The Lucifer Code

by Charles Brokaw

  Lourds placed his backpack between the chair and the wall out of the way, then sat.

  ‘Do you have the book with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you haven’t written down the translation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t write down any translation. I don’t want it to fall in the wrong hands.’

  ‘And whose hands would be wrong?’

  ‘For starters, the men you ran into down in the catacombs.’

  ‘They know about the Joy Scroll?’ Lourds asked.

  ‘Of course they know about the Joy Scroll. Why do you think they tried to kidnap you?’

  ‘Actually, they did kidnap me.’

  Olympia found what she was looking for, then stood and returned to her desk.

  ‘That’s not a book,’ Lourds observed.

  ‘It’s a thumb drive. It’s better than a book.’

  Lourds groaned in disgust.

  That earned him a sharp look of reproach. She wagged the thumb drive under his nose. ‘I can carry more books on this one device than you can pack into this room.’

  Lourds held his hand up in mock surrender. He preferred books, enjoying the smell and the heft of them, as well as the solid link to the past they represented. A book was more informal than an electronic document. A book was a personal experience for the reader.

  Olympia plugged the thumb drive into the USB port on her computer and booted it up. She turned the wide-screen monitor so Lourds could easily see. Then she looked at him.

  ‘You’re familiar with John of Patmos?’ she asked.

  That sharpened Lourds’ attention immediately. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but that name was certainly not one of them.

  ‘John the Divine?’ he asked.

  ‘Exactly.’ Olympia gazed at him. ‘As I said, Thomas, this is huge and it’s important.’

  ‘Tell me we didn’t lose our subject,’ Colonel Anthony Eckart snarled as he walked through the college hallways. Students quickly got out of his way. He was used to that kind of reaction. Head on, he looked like trouble.

  In his early forties, he kept himself in shape with a strict diet and physical regimen. Whenever he could, even in the field, he ran ten miles daily and did solid PT. Off-duty, he hit the gym and dojo wherever he lived in whatever country he happened to stay. He stood six feet three inches tall in his stocking feet and wore a size 48 jacket. These days he kept his head shaved skin smooth. Scars showed there and on his face, giving him a hard look that frightened people away. To blend in with the college crowd, he wore black Dockers, a black turtleneck and a sports coat cut to hide the longslide Colt.45 semi-automatic pistol holstered under his arm. In a pinch, he didn’t need a weapon. He knew over a hundred ways to kill a man with his bare hands.

  ‘We didn’t lose him,’ Jude Mayfield replied over the earwig Eckhart wore. ‘Guy went into the building there. We’ve got all the entrances covered. He hasn’t come back out.’

  Eckart walked as quickly as he could without missing an opportunity to peer into the various rooms along the hall. Occasionally a student or member of faculty would meet his gaze, but they quickly looked away.

  ‘Are we connected with the college security net yet?’ Eckart asked.

  ‘That’s affirmative,’ Beale replied. He was running com for the team. ‘If they get a squeal, we’ll know about it.’

  The next door was closed. Eckart approached it and turned the knob, but found it locked. Cursing beneath his breath, he reached into his jacket pocket for a pneumatic driver. No longer than a screwdriver, the device held pneumatic charges that drove a bolt through the end.

  Eckart pressed the driver’s barrel against the lock and pressed the button. He muffled the solid ca-chunk of the device operating with his body and felt his hand jump. But the expended force blew the locking mechanism into the room. He opened the door and peered inside in case Lourds was hiding there.

  The room was empty.

  Cursing again, Eckart once more took up the hunt.

  ‘Has anyone figured out why the subject rabbited from the tower?’ Eckart demanded.

  No one answered for a moment.

  ‘Whatever it was,’ Mayfield said, ‘it wasn’t us. We had him under surveillance, but he didn’t know we were there.’

  ‘Maybe we aren’t as alone here as we think we are.’ Eckart hated the way they had veered from their game plan. Trying to find someone on the move through unknown territory wasn’t easy. They didn’t have the home-court advantage, and they couldn’t operate with impunity.

  He wished he could’ve stayed in Saudi Arabia and seen the fallout from the assassinations he and his team had put together. That had to have spooked Prince Khalid. Judging from the television footage coming out of King Abdullah Economic City, Khalid was gearing up and preparing for war. Or, better yet, retribution. That was what Webster had wanted. As a result, other Middle Eastern states as well as India, Pakistan and China were all on high alert. The moment someone made a wrong move there, those nations would be at each other’s throats.

  That was fine by Eckart. He felt the United States had worked way too long trying to keep those people from killing each other. It would be better, just as Webster said, to let them go at each other hammer and tongs, wait till the fires died down, then go in and take over the whole area. No more being under OPEC’s thumb. America could go back to being great.

  He could hardly wait.

  He found the stairwell and started up to the second floor.

  Lourds’ thoughts spun as he took in what Olympia had just told him. John of Patmos, also known as John the Divine and John the Theologian, was the man believed to have authored the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.

  ‘You’re saying you believe John of Patmos wrote the book I’m translating?’ he asked.

