The Simeon Scroll

by Neil Howarth

  The room was silent, as if stunned by the revelation. Finally, Lawrence Percival spoke again.

  “General, as a serving military officer, how do you feel about initiating this campaign by assassinating the President of the United States, your Commander in Chief?”

  The General’s face became serious. He appeared to stand to attention.

  “Sir, I am a soldier, I have served on the battlefield. I understand the grand strategy. I know the objective. I also understand sacrifice. As Thomas Jefferson said. ‘The tree of freedom must be replenished from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants’.

  “I will leave it to you gentlemen to decide which camp the President falls into.”

  63

  Priory di Sant Agustino, Isola dei Lebbrosi.

  There was a scuffle going on, somewhere out there beyond the pain. His senses caught something familiar. It seemed to pull him back from the edge - the sharp, sweet smell of vomit. His first thought was, someone had thrown up on him, after working with the homeless it would not be the first time. Then reality kicked in. The vomit was his own.

  He was vaguely aware of the scrape of a key in the lock. He tried to open his eyes, but they seemed to be glued shut. Someone moved into the room. He felt a hand on his cheek. Then someone was calling his name.

  “Joseph, it is me, Frankie.”

  Fagan knew it was a dream. He would have smiled only his mouth did not seem to work. He felt something cooling on his face, gently wiping at his eyes - water. His body went rigid.

  “Joseph,” There it was again - her voice. “Relax. I am here now. I need you to open your eyes.”

  He tried again, this time his eyelids seemed to work. She was there, a vision, kneeling beside him, wiping his face with a wet towel.

  “Frankie,” it came out as a croak.

  “Causing trouble again?”

  “You were supposed to . . .” It was all Fagan could get out.

  “You think you can ditch me in the garbage and walk away?”

  “But,”

  Frankie cut him off. “We have to get out of here.”

  Fagan managed to wave a hand. “Give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll be right there.”

  “I am going to help you sit up.” Frankie got a hold of him and hauled him into the sitting position.

  The pain exploded in glorious technicolor. He had to sit for a moment and let it settle.

  Frankie pulled his arm around her shoulders and took a firmer hold. “Here we go.” She pushed, driving hard to her feet. Fagan bit down on the pain, trying to concentrate on making his legs work. She had to grab him with both arms as he staggered. They stood there swaying in the darkness, arms around each other, faces inches apart.

  He looked into her eyes. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Come on, let us get you out of here.”

  They shuffled towards the open door and out into the passageway. Two bodies lay outside on the stone paved floor.

  “Friends of yours?” Fagan struggled to bring some humor that he wasn’t feeling.

  “Shut up and walk.”

  They followed the passageway and struggled down a set of stone steps. Each one, shooting pain into Fagan’s body.

  Frankie paused and glanced around. “I hope the light security is because they think you are going nowhere, and they think I am on my way to Milan.”

  Fagan held on to her. “Why are you not on your way to Milan?”

  “Save your strength. We still have to get off this island.”

  Frankie manhandled him through the door at the end of the passageway. Outside, Fagan could make out another figure lying motionless in the grass.

  “We need to make it to the water. I have a rubber boat, it is not quite a Navy SEAL Zodiac, but the engine seems pretty good, and we can lose ourselves in the dark. If I can get you back to Iggy’s place, we can patch you up there.”

  Fagan was past caring. It was enough to try to stay on his feet. “So what are we waiting for?”

  Frankie took a better hold of him and started moving. The ground was open, short grass and no cover, but this part of the Priory gardens had no lighting and evening had faded enough to make them nothing but shadows moving slowly, very slowly towards the water.

  The door they had just come through burst open with a clatter, boots scuffed on stone, followed by more commotion.

  “Come on, we must move faster.” Frankie increased the pace.

  Fagan struggled to respond. His left leg gave way, he grabbed onto Frankie and pushed hard with his right, trying to correct himself. But his knee collapsed, taking them both down.

  “Frankie, go.” Fagan pushed her way. “You have to go, now.”

  Yelling and shouting broke through the gentle peace of the evening, and bright spotlights appeared high on the Priory walls, swinging out across the grass towards them.

  “Go!” Fagan waved an arm at her. “What are you waiting for?”

  Frankie shook her head. “I will take my chances.”

  The spotlights found them, flooding them with bright light, then men appeared on all sides, guns pointed directly at them. Fagan felt Frankie’s arms around him, pulling him in, even closer.

  A familiar figure stepped into the spotlight.

  “Mademoiselle Lefevre, what a pleasure.” Dominic De Vaux spoke to her in French. He was still dressed in his dinner jacket and bow tie.

  “You won’t get away with it.” Frankie gave him a look of defiance. “I have already passed it all up the line, my boss knows all about your little plan.”

  De Vaux allowed himself a quiet victory smile. “Yes, Charles was telling me you called.”

  Frankie tried to say something, but no words would come out.

  Blanchet appeared at De Vaux’s shoulder.

  “Take them out to the Abbey,” De Vaux said. “And wait for my call.”

  64

  The Vatican, Rome.

