After it was over, Peter had walked Josef to the crematorium to watch the workers load in the body. Karl had ordered this, too—if Josef were to be master of Doppelganger, he had to know how to dispose of the weak and unworthy. Josef could still hear the sound the furnace made when it started and smell the stench of burning flesh.
He continued to stare at the crystal—today was his thirteenth birthday. He was on the motorcycle Karl had given him. The pride that he had felt at being given such a gift while the other boys watched morphed into shame remembering how he had overturned it in front of them….Now the Sinclairs were visiting Doppelganger; he could feel Joshua lifting him up off his feet by his own collar and hear their taunts. The humiliation was as potent as it had been the day the encounter had taken place….Now he was alone with Karl, living as the favorite son in the private home of a depraved old man who masqueraded as a philanthropist. He could smell Karl; he could feel his touch. He was reliving the intense hatred and disgust he had experienced every time the old man came near him.
Now he was twenty-one. He could again smell the stench from the crematorium. This was the day that Karl murdered Alexander and Kathleen Sinclair. He was sitting in Karl’s office. He could see how old and feeble his “father” now was—his pale blue eyes were rimmed with red, and his hands trembled as he asked Josef for his help in attaining immortality….Now he had the whip around Karl’s neck—Josef could hear him sputtering and gasping for breath as he tugged impotently against the whip around his throat. Josef was reliving the murderous anger he had felt for Karl for as long as he could remember, and now he could feel the old doctor’s neck snap like a twig in his hands….He was standing on the hill overlooking Doppelganger detonating the explosives. He was more excited at that moment than he had ever been in his life. As he watched the buildings implode into flames, he imagined that he could hear the children and their attendants screaming for help.
The prism turned in his hands of its own volition. Now he could see his life since he had left Doppelganger. He was holding Maya, the first woman he had murdered. Her body was so close to his that he could feel her heart cease to beat. He wanted to feel her die—to look into her terrified eyes as her life left them. He had relived these murders in his mind every day, but never with the clarity that he was experiencing now. Every smell, every sound, every sensation were just as they had been the day they had happened….He was sitting at the top of the Burj Khalifa meeting with Prince Abdul and Anis as he took down his first order for clones of starlets….He was looking at his first Marilyn clone, thinking how perfect she was and how much he would enjoy the identical one he had made for himself…. He was receiving payment to clone Peter Kessler’s son. He was receiving tens of millions of Euros. He felt power surge through him—he was the most important man in the world. No one could do what he could—kings and presidents and prime ministers groveled before him and paid whatever price he demanded for what he offered—immortality for family or for themselves, a second chance with a loved one, an opportunity to live out their darkest fantasies with no consequences.
He was standing at the podium at the Club of Rome the night he had become secretary-general. He was observing the trance he had cast over the attendees—the uncomfortable looks all across the room when they realized that he could guess their visions and that he had bared their innermost secrets….A badly-burned Amanda Sutton was writhing in torment as the acid he had poured on her consumed her flesh. She was begging him—first for her life and later for her death….He was at the United Nations addressing the world about environmentalism….He was standing in the Pergamon Museum with Demetri….He was negotiating with Helmut Schmidt for the release of the Altar. As he had grown to middle age, he had often wondered if he were capable of accessing any of Josef Mengele’s memories; now he knew that even with Labyrinth he could not, but the day he left Helmut Schmidt’s office after having secured the Altar, he experienced a connection even more palpable. The Altar connected him to a Force that had commanded history as it destroyed one nation and elevated another to power. From the pagans who sacrificed Christians on it in ancient times, to Adolf Hitler who replicated it before he began his ascent to power as the leader of the Third Reich, the Altar was a timeless reminder of the power that the Force bestowed on those who controlled it. Josef was now among the mighty who commanded it.
He was inviting Demetri and his family to Switzerland….He was in Afshin’s hovel in Dubai. The old man’s filthy, gnarled hands gripped the prism; Josef could still hear him hiss, “Look into the prism, and see your own future when you find the courage to face it.”
The whisper had barely left Afshin’s lips when Josef felt the prism turn again in his hand, and he felt his own gaze being drawn into the soul of the crystal. Instantly, he was engulfed in darkness—not the darkness of a moonless, starless night or even the darkness of a sealed room or cavern. Rather, it was the deepest, most foreboding blackness that he had ever experienced. Not a single pinprick of light penetrated anywhere; even the tiniest speck of light would have shone like a strobe in this endless night.
