A Pale Horse
Page 2
Hitler’s “Übermenschen.”
To locate the frozen monsters had become more than Alessandro’s passion.
It had become his (and the Vatican covert intelligence service’s—Servizio Informazioni del Vaticano’s) sole obsession.
Forty-eight months ago, he had hit gold, quite literally, in the form of four unidentified flying machines, each emblazoned with a golden swastika and measuring over a hundred meters in height and width.
Then, six months later, far below the southeastern sector of the subterranean city, Alessandro had unearthed the first mummified Nephilim. The sector was now the site of the global intelligence community’s highly restricted Red Ice zone.
The doctor walked inside and surveyed the members of the Iceman Three task force. Forty-five of the world’s leading geophysicists, geologists, geomorphologists, anthropologists, and glaciologists, who had been secluded from all human contact. Training night and day for today’s retrieval exercise.
A tall man with cropped pale blond hair, in uniform, strode into the communications center. The intelligence personnel immediately stood to attention and saluted.
General Kjellberg motioned them to stand down. He nodded to Dr. Alessandro, and together they walked to the far side of the chamber.
“Dr. Alessandro, time is not on our side.” The general spoke with a soft Norwegian accent, but his tone was forceful. “Our security forces are waiting at the shaft entrance to accompany you. The destiny of the human race may rest on your success . . . ”
The general looked at Gabriele Alessandro steadily.
“ . . . or your failure.”
“Understood, General. We shall work fast. And smart.”
Dr. Alessandro turned to the task force. “Operation Iceman is in play, gentlemen.”
General Kjellberg watched silently as, one by one, the red-jacketed expedition members of Iceman Three followed Alessandro through monstrous steel doors in the direction of the underground ice shaft.
Their mission: to destroy the hidden secrets of the Antarctic.
Maybe even the secrets of Hell itself.
Two miles underground, eight weeks later
Although Gabriele Alessandro had been preparing for over two years to take possession of the “cargo,” what they had discovered was nonetheless mind-blowing. Staggering.
Over two hundred frozen mummified bodies had lain two miles beneath the ice for centuries. Giants. Nephilim—the mythical hybrids of human and fallen angelic DNA—actually existed.
Their calculations had been exact.
Two decades of preparation had been successful. Beyond their wildest imagination.
“Hey, Doc!” Jesse Tate, the youngest member of Project Iceman, a brilliant MIT grad with a Mensa IQ, ran up to Gabriele Alessandro.
“Doc . . . ,” he gasped. “I need you to come with me.” He hesitated. “Now, please.”
Alessandro frowned, then followed Tate swiftly over to the left of the cavern, where a colossal mummified figure rested on top of the ice.
The giant’s head was at least three times the size of a man’s, but the features were definitely human. Except for the staring eyes.
The irises were the strange pale lilac color that now seemed consistent with all Nephilim. The same chiseled mouth and nose, strong chin, coarse yellow hair.
Six fingers on each hand. Six toes. Wrists and ankles bound by wide copper bands.
The creature’s jaw was open. Alessandro squatted down next to the giant.
“Two perfect rows of teeth,” he murmured. “Note the incisors, Tate.”
“Doc, it’s the shoulders. Look at the shoulders . . . ”
Alessandro’s gaze dropped to the monster’s shoulders. Jutting from the massive scapulae, half concealed by the icy matrix, was what looked like an outcrop of bone.
Impossible.
“Fused together,” he muttered, tugging gently with his gloved hand at the bone jutting from the shoulder.
“Joint axes of the skeleton support the creature’s wings,” he murmured in wonder.
“ . . . Set perpendicular to the longitudinal axis. Enables it to extend and flex. It’s actually part of the hybrid’s skeleton.”
He looked up at Tate, incredulous.
“You realize what this means, Tate?”
Jesse Tate stared at Alessandro in elation. “It means that this Nephilim had wings, Doc.”
