The Armageddon Conspiracy (70 page)

Lucy looked away, appalled.
She knelt
down, closing her eyes.
It was too painful to look.
Putting her
hands over her ears, she tried to shut out the sounds, but it was
impossible to block out the screams of the others.
It seemed that,
one by one, the figure was turning on each of Cain’s priesthood,
destroying them with fiery beams from its eyes and from the tip of
the Spear of Destiny.
She heard Morson yelling and firing his
pistol, each shot booming like a cannon.
Then came a grotesque
scream.

The Temple shook more
violently than ever.
Lucy tried to block the thoughts running
through her head.
She kept her eyes closed.
I’m going to faint
.
She wanted to be
oblivious to everything around her.
Even through her closed
eyelids, she could see brilliant lights.
The gold curtain had
caught fire.
The smell of smoke was overpowering.
In her mind,
Raphael’s mural flashed up.
It was burning.
Everything was burning.
Her heart, her soul.
The whole world was on fire.
Burn it, burn it
all.
Incinerate the whole of Creation.

Her eyes sprang open again.
The figure
above the Ark had fully materialised and was staring straight at
her.
Slumping forward, she threw up, then slid into her own vomit.
The figure was laughing, the sound growing louder and louder until
the Holy of Holies shook with the noise.

There was only one thought in Lucy’s
mind.

God of Mercy – what
have I done
?

85

(One Month Later)

T
he paramedics
helped Gresnick down from the back of the ambulance.
They had
allowed him just one hour for his visit.
His doctor told him he
shouldn’t be leaving hospital at all, but Gresnick felt he must
come here to find out what finally happened.

They handed him his walking stick, and
he struggled towards the convent’s entrance doors.
It gave him such
a strange feeling to be back in Glastonbury.
In hospital in
Bristol, he’d thought of nothing else than that night in
Glastonbury Tor.
He was told he was knocked out by one of the
falling statues.
Blood loss caused by his leg wounds left him close
to death.
Another hour and it would have all been over, one doctor
said.

It seemed that the nuns in the convent
that fateful night saw the whole of Glastonbury Tor lighting up
from inside and thought they were witnessing the Second Coming.
As
soon as dawn came up, on the most beautiful day they’d ever seen,
the nuns went to the Tor.
What they found was Lucy, wearing
beautiful vestments and standing in the centre of a circle of
cherry blossom trees.
The trees had shed all of their beautiful
pink blossom, but instead of falling to the ground, it was swirling
all around Lucy, forming strange patterns, almost like great
fingers caressing her.
One nun said it was as though the Hand of
God were holding her.
Thousands of Robin Redbreasts were in the
trees, singing to her.
White butterflies fluttered around her head
like a living halo.
A rainbow of the most vibrant colours curved
over the grove.

Yet the nuns said Lucy
was in the worse state of shock they’d ever seen.
She looked, they
claimed, as though she’d just emerged from hell.
Over and over, she
repeated one thing:
Forgive
me
.

The nuns soon discovered the entrance
to the hidden Temple.
They went inside and encountered a
nightmarish scene.
Everyone was dead apart from Gresnick, and he
had only the faintest of pulses.
They carried him out and drove
Lucy and him to a military hospital in Bristol.
Lucy was quickly
discharged back into their care when it was confirmed she had no
physical injuries.

Gresnick shook his
head.
No physical
injuries
.
Lucy was hurt worse than anyone.
Mental wounds went so much deeper.

Limping heavily, he tried to negotiate
his way through the convent’s front doors.
Two nuns came out to
help him: Sisters Mary and Bernadette, the ones who had carried him
out of the Temple.
He felt grateful and yet somehow ashamed to see
them.
He poured out his thanks once again, but was anxious to get
away.

Commander Harrington, Gary Caldwell and
Dr Wells from MI5 had agreed to meet him here.
They’d been in the
Glastonbury area for the last week, attempting to piece together
what happened, to prepare a detailed report for the Director
General and the PM, and to respond to questions raised by religious
leaders.
Gresnick was eager to discover if the commander had
managed to make any sense of those final hours in the early morning
of 30 April.

The nuns escorted him to the small
chapel where Harrington and his staff had set up their office.

‘
Good to see you.’
Harrington extended his hand and gave Gresnick a firm handshake.
‘I
hear your wounds are healing satisfactorily.’

That was one way of putting it.
Too
slowly for Gresnick.
Harrington had visited him twice in hospital,
but he couldn’t remember a single thing about what they discussed.
He suspected he’d been incoherent, what with the pain and the
drugs.
Caldwell had stopped by too, but Gresnick recalled that the
young agent didn’t seem interested in getting his story from him.
Maybe it was understandable.
After so many catastrophes, people
were preoccupied with getting their own lives back on track.

‘
Sit down, colonel,’
Harrington said.
‘I’ll bring you up to date with what’s been going
on.
I guess there’s a lot you want to know.
Here, let’s get you a
coffee first.
Strong and black, right?’

Caldwell was despatched to get the
coffees and soon returned with a tray of espressos.
They sat
looking at the altar as they sipped their drinks.
Gresnick wondered
if Lucy had once sat here too, transfixed by the gold crucifix in
the centre of the altar.

