by James Codlin
A portion of the vast fund founded by King Fernando II at the urging of Tomás de Torquemada, and guarded for more than 500 years by the Guardians of the Fourth Angel, was finally being wielded to ensure that the 21st-century Inquisition would not fail as an instrument of ecclesiastic and political control.
*
It was dark in Orlando when Gina pushed back from Efraín’s desk. She stared out at the shrubbery beyond the glass. The three of them had checked and rechecked Guy Legendre’s genealogical data, which extended back to his great-great-grandparents birth, marriage, and death certificates, as well as his extended family’s records.
Gina gave Efraín the additional names of Antoine and Claire Legendre, and the birth and death years she had found with Father Croix. There was no match for that combination of names and dates in that location. They tried again with the same birth year but this time with the tombstone date of 1815. Nothing was found. Efraín expanded the geographical data to the northern half of France, but no match was found. Then he increased it to all of France.
Nothing.
“Vincennes is just a kilometer or two from the Belgian border,” Gina said. “Try there.”
Efraín clicked away on his keyboard. Still nothing was found. The three sat for a few moments, at a loss as to how to proceed.
“Of course, I’m an idiot,” Lenin mumbled to himself. “Use Flanders as the location, and ‘Burgundy’ for the name.”
Lines of data began to trace across the monitor. “How did you think of that?” Efraín asked.
Before Lenin was able to respond, the screen went blank. Efraín frowned. After some furious typing the data flow resumed, but after a few moments the display once again went blank.
“This is very troubling,” Efraín said. “I never designed blocks like these into this system.”
“Would your church do that?” Gina asked.
“There’s no one here who has enough knowledge to keep me out. No, this was done by someone outside who somehow got access.”
“There’s nothing more you can do?” Lenin asked.
Efraín scoffed with indignation. “I was always a bit worried that the Church of Latter-day Saints would realize that we had replicated their data and come after us. It wouldn’t be very Christian-like behavior, but sometimes even the most righteous can get a bee in their bonnet. I installed some fail-safes to ensure that we never lost it—I can access the data through one of those channels. Just give me a few minutes.”
Efraín resumed typing, and eventually the screen lit up again with the information they were seeking:
LEGENDRE, ANTOINE. BORN 3 JAN 1795
BAPTIZED 13 JAN 1795
MARRIED: RENARD, MARIE 12 MAR 1815
DIED: 29 AUG 1815
BURIAL SITE: TERRE BONNE, FLANDERS
DATES: DOCUMENTED C, M, BG(0)
LINEAGE: Y/N
“What does ‘Documented C, M, BG’ mean?” Gina asked.
“One of the responsibilities of our missionaries in every country is to verify and validate our genealogical data,” Efraín said. “In this case they confirmed the birth, marriage, and death dates of Antoine Legendre in C—church documents or the family Bible—and M—municipal documents, birth, and death certificates, the like. BG is an additional confirmation we seek: burial grounds. But in this case, there is a zero after it, indicating that a search was attempted, but nothing was found.”
Lenin looked up from his phone. “Terre Bonne is also on the border, just over three kilometers from Vincennes.”
A genealogical chart filled the screen. The branches went back six generations, but with notations indicating that with each additional generation the data was increasingly unreliable. This was typical, Efraín explained. There had been three previous generations in Terre Bonne from 1710 to 1795, and before that the carriers of the family name had resided in Mechelen, Flanders, for at least four generations.
“Where is Mechelen?” Efraín asked.
“Near Brussels,” Lenin said. On a pad of paper he copied from the screen several surnames that were different from, and predated, Legendre but were confirmed to be in the lineage.
Efraín commanded the program to go forward in generations, and after a pause, another genealogical chart formed on screen. One name stood out without a successive generation: Legendre, Guy Pierre.
Efraín blinked. “There must be some mistake,” he said.
“No, that’s what I expected,” Lenin replied. “Somebody has cooked the books.”
*
At a small airport near Orlando a Piper Comanche airplane with no lights illuminated and no markings waited in the dark at the far end of an uncontrolled airfield. Gina drove their Ford Taurus up to the airplane, where two men stood beside it. The men used small flashlights to check the faces of the Gina and Lenin. Then one man opened the cabin door, helping them step into the passenger seats while the other drove the Taurus away.
The pilot started the engines, did a run up, and took off, all without any radio transmissions. Hours later they landed at a small airstrip near Maiquetía, Venezuela, where a taxi was waiting for them.
*
Martín Ibarra was out of bed before five and in the hotel lobby in his running shorts, shoes, and T-shirt 10 minutes later. It was still dark but the morning air was dank with humidity. His run took him downhill from the hotel past large homes belonging to the wealthiest of Caracas—small fortresses behind high walls and barbed wire.
At first Martín glanced around in anticipation. Who was he supposed to be looking for? How would the rendezvous transpire? But it wasn’t long before his mind wandered. He was still numb from the disaster at Lenin’s house and hadn’t slept. All the way to the Miami airport and during the flight on the Latino Union’s military Gulfstream aircraft he tried to make sense of what had happened.
