The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel

by Matthew Reilly

  ‘We’ll leave or another time the question as to whether Jesus was the son of a divine being,’ Lachlan said. ‘What all agree on, believers and atheists alike, is that Jesus was a man who lived in the Judea region about 2000 years ago.’

  ‘His teachings are promulgated by the organisation we know as the Catholic Church, but questions remain as to whether this organisation is really just a revived version of an Egyptian sun-cult—’

  ‘We’ve had dealings with them on this issue,’ Jack said.

  ‘—yes, but are you aware of the critical importance to the Church of Easter this year, in 2008? Wizard even mentions this at the bottom of his summary sheet.’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Well, as you’re probably aware, the date for Easter changes every year, but do you know how the date for Easter is calculated?’

  ‘How?’ Pooh Bear asked.

  Julius said, ‘It was originally calculated this way: Easter Sunday shall fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the northern vernal equinox.’

  ‘The Sunday after the first full moon of spring,’ Lachlan simplified.

  ‘Sun-cult,’ Stretch said.

  Lachlan said, ‘But this year, in 2008, something very special happens. This year, Easter falls right on the equinox. Our day of reckoning is March 20 and this year, March 20 is Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter celebration that commemorates Jesus’s death and supposed resurrection.’

  ‘The sun at equinox and the return of the Dark Star,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a religious perfect storm.’

  ‘Too right. For the Catholic Church, March 20, 2008, is the ultimate holy date,’ Lachlan said, ‘when everything they believe in comes together.’

  ‘You think they’re still in this game?’

  ‘The Church might have gone silent since your battle with its agents at the Great Pyramid, but it would be dangerous to mistake silence for inactivity. I’d proceed on the assumption they will be observing our mission very closely come the 20th of March.’

  ‘Getting back to Jesus himself,’ Julius went on. ‘As most of you will know, he was called the “Messiah”, a moniker that has acquired religious meaning over the years but which actually is a term connected with lineage.

  ‘Much has been made of Jesus’s paternal ancestry, his father, Joseph, being from the royal line of David. On his father’s side, Jesus was from very wealthy stock. He wasn’t a poor carpenter. Indeed, nowhere in the Bible is it said that Jesus ever actually worked at all.’

  Lachlan took over: ‘But on his mother’s side, the story becomes even more interesting. Mary was from the line of Aaron, another royal line. Who was Aaron, you ask?’

  Lachlan grinned. ‘Aaron was Moses’s brother. Jesus, our Second Warrior, was a very, very distant descendant of the family of Moses, our First Warrior.’

  Julius said, ‘Jesus was thus monumentally important even before he said a word. He was the living breathing union of two powerful royal lines: the lines of David and Aaron. The linking of these two great lines had even been prophesied and the one who joined them would he known as the Messiah.’

  ‘It makes sense, then, that a sacred family heirloom such as the “treasure” that Moses spirited out of Egypt would have been passed down through the generations until it came to Jesus. What Jesus did with that treasure is then the big question.’

  ‘According to one of Dr Cassidy’s poems,’ Julius went on, ‘the Second Great Warrior—Jesus-----would “break the treasure in two and leave his mark on the world forever.”

  ‘Well, we know Jesus left his mark on the world. “To break the treasure in two”, we take that to mean dividing the Six Pillars into sets of three.

  ‘Now, after a lot of research and a little hit of gap-filling, Lachie and I have come up with the following diagram, which summarises our best guesses as to the whereabouts of the Six Pillars:

  Julius said, ‘It looks complicated, so allow us to explain. First, we need to work backwards from what we know now: that the Saudis had the First Pillar, the Neetha had the Second and the Brits have the Fourth. They’re marked I, II and IV on the diagram.’

  ‘So knowing those end-points, let’s go back to Jesus,’ Lachlan said. ‘How does he split the Six Pillars in two? Well, they are valuable heirlooms, so he probably wanted to keep them within his family. . . ’

  Julius continued ‘. . . so again, working with what we know now, we think that Jesus kept three Pillars within his own immediate family, the now famous family born of himself and Mary Magdalene that popped up in France soon after Jesus’s crucifixion. It is this holy-royal lineage, the Deus Rex, that certain European royal families claim as their birthright.’

  ‘And the British Royal Family, as we know, has one such Pillar in their possession, the Fourth. We believe that another Pillar, thanks to centuries of royal intermarriage and warfare, has been held equally between the Danish Royal Family and the Romanov descendants of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II.’

  Jack said, ‘You said Jesus kept three Pillars. That’s only two. What do you think happened to the third one?’

  Lachlan glanced at Julius.

  Julius glanced at Lachlan.

  Then they both shrugged.

  Lachlan said, ‘We have no reason to believe the third Pillar travelled out of Judea after Jesus’s crucifixion. While historians are sure that Mary Magdalene went to France, no-one is certain that Jesus left Judea at all. We think he stayed and he kept his Pillar with him.’

  ‘What?’ Wizard exclaimed.

  ‘So what happened to it, then?’ Zoe asked carefully, considering the implications.