  “Have you seen it?” Cardinal Angelo Mordeli was the Holy Father’s Camerlengo, his Chamberlain. He was an ancient Tuscan, whose face was as wrinkled as screwed up brown paper, but he still retained a razor sharp mind and ruled the Vatican household with an iron hand.

  “I have seen the images. The scroll itself will not be unrolled until the initial analysis is complete.” Cardinal Vogler sat on the other side of his desk. He looked up as Julius Mengen appeared at the door.

  “Father Brennan to see you, Your Eminence.”

  “Send him in, Julius.”

  “Ah Paul,” Vogler said as Father Brennan appeared at the door. “Sorry we had to change your travel plans.”

  “Your Eminence,” he turned his head and acknowledged Mordeli. “Your Eminence. I wish I was in Chicago now and the Holy Father was in his apartment, alive and well.”

  “A sentiment we all share,” Vogler said. “Still, God chooses the time for all of us. You were lucky to get the glimpse you did. So, how are things going?”

  “Very well, but we have much more to do yet.” He nodded towards the Camerlengo who was officially responsible for the Holy Father’s funeral. “The funeral arrangements are set for tomorrow. The Curia is assembled, and the President of the United States has already confirmed his attendance, as have most of the leaders from the around Europe and many others from around the world.”

  “We are saying goodbye to a truly great man.”

  “It seems that we will be able to honor his passing with the most wonderful discovery,” Brennan said. “This Simeon Scroll, as the press seemed to have christened it.”

  Vogler smiled at the reference to the name he had planted in the mind of a journalist, earlier in the day. “Cardinal Mordeli and I were discussing a somewhat thorny issue related to just that. The De Vaux Foundation would like us to place the scroll in St Peter’s Basilica on display while the funeral takes place. But passions will be running high. People need time to adjust to what the scroll has to tell us. To understand what it means to them. Besides, we would be acknowledging its authenticity
before it had been officially proven. Already most of the non-Christian faith’s representatives have withdrawn from attending. This would only fan the flames.”

  “Perhaps I could make a suggestion,” Brennan said.

  “Please do.”

  “Why not place it beneath the Basilica, in the mausoleum below the bones of St Peter? His final words displayed close to his final resting place. The ultimate endorsement of our faith. I think it would be a fitting silent tribute to everything Pope Salus stood for. And when the authentication is complete, perhaps we could build a permanent home for it down there. I’m sure Pope Salus would have approved.”

  Vogler darted a look at Brennan as if he had been poked in the ribs. He studied the priest’s face, searching for any hidden meaning. But Brennan was revealing nothing. Vogler looked across at Cardinal Mordeli. “What do you think, Angelo?”

  The old man’s blue eyes seemed to shine, and a smile broke across his wrinkled face. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  Abbaye de Sainte Bernadette, Brittany.

  The room was dark, like the inside of his head. Fagan peered into the gloom. Stray fragments of memory floated back. A vague recollection of being carried aboard a plane, he remembered little of the flight. He recalled arriving at the Abbey, being half carried up the steps by two of Blanchet’s men. It was late, and the place had appeared deserted, no sign of any of the monks he had met on his previous visit. They had taken him and Frankie down to the old dungeons and locked them in a cell.

  He struggled to sit up, looking around for her.

  “Joseph.” Her face emerged out of the gloom. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I was run over - by a horse.”

  “I gave you some painkillers. I found them in the toilet on the plane.”

  Fagan lifted an arm above his head and stretched gingerly.

  “I think it is all bruising,” Frankie said.

  “Really, you’ve examined me?”

  “Well, I poked around your ribs, you groaned a little. If any of them were broken, you would have screamed.”

  Fagan shook his head. “Any idea why we’re still alive?”

  “I think maybe De Vaux is keeping his options open, waiting to see if there is any fallout. Maybe he has more questions for us.”

  “Why didn’t you go in, as we agreed?”

  A cheeky smile played across her lips. “I could not resist coming to your rescue.”

  “The phrase ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ springs to mind.”

  “Joseph, you can be very ungrateful. Anyway, it seems I made the right choice because going in was never going to work out. You heard De Vaux. The Charles he said he had been talking to, was my boss, Charles Messenian. Traitorous bastard. To think I trusted him.”

  “Nothing in this surprises me anymore.”

  “I would like to give him a surprise. A bullet in the head.”

  “Let’s focus on getting out of here first.” Fagan’s face became serious. “Have you heard from Walter and Iggy?”

  “I made a call to Iggy as soon as I got off that garbage boat.” She gave him a disgusted look. “I still have not forgiven you for that.”

  Fagan managed a smile. “When needs must.”

  Frankie shook her head. “Sometimes, Joseph, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Frankie, focus. Walter and Iggy?”

  She gave him a Gallic shrug. “I told Iggy that De Vaux’s men were likely to come calling. Last I heard they were hiding in the cellar of a bar of one of Iggy’s friends.”

  “I’m sure that made Walter happy.”

  “They were not staying long. Iggy said they were heading into the salt marshes. He has a place out there where they can lie low.”

  “And how did you find me?”

  “I had a pretty good idea where they would take you, so I asked Iggy to check his cameras. And there you were, stepping off a boat at the Priory di Sant Agustino.”