Martín increased his pace in an attempt to banish Gina and Lenin from his thoughts, but their faces swam before him and he ran faster. A sense that he could have done something—moved sooner, told Gina that he loved her before leaving that night—gripped him. He was sprinting now, his heart pounding.
Caught up in his misery, Martín failed to notice a panel van pulling up beside him and matching his speed. He only realized that something was amiss when the sliding door of the van opened. Before he could react, a man grabbed his arm and jerked him into the vehicle. The door slammed shut, and the van accelerated. A knee to his back pinned him to the floor as tape was clapped over his eyes and mouth and zip ties bound his wrists and ankles.
*
Gina and Lenin let themselves into the beachfront condo. It was beautifully furnished and had a balcony facing the Caribbean. There they sat at a small table overlooking the water. Lenin wrote furiously for several minutes, then laid his tablet of paper on the table.
“I see a pattern that unfortunately eluded me when we were with Efraín last night. With a phone call, I can put him to work either proving or disproving my idea. Claire and Antoine Legendre were from Terre Bonne, a small village near Vincennes. The generation before Claire and Antoine lived in Mechelen. The seat of the House of Burgundy, one of the strongest branches of the Hapsburgs.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Gina said.
“The new pope’s lineage comes from a line that, years ago, was spliced into a French family line that wasn’t his. His true ancestors were bastards from suppressed and unrecognized branches of the family. But with his family’s altered lineage, he is a full-blown, legitimate member of the Hapsburg family line. I believe when we examine King Carlos VII’s background we will find the same tampering. In the eyes of anyone who would care about such things, he, and if I am correct, the new king of Spain are the most prominent and powerful members of a line that for hundreds of years was the most influential and formidable family on earth. We are witnessing the attempted restoration of Hapsburg rule in Spain with the backing of the Catholic Church.”
“That is a… remarkable conclusion.”
“Fine!” Gina said. “It’s crazy! What are you thinking? In the first place, why the Hapsburgs? They haven’t mattered since World War I. And who cares about bloodlines these days?”
Lenin looked out at the whitecaps and a passing sailboat, sails billowing in the breeze. Finally, he turned back. “Let me ask you that same question. Why indeed the Hapsburgs?”
As if she was back in Lenin’s classroom, Gina fielded the Socratic volley. “Well, they were among the earliest to establish monarchical power after the chaos of the fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. Eventually Charles V ruled more of the planet than anyone else has before or since. Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Peru…”
“But then…?” Lenin asked.
“They collapsed from inbreeding and were swept out of power.”
“That would have left a lot of disappointed and unemployed Hapsburgs scattered around a large part of Europe, don’t you think? Not to mention those Spaniards still yearning to restore Spain’s fabled siglo de oro.”
“Yes,” Gina said. “But how could people with meaningless noble titles do anything about it now?”
“What would you do if you were one of them?”
Gina was silent for a long moment. “Me? I’d become a journalist. But if I was some conspirator wanting to usurp power, I guess I’d start conspiring.”
“You’re getting warmer,” Lenin said.
Gina shook her head. “I can’t take it any further. It would require too many people and a lot of money, influence, and political upheaval to make any power transfer happen in Spain. Even if the Spanish people were willing, the rest of the EU—”
“The European Union is distracted right now by the departure of the United Kingdom as well as the populist movement sweeping through the continent. Add in the vitriol happening in the United States and now would seem like the time to strike. I don’t think this is only about Spain and the Vatican. I believe that Austria and many other nations will become involved. The Hapsburgs had their fingers in pies from Mexico to Eastern Europe.”
Gina stared back at him. “How can you reach that conclusion? There’s been nothing in the news that points to a conspiracy on that scale.”
“I know. If one of my students had advanced this idea I would have immediately given her an F, dropped her from my course, and signed her up for a creative writing class. But consider what has happened to you in France and now to both of us in Florida. Put that together with David Broch’s disappearance, along with the pope’s family anomalies.”
Lenin took a sip of his lime spritzer. “Two months ago I attended a history symposium in Vienna. I ran into a colleague of mine, the head of the European history department at Corvinus University in Budapest. We had dinner together and a few too many whiskies afterward. He told me he was a colonel in the Hungarian army reserve and was still active with military exercises, and that he had many friends in the officer corps.”
“I don’t see how this applies,” Gina said.
“Bear with me, I have a point. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed during World War I. Emperor Carlos and Empress Zita fled to Switzerland. As we had another round of drinks my friend became… wistful, nostalgic. He looked around to be sure no one was listening, and said that he and many other officers in both the Austrian and Hungarian armies had taken secret loyalty oaths to Zita before her death. By the time she died in exile, never having been permitted to return to Austria, those officers had become high-ranking generals in the military commands of both countries, or had retired but retained commands in the army reserves. My friend spoke in reverential terms of the possibility of an era of Hapsburg rule in a restored Austro-Hungarian monarchical state. A month later I happened to see a small news item that he and 10 other reserve officers had been arrested. They were found to be buying arms from dealers in Brussels and smuggling them into a warehouse in Vienna.”
