinclair asked.
‘You already know the significance of the
captain’s name.’

Lucy shook her head,
but the name was pulsing in her mind like a strobe, burrowing into
her unconscious.
Lucius
Ferris
.
My God, it was so obvious.
It was
one of the oldest names of all, a name from before time.
When the
captain held the stone, it didn’t show his name for one simple
reason.
The stone was his.
Lucius Ferris –
Lucifer
.

The stone was designed
to transform Lucifer into a human.
It could do the reverse as well
– turn a suitable human into Lucifer.
It had changed the captain
into an angel, a
dark
angel, the most famous angel of all.
All along, that was the
presence she’d sensed, first at Tintagel then at Cadbury and
finally Cheddar Gorge.
Lucifer was walking the earth.

‘
He’s waiting for us at
our final destination,’ Sinclair said.
‘He’s at Glastonbury Tor
with the Ark of the Covenant.’

Lucifer at Glastonbury?
It seemed insane.
The early Christian leader Tertullian was famous
for saying:
It is certain because it is
impossible
.
Lucy had always found it a mad
statement.
Now it seemed the cornerstone of logic.

The two trucks were
waiting at the far side of the courtyard.
They now had huge Skull
and Crossbones emblazoned on their sides: white on a red
background, the sign of
No Quarter
to the enemy.
Pirate trucks, Lucy thought, making
the journey to the end of the world.

As they climbed into
the trucks, Lucy caught James’s eye, but he turned away and
scrambled into the other truck.
Gresnick bowed his head and also
headed for the other truck.
It seemed no one wanted to look at her:
not Sinclair, not Morson, nor any of the soldiers or
knights.
No one
.

When she took her seat
in the back corner, she felt as though she’d been branded an
Untouchable.
Maybe they were right to avoid her.
What Sinclair was
proposing was beyond comprehension.
As far as she could make out –
Sinclair had carefully avoided spelling it out – she was expected
to stab the Spear of Destiny into the Ark of the Covenant.
Just as
it had killed Jesus Christ, the spear would somehow kill God, or,
at any rate, what most people called God.
To the Gnostics, the god
inside the Ark was Satan, but it was impossible for Lucy to shake
off the beliefs she was raised with.
For her, she was being asked
to slaughter
the
God, the one, the only, the
Creator
.
It seemed an inconceivable
act, yet Sinclair was certain it could be done.

She didn’t share his confidence.
She
suspected it would be a ceremony that ended in failure like all the
previous attempts – like her life.
Like love?
The only person on
earth who would never betray her was James, yet he had.
The
unthinkable, the unimaginable: yet it happened.
That was the truth
of life.
Humanity’s Holy Grail was never anything but an unholy
Grail.

She couldn’t make up
her mind.
One moment the idea of the world ending at her hands
seemed absurd.
Even if she could do it, she wouldn’t.
A moment
later, she could imagine nothing better than ending this atrocity
exhibition once and for all.
Rimbaud said:
Life is the farce which everyone has to
perform
.
Was it her role to bring down the
final curtain on the grand farce?

When the blood ran down
her legs at Cheddar Gorge, it was as if her own body had turned
against her.
Did it understand what she was being asked to do?
The
material world was full of suffering.
Look at all the poverty and
pain, the lies, cruelty and violence, the endless wars and madness.
It deserved to end.
Its greatest benefactor would be the person who
put it out of its misery.
Did it really fall to one person to end
it?
To her
?
Was she
like one of the leaders in the Cold War with all the apocalyptic
nuclear codes in his briefcase, his finger poised over the red
button ready to unleash the final destruction?

Those old politicians were prepared to
do it.
Why not her?
But, if she did, she’d be killing billions.
She’d be the greatest homicidal maniac in history, the ultimate
pariah.
Would anyone want that to be their epitaph, even if there
was no one left to care?

The trucks motored slowly along the
snow-covered roads leading to Glastonbury.
Lucy tried to block out
what lay ahead.
Sinclair, who’d been sitting near the tailgate of
the truck, made his way up to the back to sit with her.