  ‘Well,’ Lachlan hesitated. ‘We think Jesus had it buried with him.’

  ***

  ‘You’re saying that we have to find the tomb of Jesus Christ . . . !’ Zoe said in disbelief.

  ‘More or less,’ Julius said apologetically.

  Lachlan said, ‘Whether or not he rose from the dead, no-one’s ever actually found the tomb where he was laid to rest, either in Jerusalem or elsewhere.’

  ‘So how do we go about finding it?’ Zoe asked.

  Lachlan said, ‘We’ve only found one ancient document concerning Jesus that mentions both a resting place and his “wisdom”: a letter in Aramaic discovered in a church in southern France, purported to be from Jesus’s brother, James, to Mary Magdalene. It’s pretty vague but it translates as follows:

  ‘He lies in peace,

  In a place where even the mighty Romans fear to tread

  In a kingdom of white

  He does not grow old.

  His wisdom lies with him still,

  Protected by a twin who meets all thieves first.’

  ‘No names, no locations,’ Zoe said. ‘Typical.’

  ‘But a clear reference to “his wisdom”,’ Diane observed.

  Zoe sighed. ‘That letter could have been written by anybody—’

  ‘What about the other three Pillars Jesus possessed?’ Jack said gently, moving on. ‘Where did they go?’

  Lachlan nodded. ‘Right, right. In the Gospel of Peter, there is mention of Jesus giving “three pieces of wisdom” to James shortly before he himself was detained in the Garden of Gethsemane. We’ve interpreted this as a reference to the three remaining Pillars. Remember, family heirlooms, and James was an heir as well. Jesus also trusted James greatly.’

  ‘Again, working backwards from what we know—that the Knights Templar ransacked the Temple and stole a Pillar which ended up with the Neetha—we can postulate that it was probably James who hid that Pillar in the Temple,’ Julius said. ‘As a member of the line of David, he had privileged access to the inner sanctum of the Temple.’

  Lachlan said, ‘As for the other two Pillars, James ended his days at the Fortress of Van, a great hilltop city in modern-day Turkey, situated between the Black and Caspian seas. The route he took to get there is given in great detail, town by town, in the same Gospel of Peter.’

  Lachlan opened a nearby book
to a photo of an ancient parchment, on which was a long handwritten list:

  Julius said, ‘James went to Van and a thousand years later, guess who sacked Van with his armies? Genghis Khan. Another link between the Five Warriors.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Jack said. ‘Did Genghis attack Van just to get the Pillars?’

  ‘That’s not known, hut it is possible. Either way, Genghis got his hands on the two Pillars kept at Van and one of those Pillars—the First—ended up with the Saudi Royal Family.

  ‘How it got to them is unknown, but we do know that, as thanks for helping his army approach the Kwarezmi Empire in secret from the west, Genghis gave a Bedouin chief a “brick-like stone of tremendous beauty the likes of which none had ever seen”. Hundreds of years later, that Bedouin tribe became the House of Saud.’

  ***

  ‘And the last Pillar?’ Jack asked. ‘Genghis’s other Pillar?’

  Julius flashed a 13th century portrait of Genghis Khan onto the projector screen.

  A stern-looking Mongolian with a long grey beard glared out at them. He was dressed in leather and bronze armour and a sturdy helmet, and he held in one hand a pentagonal shield, covered in studs and raised images. Even in painted form, the man’s eyes cast a spell. They blazed with authority.

  “Attack with aggression, but always have a plan of retreat,” Julius said. ‘Genghis Khan’s famous military axiom, and also the central thesis of countless business self-help books in the 1980s.’

  Lachlan said, ‘Did you know that Genghis conquered all of China and half of Europe?’

  ‘More or less,’ Jack said.

  ‘But he never conquered Japan,’ Lachlan said, ‘and it was a lot closer than Europe. Ever wondered why?’

  ‘Should I have?’

  Julius said, ‘Around 1220 AD, Genghis made a secret voyage to the northernmost island of Japan, Hokkaido, where it is said he met with the Japanese Emperor and his most senior commander, the Shogun.

  ‘Genghis liked the Emperor, but he was even more impressed by the Shogun, who wielded the real power in Japan. Genghis figured, correctly, that it was the Shogun who was responsible for the orderly and dignified running of Japanese society. Given the unruly state of his own empire and the quarrels among his sons over succession, Genghis later wrote that he left with the Shogun “the wisdom of my life”.’

  ‘A Pillar. . . ’ Wizard said.

  ‘We think it was the Third Pillar. The Shogun in question, Hojo Yoshitoki, had a unique carving hewn into his burial headstone: a white oblong with three horizontal lines inscribed on it.’

  Lachlan said, ‘The Shoguns would rule Japan for the next hundred years as a military junta, with a series of puppet emperors, but eventually the Imperial Family regained control of the country and presumably the Pillar.’

  ‘That supports Iolanthe’s story of the Japanese Imperial Family hiding their Pillar from the US at the end of World War II,’ Jack said.