Gina was silent for a long time. She rose from her chair and leaned against the balcony, staring out at the sea.
Lenin laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “There is, I am afraid, one more part of my hypothesis. It is personal. We know from Martín that the king of Spain was recently in the Latino Union, speaking with your father.”
Gina’s voice rose sharply. “You know as well as I do that there is no way in hell—”
“I am not suggesting for a moment that your father is part of the conspiracy that I have laid out. Please hear me. For the first time in history Latin America has joined together. But you and I both know that the bond is not a solid one, and your father is using all the political capital he has to keep it all together. As such, he has reached out to not only the extremely popular king of Spain to bolster the star power at his upcoming inauguration in San Juan Diego, but also the head of the church that three-quarters of his new constituents belong to. All of those countries, many of which were once ruled by the Hapsburgs, are about to be consolidated under one legal authority. If I am correct, your father has unwittingly invited the foxes into the henhouse.”
“But how would they instigate such a massive transfer of power? The constitution allows for member countries to drop out at any time.”
“I agree. But what if the pope and the king pledged a massive influx of funds—for infrastructure, social safety nets, and investments in the economies of the member countries? A chicken in every LU constituent’s pot, as it were. Wouldn’t that potentially tip the scales? Wouldn’t most of the Latino Union’s tax-weary and debt-ridden members be willing to trade some portion of their autonomy to potentially solve many of their social ills?”
Gina was incredulous. “To undertake what you are describing would require a fortune!”
“I agree, Gina, and I haven’t figured that out yet. But don’t forget the resources of the Catholic Church, now controlled by a man whose lineage was tampered with to make him a pure Hapsburg.”
“You know that’s not enough. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any poor Catholics any longer.”
Lenin laughed wryly. “You have more faith in organized religion than I do, Gina. You don’t control people by giving them enough support to dig themselves out of poverty. You do it by dangling just enough that they believe that they will do so, and that the entity reaching out that helping hand—the one that isn’t quite long enough to pull you from the dregs—is your salvation.”
Gina nodded as she took the point. “Still…”
Lenin patted Gina on the back. “I don’t mean to mock you, Gina. I do agree with your underlying point. There would have to be enough money somewhere to at least make such claims somewhat credible. Enough to get the ball rolling, as it were. And for that, I have no answers right now.”
Gina paused, taking it all in. There were so many variables—so much complexity. She wanted to get to the bottom-line.
“Professor,” she said, taking the older man’s hands in hers and looking him in the eyes. “Tell me in a single sentence what your overarching hypothesis is. Give me your elevator pitch.”
“What I’m talking about is a grand scheme to bring about the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, with the Hapsburgs once again at the helm.”
Chapter THIRTEEN
Tokyo, Japan—2001
Waro Moto stared across the conference room at the odd pair in front of him. Outwardly, he projected the calm and confidence of a man in complete control, but inside he seethed. The very fact that he was having to consider the terms that had been presented to him was shameful.
Moto had built his telecom company by leveraging his personal fortune, which grew dramatically throughout the Nineties as Moto correctly anticipated and exploited the internet explosion. But investing in winners among the dot-coms was merely a means to funnel more and more money into his true enterp
rise, Moto Electric. Moto saw the internet companies that he bought and sold as vastly inferior—devoid of assets and run by children, they were the antithesis of the global telecommunications network that he dreamed of creating. All around the world Moto Electric purchased the only meaningful real estate left on the planet—wireless spectrum. Moto knew that wireless telecommunication was the future, and he ordered his chief financial officer to borrow as much as he possibly could in order to finance the spectrum purchases. Interest rates were low, as were the network infrastructure build-out costs—vendors were practically paying the telecom companies to take their equipment. When Moto Electric’s level of debt became toxic, Moto collateralized his personal holdings and borrowed more.
And then, last year, the dot-com bubble burst.
The same bankers who had bought him $5,000 bottles of wine as they patted him on the back and called him a visionary now came hunting. They sent him default letters and sought to tear Moto Electric and his personal assets to pieces and sell them to the highest bidders. Moto looked for partners in other Japanese industries, but those he spoke to either were feeling the financial pinch themselves or were salivating at the opportunity to cripple him. At his lowest point Moto had even entertained allowing Russian money into his company, but a single meeting in Moscow made it clear that the moment he got into bed with these men, he’d be stripped of any power other than to rubber-stamp whatever potentially criminal enterprise the Russians put in front of him. He was too proud to let that happen.
What frustrated him the most was that he knew with 100% certainty that his long-term vision was still the path to fortune and enormous power. But without the capital to bail himself out, he had no means to pursue it. Worse, if Moto Electric collapsed, he would watch helplessly as others without his foresight and business acumen profited enormously after getting his valuable assets for pennies on the dollar.