  Fagan looked up at her. “Frankie, I’m sorry.”

  “What is there to be sorry for? We are in this together.”

  “I had a chance to take him out.”

  “Who?”

  “Blanchet, back at the bridge. I had the shot. I could have taken him, one in the head and it would have been all over. But I didn’t.” Fagan replayed the hesitation in his head. As if someone was tugging at him. “I hesitated and the moment was gone. I ended up shooting him in the hand.”

  “You took a snap decision. At least he did not shoot me.”

  “We wouldn’t have been here now.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  Fagan looked at her face, illuminated by a thin sheen of moonlight.

  “Why did you come back for me?”

  She studied him for a moment. Her face was serious. “We still have a job to do.”

  The Vatican, Rome.

  Cardinal Vogler sat at his desk smoking a cigarette, an occasional indulgence he saved for times of stress - like now. A laptop was open on the desk in front of him, a file, thick with papers spread out beside it. He had just played his way through the last of the security videos he had removed from the Vatican security office. The video was paused capturing a single figure, frozen as he emerged from the Papal apartments.

  The whole story was now laid out before him. He was reasonably sure no one else had seen the videos, not that anyone else was looking. After all, there was no need. There was no suspicion of foul play, none wanted. This was a time for moving swiftly on. As far as the Roman Curia were concerned, the Supreme Pontiff was gone, the papal ring had been crushed. No more papal documents could be endorsed with its seal. It was time to elect his successor.

  Inevitably the rumors, the whispers had begun. He, they speculated, might be the chosen one, even the Roman bookies had him installed as the favorite. But it was not a position he sought. He had been proud to serve in the position he held now, to be given this task, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. It had been the biggest challenge of his life. He Heinrich Vogler, a poor boy from Heidelberg, had been chosen to confront the devil himself. And he had not the slightest doubt that Lucifer himself was his adversary, just as the Holy Father had predicted.

  65

  Fontainebleau, France.

  Dominic de Vaux watched as the helicopter swept around the conical towers of the chateau and landed on the grand front lawn. Konrad Krueger climbed out as the engine note dropped and the rotors began to run down.

  “Dominic,” he called out as he hurried up the steps to the terrace where De Vaux stood. “You, my friend, are a hero. They are very impressed. Well, most of them.” He dismissed the rest with a wave of his hand. “Percival is pissed as you’d expect. Say’s it will all backfire, too much risk involved. You know, the usual crap. But there’s no doubt the council are impressed. They’re beginning to believe that this could really work.”

  “I never doubted it.”

  Krueger pointed a finger at him with an upraised thumb, and smiled. “Remind me to never play cards with you.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No thanks. I can’t stay I’m heading back to the States. Things are moving fast. We need everyone ready. I’m meeting General Hathaway for dinner.”

  “How are things going?”

  “Everything’s falling into place. We’ve had our people feeding chatter into the network for the past week, but now we’re ramping up the traffic. The security services have just discovered that Abu Nadas and his organization found out about the scroll, and its plans a week ago, well before any public announcements were made. But they don’t know about the carpenter link just yet. The French police have already made the connection from the carpenter, through his son, to the local militant cell. It won’t take long to link them to Abu Nadas, and from there to VEVAK, the Iranian Security Service, and of course our friends in Tehran. But for now, he’s just a hit and run with questionable connections.

  “We’ve still to feed t
hem the last part. The carpenter discovered what his masterpiece was built to hold, and he told Abu Nadas his secret. From there, they were able to put their plans in place through him and his cabinet. But that’s not going to happen until after the event.

  “My contacts tell me the intelligence agencies are going crazy. They’re already formulating that there will be a major action against the US.”

  “Are they speculating as to what?”

  “No, not at the moment. We’re just building the backdrop. And speaking of build up, it gets better. The First Lady has a cold and will not be traveling with her husband to Rome, but the President has reiterated that he will still attend the funeral. Which means they’re taking it seriously. There were some moves to stop him traveling, already most of the other religious leaders have pulled out because of the scroll, but there was no way the President was going to back out. He can’t be seen to be walking away from his friend.”

  Krueger glanced at his watch. “Look, I need to move. I just wanted to drop in to congratulate you and let you know we’re all behind you. So relax, the hard part is done, sit back and enjoy the show.”

  “Konrad,” De Vaux had one last question. “Any disturbances out there, any ripples concerning our friends out at the Abbey?”

  Krueger grinned. “Quiet as a mouse. Nothing at all, you’re clear. But look I have to go. Things are going to start to happen real fast from here on in.”

  De Vaux watched the helicopter climb and disappear off behind the chateau. He looked down towards Micheline’s mausoleum, basking in the morning sunshine in the middle of the lake. It was as if she was watching him, as everything finally came together.

  The council had given him the problem of Pope Salus, but he knew that merely removing him would solve nothing. Salus already had the President of the United States singing from the same hymn sheet, and there were others, influential others, which meant that it would not simply go away. The Grand Master had earlier introduced him to General Hathaway, as always, the old man seeing all and moving the pieces on the board.