It is called the Throne of St Peter and it is a massive raised chair that occupies the rearmost wall of the basilica. Although it seats only one, it is four storeys tall and covered in golden images of eagles, angels, cherubs and, oddly, many blazing sunbeams.
A man now sat on the Throne of St Peter.
A very large man.
Mae eyed him closely.
He was an enormous specimen of a human being: broad-shouldered, muscular and well over six feet tall. He wore grey military fatigues.
His head was completely bald and his eyes blazed with an intensity that bordered on madness.
‘So. The monks of Omega . . .’ he said slowly. ‘Making your play for the Labyrinth, are you?’
Brother Enoch said, ‘We have no quarrel with you, General Rastor.’
‘Oh, but you do,’ the big bald man said mildly. ‘We are at cross-purposes in our quests. You want what I do not.’
‘We only want a world that operates in accordance with the natural order,’ Enoch said, raising his chin righteously.
‘I know what you monks want: a world where women bow before you,’ Rastor said. ‘How is Ezekiel, by the way? Has he recruited his equally zealous Catholic brothers in the Romanian military to help him in this matter?’
‘We could work together, you know—’ the monk Enoch rallied.
‘No, we could not,’ Rastor said. ‘As I said, we are at cross-purposes. You want a warped world, whereas I do not want a world at all. I do not want it to continue to exist. You have discovered the multiple, I gather? Give it to me now.’
Enoch hesitated.
Rastor nodded to one of his soldiers and—bang!—the soldier blew out the brains of the Omega monk to Enoch’s left.
The dead monk fell.
‘Give me the multiple,’ Rastor said again.
‘We didn’t get it—’ Brother Enoch lied.
Bang.
A second Omega monk was shot and fell.
Sister Lynda started hyperventilating.
Mae stood stock-still.
Rastor said again, ‘The multiple.’
Enoch visibly slumped. ‘Sixteen. It is sixteen.’
Rastor smiled. ‘Thank you.’
Then he nodded to his captain again and the soldier calmly shot Enoch and the last Omega monk.
It was only then that Rastor turned his gaze to Mae and Sister Lynda.
‘Goodness me, where are my manners,’ he said. ‘I haven’t introduced myself. Ladies, my name is General Garthon Rastor, Commander of the Elite Royal Guard, a force that for two thousand years has threaded itself into the world’s leading military forces. From the Roman legions to the armies of Napoleon to various national militaries of today, the Royal Guard has always been present in some way to represent the interests of the four kingdoms.
‘That said, I have been absent from royal society for a couple of years due to a misunderstanding I had with some members of the royal world. Their ruling philosophy and mine no longer agreed. This resulted in a short stay at Erebus. But now I am free once again and in my absence the world seems to have changed for the better.’
He eyed them keenly.
To Sister Lynda: ‘You have the look of a Vestal.’
Lynda nodded. ‘I am a member of that order. I am Sister Lynda Fadel.’
General Rastor turned to Mae. ‘And you?’
Mae began, ‘I’m—’
‘You are Mabel Merriweather, or Mae to those close to you.’ Rastor grinned. ‘You are the mother of the man named West and were once the wife of the one known as Wolf. Before my unfortunate fall from grace, I studied your son, in case I needed to kill him. The first thing I did was determine the people he loved.’
‘Cut the bullshit, then, what do you want?’ Mae said.
Rastor smiled.
He stroked the armrest of his glorious throne. ‘Do you know the history of this throne? It is a true work of art, sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini himself. But because of his glorious baldacchino and the impressive interior of this basilica, few visitors ever actually heed it.
‘This is a shame because this throne is actually the most significant artefact in this place, for it was made in honour of a far more important throne that resides in the Supreme Labyrinth. What do I want?’
‘To rule the world like a tyrant?’ Mae prompted.
Rastor shook his head. ‘Some who seek the World Throne desire it so that they may rule unchallenged. Others like the monks of Omega want it so that they may subjugate women. I want neither of those things. I delight in rage, chaos, nihilism. Madam, what do I want? I want to stop anyone from sitting on that throne and thus gain a front-row seat to the greatest event in all of history: the end of the universe.’