  Olympia shook her head. ‘No. But it is about John of Patmos. He’s the one who wrote the Joy Scroll, which the translation talks about.’

  ‘Then why haven’t I ever heard of it? You’d think the whole world would know about something like that.’

  ‘Because the scroll was hidden and kept secret.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The Joy Scroll is dangerous, Thomas,’ Olympia said. ‘Possibly the most dangerous document in the world.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It talks about the end of the world.’

  ‘So does the Book of Revelation. John of Patmos is believed – by some scholars and theologians – to have written the Revelation while in exile in Greece. And there are some who believe he was also John the Apostle and wrote the Gospel of John.’

  ‘They are the same man,’ Olympia said. ‘One individual. And he did have those visions and write about them while on the island of Patmos.’

  ‘Scholars and church leaders disagree with the possibility of those men being the same. In fact, some of them believe there were three separate Johns. The Apostle, the author of the Gospel and the author of the Book of Revelation. Historicists and critical readers of the Bible have strong arguments for that.’

  ‘How many times have you seen people, non-believers and doubters, prove some aspect of the Bible false? How long did scientists and historians doubt the veracity of the Flood, only finally to prove – scientifically – that the Mediterranean world was once flooded.’

  ‘They also make the case that the flood was from geological events, not divine intervention. And that, not one but several floods took place round the world at different times.’

  ‘They believe it was a geological event, but they can’t agree on what that event was.’

  Lourds didn’t argue because he knew she wasn’t listening. She was tied into her own beliefs and wasn’t about to be swayed.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not looking at you any way.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ Olympia turned to her computer and began opening files.

  Increasingly amazed, Lourds watched digitized images of scrol
ls fill the monitor. Most of them were written in Ancient Greek, but a few appeared to be more modern in origin.

  ‘What are these?’ Lourds leaned closer.

  ‘All three Johns were one, Thomas. I have proof. These are documents – letters and journal entries – from the men who worked with him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The acolytes provided by Peter and Paul. This first one details John’s passing. The others all talk about his final days and how he dictated the book of Revelation to them as well as the Joy Scroll.’

  ‘I can see these are journal entries.’ Lourds translated the script easily. Whoever had done the digitization of the original source material had reproduced them meticulously.

  ‘You see this and you still doubt what I’m saying?’ Frustration edged Olympia’s words.

  ‘I would prefer to see the original documents before I passed judgment on the authenticity of this replication.’ Lourds was diplomatic.

  Olympia’s cheeks turned red and her eyes narrowed. ‘Thomas Lourds, if you think I would bring you all this way for a wild goose chase, you don’t know me as well as you should.’

  ‘If you think I’m going to simply accept this without questioning it, you’re mistaken. And you don’t know me as well as you should. Maybe you want to believe in this so much that you’ve lost perspective.’

  Taking a deep breath, Olympia leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘All right, for the sake of argument, let’s say those documents are legitimate.’ Lourds ignored her glare. Unable to sit calmly, he stood up. ‘If you’ve had this kind of information, why haven’t you come forward with it before? Or why hasn’t anyone who’s had it before you?’

  Olympia paused a moment before answering. ‘It’s complicated. You need to know more of the story. You’re making a judgment without all the facts.’

  ‘These documents have been around for nearly two thousand years and scholars haven’t been allowed access to them?’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing’s that complicated.’

  ‘Really? Not even the end of the world?’

  ‘John of Patmos wrote about the end of the world as he saw it. His words are in the Bible. This isn’t news.’

  ‘He wrote about the end of the world as it would be when God comes back for those who survive the Tribulation,’ Olympia said. ‘This is another end.’

  ‘According to what I’ve studied, while he was living on Patmos, John had two visions of how the world would end. He wrote a long letter, which became the Book of Revelation, to the seven Christian churches in Asia, all of which were here in Turkey. In one of the visions, John saw seven candlesticks which represented the seven churches: Ephesus, Laodicea, Pergamum, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna and Thyatira. None of those communities exist now. They were ousted under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. That document also recognized the country as the Republic of Turkey and it succeeded the Ottoman Empire.

  ‘The churches weren’t actual physical buildings. I mean, there were structures there, but the reference was inclusive of the Christian communities that lived in those cities. After the treaty, the Christians were ousted and forced to live elsewhere.’ Lourds paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘In the middle of the candlesticks was the Son of Man. He held seven stars supposed to signify the seven angels protecting each of those communities. At the command of Jesus Christ, John wrote to each of those angels, citing what was wrong with them and what they needed to do. And what would happen to them if they didn’t do those things.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Olympia seemed mollified.

  ‘In the second vision John saw a door opening up in the sky, which he interpreted to mean the end of the world and the final destruction of Satan here on earth.’

  ‘That’s all here.’ Olympia tapped the keyboard and an image of a snarling dragon filled the screen. ‘This is how John saw Satan, not as the horned and tailed visage made popular later.’

  ‘You have the original journals the acolytes wrote?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you know they’re authentic?’

  ‘There’s not a doubt.’ Olympia pointed at the computer. ‘Everything I’m showing you today exists. It’s all real. We have them.’

