The Armageddon Conspiracy (7 page)

Swallowing hard, Vernon
flicked through the rest of the material.
The file stated that Lucy
was in a care home, on the outskirts of Glastonbury, for the
recuperation of Catholics who’d suffered from mental breakdowns.
Care home?
Judging by the photos, it was some spooky old
convent.
Our Lady of Perpetual
Succour
it was called.
You’d know you were
in big trouble if you ever ended up in a place with a name like
that.

With Glastonbury being one of the most
famous locations in southwest England, frequently linked to
mystical forces, Vernon wondered if Lucy was the true reason the
Delta Force deserters were in that part of the country, or if
Glastonbury itself was the key.
It seemed a bizarre proposition
that soldiers would have any interest in Lucy, especially given her
mental state.

It was eighteen months since they broke
up.
When her mother died from breast cancer, Lucy hadn’t coped.
She
threw herself into her work.
The more he tried to comfort her, she
more she pushed him away.
Finally, she sent him a letter saying she
didn’t want to see him again.
No reasons given.
It was the coldest
thing he’d ever read, and inconceivable that Lucy had written it.
She never answered his calls, and didn’t reply to any of his
e-mails and letters.

On the rebound, Vernon met the Swedish
nurse who became his wife, and he tried to put Lucy out of his mind
for good.
Deep down, he never stopped thinking about her.
It was
such a struggle to pretend that his wife was the great love of his
life when she could never hope to displace Lucy.

Anna was blonde and not in the least
cerebral; the opposite of Lucy.
That was why he chose her, of
course.
He couldn’t blame her for going back to Sweden.
Their
relationship began sliding from the moment she announced she was
pregnant, weeks after they started seeing each other.
He did the
honourable thing and married her, but now he wondered where the
honour was in making two people miserable.
What would be the effect
on baby Louise?
Nothing healthy, that was for sure.
She was a
gorgeous little thing and he loved every moment he spent with her,
but she was better off with her mum.
Out of sight out of mind, he
thought.
But that wasn’t the case with Lucy.
It still hadn’t sunk
in.
Lucy in a loony bin?

Gresnick passed over another folder.
‘The DIA have produced a detailed file on Lucy,’ he said.
‘We’re
trying to find some reason why Delta Force deserters would be
targeting her.
During our researches, your name cropped up, which
is why I’ve asked to see you.
So far, the best we’ve been able to
come up with is connected with the fact that the two deserters we
caught last night were studying old manuscripts concerning the Holy
Grail.’

Vernon nodded.
A couple
of years ago, Lucy published
The Unholy
Grail: The Secret Heresy
, a controversial
analysis of the Grail legend, claiming it was a coded reference to
heretical rituals.
Initiates would understand what the Grail story
was really saying, she argued, while non-initiates would think it
was simply an exciting tale.
Because the story was dressed up to
make it look superficially consistent with orthodox Christianity,
the Catholic Church never banned it, though they were always
uncomfortable with it.
So, the Grail legend allowed heretical
beliefs to be safely distributed across Europe.

A book published in
1920 inspired many of Lucy’s ideas.
From
Ritual to Romance
by Jessie Weston was, in
its day, both highly influential and much derided.
Lucy’s book
suffered the derision part of the equation, but, unlike Weston
who’d enjoyed admirers of the calibre of T.S.
Eliot, Lucy didn’t
have any supporters.

‘
I know it’s a lot to
take in,’ Gresnick said, ‘but I’m afraid there’s more.
I think we
ought to let you see the two prisoners now.’

Vernon stood up, expecting to leave the
room.

‘
Oh, we’re not going
anywhere,’ Gresnick said.
‘I want to show you the video footage we
took when the prisoners were brought in.’

‘
Why can’t I see them
in the flesh?’

‘
Just watch the video.’
Gresnick turned to the large LCD TV at the side of the room,
currently showing a screensaver of mathematical symbols.
He pressed
a button on a remote control and the screensaver disappeared,
replaced by video images of soldiers bringing in, at gunpoint, two
handcuffed men in dark suits.

One of the prisoners glanced at the
camera.

God
Almighty
.
Vernon looked away in
revulsion.

Gresnick froze the picture.
‘What age
would you say that man is?’

‘
Seventy?
Eighty?’
Vernon was baffled by how an old man could be serving in Delta
Force, and even more perplexed by how an elderly man arrested in a
library ended up in such a horrific state.
Surely he should have
been taken straight to hospital.
Much of his flesh was charred;
third degree burns by the looks of it.
Strips were flaking
off.

‘
He’s thirty-one,’
Gresnick replied.
‘A doctor said he’s been exposed to incredible
levels of radiation.’

‘
Thirty-one?
Impossible
.’

Gresnick pressed
the
play
button
again.

The soldiers took both prisoners to the
detention block and put them in separate cells.
Dr Hugh Wells, a
friend of Vernon’s, laid the burned man on a prison bed and
attended to his wounds.
Another doctor started to cut away the
prisoner’s clothes.