Josef was falling, and though he reached out for something to break his fall, he could not catch onto anything. Nor could he see into what he was falling—he could not see anything or measure the distance he had fallen or how much further he had to fall.
The heat was intense and stifling—he could feel his breathing constricting because of the scorching air that tortured his lungs. The stench was terrible—all around him was the smell of decay and putrefaction and burning flesh. These odors were familiar to him from his youth at Doppelganger, but they were magnified to an intensity he had never before experienced.
He was surrounded by misery. He could hear the sounds of torment, pain, sadness, loneliness, grief, disappointment and every sort of suffering reverberating through the chamber. But even more than hearing these audibly, he could feel them. It was as though all of the pain and sadness and loneliness and grief and pride and anger and hatred and suffering and torment that had ever existed since time began had been captured and confined in this space, and he was experiencing all of it inside himself at one time. He was completely alone, empty and cut off from everything and everyone. It was the most desolate, terrifying sensation he had ever experienced. And as he continued his downward descent he knew instinctively that he would never be able to escape from this place. He was imprisoned in this hopeless misery for all of eternity.
His mind was struggling to reject this vision. Even as he continued to fall he could sense that his physical self was attempting to free him of this ghastly portent of the future—his hand was trying to drop the prism. Finally, his fingers released the crystal, and he was once again sitting in his library. His heart was pounding; his hair and clothing were drenched in perspiration. When he looked up, he saw Karl standing in front of him.
This was not the old, feeble Karl just minutes away from the death; this was a younger man. This was the Karl he remembered from his childhood, the one who had moved him into his house when he was just thirteen. The apparition stood in his gray suit and smiled slightly—the cruelest, most sinister smile imaginable—and beckoned with his index finger for Josef to draw near. It was a gesture with which Josef was familiar and which made him tremble inwardly when he was a boy—that smile and that gesture always meant that something terrible was about to follow.
Josef staggered to his feet. His legs felt like lead; he could barely stand, but he forced himself up onto his feet. Taking the keycard to his motorcycle, he stumbled from the library and outside to the bike. When he looked up at the window he could still see the specter watching him and smiling.
He started the bike and pealed out of the driveway as though he were being chased. His only thought now was to get away from that library, from the prism and its hideous vision and from Karl. He could hear his victims now, but rather than their final moments of torment he imagined that they were taunting him, laughing at him. “Soon you will be with us,” they seemed
to whisper. The bike accelerated—100 kilometers per hour, 125, 150, 200.
The bike was climbing the narrow mountain road, and the cold air was reviving Josef and countering the effects of Labyrinth. As he reached the lookout point at the peak, his heart rate began to stabilize, and by the time he had brought the bike to a stop, the feeling of panic was subsiding.
The morning was beautiful. A fresh snow had fallen just before dawn, blanketing everything in glistening white; the sun shone brightly. Josef looked up; the sky was a perfect blue in a part of the world unsullied by pollution. Everything was light and bright, and the sunlight was glinting off the icy tops of the peaks. He thought that it resembled the light from the crystal prisms. For a fraction of a second, the scenery changed before his eyes, and he was at a lookout point overlooking peaks sculpted entirely from glimmering crystal prisms.
At that moment, the fog produced by the drug he had taken and his terrifying hallucinations evaporated. His mind was completely clear, his heart rate steady, his breathing calm. The biting cold of the air was invigorating as he surveyed the magnificent, glittering scenery before him. Whatever malevolence Afshin had infused into the prism when he had cursed it no longer had power over Josef’s destiny. No vindictive spirits from the past were pursuing him—no tortured souls whispered in his ears now. The bright, cold, shimmering landscape was a profound contrast to the black furnace of torment he had seen in the prism. The latter was merely mischief wrought by a bitter old man—this was his present; this was reality. This was eternity—this pristine ice palace was his home, now and forever.
As he sat straddling his bike, suddenly Josef knew what to do. He would end things on his own terms—it was the only course that made any sense. Starting his bike, he pulled back onto the road and once again accelerated—100 kilometers per hour, 120, 200. He was racing up the narrowing road to the topmost point. The world below was reduced to a white blur as he reached the top and the bike sailed over the edge at almost 300 kilometers per hour.
