The Apocalypse Fire (Ava Curzon Trilogy Book 2)

by Dominic Selwood

  “Nice touch to meet here.” Ava nodded at the building behind them – a museum to the English romantic poet, John Keats, who had died there aged twenty-five.

  “Is your colleague here?” Mary asked, looking around.

  Ava was lost for an instant, unsure who she meant.

  “The Army officer?” she prompted.

  “Oh, Ferguson?” Ava was surprised to hear him described as a colleague. She shook her head. “He’ll join us later.”

  She saw a hint of disappointment on Mary’s face. Then it was gone.

  Mary turned and walked down the few remaining steps. “You left the reception at the Russian embassy early.” Her tone was breezy, but it was clearly a question. “With Oleg Durov.” She paused. “Did you find out anything worthwhile?”

  Ava smiled to herself.

  So the Vatican had not just been concerned with getting the Shroud back, and Mary’s appearance at the Russian embassy had not merely been to catch sight of Durov – or even to keep an eye on her and Ferguson.

  The Vatican was actively following up on Durov.

  Ava had no intention of telling Mary the details about her trip to Durov’s house – not until she knew exactly what the Vatican’s interest was. “I was surprised to see you there,” she countered.

  Once off the steps, Mary kept walking across the Piazza di Spagna. “When we were back in London, at the Museum, you asked whether I really got the information on Lunev and Durov from the Vatican. You seemed surprised that Rome would have access to that kind of data.”

  Ava nodded. “Well, you have to admit, it’s not widely known that the Vatican has a hi-tech security and intelligence capability.”

  Mary stopped at a fountain, lost in thought. “That’s true, but put it this way.” She pointed to the sculpture. “This water comes from an ancient aqueduct that feeds over a dozen fountains. Many claim it’s still the finest water in Rome. When the engineers built this fountain in the early 1600s, the water pressure wasn’t strong enough to make huge jets, so instead they opted for a sculpture of a battered boat struggling on a pond.”

  Her expression was deadly serious. “You may think the Vatican has similarly lost the energy and vigour it once had, and that it’s now no more than a battered ship. But you’d be wrong. Its spiritual waters are still highly rated by billions, and as the single largest religious organization on the planet, the Holy See has a vast global empire to protect. It’s never been afraid of technology, and nowadays it uses every means available to secure and protect its operations.”

  When Mary had first introduced herself as ‘Vatican Liaison’, Ava had wondered if she had been joking – although there had been nothing funny about her marksmanship at Nuremberg.

  “Who exactly do you work for?” Ava probed. “Does your department have a name?”

  “The Dipartimento delle Intellegenzia Vaticana.” Mary exited the piazza into the Via del Condotti, the heart of Rome’s high-end fashion district. “DIV for short, affectionately known as Five-O-Four, from reading it as Roman numerals.”

  Ava smiled. It was a nice touch.

  “And what does Five-O-Four look after?” Ava was keen to know more now that Mary was talking.

  “The Swiss guard are the military. The Gendarmerie Corps is the police. As you can imagine, that leaves a lot of other areas: terrorism, espionage, sabotage, cyber – internally and externally.”

  Ava watched as two nuns passed them.

  Maybe it was not so difficult to believe.

  The Church had always been high on the hit lists of a variety of hostile organizations. It was not that long ago that the pope had been shot in Saint Peter’s Square.

  So, from what Mary was telling her, the Vatican now had a full intelligence service, like MI5, MI6, and GCHQ in the UK, or the FBI, CIA, and NSA in the US.

  Or maybe it always had?

  “What about you?” Mary asked Ava. “Nobody’s told me who you lot are. The initial call came through to us from the UK’s Ministry of Defence. But you work for the British Museum?”

  “I’m just part-time with the MoD,” Ava replied, feeling a small thrill at realizing it was the first time she had told anyone of her new role. “It’s a specialist unit. To be honest, I’m still finding my way around.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mary smiled. “I’m pretty used to departments no one has ever heard of.”