“It also means,” Alessandro said softly, “that the angelic DNA in this hybrid had to have superseded the human DNA. Get the DNA sample, Tate. Then proceed with the extermination procedure.”
Gabriele Alessandro tore his eyes away from the eighteen-foot mummy and pressed his transmit button.
“Bayliss, confirm the number of cargo still to be terminated.”
“One hundred and ten, Doc.” The words in a strong cockney accent reverberated in his earpiece.
Alessandro spoke softly again into his mouthpiece. “Keep me post—”
A barrage of machine-gun fire erupted through the caverns. Seconds later, the entire battalion of special security forces lay dead or dying on the ground.
“Congratulations, Dr. Alessandro.”
The blood drained from Gabriele Alessandro’s face. Slowly he turned around.
Walking toward him was a tall, bony man with a gray complexion, humorless eyes, and badly dyed cropped jet black hair.
Kurt Guber, Director of E.U. Special Service Operations, and exotic-weapons specialist.
“You have some lost property belonging to us, I believe.”
Alessandro stared back at Guber with unconcealed disgust.
“Oh, come, come, Dr. Alessandro, we are fully aware of your discovery of our flying machines. In fact, we are most indebted to you, Herr Doktor. You have single-handedly discovered the passage under ice to Agharta.”
He held out a gloved hand grasping a map with the title “Deutsche Antarktis Expedition 1938–9.”
“A map of the underground passages under Antarctica. Grand Admiral Doenitz gave it to my father.”
Alessandro stiffened visibly at the mention of Guber’s father. Ulrich Guber, “the Wolfman,” had been in charge of one of the Nazis’ most advanced covert superweapons programs until his disappearance in April 1945.
“What is the English saying? I think it goes, ‘Don’t exterminate your chickens’—in this case, your Nephilim—‘before they are hatched.’”
“You’re trapped, Guber,” Alessandro snapped. “The communications base two miles above us will be tracking you and your thugs.”
Guber reached over and ripped open Alessandro’s Big Red parka at the neck, revealing a clerical collar. He smiled contemptuously, then nodded to a swarthy mercenary who pushed the butt of his machine gun savagely between Alessandro’s shoulder blades. Alessandro collapsed to his knees in pain.
“Yes, pray, Reverend Doctor—you will need your prayers. How do you think we got in? Let’s just say that your associates from the intelligence base in Antarctica are no longer with . . . ” Guber broke off in mid sentence. Gabriele Alessandro was staring, transfixed, at the Nephilim to his left.
Guber carefully followed his line of sight.
A shallow but definite pulse was beating under the pallid flesh.
“Dio Abbi pietà,” Alessandro whispered, his face as pale as the form on the ice before him.
“God have mercy.” He stared up at Guber “It’s alive!”
“Of course it is alive, Herr Doktor Alessandro.” Guber swigged a drink of brandy from the hip flask at his waist. “They are all alive.” He smiled dispassionately at Alessandro.
“They have just been sleeping. For thousands of years.”
He leaned over and pressed the transmit button on his comm system.
“Your assistance has been invaluable to us, Bayliss. Crate the cargo; then transfer the containers to the shafts. Our transport planes have entered Antarctic airspace. We airlift them out at 0200 hours. And the viruses. Leave him till last.”
; He nodded at the trembling Alessandro, then turned to the terrified scientists being herded into the cavern by Guber’s mercenaries. Finally, all forty-five stood in silence before Guber.
“Execute them.” There was so much loathing in Guber’s voice that Gabriele Alessandro knew with certainty that he would slaughter them all. He bowed his head, grasping for his rosary with trembling fingers.
The South polar underworld had indeed released its grisly secret: the ancient race of flaxen-haired supermen that Ulrich Guber and the Nazis had combed Neuschwabenland for eight decades earlier.
Hitler’s Übermenschen. Sons of the Fallen.
The Nephilim had been exhumed.
Operation Pale Horse was under way.
It was Resurrection Day.
Vatican Observatory, Castel Gandolfo, Italy
2024
It was eight p.m., the first Sunday in December. And it was Raffaele Ricci’s nineteenth birthday.
