ANTHONY DENISON
SOMETHING HAD BEEN bothering him ever since the shootout in the cathedral.
There was a momentary pause as the search went out onto the worldwide web, and then something extraordinary happened.
A list of the top ten hits appeared on the monitor screen, but instead of the scattershot of information Frost had expected—links to Denison’s books, discussions about his polarised political opinions, even connections to other men who shared his name—he saw a none-too-subtle accusation.
THE FOUR EVANGELISTS
Is former Brigadier Anthony Denison part of the nationalist conspiracy known as the Four Evangelists? Find out more by clicking here.
IT WASN’T THE CONTENT of the linked website that raised the hairs on the nape of Frost’s neck, but rather the fact that every single one of the hits returned directed him to the same website. Search engines didn’t work like that; meaning someone had messed with the code to make sure that anyone asking about Tony Denison would find their way to this particular website, and there was only one person Frost could think of who’d do such a thing:
“Lethe,” he whispered.
Unable to make contact through conventional means, Jude Lethe had built a digital bonfire to get his attention.
So what the hell are the Four Evangelists?
His eyes darted across the text, trying to work out what Lethe was trying to tell him.
The page contained a hasty description of a quasi-religious terrorist group intent on reshaping the world. It was short on detail, but the second paragraph gave a list of possible members—a list that started with Denison—along with their occupations.
Frost read on, swallowing the information in huge undigested chunks. It didn’t take a huge leap to see how it all fit together with what Denison was doing, and more importantly, explained why the man had been targeted.
The last paragraph listed contact information, a phone number, which Frost committed to memory.
He sat back in his chair.
The wrong side... I’m still missing something.
He scanned the list of suspected members of the Four Evangelists. One other name stood out. He opened another window and typed in a new query. This time, the search performed as expected, and a few clicks later, he had found the verification he was looking for. Now it all made sense.
“Tony.”
Denison raised his head.
“Tell me about the Four Evangelists.”
The other man stiffened. “Where did you—?”
Frost silenced him. “No more games.”
Denison shook his head. Frost saw the way his hand curled around the grip of his chair’s armrest. He blinked once, twice, three times, four, as though his eyes were an indicator of his mental processing speed.
“I’m waiting,” Frost said.
Finally, he took a breath and started speaking. “The Four Evangelists...”
Frost fought back a rising wave of anger. “Talk.” He’d never completely bought into Denison’s conspiracy theory, but now he knew for sure the other man had been holding back critical information, and that had nearly gotten them killed. There was no friendly smile now. No for-old-times-sake.
“What I told you about the New World Order is the absolute truth. I haven’t lied to you, Ronan. They’re the greatest threat our society has ever faced. If they get their way, it will mean a return to serfdom without end. No more nations, no more superpowers...No more United Kingdom...just billions of people permanently enslaved to the multinational corporations and banks that own everything.”
“Jesus Christ, Tony, have you heard yourself? You’re worse than Tom fucking Cruise.”
He took a breath, trying to rein in his passion. “Some of us have been shouting the message in the streets for a long time, but no one seems to care. But there are others... ready to take action. That’s what the Four Evangelists are.
“For the longest time, I thought they were just another crazy conspiracy rumour.” He flashed a self-deprecating smile and for a moment—just a moment—seemed to come alive again. “There are a lot of loonies out there, Frosty, and they’ll believe anything.
“In the Book of Revelation, four creatures bear witness to the coming of the Kingdom of God. They’re sometimes called the ‘Four Evangelists.’ Do you know what that word means? Messengers of good news, and that’s what they are.”
Frost remained impassive as the other man began describing the theory, proposed by a prominent Italian Bible scholar—the very man whose name Frost had earlier picked out from the list—that the Revelation had been a blueprint for overthrowing Rome, and not a prophecy of the end. Everything Denison said was virtually identical to what he had read on Lethe’s website, but he got the sense that the other man was hedging, not tipping his hand.
“What’s the plan? There’s got to be a plan. Revelation was a blueprint, a strategy. Explain what you mean by that? And then tell me what the fuck this has got to do with Caesar’s sword.”
“The Four make their first appearance in Revelation chapter four, but it’s later, in chapter six, when they actually begin to speak. Each one of them bears witness to the arrival of a horse with a rider—”
“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Frost said.
Denison nodded. “Even people who don’t know anything about the Bible have heard of the Four Horsemen. They’re iconic. They’re as recognizable as McDonald’s golden arches, but the thing is no one can agree on exactly what they represent. And the interpretation changes with every generation. But according to Professor Martedi, the horsemen were never meant to be a prophecy of something to come, but rather a description of a four-pronged strategy that would bring the Roman Empire to its knees. Four separate elements, set up like dominoes, that would shake the power of Rome. The first—the white horseman—is described as wearing a crown and carrying a bow. In the first century, that represented the emergence of a strong Parthian king. The second horse—a red horse, whose rider carries a great sword—represented a state of total war. The third horseman carried scales and was associated with both famine and rising food prices. The fourth horse represented death by every means, but is especially linked to pestilence.