  Ava was grateful for being cut some slack. “Anyway, what brought you to Rome?” she asked, changing the subject. “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Los Angeles.” Mary stopped to let a couple pass her. “I was a cop. LAPD. A neighbour’s child was taken hostage by a gang trying to intimidate me into closing down a narco-investigation. They told me they’d kill him if I carried on. I didn’t think they’d do it…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I’m sorry,” Ava replied, when it was clear Mary had finished the story. “Did they get the gang?”

  Mary shook her head. “They’re way too connected. No one touches La Santa Muerte.”

  Ava wondered if she had heard right. “La Santa Muerte? Saint Death?”

  “Mexicans,” Mary confirmed. “Really, really bad news. Creepy religious tattoos, too.”

  Ava’s pulse quickened. “Skeletons, skulls, rosaries, flowers – that sort of thing?”

  “Oh, you’ve heard of them.” Mary nodded. “It’s a very particular look – kind of Catholic tat meets voodoo. You know it when you see it.”

  Ava had.

  “Where does the name come from?” Ava was intrigued. “Is it a Church thing?”

  “Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte is a popular folk saint in Mexico and the southern US. She’s death – a female grim reaper – but she also takes care of people: protects them, heals them, and guides them to the afterlife. If you see a skeleton saint in a shroud with a scythe, flowers, owl, hourglass, or scales, that’ll be her. The Church and government are pretty unimpressed, although millions of people love her for her miracles. This particular gang has adopted her, and you don’t want to get mixed up with them.”

  So now she had a name for the antiquities gang she was dealing with.

  Saint Death.

  She dug her hands into her pockets and started following Mary again. “Why did you choose the Vatican?”

  “I needed to get away,” Mary replied, “do something completely different. I’d always fancied coming to Europe. At the interview I fell in love with Rome. I felt that if I looked hard enough, everything was here. I still do. And the best bit’s the ice cream.”

  Ava smiled. “Anyway, you’ve got the Shroud back, so what’s your ongoing interest in Durov?”

  “His men murdered a Church employee in Turin.” Mary’s expression was grim. “Until I’m certain he won’t do it again, he’s staying firmly on my radar.”

  Ava walked a few paces in silence, mulling over what she had learned from Mary. “Why did you call me here?” she asked after a few moments. “Has something happened?”

  Mary nodded. “Durov’s in Rome.”

  She set off walking again. “After seeing you leave the embassy with him in London – and then hearing about that nastiness outside your house the other night – I figured he might still be of interest to you.”

  Did everyone know about Julia, and the fact she was killed on her doorstep?

  Ava stopped at the window of an old-fashioned café. It looked like a throwback to a previous century, with its richly papered walls, oil paintings, tinted mirrors, elegantly upholstered sofas, and marble-topped tables.

  First Mossad were protecting Durov.

  Now he was at the Vatican?

  What was going on?

  “Don’t tell me he’s friendly with some senior cardinal?” Ava asked, remembering what Jennings had told her about the Skoptsy and their bizarre religious rituals. “Not really his scene, is it?”

  Mary shook her head. “He’s not at the Vatican. I could deal with the situation if he was. I’m afraid he’s in there.”

&n
bsp; They had drawn level with a large arched gateway sandwiched between Jimmy Choo and Hermès. Mary nodded towards it as they passed.

  “He flew in on a private jet overnight. We spotted his name on the paperwork and discovered he was going to be a guest here, at 68 Via del Condotti. That’s when I called you. He entered the building in the early hours of the morning, and hasn’t come out yet.”

  Ava looked up at the high stone wall, and a tingle of electricity ran through her as she saw a large Maltese cross carved into the stone above the doorway, and two flags either side of it emblazoned with Maltese crosses.

  “What’s inside?” Her excitement was mounting.

  “The palace of His Most Eminent Highness the Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta.”

  Ava felt a flush of satisfaction as she gazed up at the imposing entranceway.

  Just like in Rasputin’s cryptograph.