‘
You know,’ Harrington
said, ‘scientists are claiming the earth is now more stable than at
any time in history.
Catastrophic
Realignment Theory
– that’s what they’re
calling it.
Apparently, the world reaches a point of massive
instability where everything starts happening at once – fault lines
moving, massive earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, tsunamis,
hurricanes, magnetic storms, you name it.
It’s as though someone
has turned a valve to release a huge pressure that’s been building
for millions of years.
Now the pressure’s gone and they’re saying
we can look forward to a thousand years of unprecedentedly benign
weather all across the globe.
The earth sparkles now, as though
it’s been cleaned and polished.
They’re not expecting any more
natural disasters for a long, long time.
We’ll be able to rebuild
in peace.’

Despite the optimistic things he was
saying, he sounded weary.
‘They reckon four billion died, two
thirds of the world’s population, but it should be a golden age for
the rest of us if we can successfully reconstruct our old way of
life.’

Gresnick was bemused.
Already, the dead
were being forgotten.
Civilisation in South America, Africa and
Asia had practically ceased to exist.
Most of North America was in
ruins too.
Boston, where his parents lived, was the only major
American city to survive intact.
Huge swathes of territory would be
uninhabitable for centuries to come.
Only Australia and mainland
Europe escaped the worst, but millions died in England when the
asteroid exploded over the centre of the country, and hundreds of
thousands of others perished when the crisis was at its height.

Even so, everything was getting back to
normal with surprising speed.
The London Stock Exchange was up and
running again and was actually surging ahead – a million new
investment opportunities.
Capitalism could never be defeated, it
seemed.

Harrington said a new Pope had been
elected – the first-ever black Pope.
It was being hailed as a
wonderful sign from God, ushering in a new age of tolerance and
racial harmony.
Already, talks were well underway between the
Vatican, the Anglican Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church about
reuniting the main strands of Christianity.
Even many of the
anti-Catholic Protestant leaders were beginning to make
conciliatory noises.
Some optimistic commentators were claiming
that there was a one-time opportunity to unite all of the different
religions and produce a single world faith.

Dr Wells came into the chapel, wearing
a smart linen suit, and looking remarkably more comfortable than
when Gresnick last saw him in Thames House.
Bizarrely, he was
eating fish and chips wrapped in old newspaper.

‘
Good to see you,
colonel,’ Wells said.
‘I was delighted when I heard you were still
alive.
It’s tragic James didn’t make it.
He was a good
friend.’

Gresnick said nothing.
He didn’t want
to think about Vernon.

‘
What on earth have you
got there?’
Harrington asked, gesturing at Wells’s
lunch.

‘
The fish and chip shop
on the high street has reopened.
You can’t believe how much I’ve
been looking forward to this.
They even had brown sauce.’
He held
out the bag towards Harrington.
‘Want a chip?
The fish is haddock.
No cod.
First delivery of fish arrived this morning.
A miracle,
really, given the state of the oceans a few weeks ago.’

Harrington peered at the fish and shook
his head.

‘
Colonel?’
Wells turned
to Gresnick.
‘You must admit – the smell is amazing.’

It was true.
The smell of vinegar from
the food was almost overpowering.
But Gresnick was concentrating on
something else.
‘The newspaper,’ he said, pointing at the wrapper
for the fish and chips.

Wells peered at it then gave an
embarrassed shrug.

‘
I’m sorry, I didn’t
realise.’

‘
Let me look at
it.’

Wells reluctantly handed over the old
sheet of newspaper.
‘This was printed at the height of the crisis,’
he explained.
‘No one understood what was happening back then.
Scientists hadn’t formulated Catastrophic Realignment Theory.’

Gresnick stared, horrified, at the
colour photograph on the newspaper.

Humanity’s last
hope
?
the headline above the picture said.
Underneath the photo was a single word –
Messiah
.

‘
God Almighty,’
Gresnick said.
‘How did Lucy’s picture end up in a
newspaper?’

‘
I guess the whole
world went a bit crazy,’ Wells said.
‘It was the Vatican that said
humanity should pray for Lucy, that she was the only thing standing
between the human race and Armageddon.
Everyone wanted to believe
it was true.’

‘
What are you talking
about?’
Gresnick continued to stare disbelievingly at the picture.
All the time he was with Lucy, she was dishevelled, without a trace
of make-up, yet, despite that, she had a tremendous natural beauty.
Here, her raven hair was neatly combed, her blue eyes shining, her
face smothered with expensive cosmetics.
Some sort of publicity
shot.
She looked simply stunning.

‘
Psychologists
concluded that mass hysteria erupted during the week of
catastrophes,’ Wells said.
‘The realisation that the world really
could be ending cracked everyone’s minds.
That’s why most of us
were ready to believe in a Messiah.
We would have believed anything
that allowed us to think there was still a chance.
But, I mean, how
could a woman from an asylum possibly save the world?
One leading
psychiatrist said the sanctification of a lunatic was symptomatic
of the craziness that enveloped everyone.
End of story.’