The Shroud of Heaven

by Sean Ellis

  “Well done.” His voice quavered slightly but was otherwise restrained. “But you now find yourself on the wrong side of this war. Ask her and she will tell you what sort of enemy you have made today.”

  Dismissing Chiron, he turned to the woman and made another brief utterance in their shared tongue. She continued to hold her wounded shoulder, but her eyes were triumphant. When she spoke, it was in French, doubtless for the benefit of her companion, and though her comment was cliché, the sentiment rallied Chiron. “Go to hell.”

  The assassin chortled as he pulled back through the doorframe and vanished from sight. Chiron slumped in relief, and then roused himself to thank their savior. He turned to the door he had opened but there was no one there. Certainly no one with a camera, close enough to have activated the blinding flash that had distracted the assassin from his lethal task. The closest person—a young man running toward them—was still a hundred meters away.

  That’s odd, he thought. Was it only lightning?

  “Pierre, listen to me.” The woman’s voice remained defiant, but he could hear a faint hiss of anguish in her gasping breaths. “This man would not have acted alone. He is a soldier, not a general. But I do not know who gave the order, nor whom to trust.”

  “You can trust me,” Chiron replied, instantly feeling foolish for his eager promise.

  She chuckled through the pain. “You are more right than you’ll ever know. Alas, this will likely be our only meeting.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The timing of this crisis is unfortunate for you, Pierre. It would have been a great privilege to offer you a seat at our table, but now I must implore you to forget everything.”

  “Forget?”

  “Trust no one, Pierre. If someone tries to persuade you that the danger has passed, then you will know that the enemy is close at hand. Only in ignorance will you find safety.”

  Chiron sighed, comprehending the wisdom of her strategy, but nevertheless felt a pang of loss. So close. “And the tests? The atomic tests?”

  Her eyes darted sideways, then fixed his stare once more. “The tests must proceed as I described.”

  He nodded earnestly. “It will be so, madame. And will you be safe?”

  “I’ll manage.” She looked aside once more, her gaze shifting to the open doorframe behind Chiron. “There is one more thing, Pierre. A personal favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “Soon, you will cross paths with a young man. He is very special to me.”

  “I will welcome him as I would my own son.” Even as he spoke the words, the irony of the statement rang in Chiron’s ears.

  “Thank you, Pierre. But he must never know of this conversation, nor anything about the group. He will find those answers in due time.”

  “How will I recognize this young man?”

  “Oh, I don’t believe you will have any difficulty. Your rendezvous will seem like an act of fate.”

  “Are you injured?” shouted a voice in French. “What happened?”

  He turned and saw the man he had earlier spied now drawing even with the wreck of the limousine. The newcomer wore casual clothes, a navy blue polo shirt with khaki chinos, but Chiron saw none of the expected accouterments of a devotee; no gold chain around his neck, no crucifix. The man was a tourist, marking this place off a list in a guidebook rather than seeking a blessing from the Divine. Somehow, the scientist found that encouraging. The young man was the vanguard of a small army of Good Samaritans, leaving their devotions at the grotto in order to render assistance to the victims of the accident.

  Chiron did not know how to answer the latter question, so he addressed the former. “Yes. For God’s sake, call the medics.” He then turned back to the woman. “Everything is going to be fine…”

  The words died on his lips. The woman was gone.

  Chiron pulled himself across the seat and thrust his head through the opposite doorway, but there was no sign of his host. She had vanished as completely as the assassin before her. Only the crimson-tipped umbrella remained to give evidence that the encounter was not merely a delusion. Stunned by the disappearing act, he fell back into the seat, a wave of nausea creeping over him.

  The tourist stuck his head inside and made eye contact with Pierre. "Help is on the way. I'm going to check on the driver."

  The man then splashed into the shallow water surrounding the front end of the vehicle and forced open the driver’s door. Chiron found himself wondering if the chauffeur had likewise evaporated, but a shocked exhalation from the young rescuer affirmed that such was not the case.

  The young man reappeared before Chiron, his eyes now accusatory. “That man has been shot, murdered. What happened here?”

  Chiron opened his mouth to reply without really knowing what he was going to say. He stared back at the tourist, trying to formulate a plausible fiction to conceal a truth he barely understood. “I’ll wait for the gendarmes to arrive before I tell the story,” he said finally, forcing his eyes away from the young man.

  He could feel the young man’s eyes boring into him. There was a familiar fire in that gaze, yet it wasn’t until he looked away that recognition dawned.

  It was convenient…

  I should have seen it right away, thought Chiron.

  He looked back into the other man’s eyes. “Pardon, monsieur, but what is your name?”

  “My name?” The tourist seemed rightly surprised by the question, but answered nonetheless. “I’m Nick Kismet.”

  “Kismet?” Chiron savored the word. “That’s an unusual name. You are not French?”

  “I’m an American.”

  “But the name is something else; Arabic, if I’m not mistaken.” He gazed at the young, masculine face, astonished at the similarity of features. “But you do not appear to be an Arab.”