“A great nation can withstand a crisis—a war, an economic downturn—but when the crises multiply, arriving one atop another, the foundation crumbles. In the first century, the plan was never fully executed and Rome endured, but the wisdom of the strategy holds true even today.”
“Treat me like an idiot, spell it out for me,” Frost pressed. “Who are the horsemen?”
Denison balked at the directness of the question. “I—I don’t know. I’m not part of this, Ronan. I don’t know the details. I’m not even sure the horsemen are meant to identify literal people.
“But think about it. A strong leader emerges, someone charismatic that can rally people when everything looks hopeless. At the same time, war, economic hardship, perhaps even a disease pandemic like AIDS or Bird Flu, something like that, and you throw the forces of globalism into chaos. It’s already started. Look at what more than a decade of war has done to the United States. Look at what’s happening in the Eurozone. Greece on the verge of ruin, Spain and Ireland in trouble. The Euro currency itself under threat. And experts say we’re overdue for some kind of plague outbreak. When all of these forces finally collide, it will rip our world to shreds.”
“And that’s when your white horse will ride in and rescue everyone?” Frost couldn’t entirely mask the sarcasm in his tone. “That’s why you wanted to find Caesar’s sword, isn’t it? The Arthurian Myth. Excalibur, the Once and Future King and all that. It’s a symbol of the Divine Right of Kings, a way to seal the deal.”
Denison inclined his head. “A symbol, yes. One that would affirm the Crown in the hearts and minds of the subjects once more.”
Frost shook his head. “You’re smarter than this, Tony. You said it yourself. These men don’t see Revelation as a prophecy...they aren’t waiting for these
things to happen. It’s a strategy, and they want to implement it. They want to make it happen. Start the next world war, rip the world economy apart, unleash bird flu or small pox or some designer fucking virus there’s no cure for. That’s not visionary, Tony. It’s insanity.”
Denison ducked his head, unable to meet his eye.
“What about Lili?”
The question caught the former brigadier off guard. “Lili?”
“She’s in on this too, isn’t she?”
This time it was Denison’s turn to shake his head. “Lili’s an historian. She’s been helping me track down the sword. Nothing more.”
Frost could almost see the cogs turning inside Denison’s head, and the cogs driving the shafts that turned the wheels, and knew the man was looking at Lili’s role in a new light. “Damn it, Tony, you can’t be that naïve. How did you two connect? Why were you working with her? No secrets. We’re in deep shit here. I need to know the truth.”
“David Habersham suggested it.”
Frost recognised the name from the list on the website. “Habersham? He is one of the Four.”
Denison nodded slowly. “He wants the same thing I do, the full restoration of the monarchy. I guess that would make him the first of the Four; the one who announces the rider on the white horse. He knew of my passion for Arthurian lore, and was aware of my acquaintance with Lili’s father. When he learned about her discovery of the palimpsest, he suggested that we meet. Believe me, Ronan, David is a very influential man. He even arranged for me to meet with...ah, my patron.”
“Your patron,” Frost echoed. “The man who would be king?”
The haunted look in Denison’s eyes was answer enough.
“What the fuck have you gotten yourself into, Tony? Habersham put you and Lili together, pulled the strings for you to serve the man who would be king. You don’t think any of this is the least bit suspicious?”
Denison spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
It was true after all; he was on the wrong side.
But was there really even a right side?
“We have to stop them. You understand that, don’t you? I don’t care how much you believe in what they’re doing, we can’t let them unleash this on the world. Not any of it.”
Denison didn’t answer, didn’t meet his gaze.
Frost rubbed his eyes wearily.
He understood almost everything now; he understood why Denison had been marked for death, he understood who the real enemy was and what he would have to do to stop them.
There was only one thing that still troubled him.
“Back there in the crypt, when you picked up the sword, what happened?”
Denison abruptly sat up in his chair, his eyes coming alive at the memory.
“It was incredible,” he said. “I don’t know how to explain it. I really don’t. I felt it in every bone in my body.” And then the front of Tony Denison’s face exploded as a 7.62×51mm NATO round tore out of it.
The exit wound left nothing recognisable behind.
17 Q and A
Location unknown—0345 UTC (approximate)
A DULL, INSISTENT, thump of pain brought Konstantin Khavin back slowly to consciousness.
It took him a moment to realise it wasn’t from the blow that had taken him down—though he felt a knot growing at the back of his skull.
The dull ache was amplified by pressure change. The pain pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
I’m on an aircraft, he realised.
Konstantin opened his eyes.
He saw nothing.
There was something covering his face—a hessian sack. He twisted, trying to move, to dislodge the sack but it just twisted with his head. As his awareness sharpened, he felt the heavy fabric against his skin and tasted the stale air that he had been breathing over and over again.
He worked his jaw, wincing as the movement aggravated his injury.
He was rewarded with a not altogether pleasant pop in his inner ear as the pressure equalised. That small measure of relief freed him to begin piecing together what had happened.
The last thing he remembered clearly was freeing Habersham’s hostage.
