The Seventh Commandment

by Tom Fox

  Copyright © 2017 Tom Fox

  The right of Tom Fox to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook in Great Britain by Headline Publishing Group in 2017

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  Cover imagery: landscape © Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images; coin © Yaroslaff/Shutterstock; figure © syrotkin/Shutterstock; sky © bartsadowski/Adobe Stock; cuneiform © Lilyana Vynogradova/Shutterstock; light glow © Gun/Shutterstock; textures © Lightix/ Shutterstock & NataLT/ Shutterstock;

  Cover design by craigfraserdesign.com

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 4241 9

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Tom Fox

  Also by Tom Fox

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: Discovery

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Two: Prophecy

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part Three: Deception

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Part Four: Distraction

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Part Five: Decisions

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Part Six: Death

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Part Seven: Destruction

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Part Eight: Dawn

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Part Nine: Aftershock

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Tom Fox’s storytelling emerges out of many years spent in academia, working on the history of the Christian Church. A respected authority on that subject, he has recently turned his attentions towards exploring the new stories that can be drawn out of its mysterious dimensions. Tom’s debut thriller Dominus was translated into several languages and met with great acclaim. The Seventh Commandment is his second novel.

  By Tom Fox and available from Headline

  Dominus

  The Seventh Commandment

  Digital Short Stories

  Genesis (prequel to Dominus)

  Exodus (sequel to Dominus)

  About the Book

  Fans of Simon Toyne and Dan Brown will be gripped by The Seventh Commandment, the electrifying new conspiracy thriller by Tom Fox, author of Dominus.

  Not every curse is ancient. Not every prophecy is true. Not every fraud is what it seems.

  The Eternal City is about to become a hotbed of chaos . . .

  The River Tiber will run red with blood.

  The hills of Rome will be cloaked in darkness.

  A deathly fog will stalk the streets.

  And that is just the beginning.

  Seven predictions the world is calling prophecies, and the clock is ticking.

  But can any of it be real?

  As the world watches on, it is up to Akkadian specialist Angelina Calla and Vatican expert Ben Verdyx to find out. In a race where every secret conceals a lie and the strange verses of an ancient stone seem to hold the answers, the real question is, can the terrifying truth be unravelled before their time runs out?

  To Katie,

  who always believes;

  And to John,

  who tries to.

  ‘The old pharaoh’s heart was hard, but the new pharaoh’s heart is harder.

  I shall lay my hand upon him anew, and all his people, and my signs and wonders shall be multiplied.

  I shall stretch out my hands against them, that they may know my great judgements – as I will upon the one who discovers these things, whose terrible death shall come most swiftly.

  It shall come to pass in the seventeenth year of the second millennium after the coming of the Sun, when the great star is at her peak over the Eternal City.

  And the first sign shall be that the river shall run with blood . . .’

  PART ONE

  Discovery

  1

  The present – morning

  It happened during the night, or during the earliest morning. At least, so would go the official stories, to emerge in due course from the confusion generated by the discovery and the chaos of the days to follow.

  The discovery itself took
place at 4.15 a.m., according to the most reliable reports. Later legend would have it that it was spotted first by a jogger, eyes adapting to the changing light of morning; but with an event so large, that swept through a city of so many millions, such a tale could amount only to wishful thinking. The media, as the world had long known, always craves a point of initial contact, a voice to speak as ‘the first on the scene’. And too often they will create what they cannot find.

  As to when it truly began, such speculations could only be guesswork. They ranged from a few minutes before the first crowds began to gather, there in the morning light, to perhaps several hours earlier. The receding darkness of the Roman night, illuminated only by the false blues and oranges of so much electric light, made it all but impossible to tell the river’s true colour until the first rays of dawn started to creep over the rooftops.

  But when the sun finally rose and those rays came, there was no guessing any more.

  Something had happened.

