by Rene Fomby
“Which is why we haven’t been able to find him.” Sam interrupted, beaming. “And that’s why there wasn’t any rioting in Turkey. They wouldn’t want that kind of trouble in their own backyard. And now that I think about it, Göreme was where we first uncovered those Chi Rho stickers, stuck on the doorframe of one of the churches that had been carved out of the rock.”
“What are you two talking about?” Gavin asked, completely lost by now. “Underground cities? Where? And how is that grim?”
Sam finally calmed down enough to explain. “Gavin, we had the answer all along, and just didn’t know it. The word. It wasn’t ‘grim’ after all. It was the name of an area in Turkey just southwest of Ankara that, among other things, it noted for having shitloads of underground cities, many of them dating back thousands of years. Some of the cities have been found and opened up for tourists, but Mehmed believes there are probably still a great many more, hiding out there waiting to be discovered. They haven’t been found because nobody has ever bothered to look for them.”
Mehmed sat up straighter in his bed. “Several months ago I was hired to be a tourist guide of sorts for Sam, her daughter and her mother-in-law. Among other things, I took them to see one of the underground cities, a complex that extended well over a hundred feet below the surface. Many different groups of people have lived in the cities, going back to prehistoric days. Since the Cappadocian plains have served as a battleground for all of the major civilizations of the ancient past, the cities themselves provided an excellent way for the local population to hide and protect themselves from marauding armies. Or simply bands of thieves that crossed the plains from time to time.”
Sam was so excited by her discovery, she couldn’t keep from butting in. “So what if William Tulley bought up a massive tract of land out on the plains—land is literally dirt cheap out there, since hardly anything will grow on most of it—and if he uncovered one of the secret underground cities—”
“He could hide there as easily as people did in the old days, down in his private little rabbit hole, and no one would be the wiser.” Gavin had finally caught on to what they were talking about. “In fact, given the right connections with the Turkish government, he could fly in and out of the area and not even file a flight plan. It’s brilliant!”
“It’s the perfect place to hole up while you’re putting together whatever plans he’s working on,” Sam continued. “Whatever all this Chi Rho stuff is ultimately supposed to achieve.”
Gavin reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Okay, I’m pretty much ninety-nine percent convinced, but it’s still just a theory. Let me see what we can do to prove or disprove that theory, and then we’ll give it a go from there.”
※
Sam ordered up a pot of coffee and some sandwiches while Gavin talked with Bob Sanders over the phone. If they were right, if Tulley really was in Göreme, they may finally have found the break in the case they’d been chasing for the past year, and that would probably mean another long night of planning next steps.
Gavin clicked off his phone and shoved it in his pocket. “Sanders says he’ll have a satellite repurposed for us within the hour, the same technology he used to find the hidden chamber in Akko, and all those bodies Andy and I hunted down out in the Sahara Desert. If there’s a secret underground lair operating out there anywhere near Göreme, he says he’ll find it. Meanwhile, I’m starving. Got any grub around this place?”
“Already ordered up and on its way,” Sam told him, still grinning with excitement.
※
It took slightly over an hour, but when Sanders finally called back, he had good news. Gavin put him on speakerphone so they could all listen in.
“No doubt about it. Looks like there are actually several active cities down there, plus some kind of long tunnel connecting them all to another underground city, a city that looks to be completely void of any kind of activity at all.”
“So what do we do now?” Gavin asked, wiping the last crumb from his sandwich off his chin.
“I put out the word to assemble an assault team before we even turned on the satellites,” Sanders growled over the phone. “If Andy’s down there, I don’t want to waste a goddamned second getting her out, you know what I mean?”
Gavin really did know how Sanders felt about the situation, knew it all the way down to his own bones. “So what’s the timing? Tonight? Tomorrow?”
