The Armageddon Conspiracy (72 page)

When he got back to the convent, he
found Dr Wells finishing his fish and chips.
Gary Caldwell was
hunched in front of a computer, while Harrington gazed at the
sunlight as it shone through the small stained glass walls, laying
tiles of different colours on the chapel’s cool stone floor.

‘
Such lovely weather
we’re having now,’ Harrington said.

Gresnick sat down again.
He gazed at
the figure of Christ on the gold cross on the altar.
For a moment,
he imagined Lucy up there on that cross.
The media had crucified
her for absolutely no reason.

‘
What do you think
you’ll do now?’
Harrington asked.

Gresnick bowed his head.
He had no idea
what the future held for him.
Maybe he’d go back and stay with his
parents for a while.

‘
I wouldn’t write your
memoirs,’ Harrington said.
‘I don’t think the DIA would appreciate
it.
Besides, no one would believe you.
We certainly wouldn’t
corroborate any of your material.
As far as we’re concerned, the
world suffered a series of unpredictable natural disasters, that’s
it.
There were no supernatural forces at play.
As we assumed all
along, the theft of religious artefacts had no connection with the
catastrophes.
Nothing bizarre happened.
No gods or devils came to
the earth.’

He smiled in a way that made Gresnick
nauseous.

‘
If you want to have a
bright future, or indeed any kind of healthy future, colonel, I
seriously advise you to stick to that script.’

Gresnick turned and
looked the commander in the eye.
‘Forget the official script.
What
do you
really
believe?’

Harrington gave a half-smile.
‘I
honestly don’t know.
If you’re asking me if Lucy was some sort of
Chosen One who saved the world, I’d deny it utterly.
Look at her
now – deranged.
She’s painting crazy pictures again.
They’re even
more disturbed than before.’

‘
I was there,
commander.
You weren’t.’

‘
We’ve been through
this before.
You were probably unconscious.
Maybe you bumped your
head.
Maybe you were hallucinating.
What did you really see?
When I
first spoke to you in hospital, you were rambling.
At one point,
you said God materialised above the Ark of the Covenant.
I mean,
how can anyone take that seriously?’

‘
I know what went on,
I
know
.
Lucy saved
us all, and this is how we repay her, putting her back here in this
madhouse.
There must be something we can do.
She needs help from
someone who understands what she went through.’

‘
From
you
?
You love her, don’t
you?’

‘
I…’ Gresnick’s voice
tailed off.
He turned away in embarrassment.

‘
I’m afraid I have to
mention some of the odd things that have been happening to her
lately,’ Harrington said.

‘
Odd
things?’

‘
She’s become a
fully-fledged stigmatic, manifesting all five of the wounds of
Jesus.
She has wounds on her ankles and wrists matching those where
Christ was nailed to the Cross, as well as a wound on her side,
exactly where the Spear of Destiny pierced Jesus.
She’s heavily
bandaged because her blood won’t clot.
The wounds stay fresh, but
they don’t become infected and her blood seems to continually
replenish itself so that she doesn’t need a transfusion.
Her blood
gives off a strange, perfumed odour.
She’s in extreme pain all the
time.’

‘
My God, I had no
idea.’

‘
You should have been
here a few days ago.
Bleeding welts appeared on her back as though
she’d been scourged, and hundreds of bloody marks were visible on
her forehead, as though someone had ripped a crown of thorns from
her head.
Thankfully, those marks all disappeared within
twenty-four hours, leaving just the stigmata.
The media said her
wounds were self-inflicted.
Doctors say her disturbed mind is
producing these weird effects.’

‘
What about the nuns?
What do they say?’

‘
Oh, they’re certain
it’s all genuine.
They think Lucy is a saint.
They’ve started
calling her things like
Holy Lucy
and
Blessed
Lucy
.
They never throw out any of her old
bandages.
Everything is kept.
I think they’re going to build a
shrine to her.’

‘
Jesus, this is some
kind of nightmare.’

‘
Come on, there’s no
point in putting it off any longer.
I’ll take you to
her.’

Afterwards, Gresnick couldn’t remember
anything about the short journey he made along the narrow corridors
leading from the chapel to Lucy’s small room.
The closer he got to
Lucy, the more his mind tormented him.
He couldn’t bear to think of
the suffering she was enduring.

‘
Here’s Lucy’s room,’
Harrington said when they arrived outside her tiny cell.
Her name
was written on a small whiteboard on the door, with a silver
crucifix beneath it.
‘She’s gone somewhere in her head,’ Harrington
remarked, ‘and I don’t think she’s ever coming back.’

‘
Let me see
her.’

Harrington knocked on the door, and it
edged open.
A nun peered out.

‘
Colonel Gresnick is
here to see Lucy,’ Harrington said and the nun nodded.
The room
behind her was dark, lit only by candles.
Slowly, she opened the
door and beckoned Gresnick in.