Though he hadn’t actually freed him.
At least they hadn’t just killed him outright, which is what he would have done in their place. Given the set up at Habersham’s mill—the camera positioned facing the militant flag, the chair in the middle of the bare concrete floor—he wondered if a quick death might have been preferable.
He was seated with his hands bound behind his back, the nylon cat-strangler ties biting into his wrists and ankles. The heavy bag over his head blocked out light and amplified the noise of his own laboured breathing, but when he held his breath for a moment, he could just make out the sound of muffled voices nearby.
“—should postpone. Or reconsider altogether.”
Habersham.
“You’re being paranoid.” A stern rebuke. The voice belonged to the man that had brought the hostage to Habersham’s manor house. Those three words proved that he was at least Haberhsam’s equal in the group. Another evangelist? Or was there one above them? A messianic leader?
“Paranoid? I rather think not. There are questions we should be asking: who is he? How did he find us? If someone on the outside knows what we’re doing, then we’ve already lost.”
“Then let’s wake him up and ask him.”
There was a pause, and then something collided with the side of Konstantin’s head. The blow set his ears ringing and triggered a concomitant stab of pain at the base of his skull.
“Wake up,” the second man growled in his ear.
Konstantin gritted his teeth and turned his head to indicate that he had heard.
“Who are you, my friend? Who do you work for?”
Konstantin knew intuitively that these men were amateurs. They learned their tradecraft from watching Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne use brute force to solve all their problems. Konstantin smiled beneath his hood, and then spat an oath in his native tongue.
“What’s that?” Habersham immediately asked. “Russian? Is he a KGB agent?”
The other man spoke into his ear. “The KGB haven’t existed for twenty years, have they, my friend? But that doesn’t mean you’re not a Russian spy, does it? FSB? Counter-intelligence? Economic Security?”
“I tell you nothing,” Konstantin rasped, deliberately thickening his accent and turning it into basic Pidgin English.
“I don’t like this, Lorenzo. How could the Russians know about us? Why would they even care what we’re doing?”
Lorenzo? Konstantin recalled the name from the list of potential members of the Four Evangelists. Lorenzo Martedi: Italian history professor, Bible scholar, credited with the seminal theory that the Book of Revelation was a strategy for world domination. It made sense that he’d be in bed with Habersham.
One benefit of the sack over his head was that they couldn’t see his face.
He waited.
“How did you learn of us?” Martedi asked, finally.
Konstantin said nothing.
“Why is your government interested?” Martedi pressed.
Again his answer was silence.
“He isn’t going to talk.” Habersham sounded like a petulant child.
“He will talk,” Martedi insisted. “Jonathan. See if you can loosen his tongue.”
Ah, here it comes, Konstantin thought, bracing himself for the pain even though he had no idea what form the coercion would take, he knew it would hurt.
There was a loud snap and an agonizing jolt of pain burned into his thigh. Simultaneously every muscle in his body went rigid. For a few seconds his entire universe consisted of nothing but pain. He grinned through it. The one thing the big Russian could handle was pain.
“Careful,” Habersham warned. Konstantin barely heard him over the crackling discharge of electricity. “You’ll give him a heart attack.”
The assault ended as abruptly as it had begun an
d Konstantin sagged against his bonds, lactic acid draining away from his overburdened muscles. He felt a small measure of relief that his captors had elected to use this method of interrogation. There was nothing they could do to him that his KGB trainers hadn’t done to him, more brutally, when he was young. He’d been shocked very nearly to death on several occasions as part of that training, and revived once with a defibrillator when it went too far. It would take a lot more than a zap from a spy store stun gun to break him.
Of course, he wasn’t going to let Habersham and Martedi know that.
Martedi grunted unsympathetically. “Now, let’s try that question again. Who are you?”
Konstantin panted dramatically against the fabric covering his face, making the hessian cloth suck into his mouth as he gasped, “Can’t...breathe...”
The covering lifted just enough to expose his mouth and let in a sliver of light. “Who are you?” Martedi said again, like a broken record. “Who are you working for?”
“Karpov,” Khavin gasped. “Anatoly Karpov.”
“Who do you work for? The KGB or whatever you call it these days?”
Khavin suppressed a smile. First they didn’t know their chess players, and second they didn’t know their intelligence agencies. While it was functionally still the same, the agency now went by the name Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii—FSB—and had been since the fall of the Soviet Union. “I saw you take him.”
“Who do you work for?” Martedi repeated.
Konstantin didn’t answer, and a few seconds later, electricity crackled through him.
Konstantin shouted through clenched teeth as the jolt subsided. “I was assigned to watch him. I saw you take him and I followed.”
“You were watching Pavic?” Habersham asked. “Why? Why are the Russians interested in him?”
The question was aimed at Martedi, but he focused on the name: Pavic. There was only one Pavic of interest: the man Habersham and Martedi had abducted was Kristijan Pavic, a former Serbian official, presently on trial in The Hague for crimes relating to the war in Kosovo during the 1990’s. Now he was curious.
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