  ‘The Americans weren’t the only ones to make a play for it,’ Julius said. ‘One of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, Kublai Khan, tried to invade Japan on two occasions, and failed both times, repelled by the Shogun’s forces. We found a Mongolian record of his campaigns: curiously, Kublai was attacking the remote north-western coast of Hokkaido, a region known for its high cliffs and violent seas. It has no strategic value at all, yet Kublai attacked it twice.’

  ‘You’re thinking Kublai Khan wanted to get his grand-daddy’s Pillar back,’ the Sea Ranger said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Jack leaned back in his chair, glanced at Wizard. ‘It’s good, but...’

  ‘One more thing.’ Lachlan projected one of their photos of Stonehenge onto the screen:

  ‘You see the coastline with “3” marked on it? Inspired by Genghis’s secret journey and Kublai’s failed attacks, we think we might know where the Third Vertex is.’

  Jack leaned forward. So did the others.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘This coastline changed considerably over the millennia, which is why it was so hard to deduce.’ Lachlan flashed up two new images. ‘On the left is a close-up of the upright at Stonehenge; on the right is a map from today.’

  ‘As you can see, whole seas have flooded into hollows in the landmass, megafloods that created Korea and all the islands of Japan. And right there is the Third Vertex: situated on the northwestern coast of Hokkaido in Japan.’

  ‘This is splendid work, boys,’ Wizard said. ‘But—’

  ‘But a Vertex without a Pillar is useless,’ Jack said.

  Lachlan said, ‘It is indeed. We’re not done.’

  ‘My humble apologies.’

  Lachlan went on: ‘Soon after Genghis Khan died, messengers from the Shogun came to see him. They found his son, Ogedei, on the throne. According to a scroll in the Shanghai Museum, it’s said that they gave Ogedei a most peculiar gift: a beautiful glass orb, cloudy-white in colour, the size of a football, and covered with intricately painted pictures.’

  ‘With the gift came a message from the Shogun intended for Genghis:

  Great Khan, after nine long years, the works are complete. A maze of our own devising—a match for the one already there—has been constructed within the temple-shrine to protect your glorious gift to my people.

  It is our honour to present to you this Wingless Dragon’s Egg, found at the temple-shrine during our excavations. It portrays the glorious cliffs above the shrine’s entrance, plus images of five other most beautiful landscapes. Its artistry is beyond compare.’

  Wizard said, ‘So Genghis gave the Japanese the Third Pillar as a gift and the Japanese hid it within the Third Vertex itself. The Pillar is inside the Vertex . . .’

  Lachlan turned to Jack. ‘A Vertex without a Pillar might indeed be useless, but I’d say one with its matching Pillar inside it is pretty fuckin’ awesome.’

  ‘Touché,’ Jack bowed his head in acknowledgement.

  ‘A Wingless Dragon?’ Pooh Bear said. ‘What is that?’

  ‘The term “Wingless Dragon’s Egg” is very peculiar,’ Julius said. ‘But think about it. What would a wingless dragon look like?’

  ‘Like a dinosaur. . . ’ Lily said over the videolink.

  ‘That’s just what we think,’ Lachlan nodded. ‘We figure this Wingless Dragon’s Egg is actually some kind of petrified dinosaur egg, or a glass version of one, that was decorated with painted images.’

  Jack turned to Wizard. ‘Max? Any famous eggs we should know about?’

  Wizard said, ‘Only the most famous. In the late 19th century, the Russian tsars commissioned fabulous jewelled artworks in the shape of eggs from the master craftsman Peter Carl Fabergé. I mention them in my summary sheet.’

  ‘Fabergé Eggs are beautiful, rare and practically priceless. One such Fabergé Egg—made of gold and lost during the Bolshevik revolution—apparently depicted landscapes such as the twins describe. Given the Russian Royal Family’s links to the Machine, I have often wondered if that Fabergé Egg was created as a replica of this or perhaps another Dragon’s Egg. If there was an Egg found at this Vertex, there might be other Eggs at other venues, Eggs that the royals already possess.’

  ‘If the royals have one, it would explain some of Iolanthe’s superior knowledge,’ Jack said.

  ‘It certainly would.’

  Jack said, ‘Well, whatever it is, this Dragon’s Egg is central to everything. If it depicts the landscapes around the entrances to this and all five of the other Vertices, we have to get it.’

  At that point, Diane Cassidy chimed in. ‘There were pictures of a sacred orb such as you describe among the carvings of the Neetha tribe. If Jack’s father is still travelling with the Neetha warlock then it’s likely he knows about this Egg, too.’

  ‘We have to assume Wolf is doing exactly what we’re doing,’ Wizard said, ‘researching and planning. Likewise the royals, especially if they have the Fabergé replica.’

  ‘I’ve got someone keeping track of my father,’ Jack said, some
what enigmatically. ‘According to my guy, Wolf’s been hunkered down at the American base at Diego Garcia for the last two weeks. If he knows about this, he hasn’t gone after it yet.’

  Alby said over the videolink: ‘According to the Shogun’s message, this Dragon’s Egg was found inside the Vertex, which would mean the ancient builders of the Machine left it there.’