“I’m told the best window for going in there will open up tomorrow night. We can’t get everything in place this evening, especially since Turkey’s not exactly on friendly terms with us at the moment, and a daylight raid opens up all kinds of worm cans you don’t want to look inside. Plus, it looks like there’s another storm front coming through there, hitting Istanbul early in the day and then parking itself over our target just after sundown tomorrow. With any luck we’ll get howling rains, lightning and a whole hell of a lot of thunder.”
“How does that help us?” Gavin asked. In his experience, thunderstorms were a nightmare to be absolutely avoided in any kind of field operation, and never embraced.
Sanders explained. “With the storm, any noise we might make coming in will be covered up by all the sound from good old Mother Nature. We’ll be using silencers wherever possible, but there’s a good chance we might need to blow through a wall or two, and while it might not sound much like thunder if you’re really paying attention, it should be enough to keep the wolves at bay during the critical first few minutes of the operation.”
Gavin grimaced. He should have thought of that. “Any chance we can be in on the raid?” After his experience with the last rescue mission, he was under no illusions that he could keep up with the Navy’s crack assault team, but if Andy was down there—
“I get you, son. And there’s no way I’m going to sit this one out, either. But we’ll have to stay well back behind the lines for most of it while the big boys do their dirty work. We can’t have amateurs in there gumming up the works. No insult intended.”
“None taken, boss. Okay, I assume you’ll be sending me all the info on where to go and how to get there. And Sam?” She caught his eye with a questioning look. “I assume you’ll be heading out to the Carl Vinson to be with your daughter?”
“As much as I want to see that bastard William Tulley and his whore of a daughter nailed to rights—and see Andy safely rescued—right now I don’t have any more to contribute to any of that. I’d just be in the way. But you’ll keep in the loop, right?”
Sanders spoke up. “I’ll patch in a video feed to the ship’s command center, and you can see everything we’ll be seeing, in real time. Good enough for you?”
“That would be perfect,” Sam assured him. “And—Mr. Sanders?”
“Yeah?”
“Go get ’em tiger. Our boy Gavin here is way overdue for some good news these days.”
“That he is, Mrs. Tulley. And I think that goes for all of us, but especially you three. You’ve all been through quite a wringer lately.”
Sam glanced over at Mehmed, his left arm still wrapped tightly in bandages. Yes. We’ve been through quite a wringer, indeed.
88
Cappadocia
Simone Duval watched her computer screen with growing concern. The storm front that was supposed to have moved south, well out over the Mediterranean, was shifting eastward instead. And growing in intensity. She checked the forecasts for when it was expected to hit Turkey. The timing was going to be close. Too close.
89
Houston
Harry cued up the first video and pressed play. His eyes automatically went to the timestamp. If this was accurate, he was looking at a video of the refinery just a few minutes before the blast. Several people were walking around the area, seemingly aimlessly. Then, as the minutes ticked slowly by, one of the workers stopped to wave at a friend across the way. They started walking toward each other and—boom! The explosion. It never failed to shock Harry every time he saw it. It wasn’t just the
violence of the blast itself, it was the realization that so many lives had been snuffed out in literally an instant.
When the smoke cleared, he was left staring at the sight that had dominated the evening newscasts for several days. Bodies everywhere, broken and bleeding. And the two men the one guy had waved to, simply gone. Vanished without a trace.
But one thing he noted that was also missing from the video was the scene where Nabil placed the bomb. Thinking back, this had to have been taken from the same precise location, but Nabil was nowhere to be seen.
He clicked on the second video. This one did show Nabil kneeling down to adjust something—but it was taken from a completely different location, and the time stamp was off by several weeks. Several weeks before the blast.
Now fully intrigued, he opened the last video, the one that the prosecutors on the case had given to the press. The time stamp matched that of the first video, and the angle and distance was the same. But this time, the image of Nabil from the second file had somehow been superimposed on the recording. And that explained the small glitch he had observed earlier. This video, the one tying Nabil directly to the scene of the explosion, it must have been spliced together by someone with the highest possible technical skills, and still he—or she—had left one small accidental mistake behind, all but unnoticeable unless you were paying very careful attention. Harry wondered for a moment whether the glitch might not have been accidental after all. Maybe whoever put this together intended to leave behind a clue, a warning that the video—the most damning evidence of all against his client—had all been manufactured.