  She had been right.

  “What’s he doing in there?” she asked as they passed, and the large wooden gates began to open. “Have you got Five-O-Four people on the inside?”

  Mary turned right, steering Ava into the narrower Via Bocca di Leone. “I’m afraid it’s not that easy.” She shook her head. “The Order of Malta are part of the Church. And they accept the leadership of the pope…”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Ava was unsure why Mary was being so hesitant.

  Mary looked tense. “They’re not like any other organization on earth. They’re a country, with their own passports, number plates, stamps, and coins. Their property is independent sovereign territory. When you step through their doors, you leave Italy. There’d be all hell to pay if I walked in unannounced.”

  Ava was momentarily flummoxed that a religious order of the Catholic Church was also an independent country. “Then what’s the plan?”

  “I was rather hoping,” Mary answered slowly, “that you’d have one.”

  Chapter 33

  Majdal Shams

  The Golan Heights

  Israeli Occupied Syria

  THE MOBILE M270 multiple launch rocket system was the pride of the Israeli Defence Force’s artillery. It could discharge a salvo of twelve high-explosive warheads in forty seconds, scorching and pulverizing an entire half-mile grid square back to the Stone Age.

  It was Menatetz: the Smasher.

  From inside its heavily armoured cabin, Danny Aronov looked out through the sturdy blast grilles at the mountains of the Golan.

  He had volunteered for training as the M270’s gunner, and had quickly learned that it was not a difficult role. The job required only that he sit between the driver and the section chief, with the computer fire control panel in front of him. Apart from that, there was not much to do, except ensure the targeting and guidance system was properly hooked into the data feed from the Command Post. When the time was right, he merely had to close the external grilles on the cabin windows, punch the button to initiate the launch sequence, and let the computer do the rest.

  Industrial killing had never been so easy.

  The driver steadied the two steering handles and jabbed the heavy accelerator, coaxing the twenty-eight tons of steel and armour up the ancient incline.

  Around them, the northern Golan was tranquil.

  Oaks, junipers, black mulberry and olive trees clung to the brightly sunlit volcanic mountainsides. The scene was majestic and pure, but Danny had stopped seeing it long ago. He was aware only of how it had all been defiled by mankind. How, over the millennia, with slingshots, spears, swords, guns, and bombs, man had soured what the Lord had offered as a priceless gift. Greed, jealousy, and violence had turned Paradise into Hell.

  He looked down at the launch control panel in front of him.

  Well, not for much longer.

  He had read the ancient writings, and knew that the end would bring a new beginning.

  But first, there had to be a descent into the abyss.

  He checked his watch. They were still a long way from the plateau where they would park and stand guard over the hostile frontier – surveying the area where the Golan dropped away to the desert of western Syria, and the lawlessness that lay out there.

  Once parked, they would train the rockets on the jihadi-controlled badlands, arm the system, and wait for instructions – just like men from their battalion did every day.

  Almost nothing ever happened.

  A few years ago, another battery had brought down a Syrian Sukhoi SU-24 bomber straying over Israeli airspace. But that had been the most exciting thing to occur in a long time.

  The job was the textbook definition of monotony.

  He looked at the unending terrain, allowing himself a small smile.

  Stretching his gloved hand down to the hip pocket of his dark green combat jacket, he felt for the reassuring bulge of the stun grenade he had failed to return to the Quartermaster three days earlier.

  The Menatetz powered on.

  As they climbed, he looked down into Syria, onto the abandoned United Nations observation post far below. International peacekeepers had monitored the area since 1974, but for the last few years it had been too dangerous for them, and the camp lay derelict and dilapidated.

  It was the perfect spot.

  He had no idea what the M270 was worth. A couple of million dollars, he had heard. It was state-of-the-art artillery technology – a stretched Bradley fighting vehicle chassis, fitted with a bombproof cab at the front and a large rectangular multiple rocket launcher on the back that could be swivelled, raised, angled, and aimed to direct its lethal payload to targets up to a hundred and eighty miles away. It was a crushing amount of firepower – as much as an entire traditional artillery battery. And even though standard operating procedures were to run it with a crew of three, it only needed one man to drive it and unleash the biblical Armageddon it carried.