He looked hard at the two women.
‘You, Vestal, I have no need for you. But, you, Ms Merriweather, have value to me.’
With those words, he nodded to his captain, who pressed his pistol to the back of Sister Lynda’s head and pulled the trigger.
A gunshot rang out—
—and the captain’s head blew apart, shot from the side, and to Lynda and Mae’s surprise, he collapsed in a heap.
Zoe emerged from behind one of the pillars of the basilica, her smoking pistol trained on Rastor and his men. Agnes was close behind her.
‘The famous Ms Kissane,’ Rastor said. ‘The wife of Captain West. A pleasure to meet you.’
‘Mae. Lynda. Over here. We’re leaving,’ Zoe called. She kept the gun aimed at Rastor. ‘Don’t make me kill you, buddy.’
He shrugged mildly. ‘I do not fear death. Indeed, I welcome it.’
‘Rufus, come on in,’ Zoe said into her mike.
With a deafening roar, the black Sukhoi Su-37 fighter-bomber swept vertically down through the hole in the roof of St Peter’s Basilica, the blast of its engines booming loudly throughout the space.
Mae could see Rufus in the pilot’s seat, expertly flying the jet inside the gigantic basilica!
The Sukhoi landed on the wreckage of the dome and Zoe guided Lynda, Agnes and last of all, Mae, up the pile of rubble to the open bomb bay doors in its belly.
Rastor watched, unperturbed.
‘You’re not the only one who has a hover-capable aircraft, you know,’ he called.
At that moment, a vast shadow moved across the big hole in the roof of the basilica, a shadow the size of a cargo plane but with four rotors that blurred with motion.
Zoe saw it and her jaw dropped.
She’d read about these planes but never actually seen one. They had only just come out of the prototype phase.
It was a Bell Boeing Quad TiltRotor aircraft, the next generation of the V-22 Osprey. It didn’t have an official name yet but those who knew of it had taken to calling it the V-88 Condor.
Where the Osprey was a two-rotored mid-sized plane, the Condor was several times larger. It was a massive four-winged and four-rotored aircraft with the fuselage of a C-130 Hercules. It was also widely regarded as the airpower of the future: a plane with enormous range and the ability to land in places that did not have airstrips. There were plans for various versions of the Condor, including cargo versions, troops versions and even hovering flying fortresses armed with all manner of cannons, mini-guns and missiles.
This Condor, it seemed, was one of those.
Mae gazed in awe at the massive aircraft hovering above them.
It explained how Brother Enoch had been so wrong.
He had thought, being a plane, the aircraft would need a runway to land on. But since this mighty plane didn’t need a runway, it had simply swept into a hover above the Vatican and unloaded its cargo of killers with shocking speed.
And right now it was blocking the way out. The noise its engines made was deafening. The downblast was like a mini-hurricane.
It was ami
d all this noise and movement that, quick as a whip, Rastor drew a rare and devastating pistol—a Glock 18C, a handgun capable of firing on full auto—and unleashed a fusillade of gunfire at Zoe’s group beneath the Sukhoi.
Lynda and Zoe were already half inside the bomb bay when he pulled the trigger and they dived inside the plane, out of the way of the line of fire.
Sister Agnes wasn’t so fortunate. Rastor’s withering spray of bullets cut viciously across her body and her stomach blew open with bloody holes and she was thrown down the large mound of rubble.
Mae was also hit. Pure luck had placed her behind Agnes when Rastor had opened fire, so poor Agnes had taken the brunt of the burst. Mae was still hit twice in the thigh and she also fell down the rubble mound, away from the plane.
‘Agnes!’ Sister Lynda cried.
‘Mae!’ Zoe shouted.
Zoe took in the situation. Rastor’s men were moving toward them, running fast, guns up. Agnes lay face-down, not moving. Zoe couldn’t tell if she was dead. Beside Agnes lay Mae, teeth clenched in pain, wounded but alive, yet too far away to save.