He had recently been transferred from the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, in Florence, to serve as special assistant to the revered chief astronomer of the Vatican Observatory, Father d’Angelis. Raffaele knew instinctively that the sealed document he clutched in his right hand contained “il più terribile segreto.”
The terrible secret. The secret that Father d’Angelis had probed the cosmos and the glaciers of Antarctica for these past thirty years.
The terrible secret that could now set in motion the annihilation of the entire human race.
Il Catastrofico scenario—the Doomsday Scenario.
Raffaele wiped the perspiration from his upper lip, stared down once more at the document, then ran like lightning through the cloisters’ ancient winding corridors, his long dark hair flying across his beatific features.
He ran through the vast observatory library housing the priceless antique works of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler. Past four Italian carabinieri holding their submachine guns, and out into the palace’s inner courtyard. He caught his breath, then headed toward the newly renovated edifice on the east side of the Castel.
He pushed open the heavy eighteen-foot chestnut doors of the palace apartments.
Since the appointment of Pope Boniface Xl in 2022, Castel Gandolfo had ceased to function as the Pope’s summer palace. It was now the international headquarters of the new state-of-the-art Vatican Observatory, and permanent residence of the current Pope’s beloved old mentor and confidant: chief astronomer of the Vatican, and eminent glaciologist Father d’Angelis.
Unknown to the outer world—unknown even to the Pope—was the fact that Castel Gandalfo was also a top secret base for the most covert expedition ever planned by the Illumines: Project Iceman.
Raffaele stopped to catch his breath outside the exquisitely carved door of Father d’Angelis’s private cloister. He knocked loudly.
He was greeted by silence.
He knocked again, then took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
“What is it, Raffaele?”
The 80-year-old Jesuit priest looked up from his papers in mild irritation, but his pale blue eyes twinkled with affection.
“I thought I made it abundantly clear.” Father d’Angelis elegantly removed his pince nez glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“There are to be no disturbances . . . ” He broke off in mid sentence, catching sight of the distinctive copper seal of the Servizio Informazioni del Vaticano.”
The Vatican’s covert intelligence service, established to monitor secret information regarding extra- and intraterrestrial intelligence activities.
The copper seal to be used only in one event: il Catastrofico scenario—the Doomsday Scenario.
Father d’Angelis’s glasses slid out of his hand and onto the antique wooden desk.
Slowly he rose to his feet. Ashen.
“Dio Abbi pietà,” Father d’Angelis murmured.
He held out trembling fingers to Raffaele, who handed him the sealed pages.
Father d’Angelis took the documents, broke the copper seal, then spread the papers out on his desk with meticulous care.
“God have mercy.”
Raffaelle watched his tutor in awe. He well knew that at this precise moment, the chief astronomer was deciphering the lines at lightning speed, using the thousands of proprietary algorithms and classified cryptography that he had meticulously accumulated over sixty years of intense analysis and study of both the cosmos and the Antarctic.
He put on his glasses, his eagle eyes scanning the pages of encoded data.
“The secret Antarctic doors of the South Pole,” he whispered. “They are open. Essi sono qui . . . ” His voice quavered.
He read in silence, then rose slowly to his feet.
“Over a hundred frozen Nephilim bodies were secretly airlifted from below the Southern Polar entrance by Kurt Guber and his mercenaries over twelve hours ago.”
He walked over to the window.
“To what end, we dare not contemplate.”
He stared out at the calm waters of the volcanic Crater Lake that glistened in the falling Italian dusk.
“They are now housed in Mont St. Michel’s secret bioterror containment levels, connected by a set of deep tunnels and railcars to the underground base at the Franco-Swiss border.”
He turned back to the pale 19-year-old before him.
“To CERN.”
“The expedition?” Raffaele whispered.
“Project Iceman was successful.” The old man closed his eyes. “Successful beyond imagination. Over one hundred frozen Nephilim bodies. Giants. Hybrids of human and fallen angelic DNA. Our calculations were exact. Precise.”