  In the rising brightness of morning, the great Tiber River sparkled like a time-worn ribbon streaking through the unsuspecting city. For how many millennia she had carved her way through that landscape could never be known, but as a landmark she was as ancient as written history. And though she flowed that day in the same direction she always had, charting no different a course than she’d woven through Rome’s seven hills since the city first rose out of myth and legend, the light of this day saw her appear as never before in the whole of her storied history.

  The river flowed red, thick and crimson and opaque.

  Between her banks, the pulsing artery swept like an angry brushstroke through the Eternal City. It lapped at the large boulders that lined the Tiber’s course here and there, at the concrete barriers that cemented its path in the most central regions. And the city woke, and saw the wonder, and flocked in droves to the riverside.

  The scent remained as noxious as always. The Tiber had been polluted to the point of muted ecological crisis for years, and while it retained its visual appeal, few sought out its banks for invigorating strolls or breaths of air that even vaguely resembled fresh. But this morning the elderly exited their apartments alongside children, businesswomen alongside hastily parked taxi drivers, all to bear the burden of pinching their noses at the river’s shores in order to stare as a vein of blood cut through the heart of their venerable home.

  They watched – a whole population, crowded along its embankments, gazing down from riverside windows or catching live feeds on televisions and browsers. Mystified. Confused. Some laughed, some took snaps and began new trends on social media as curiosity swept across the Internet and memes guessing at hows and whys blazed through online forums and filled Twitter timelines. Other observers tried to conceal their worry. Yet others openly shouted foul. Protested. Complained. Blamed.

  Some stayed away, afraid.

  But the river ignored them all. As blood pulses through arteries whether witnessed or not, the old river simply flowed, steadily, calmly, ominously, with redness pouring from her eyes.

  One month earlier

  Central Rome, near the Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano

  The object that would change everything was not of impressive proportions. It was neither massive nor ornate, and in appearance it was not visually captivating. As Manuel Herrero held it in his hands, his fingers curled gently around its rough edges, it felt almost ordinary. And yet, somehow, majestic.

  Manuel was himself covered in dust and grime, red nicks marking his flesh from the labours of the dig. He wore his usual coveralls, ragged and dirty from years of service, and his face was smeared with sweat that bore muddy tracks from the backs of his hands. He had never been a man to stand on formality or care about appearance, but in this instant he suddenly felt unworthy. Moments such as this were the preserve of greater men than he. Men of refinement, of authority, and with decent clothes.

  Nevertheless, it was he and no one else who bore the object in his grip, and Manuel’s eyes glistened. It was all but surreal that he should be holding it – that something like this could actually be nestled between his tired fingers. A discovery.

  The stone, he imagined, must have lain at rest beneath the soil for untold generations. Silent, waiting. The earth above it had perhaps at first been only dust, maybe a thin layer. The physical residue of the sky – innocuous particles that float on the breeze, gently accumulated as they settled from heaven over the span of so many years. Gradually the dust would have become a layer of new earth, the former specks of sky transformed into ground and loam, layer over layer, shielding the stone’s flat surface from view until it was secreted wholly away, hidden from the eyes of history.

  Or perhaps the stone – maybe he should call it a tablet, it was really more tablet-like than stone – had been intentionally buried. It would have been a dark night, that seemed only appropriate: either devoid of or overwhelmingly filled with stars. Either would have fit the occasion. A man, likely in loose-fitting robes and probably with a hood concealing gaunt features, slicing the razor edge of his spade into the stony earth. Would it have been a deep burial? Certainly nowhere near as deep as it lay now, so many metres beneath the noise of the surface streets above, a whole world having arisen over it as the centuries passed. But perhaps an arm’s depth, back when it was first concealed. Enough to vanish from the scrutiny of the world’s inhabitants, as intentionally as any other burial, though likely far more secretive.

  Or it might not have been buried at all. Perhaps it had been enshrined, right here, in this place. Not dropped into a pit dug in the clandestine night-time, but mounted in glory. Venerated, committed to eternal memory and the protection of whatever divine force had inspired its creation.

  Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine . . .

  There would have been songs and ceremony, surely, with chants like those offered for a departing soul, preserving that which was meant to bear the light of influence upon the future.

  Lux perpetua luceat ei . . .

  Manuel glanced around him. The routine dig, mandated by the city, was hardly ceremonious now. Mud and dust were caked into fierce lines left over from the industrial digger, slanting at incongruous angles through layers of carved tarmac and paver stones. The tablet had been situated atop a slab of limestone that was likely once beige, before the sweat of subterranean minerals seeped in and changed its colour to a strange hodgepodge of greys and greens. Ugly, unartistic and wholly inconsequential. But it could have, just could have, once been something more. A table. A shrine. An altar.

  Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam . . .

  Yes, Manuel thought, I will go unto the altar of God. The old psalm verse sprang unbidden to mind, years of pious Catholic upbringing never failing to push at the shape of his conscious thoughts. To God, my exceeding joy. Those were the kinds of words that would have been sung – and there would have been chanters somewhere, almost certainly, tucked away in a recessed alcove long since collapsed to rubble. What tongue would they have spoken? He didn’t know enough about ancient languages to be certain of what he was looking at on the tablet’s surface, but even such knowledge wouldn’t provide a sure answer. The tablet could be far older than whatever society had left, buried, enshrined it in this place.

  Far older.

  All Manuel knew for certain was that somehow, in some way, this little discovery in his hands was going to change his life. He would not be the same, and the world would never again look as it had before.

  Beneath the surface of his skin, in the nutrient-rich layer of subcutaneous fat that buffered it from flesh, tendon and bone, a host of foreign molecules hydrated and latched on to the vibrant blood cells pulsing through Manuel Herrero’s capillaries. Through them the tiny forces had access to his deeper arteries and veins, into which they moved with rhythmic speed. The fact that his heartbeat was racing at a rate far higher than usual only served to push things along.

  It may have been biological in form, molecular and the
refore without intelligence to plot or scheme, yet the compound in his flesh was a pathogen and worked true to its foreboding name. The pathos, that fittingly ancient term for suffering, would come quickly enough. In anticipation, the substance raced through him, seeking the man’s vital organs, latching on with a ferocity and permanence that could almost have amounted to fervour or zeal.

  Outside the shell of his flesh and skin, the man still held the tablet in his hands, face flushed with the joy of discovery and his mind overwhelmed with thoughts of a life about to change. Inside, within only minutes, his organs were already beginning to decay.

  By the time he learned that his life was ending, rather than changing, it would be too late. The tablet, the prophecy, and the discoverer’s death – they were never meant to be separated.

  And they never would be.

  2

  The present

  Central Rome

  Bodies flowed across the Piazza della Rotonda in wavelike motion, brilliant in a bewildering array of colours and fashions. They emitted the constant hum of a dozen languages and a hundred conversations – the painted, noisy backdrop of modern Rome, scented by espresso shots and cigarettes, humming in all its vibrant complexity and chaotic normalcy.

  Angelina Calla observed them all, as she had so many times before.

  Bodies moving like the tide. The thought was automatic, an interior voice that was a familiar rattle in her head, though its words at this moment were too poetic. She reflected, her shoulders sagging, seeking an alternative. Like beetles. Unstoppable beetles. A slight nod, only to herself. It was the right image, and Angelina Calla rejoiced, even as she lamented.

  The tourist trade, she had long ago learned, has no down season in Rome. There are high points in the year, there are lows, but there is no moment when calm overtakes the city as eternal in its bustle as in its legend. It was the first lesson Angelina had taken in as she’d been swept into her unwilling role and trade. She’d admired Rome all her life. Loved it. She could recount its history and mythology with the best of them, and perhaps better than most. But it was only when she’d taken to the streets and stepped out into the fray – propelled there rather than wandering the path by choice – that she had learned that ancient Roma was the true definition of a city that never sleeps or slows.