Gavin’s FBI friend had said the three video files were open game for him to blow open the unvarnished truth about how Nabil had been framed for the explosion. But why? Why on earth would anyone go to this much trouble to frame an innocent young doctoral student for something that clearly wasn’t his fault?
That left the fourth and final file, the one that he had been warned must remain confidential. It was a PDF, created late last night, and apparently quite large. Harry clicked on it.
90
Vatican City - Saturday
“Your Holiness, you must do something. The situation between the Spaniards and Catalan has been on the verge of boiling over for decades, but now Madrid thinks it has the perfect excuse to rid itself of the Catalan problem for good. That would mean a great many lives lost, on both sides. Many good Catholic lives.” As Grand Master of the Military Order of Christ and Head of the House of Borghese, Joseph Pinotti held some influence over this pope, but he was beginning to question whether even that would be enough.
The pope waved him off, annoyed by Pinotti’s constant arguments. “You mistake the role of the church with that of the state. The problems between the Spanish and Catalunya are theirs to work out, not ours. We are concerned with the souls of men, not the flesh. What God plans for Catalunya is His alone to reveal.”
“But—Most Holy Father, the violence all around us, it is dying down. Finally. And so far, by the grace of our Lord, we have been spared the worst of it. But that can’t last, and unless we focus our message on peace, on Christian love and tolerance, Spain will be almost certainly be the least of our worries.”
The pope faced him with guarded eyes. “Are you saying this violence is my fault. That I caused this?”
Joseph stepped back. He had pushed too hard, too fast. “No, Your Holiness, I only meant—”
“That my call for a unified Church, for a Christianity that could stand together to finally thwart the naked ambitions of Satan, to thwart the perverse and corrupt message of Islamic heresy, you think that’s wrong? You agree with those who preach moral equivalence, with those who claim Islam is the equal of God’s Holy Church? That all religions are holy in God’s eyes, and that a lowly Muslim imam is somehow equal to Christ’s own Vicar?”
“No, Your Holiness. Forgive me, I misspoke. I am just humbled by what is happening outside our gates, by the suffering—”
“God has warned us that the guilty must suffer for their sins, so that the innocent may receive the blessings of His Kingdom, here on Earth. Do you question that?” The pope had left his desk and was now towering over Pinotti, who was abasing himself as best he could, lest he lose the last remaining shreds of influence he still had over this pope.
“No, I understand, Your Holiness. I will return to my office and do as you command.”
“Very well.” The pope leaned back against his desk, his white cassock draped loosely across his swollen belly and flowing down to his sandaled feet. “Joseph, you must not fail me at this chosen moment,” he continued in a softer voice. “You are the head of all the Noble families, as was your father, and his father before him. You are the last of the Knights Templar, the last of the very first soldiers of Christ. And yet you will be first again.”
The pope reached behind him and pulled a large book off his desk.
“Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Interesting as far as it goes, and I would agree with his central thesis that Rome collapsed largely because of the collapse of civic virtue. But the book is missing its final chapter. And that is where you come in.”
He set the book back down, and summoned Pinotti to join him in a pair of blood red leather chairs, facing each other only two feet apart. Once they were settled, the pope leaned forward and grasped Pinotti’s hands.
“You see, Joseph, the Roman Empire never completely disappeared. The secular part of the empire, sure, but remnants of even that remain here, in the form of Vatican City. But the most important part of the empire continued to flourish, unabated. God’s interest in mankind has never been secular. That is Satan’s domain. No, God placed the keys to His Church in the hands of the emperor Constantine, so that His Church could flourish, so His message could be spread to all the corners of the earth. And that is exactly what has happened. The Church continued to grow, and with it the light of the Christian faith, a light that served to beat back the darkness that is Satan, to illuminate the one true path to God.”