Ashen, he turned back to stare out over Lake Albano. He was silent a long time.
“As we knew they would be.” He bowed his head.
“The expedition was tracked, Raffaele.” His voice was very soft. “By Kurt Guber and his mercenaries. The Antarctic underground base. Blown to smithereens.
“The security forces—over a hundred killed. Our scientists, all forty–five, murdered in cold blood. Decapitated, their heads strewn on the ice.”
Raffaele ran over to the small sink in the far corner of the cramped office and retched violently.
Father d’Angelis sighed deeply. His features began to glow with a strange luminosity. Raffaele turned from the sink just as the Jesuit priest transformed before his eyes into the form of Maheel, ancient angelic king of the High Council of the First Heaven.
Raffaele had seen the transformation only once before, but still he stared transfixed at Maheel’s noble angelic features as the ancient king walked toward him, towering over him.
“We must alert Jether the Just.”
Very gently Maheel placed his hand on Raffaele’s back and smiled down in compassion at the trembling boy before him.
“We find ourselves in the most coveted place of all, my son,” he said softly. “La mani de Dio.”
He fingered his rosary with trembling fingers, then stared up at the beautifully carved statue of Christ in the alcove far above him.
“We find ourselves in the very hand of God.”
Chapter One
De Vere Mansion, London
December 2024, 11 p.m.
Jason stared in disbelief at the figure standing outside the mansion’s back garden security gate. He rubbed his eyes. He was seeing things. Hallucinating.
It was a ghost. But he was the CEO of the largest media conglomerate in the Western Hemisphere. A consummate pragmatist.
He didn’t believe in ghosts.
Jason took a slug of his whisky.
The figure was a hallucination. A figment of his imagination. What with Mother’s sudden death tonight, the old professor’s revelations about Adrian’s birth . . . and the whisky . . .
He stared down at the half-empty glass in his left hand. God, the whisky.
With his free hand, Jason fumbled in his pocket for the last cigarette in the now crumpled packet, shook it free, and lit it with trembling fingers.
He inhaled deeply on the cigarette; then very slowly, inch by inch, he raised his head toward the back gate.
The hallucination was still there.
In fact, not only was it still there. It must have keyed the private code into the security gate, because the steel gate was now open and the figure was walking.
Straight toward him.
The whisky glass slid out of Jason’s hand and smashed onto the concrete floor of the garden terrace.
Jason stood rooted to the spot. Stunned.
“Nick?”
“Yeah, it’s really me, Jas—Nicholas.”
Jason’s cigarette slipped out of his fingers and made a faint hiss as it hit the snow.
“You’re dead,” he whispered.
He was greeted by silence.
“You . . . you’ve been dead . . . ”
He took two steps back, his mind reeling. Dear God, now he was conversing with a ghost.
“ . . . for over three years.”
Jason stared at Nick for a full minute, at a loss for words.
“I’m alive, Jas.”
Nick took a step toward him. “Flesh and blood.”
“How—I mean, where . . . ?”
“Look, Jas, I’ll explain everything later,” Nick said softly. He held out an envelope. “I can’t stay.”
“What the hell kind of game do you think you’re playing?” Jason rasped. “Disappearing for three years. The whole family thinking you’re dead.”
Jason’s grasp on Nick tightened so fiercely that Nick winced.
“And you tell me you can’t stay?”
“It’s not a game, Jason,” Nick replied. “I have no option.”
“Don’t.” Jason brought his face a hairsbreadth from Nick’s. “Don’t you for one moment think you can just walk back into my life after three years of everyone thinking you were dead . . . ” He took a deep breath, still shaking with fury. “ . . . and casually tell me you’ll explain everything later.”
He released Nick, then walked over to the rose beds. He spun around, his mind still reeling.
“Damn it, Nick, we had a funeral for you!” he yelled. He froze, then ran his hands through his cropped, silvering hair.