  Danny gazed up ahead at the three peaks of Mount Hermon, where the melting snow mixed with the natural springs and ran south as the mighty River Jordan.

  It was a place that was blessed.

  The call to action lay in the ancient Song of Songs. He knew it by heart:

  From Lebanon come with me; From Lebanon, my bride, with me! Trip down from Amana’s peak, From the peak of Senir and Hermon, From the dens of lions, From the hills of leopards.

  This was where it would begin.

  Behind him was the Sea of Galilee. In Roman times – when Jesus had lived there – it had been at the heart of the Decapolis, a network of ten cities connected by Graeco-Roman culture rather than the local Jewish, Nabatean, or Aramean, yet now it was a hinterland. It was funny how things changed, he mused. Back then, Damascus, too, had been one of the leading cities of the Decapolis, but now it was a world away, at the bloody heart of a brutal war.

  He shifted on the metal seat’s thin plastic-covered padding.

  He had only fully understood when he had first started reading the Nevi’im, the prophets of the Tanakh. Then he knew he had a destiny.

  And it was also the destiny of the world.

  He thanked the Lord for the Brothers of the Seven Seals, who he had found deep in the dark web, preparing to do what needed to be done. It had been a revelation to know there were others who saw the signs and understood what needed to happen.

  And he also gave thanks for the day he had received the first approach from the prophet. In the encrypted pulses of clandestine cyberspace, the Russian had sought him out. And he had known immediately that this charismatic stranger was the man he had been waiting for – the one he had been put on this earth to follow.

  Danny was watching carefully out of the cab’s front grille, and when he finally saw the four large boulders pushed up around the base of the roadside telegraph pole – one with a Star of David spray-painted onto it in blue – he started to sweat with excitement.

  It was all going to happen. Just like he said it would.

  “Stop,” he ordered the driver next to him. “I have to take a leak.”

  The driver ig
nored him.

  “Seriously,” he insisted. “Unless you want the cabin to stink all day.”

  “Ma nisgar,” the driver cursed, braking hard and bringing the vehicle to a shuddering halt. “You’re pathetic.”

  Danny ignored the jibe.

  He had been suffering them throughout his military service.

  But not for much longer.

  Feeling wired, and with his senses on full alert, he scrambled over the section chief next to him, and pushed open the heavy armoured door.

  The cold mountain wind slapped him in the face, but he welcomed it – the low temperature meant there were less likely to be walkers about.

  Hitting the ground, he pulled the grenade from his pocket. Gripping the safety lever to the body of the slim canister, he rapidly pulled out the pin. Without pausing, he spun and hurled the grenade back into the cab, slammed the door shut, dropped to the floor, and clamped his hands over his ears.

  Despite the thick material of his gloves and the dense armour-plating on the vehicle, two seconds after he had released the lever, he heard the grenade detonating.

  It was a deep pressure wave of disorientating sound that must have been devastating in the small confines of the metallic cab. He had been looking at the ground, so was spared the simultaneous lightning flash of magnesium that accompanied the explosion, but knew that his two compatriots in the vehicle would be blinded for at least five seconds, and blinking away coloured lights and optical interference for half an hour or more as their seared retinas tried to recalibrate.

  He picked himself up just in time to see the two black-clad and balaclavaed figures swarm the vehicle’s cab.

  The muffled sound of the six suppressed shots came instantly, three for each of them.

  Danny smiled.

  This was the time of the prophecy, the start of the final heavenly battle – the one the Russian had promised.

  And he was going to be part of it.

  His heart swelled with pride as he watched the black-clad men jumping down from the M270’s cab. But his joy turned to incomprehension as one of them strode towards him, his OTs-38 Stechkin silent revolver raised and aimed straight at Danny’s head.