  “Right on both counts.” The young man remained aloof, evidently suspicious of the stranger who shared a car with a gunshot victim and now seemed so interested in his name. “It’s a long story.”

  “I imagine so. Still, it is a unique name. A powerful word. I believe it means luck or destiny. Or fate.”

  It was convenient…an act of fate.

  Kismet nodded hesitantly, but said nothing.

  Chiron managed a thin smile. “Well, I hope you will count this meeting an instance of good luck. My name is Pierre Chiron, and I am the director of the Global Heritage Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. If there’s anything I can do to assist you during your stay in my country, please do not hesitate to ask. I have a feeling I can be of great assistance to you.”

  He knew by the sudden gleam in the young man’s eyes that he would have to make good on his offer in ways he could scarcely imagine.

  ***

  Six days shy of four months from the occasion of Collette Chiron’s annual pilgrimage to the Grotto of Lourdes, a small borehole in the basalt gut rock of the Mururoa atoll vomited forth an eruption of force and fire. Though modest by the standards of modern destructive power, equivalent only to about eight thousand metric tons of TNT, the explosion nevertheless rocked that remote corner of the world.

  Twenty-four thousand miles away, Pierre Chiron stood at the foot of the structure he now thought of as “le observatorie”. He had arrived ninety minutes ahead of the projected time for the test and lingered for three hours beyond that pivotal moment. Yet he saw no indication of activity, nothing to suggest that an experiment was being monitored in the observatory, nor any sign that the atomic test in the South Pacific had exerted an influence here, on the other side of the globe. At last admitting defeat, Chiron left, pausing only long enough to take a picture for a tourist couple posing gaily in front of the monument, blissfully unaware of its dual purpose.

  In the four months since the incident in the Haute-Pyrenees, Chiron had received no further contact from the woman or any of her agents. He had however developed a close friendship with the young man with the unusual name, fulfi
lling the second of two promises made that fateful day. Now, with the underground detonation of an atomic device at Mururoa, both pledges had been satisfied. He remained curious to see what fruit each of those disparate branches would bear.

  The second test, an airburst over Fangataufa on the second of October, was judged a success by both the military scientists overseeing the project and the nationalist politicians intent on flexing the French military muscle in the face of NATO and the United States. Because he was paying attention on a different level, Chiron’s observations were less sanguine.

  Almost immediately following the Fangataufa test, Mount St. Helens, an active volcano in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, began to resonate with tremors. In New Zealand, Mount Puapehu entered into a period of intense eruptive activity, as did Mount Merapi in Java. One week after the test, Mount Hosshu, dormant for over 250 years, rumbled to life in Japan.

  Over the next few months, Chiron saw fingers of force reaching out from the test sites to distant locations around the world, a series of unprecedented volcanic and seismic events coinciding with the atomic detonations. His observations led to more research, which in turn revealed an astonishing link between the weapons tests and geological activity, but he shared his findings with no one. He knew others were also watching and had perhaps been doing so for decades.

  Meanwhile, a cluster of cells began to thrive and multiply in the warm and dark embrace of Collette Chiron’s womb. It would yet be two months before she and her husband would discover that what grew there was no miracle.

  She would make just one more journey to Lourdes, but her supplications would once more go unanswered.

  Part One: Reflection

  One

  May 2003

  Between heaven and earth, a veil.

  It was an illusion—more accurately a mirage—and Nick Kismet was not fooled. Nevertheless, his eyes were drawn to the shimmering curtain of superheated air rising from the earth, pooling in mid-air like the surface of a vast lake somehow turned on its side. The Airbus A320 speared onward into the heart of the distortion and the convection waves magically receded.

  Spring was now half done and already the desert days had become brutally hot. At sunrise, temperatures of nearly ninety degrees Fahrenheit were reported; by midday, the mercury would reach well into the triple-digit range. And yet, with the fall of night, the day’s heat would radiate back into space to plunge temperatures in the austere environment to the opposite extreme. Indeed, it was a place of extremes.

  That’s why they call it the desert, Kismet thought darkly.

  He hated this place, hated the arid nothingness and the severe temperatures and the scouring sandstorms. He loathed the constant thirst, the ever-present smell of scorched iron, and the way his clothes felt like sandpaper against his skin. Yet, there was much more to his contempt than recognition of the physical hardships imposed by the harsh conditions.

  This was the place where he had almost died.

  The desert extremes did not adequately represent the totality of the environment. As the plane sailed onward through the roiling air mass, shedding altitude and cruising speed on approach to its destination, Kismet began to see more green in the brown landscape below. The Tigris River was a barely visible ribbon, glinting in the sun, but its benevolent effects, courtesy of an ancient network of irrigation canals, were visible all around the city. From a distance, it was hard to believe that this place was still a war zone.

  The aircraft began to vibrate as it struck pockets of disturbed atmosphere. The turbulence was not unlike slamming into potholes on a paved road, and as the plane made a particularly violent drop, Kismet was grateful for his seat belt. He overheard snatches of conversation from some of his fellow passengers, mostly relief workers from UNICEF and other international agencies, wondering if the plane was taking ground fire.