‘Zoe!’ Mae yelled above the din. ‘Go! You and Lynda have to get away! You both have to go help Jack!’
Zoe locked eyes with Mae and she knew she was right. Beside her, Lynda looked from Mae to Agnes, torn.
‘Rufus!’ Zoe called. ‘Get us out of here!’
Then she shut the bomb bay door and lost sight of Mae and Agnes.
In the Sukhoi’s cockpit, Rufus was looking all around himself for a way out: left, right, up, down, in front and behind.
‘Oh, well, I guess I’m going to Hell anyway for flying in here in the first place,’ he said.
He gunned the engines and swung the Sukhoi around, swivelling his jet inside the giant walls of St Peter’s before hitting the afterburners and racing down the length of the nave, toward the massive front doors of the enormous church.
Then he opened fire on those doors.
The doors blew apart under his hail of gunfire, but they were too narrow for the Sukhoi to fly through, so as he picked up speed, Rufus banked the Black Raven onto its side and shot through the main doorway of St Peter’s Basilica with only a couple of feet to spare at either wingtip, and the Sukhoi zoomed away over the city of Rome, unseen and unnoticed by its inhabitants, comatose on the ground.
Back in the nave of St Peter’s, Mae lay on the debris-covered floor, grimacing with pain, pressing hard on the two bullet wounds to her thigh.
A groan from beside her made her turn.
It was Agnes. She was still alive, if only barely—
—then Agnes’s head blew apart in a short burst of gunfire.
A shadow fell over Mae.
Rastor. He lowered his smoking pistol.
‘I have no need for clever nuns,’ he said. ‘But the mother of Captain West. You are very valuable.’
One of his masked troops came running up.
‘Shall we pursue their plane, sir?’
Rastor stared off in the direction the Sukhoi had taken, entirely unconcerned.
He looked back down at Mae and a cruel smile crept across his face.
‘No,’ General Rastor said. ‘We have a more important mission. With the multiple, we can calculate the location of the Supreme Labyrinth. Which means we now must find ourselves an iron mountain.’
Perth, Australia
July 2007
When Lily and Alby were in sixth grade, their school for gifted children in Perth put on a careers day.
Naturally, Lily begged Jack and Zoe to attend and give presentations on their careers. And so Jack and Zoe left their isolated farm and went to the city for a few days.
This was in the gloriously quiet days after their mission to re-erect the capstone of the Great Pyramid at Giza but before the overwhelming attack on the farm that had precipitated their mission to find the Six Ramesean Stones.
Throughout that morning at the school, Jack had sat in a little chair at the back of Lily’s classroom, watching all the other parents give their talks.
As a guy who had spent much of his life going to incredible places to do dangerous things—and who, more than anything, enjoyed hiding away from the world when he wasn’t doing that—Jack liked seeing real people in the real world. Their interests and their passions fascinated him.
One girl’s mother was a paramedic: she was awesome.
There was also a lawyer, an accountant and a hedge-fund manager.
The accountant was Tilly McCarroll’s dad, Phil. Jack had met him a couple of times because Tilly and Lily were friends.
Phil McCarroll was a short, balding, bespectacled man who was not the most gifted public speaker.
In fact, poor Phil was awful.
He sweated and stammered as he told the kids what he did. ‘I went to Girraween High School right here in W.A. I . . . er . . . got my CPA while I was working nights delivering pizzas, then got my CFA while I was working at a firm in the city . . .’
The kids shifted and coughed, the surest signs that Phil had lost their attention.
He finished with a mumbled ‘Thank you’ and shuffled away from the whiteboard to tepid applause.
Jack’s heart went out to him and he patted Phil on the shoulder as the sweet accountant sat down beside Jack at the back of the room, wiping his brow in relief.
The next speaker, the hedge-fund guy, bounded to the front of the class.