  Lourds stared at her. ‘I guess my next question is, who’s “we”?’

  Cleena stared at the scar-faced man as he started up the stairwell to the second floor. His dead gaze had raked her with brutal intensity then moved on as if she were nothing.

  Now there goes a nasty guy who’s looking for someone. She thought she knew who that someone was.

  She turned and rushed for the other stairwell leading up to the second floor. Lourds and his lady friend were at this end of the building on the third floor. Evidently the dead-eyed man didn’t know that.

  ‘Sevki,’ she called as she caught the railing and hurled herself up the steps. Her motion caught the eye of another man coming down the hallway from the other end to the dead-eyed man.

  ‘I see him.’ Sevki had hacked into the college security camera system. ‘You should get out of there.’

  Cleena was of the same opinion. Over the last couple of days she had managed to get Brigid out of Boston with the aid of some of her business contacts. They had also agreed to keep her little sister at a safe house until Cleena told them everything was finished. Brigid hadn’t been happy about that, but she had been scared enough to go without making too much of a fuss.

  The man who had contacted Cleena had phoned on a regular basis, usually every four hours or so, to check in. She had given him reports about Lourds and he had seemed satisfied. The man hadn’t mentioned Brigid’s disappearance and Cleena felt certain he hadn’t noticed.

  Despite Sevki’s advice, Cleena continued to fly up the stairs.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sevki demanded.

  Cleena saved her breath for running.

  Sevki cursed vehemently. ‘Come on. Be sensible. It’s time for you to get out of there. That man looks dangerous. So does the one following you.’

  The one following me? Cleena spared a glance over her shoulder and saw that the other man she had spotted was indeed following her.

  ‘Both of those guys look like Americans,’ Sevki said. ‘They also look like the type of guy the CIA would send in to hit someone.’

  Cleena knew that. That was why she was running. ‘They’re after Lourds.’

  ‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.’

  ‘If they kill him or take him, I’m not going to be able to find out who hurt Brigid and threatened us. I’m not going to let whoever that was escape without getting a chance to even the score.’

  ‘Having that guy forget about you would be the best-case scenario.’

  Holding tightly to the railing, Cleena powered into the third floor hallway. She had familiarized herself with the layout while Lourds was lecturing Olympia Adnan’s class.

  ‘I’m not going to forget about him,’ Cleena said.

  ‘You’re going to get yourself killed.’

  ‘I am if you continue to distract me. All the negativity is killing my confidence.’ Cleena stepped to the first open doorway and entered. The lights were off and the room was in semi-darkness. She stepped behind the door as she heard the man’s foot scuff the top step. For the moment she left her pistol holstered at the back of her waistband. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a lead-filled leather blackjack. Her father had taught her how to use one when she was ten years old.

  ‘He knows you’re there,’ Sevki told her.

  Cleena didn’t reply. If the man hadn’t known where she was, he would have been a fool. Even so, he couldn’t expect what she was about to do. He would count on his gun and his size and dismiss any possibility of her overpowering him. That was going to be a mistake.

  She heard him outside the door. He barely made any noise, but shoe leather scraped the floor, and she heard him let out his breath. In the hall the conversations outside the doo
r abruptly quieted. He leaned through the door cautiously. Once his body was inside, Cleena swung the door towards him with all her strength. The door banged against his boot where he had jammed it to keep from getting battered by the door. As quickly as she could, Cleena slammed the blackjack into the frosted glass and shattered the pane. Razor-sharp shards poured over the man. Instinctively, he raised his arms to protect his face from the flying glass. Before he realized what was happening, Cleena reached through the empty door frame and was on him with the blackjack. She swung it viciously, holding nothing back, striking as quickly as she could with enough strength to damage but not kill. Her first blow broke the man’s wrist and sent his pistol spinning from his numbed fingers. She hit him four more times, aiming for his face and head. Blood covered his features as he went down. She hit him once more at the back of the skull to knock him unconscious.

  Breathing raggedly, more from the adrenaline rush and physical exertion, Cleena stood over her opponent.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Sevki asked. The security cameras he had taken over weren’t in all the rooms.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Cleena dropped the blackjack into her pocket and wiped the man’s blood from her face. She knelt quickly and went through his pockets. ‘Where’s the other guy?’

  ‘Covering the second floor. Are you robbing that guy?’

  Cleena found the man’s wallet and passport, then dropped both into her jacket pocket. ‘Getting his ID. It might be helpful to know who these people are.’

  ‘It might be helpful for you to get out of there.’

  Moving again, Cleena headed for Olympia’s office at the end of the hall.

  ‘You shouldn’t be planning on making this a hobby,’ Sevki said.

  ‘They came after me. Do any of those security cameras you’ve hacked into allow you to see the grounds round this building?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Check to see how many men out there might match up with the men in here. The guys in here didn’t come alone.’

  Sevki cursed. ‘I’d have to be a fly to keep an eye on everything you want me to keep an eye on.’

  Cleena halted outside the office. Voices came from inside but they were too low and indistinct to understand. She got the definite impression that Lourds and his lady friend were trying to hide something.