  He smiled humorlessly at the notion. If the civilian aircraft was indeed under attack from anti-aircraft artillery batteries, or even small arms fire, there would be no time to wonder. The plane would simply break up in the air over the city. Yet it was only right that the volunteers be concerned. For most, this endeavor would represent the greatest peril they would ever face—stepping willingly into one of the most violent places on earth in order to do nothing but good—and they certainly had every right to be apprehensive. If he did not share their trepidation, it was only because for him, this would not be such a singular event. As the soldiers with whom he had once served were fond of saying: “Been there, done that.”

  It had been twelve years and three months, give or take a few days, since Kismet’s first journey into the desert. He had not come quite so far north that time, but in some ways he had gone much further. Yet that crucible of violence, from which he had escaped using only his wits and the devil’s own luck, was not what he would remember most about his experience in the desert. War, even on such a personal, visceral level, was not the element which had forged him like steel and set him upon the path he now followed. Something else had happened that night in the desert, something he still could not fully explain. Somewhere in the world however, there was at least one person who did know, and Kismet had sworn to find that man. When he did, he would demand an answer to his questions and settle a very special account—a debt payable in blood.

  He had been on that path for more than a decade, finding little in the way of solid information, but had never lost hope. In all that time however, his quest had not returned him to the desert sands where he had been reborn. It had taken another war to bring him back here.

  He was not returning as a soldier to battle a modern enemy, but rather as a protector of ancient wonders. The second Gulf War—designated Operation: Iraqi Freedom—was not over. Not officially, as the objectives of the war plan had yet to be fully realized, and not literally. Not by a long shot. Men were still fighting and dying in nearly every corner of the country. Sporadic resistance continued to break out, both from organized groups still loyal to the fallen regime and from enraged citizens, striking out blindly at the foreigners who had come unbidden and shattered their world. In many cases, that violence had been directed at objects rather than at people. Several days of looting had followed the collapse of the regime, mostly from government offices, but also from hospitals, banks and museums. It was the latter area of need that had prompted Kismet’s return to the desert.

  As the city grew closer, the pilot put the plane into a shallow dive, shedding altitude rapidly. The engines whined with exertion, but Kismet knew they were actually giving up airspeed, slowing down in preparation for landing. He nevertheless got the feeling that the pilot was in a hurry to get his aircraft on the ground. The jet would never be more vulnerable to attack than when on final approach. The landing gear came down with a thump, and he sat back in his chair, knowing that while the flight was almost over, the journey was only just beginning.

  Kismet took his place in the queue of passengers poised to disembark. He found it slightly amusing that he was nearly at the head of the line. That never happened when he traveled. Always a stickler for obeying the flight crew’s directive to remain seated until the plane stopped moving, he usually found himself fighting to get out of the cramped row and into the aisle. Evidently no one on this flight was eager to leave the aircraft, their last link with a world that was, if not completely civilized, then at least recognizable.

  He noticed one group of Red Cross workers who, like himself, were not put off by their arrival in the war zone. They moved with calm assurance toward the exit, shouldering their gear as if they were simply reporting for another day at work. It was not their collective demeanor that drew his attention however, but rather the face of their leader, a red-haired woman who pushed past him with a confident stride that could only be earned through years of experience in dangerous areas. She caught his appraising glance and returned it with a contemptuous curl of her lips. On a face less lovely, it would have been a sneer.

  Must be French, he thoug
ht, answering her with a wink.

  The heat of the day was beginning to fill the cabin, rapidly displacing the cool air-conditioned environment. The effect was welcome, buffering the passengers against the furnace blast that awaited them on the tarmac. Kismet squinted involuntarily as he stepped out onto the gantry, and then quickly descended. The recently re-christened Baghdad International Airport had not exactly been designed with a view to making travelers feel welcome, but an overwhelming presence of armored vehicles made it seem downright inhospitable. Like his fellow passengers, he was eager to be inside where there was at least the illusion of safety.

  A small knot of grim-faced soldiers waited at the foot of the descending staircase. They were young—just boys, thought Kismet, remembering a time when he had been one of them—but their weapons added a gravity to their presence that somehow obviated the need for maturity. Kismet recognized the M4 carbines—the latest incarnation of the venerable M16 assault rifle—and the M136 AT-4 missile launch tubes slung over several shoulders. Despite their almost juvenile countenances, to a man they all had an aged appearance, as if the desert sun had bleached away the flush of youth.

  “This way,” directed one of the men, a staff sergeant and leader of the squad. His voice was tight, without a trace of pleasantness. He was not there to play welcoming committee. Kismet nodded and headed in the direction of the soldier’s brusque gesture.

  He reached the relative shade of the terminal, passing more soldiers but also men and women in civilian clothes. Armbands differentiated relief workers and agents of the UN, while cameras and sound equipment were the badge of the journalist, but all of the civilians, like the soldiers before them, wore flak jackets and Kevlar helmets. Kismet had been issued similar protective equipment, but it was packed away in the large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He debated donning the equipment, but decided he could survive a few more steps without the precautionary armor.