Don Dalton was the exact opposite of Phil McCarroll: fun, charismatic and he kept the kids enthralled, chiefly by telling them how much money he made at Dalton Funds Management.
Jack went next—occupation: historian—and gave a short but sharp presentation that began with the statement: ‘Do you know the Great Pyramid?’
‘Yes,’ the kids answered.
‘Did you know that it’s nine feet shorter than it should be?’
He then put up an image of the Giza pyramids and sure enough, there was the Great Pyramid with its flat top, its capstone missing. He didn’t go on to say how he’d found the pieces of that capstone and put it back in place just in time to avoid global annihilation, but he gave an interesting talk nonetheless.
Then Jack sat down and gave the stage to Zoe.
She came into the classroom in full battle gear—helmet, body armour, laser-sighting device, camos, boots and guns, lots of guns—and the kids gasped in absolute awe.
Zoe stole the show.
To have a special forces soldier in full battle dress was one thing, but to have a female one was even better.
At the back of the room, as the kids peppered her with questions, Jack smiled quietly to himself.
Only then, however, did he hear the snort from the guy next to him, the hedge-fund guy, Dalton.
‘Hmph, wait’ll they discover how much the army pays,’ he whispered.
After school that day, Jack and Zoe had dinner with Lily and Alby.
‘So, Lily,’ Jack said. ‘What did you learn from those talks today?’
Lily pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘I learned that Zoe kicked ass. And if I want to make lots of money, I should own a hedge fund like Liam Dalton’s dad, although I’m still not quite sure what a hedge fund is.’
‘I’m not either,’ Zoe said.
Jack said, ‘Let me rephrase the question. Apart from Zoe and me—we don’t count because you know us—who did you find the most impressive today?’
Alby said, ‘I liked the paramedic lady.’
‘I liked her, too,’ Lily said, ‘but Mr Dalton was the best speaker.’
‘Okay,’ Jack said, nodding. ‘Do you know who I found the most impressive?’
‘Who?’
‘Tilly’s dad. Mr McCarroll.’
‘Mr McCarroll? Why? He was kinda boring and he didn’t speak well at all.’
‘First, young lady,�
�� Jack said sternly, ‘no-one is boring. We never call anyone boring. Everyone has an interesting story. You just have to listen to them and find out what it is. When I listened to Mr McCarroll—and to Mr Dalton for that matter—I learned a lot about both of them.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, I learned that Mr McCarroll went to a public high school and then he studied to be a CPA, a Certified Practising Accountant, and that’s not easy. And he did it while he was working as a pizza delivery guy. But then, then, he said he got his CFA qualification. Now that’s a big deal. CFA stands for Chartered Financial Analyst and it’s a really hard qualification to get, one of the hardest in the world. It takes years of study and you have to pass a series of brutal exams.
‘Mr Dalton, sure, he put on a good show and, yes, he makes lots of money, but did you know that Dalton Funds Management was started by his father? Mr Dalton didn’t have to get any qualifications to get into his position and make all his money.
‘Mr McCarroll may not have been the most engaging presenter, but if you listened to what he had to say, you would’ve seen someone who worked his way up from humble beginnings at a public school in outer Perth to the very admirable position he’s in today. That’s the kind of guy I respect.
‘And I imagine if, the next time you see him, you give him a compliment on his speech, he’d really appreciate it.’
As it happened, Lily saw Mr McCarroll the next morning when he dropped off Tilly at school, so she said, ‘Mr McCarroll, I really enjoyed your presentation yesterday.’
Mr McCarroll swelled with pride. ‘Really? Why, thank you, Lily. Thank you for saying that.’
Lily never forgot it.
About a month after that day, she asked Jack another question.
‘Dad, at my careers day, why did you say you were just a historian? I mean, you’re a bad-ass soldier who saved the world. You fought evil people and beat them. You’re a great man and yet you didn’t say so. Why didn’t you reveal that?’
Jack looked away.
‘Lily, studying history has taught me a lot of interesting things, but it’s taught me one lesson above all else: not all great people are good people.
The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020) Page 16