‘
I know it’s hard for
you to come to terms with all of this,’ he said.
‘The truth is,
everything collides in you, all the forces of history.’

Lucy was astonished by what Sinclair
then told her.
Her mother was a Jewess who could, he said, trace
her bloodline all the way back to Seriah, the last High Priest of
Solomon’s Temple.
That meant she was descended from Aaron, brother
of Moses.
It was essential for her to belong to that bloodline
because the Ark couldn’t function properly unless one of Aaron’s
descendants was present.
The Gnostics’ attempt at Atlantis had gone
catastrophically wrong because no such person was there.
The Nazis
failed too, and one of the reasons was that they refused to have a
Jew amongst them.
This time, the Invisible College had ensured
everything was done properly.

‘
Are you saying my
father didn’t marry my mother for love?
It was
arranged?’

‘
As it turned out, your
father did love your mother, but he wasn’t supposed to.
All that
was required of him was to have a child with her.
Your father can
trace his line back to Cain.
We have unbroken records dating back
ten thousand years, with Cain’s name the very first.
Your bloodline
could not be more illustrious – with Cain on your father’s side,
and Aaron, the patriarch of the Levite priesthood, on your
mother’s.
You were raised as a Catholic in an attempt to disguise
your true heritage.’

Lucy shook her head.
No wonder she was
at war with herself.
Her blood was practically fighting itself.
A
Catholic, a Jew and a Gnostic all in one.
If the legend were true
that Lucifer was Cain’s real father then she had supernatural
elements in her blood, an innate hatred of Jehovah, yet she also
had the blood of Aaron, one of the most revered figures of
Jehovah’s Chosen People.
And she was a Catholic, the religion that
was the historical enemy of both Jews and Gnostics.

‘
The final side-panel
of Raphael’s mural is the summary of this ancient struggle,’
Sinclair said.

Lucy pictured it instantly: the one
that showed the city of Rome in a mirror with the Vatican displayed
upside-down in an egg timer.

‘
The proper name of
Rome is
Roma
,’
Sinclair said.
‘Roma in a mirror spells
Amor
.
Amor is the Cathars’ word for
love.
The Cathars regarded Roma as the symbol of temporal power, of
Satan’s kingdom.
Amor was the antidote, the opposite of everything
Roma represented.
Amor was spiritual power, the kingdom of light.
Roma versus Amor is the eternal war.

‘
Amor
can be split into
a
mor
meaning w
ithout
death
in the Cathars’ language.
That’s the
prize Amor offers – immortality, deathlessness, the final release
from Satan’s hell.
All of us must decide which side we’re on: Roma
or Amor.’

The truck stopped.
‘We’re here,’
Sinclair said.
‘It’s time, Lucy.’

The others got out of the truck,
leaving Sinclair alone with Lucy.
For a second, he held his hand
against her cheek and she trembled.
Her father used to do that
too.

He climbed out of the
truck then helped her down, never taking his eyes off her.
Was he imagining what he’d do if he were in her
position?
But he wouldn’t hesitate, would he?

They had parked outside
Glastonbury’s famous
Chalice Well
gardens.
Lucy could scarcely believe she was
here,
just a few hundred yards from her
convent.
Beginnings and endings – always the same.
Scientists said
the universe began with a Big Bang.
Was that how it would end too?
She would pierce the Ark of the Covenant with the Spear of Destiny
and it would cause a second Big Bang to reverse the first.
With
that apocalyptic explosion, hell would end forever.

Let there be
light
.
Perhaps those were the words said
before the original Big Bang.
Did Satan say them?
Jehovah?
Allah?
God?
Yahweh?
Christ?
Did these names mean anything any longer?
Through a dazzling explosion, the material world was born.
Through
a matching explosion it would die.
The eternal symmetry.
The
perfect circle.
As you raced forward, you simply get back faster to
where you started.