As he stepped inside, Gresnick felt his
stomach churning.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
Lucy was
standing in the corner in black pyjamas with her back turned to
him, mumbling to herself.

‘
Lucy
,’ he said quietly.

She didn’t move, but stopped
muttering.

The nun went up to her and put her hand
lightly on her shoulder.

‘
Lucy, a friend has
come to see you.
An American soldier.
You’d like to see Colonel
Gresnick, wouldn’t you?’

At first, Lucy didn’t react and then,
painfully slowly, she started to turn.
More and more of her
features appeared in the dim candlelight.

When she turned round completely,
Gresnick wished he had never come here.
She looked ghastly, almost
supernaturally pale, her hair horribly dishevelled, her hands and
feet tightly wrapped in white bandages, with blood seeping through
them.

Her eyes briefly focused on him.
Instantly, she burst into tears, grabbed the pillow from her bed
and buried her face in it.

Gresnick twisted away
in revulsion, but it wasn’t Lucy’s reaction that then made every
part of him turn cold.
He thrust his hand over his mouth, trying
not to vomit.
‘
No one told
me
,’ he screamed, pushing past the nun to
get out of the room.

Harrington was standing outside, hands
in pockets.
‘Maybe you understand now, colonel.
That’s why this has
to end here.’

Gresnick grabbed him by the lapels.
‘You bastard, you should have warned me.’

‘
You needed to see for
yourself.’

Gresnick turned away, his heart
pounding.
This wasn’t possible.
It couldn’t have happened that way.
‘My God,’ he said, ‘what have we done?’

The image in his mind
would never be erased.
As Lucy turned to grab her pillow, he’d
taken his eyes off her for the first time and looked at the rest of
the room.
It was covered with scores of paintings, every one of
them showing a single figure against a blue background, just like
those in Lucy’s cell when this whole thing first started.
But now
the figure had changed.
Under each was scrawled a message, the
despairing words of Kafka:
Infinite hope,
but not for us
.

Gresnick started walking away,
practically stabbing his walking stick against the tiled floor to
allow him to go faster.
He longed to run, but his legs wouldn’t let
him.
Excruciating pains shot through them.
Glancing down, he reeled
as he saw fresh blood staining his trousers.

‘
Gresnick?’
Harrington
shouted after him.
‘Where are you going?’

Gresnick’s legs were in
agony, but it didn’t match the pain in his head.
Dear God
.
The figure in
Lucy’s paintings was no longer a woman with dark hair and a blank
face.
Now it was a masculine figure, with a face as recognisable as
any you could ever imagine.
The figure had other features, like
those of no one on earth.
The scaly skin, the tail.
Above all, the
two horns, familiar from a million terrifying medieval depictions.
Now he knew beyond doubt what Lucy saw in the Temple of Solomon.
There was no question this was the figure she saw seen hovering
above the Ark of the Covenant.
As long as he lived, he wouldn’t be
able to escape it.
It would haunt his every step, torment him with
every breath he took.

The
God
Lucy saw was the one no good
person would ever want to encounter.
One name resounded in
Gresnick’s head, an inescapable name.
He was branded with it as
though it were the Mark of Cain itself.
It represented the
destruction of all his hopes, the end of every dream.

‘
I know what she saw,’
he screamed into the corridor, to himself, to Harrington, to anyone
who could hear.
He was hoping, praying someone would grant him
absolution.
But there was no forgiveness for this.
His words echoed
in the corridor, becoming horribly amplified, rebounding off every
surface as though they were determined to pursue him, to haunt him,
to taunt him, for the rest of his life, and for all eternity in the
hell that surely now awaited him.

‘
Not God, not God,’ he
screamed.
‘
Satan
.’

‘
Don’t be alarmed,
colonel.’
The nun had followed him and was now gazing down at him.
‘Lucy met the Devil, triumphed over him and saved us all.
It’s only
natural that she should paint these pictures.’

Gresnick lay there in shock, struggling
to regain his composure, to convince himself he hadn’t gone insane.
‘Does she ever speak?’
He fought to stop his voice shaking.
Pains
more excruciating than ever were shooting through his legs.

‘
Not a word since she
came back to her room.
She’s a conduit for God now.
All of her
communication is saved for him alone.’

Gresnick tried desperately to find
anything he could cling to, the tiniest hope, a single particle of
consolation, to stop him going under just like Lucy.
There must be
a chance of redemption.
It couldn’t end like this, it just
couldn’t.
Some sort of good had to survive.

‘
Colonel, your
legs…we’ll need to take you to our medical centre.’

‘
No,’ he snapped.
‘I’m
OK.’
He gazed back towards Lucy’s room.
‘Can I be alone with her?’
He shielded his face to hide the tears welling in his eyes.
If
nothing was salvageable, there was no point in going on.