Gresnick fast-forwarded the pictures
until they showed Dr Wells alone in one of the interview rooms,
talking quietly to an overhead camera.

‘
The man’s body is
covered from head to foot with blisters and sores,’ Wells said.
The
doctor then mentioned that, as a young trainee, he was part of an
international team of doctors sent to the Soviet Union to treat
victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
This prisoner’s condition, Wells
said, reminded him of the nuclear engineers who’d been nearest to
the site of the partial meltdown.
Many died in agony within days.
This man, according to Wells, was much worse off and unlikely to
survive hours never mind days.
All they were trying to do now was
ease his pain.

As for the second prisoner, Wells said
that although he seemed healthy, he was being kept in isolation as
a precaution.
No one would be allowed to approach either prisoner
directly without protective clothing.
Any interrogation of the
prisoners would have to take place remotely.

Gresnick stopped the video and the
screensaver reappeared.

‘
I just don’t get
this.’
Vernon shook his head.
‘I mean, what happened to that man?
A
radiation source?
Where?
How?’

‘
We have no idea.’
Gresnick reached forward and raised the emerald paperweight.
‘Something very odd happened when the armed police arrested the two
men.
They told them to raise their hands and stay where they were.
Instead, one of the men put his hand in his pocket and snatched
this out.
A policeman thought he was reaching for a weapon and
opened fire.
The bullet hit this ball.
It didn’t leave a
mark.’

‘
It’s just a
paperweight,’ Vernon blurted.

Gresnick shrugged.
‘Well, the prisoner
seemed to think it was valuable.
The police had to prise it away
from him.
There’s another curious thing – before he touched this
object, the prisoner was uninjured, and looked like a normal
thirty-one-year-old.
The burns and rapid ageing appeared while he
was being brought over here, but he wasn’t exposed to any radiation
en route.
The ball was seemingly the last thing he touched.’

‘
What are you saying?
That the radiation came from that ball?’

Gresnick tapped the back of the orb
with a pencil.
‘As far as I can make out, it’s just a coloured
glass ball.
Several of us have touched it without mishap, but we’re
sending it to a lab to have it analysed in depth.’

Vernon imagined he was looking at the
scattered pieces of some giant jigsaw, but he couldn’t form any
idea of what the big picture might be.

‘
The burned man is
Captain Lucius Ferris,’ Gresnick said.
‘His colleague is Sergeant
Samuel Morson.
Both are highly decorated veterans.
These were the
Special Forces men chosen for the most dangerous operations.
In
terms of our elite soldiers, they were the cream of the
cream.’

Vernon couldn’t think of a single
plausible idea why America’s top soldiers would go AWOL.

‘
It’s time to see if
these guys want to talk.’
Gresnick picked up the remote control
again and pressed a button.

On the LCD TV, a live feed appeared of
the prisoners in their adjoining cells.
The cell walls were made of
reinforced glass to allow unobstructed 24/7 observation.
It was
possible to see both men from one camera.
Sergeant Morson had been
made to sit in a position giving him a clear view of his superior
in the adjacent cell; a tactic, Vernon assumed, designed to make
the sergeant anxious and more talkative, but Morson wasn’t showing
any signs of distress.
His expression mixed arrogance with
satisfaction.
Vernon was nonplussed.
Why did Morson seem so pleased
with himself when his captain was likely to die at any moment?

Gresnick drew his microphone towards
him and coughed a couple of times.

Vernon noticed how neatly Gresnick’s
cufflinks were arranged, how straight and pristine his tie was.
He
was obviously the sort who spent a lot of time getting everything
just so.

‘
What is this object,
Sergeant Morson?’
Gresnick held up the emerald globe, pointing it
towards the overhead camera.

Morson peered at it on the monitor that
had been set up in his cell to allow easy, two-way communication.
‘Isn’t it a paperweight?’

‘
So, you wouldn’t mind
if I smashed it on the floor?’

‘
Do whatever you
like.’

If Gresnick believed the object held
some great significance for Morson and his colleague, he’d received
no encouragement.
‘Why did you and your men carry out seven raids?’
he asked.
‘What did you want with religious relics?’

Morson didn’t answer.

‘
Why were you examining
microfiche of ancient manuscripts in the British
Library?’

This time, Morson smiled, but still
didn’t speak.

‘
Why did the natural
disasters start straight after your seven raids?’

‘
You have no idea, do
you?
The kingdom of the blind, and no one-eyed man in sight,’
Morson said without warning.

‘
What do you want with
this woman?’
Gresnick lifted up Lucy’s picture.

‘
He
knows.’
Morson pointed at Vernon.

Vernon shrugged.
He’d had to read the
DIA file to find out what had happened to Lucy since their
break-up.
After her mother died, her father committed suicide
several months later.
At the same time, Lucy’s professional
reputation was ruined when her theories about the Grail were
ridiculed as speculative, unacademic nonsense.
‘This poor woman is
clearly losing her mind,’ one of her critics said, before literally
being proved right.
The whole world was going nuts, Vernon thought,
but Lucy got there before everyone else.