“But how do I fit into all of that?” Pinotti asked.
The pope nodded, and clutched Pinotti’s hands even tighter.
“You have seen it as well as any other, my child. The light—it is fading. It is being slowly consumed by the darkness that flows out of Islam, a darkness that is the lifeblood of Islam. The blood of Satan himself.”
The pope paused and let go of Pinotti’s hands.
“The world is turning against God. It is turning against the one true faith. Europe, the United States, they are no longer the guardians of Christianity in this world. If anything, they have become the Church’s greatest detractors, its greatest enemies. So the time has come to write the final chapter in Gibbon’s book.”
“And that would be?”
“The second coming. The resurrection of Rome, the resurrection of the Church, the resurrection of the faith. Eschaton is upon us, my child. It is no longer just a point of rhetoric. I have seen it, I have been given a vision of the war to come. It will not be a war over land or mere mortal possessions, though. It will be a war to safeguard the true treasures of this world. The souls of man. I have seen it all, Joseph, it is happening even now. The coming of the new Messiah and the return of Constantine, ushering in a new age, the age of the Kingdom of God.”
“But that’s—” Joseph had never been an advocate of the apocalyptic elements of Christian theology, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to become one now. It had long been settled that The Revelation of St. John could not be taken literally, that it was simply a well-coded Jewish denunciation of Rome, a condemnation of the emperors who had destroyed the Temple of Solomon. “The seven heads are seven mountains.” That couldn’t possibly be any clearer, an unmistakable reference to the seven hills of Rome …
“I understand your reluctance, Joseph, I understand your disbelief. But the end times are upon us, whether you acknowledge that fact or not.” He inclined his head toward the window off to his left, behi
nd the desk. “The uprising last night, that was just the beginning. By tomorrow, New Rome will join Old Rome as the twin citadels of the Church, the twin beacons of the faith. The Church has been reunited as it was in the beginning, before the Great Schism, and God’s army is forming even as we speak. But that army will need a leader, a strong leader, a leader who is in turn strong in the faith. I ask you, Joseph Pinotti, as Grand Master of the Military Order of Christ, as head of the last of the Knights Templar, to lead the Templar Knights into this final holy war. Can you do this for me? Can you do this for your God?”
Pinotti didn’t know what to say. He wanted to object, to point out the fact that the Church no longer had an army, that it had given away any pretense of that at the signing of the Lateran Treaty. But the pope seemed so earnest, and he desperately needed time to think all this through. Time to figure out what was really happening. A holy war? Against all of Islam? That was insane! So maybe Savio was right. Maybe it was time to Benedict this pope. Or worse. But now, now was not the time …
“Your Holiness, of course I will serve you, as I serve my Lord. You have but to ask, and I will gladly lay down my life for the Church. You know that.”
“Good, good.” The pope rose, slowly, then placed the palm of his left hand lightly over Pinotti’s forehead. “Go. Rest. Tomorrow everything will become clear, and then we shall talk again.”
Pinotti nodded, the movement arrested slightly by the pressure from the pope’s hand. “Of course, my Most Holy Father. I shall go rest. And pray. Pray for our Lord’s guidance in these troubling times.” A guidance he had never needed more that he did today. And just what exactly was supposed to happen tomorrow? And what was all this stuff about a New Rome rising to join the old?
91
USS Carl Vinson
Maddie was waiting with her grandmother on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier when Sam’s ash gray AW101 Merlin helicopter touched down. Before the prop blades had even begun slowing, the steps at the front of the helicopter were dropped to the deck and Sam came bursting out of the cabin. Maddie met her halfway across, with Margaret chasing behind as quickly as her distressingly high-heeled red Pradas would allow.