Josef felt himself falling through the frozen air. Time seemed to stand still. He could not see the ground, but he could see the sunlight and the blue sky as he descended further and further down. The impact fractured his skull and pulverized his bones on the rocks below. His bike came to earth at almost the exact moment that he did. Within seconds the fuel tank exploded, consuming the bike and its owner in the flames.
Instantly, he was engulfed in darkness….
Chapter 35
Fred boarded the Branson Stream that made the flight from Dubai to New York in three hours. At the turn of the century when Richard Branson had built his spaceport at Las Cruces, New Mexico, to sell space flights to civilians, he had believed that the demand for the forty-five minute fifty-thousand-dollar flights would be sufficient to make his venture a commercial success. He soon discovered, however, that he had miscalculated, and he then decided to use the technology that his Virgin Industries had developed to produce a plane that made international travel faster and more convenient than any of his competitors. The resulting Branson Stream was an instant success.
Fred had never imagined that one day he would be in a position to fly on the Branson Stream. The tickets cost double the amount of those of other airlines, but the Sinclair brothers were generous, and they always provided him with the best accommodations. The attendant showed him to his seat—a large well-padded window lounger in putty-colored Italian leather. It was the ultimate in luxury, supporting his head, neck and back perfectly. The Branson Stream was designed with two seats to a row with a privacy screen between them so that every passenger enjoyed his own personal space.
Fred was glad to be going home. Although he had made several trips home, he had felt it was too dangerous to bring Annie to Dubai and so he had gone for several weeks at a time without seeing her. He missed her, and he was emotionally and physically drained. Josef was dead, and Fred had recovered all the evidence he had left behind of his massive crimes. He felt a shudder pass through his body as he thought about the heinous acts that Josef had committed. Fred was grateful that he had been able to play a major role in bringing to an end what might prove to be the most wide-spread killing spree that anyone had ever undertaken, but he had some regrets.
From the day of his arrival, Fred had felt such a burden for the people of the Middle East. There was great wealth, but there was also great poverty. Everywhere he looked he saw dust and dirt and relentless sun and endless sand. But more than that, he felt the overwhelming sadness and despair of a people who do not know Jesus. Work slaves from all over the planet labored for the world’s most privileged classes. The poor had come to Dubai to find a better life and had been forced to live in filthy, crowded conditions where disease was rampant and the intense heat seemed to suck the life out of them. They had no means of escape from their subhuman living conditions, and the luxuries they observed as they bent their backs under the heavy loads that their masters imposed upon them were as unreal to them as a desert mirage that tantalizes the senses and then evaporates just when it appears to be within one’s reach.
Fred had prayed for them every day that he had been in Dubai, and his prayer had always been that he would be able to reach them for Christ. He had prayed that God would send the greatest revival that the world had ever known and that it would begin in Dubai and spread across the Middle East “like a raging fire, consuming everything in its path.” He had prayed that the revival would spread from the Middle East across the globe so that there would not be “one square centimeter of land on earth” where revival would not come. He had prayed that every living person would hear the gospel preached in his own language and that even those who were not searching for Christ would find Him.
As he sat looking out the window waiting for take-off, Fred felt like a failure. He had witnessed to everyone who would listen. Some had turned away in anger; others had listened politely; a few had seemed to be somewhat interested, but he had led only Walid to accept Jesus as his Savior. Yet, each day he had expected revival to begin. He had watched in vain for any sign that the Holy Spirit was lighting a fire in this lost land; now it was too late.
The engines roared to life, and the Branson Stream began to taxi down the runway. Fred turned his eyes to the window and watched the earth fall away beneath him as the huge plane gained altitude. Then he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He had done all he could—all he knew to do—but he did not have the power to bring about revival. That was up to God.
At precisely that moment, three miles from the airport a small lizard scurried out from under the dry desert bush where he had been sleeping. He seemed to be disoriented as he turned to look at his former shelter. As the tiny creature watched, the small shrub burst into flame. It burned hotly for a long time, but it was not consumed. Hours later the flames still raged against the black nighttime sky as a gentle breeze caught the sparks and flung them upward in a golden shower that appeared to reach the very gates of heaven.
Chapter 36
The sunset over the ocean was a stunning kaleidoscope of crimson and gold hues. The few visible clouds filtered the light in such a way that the beams seemed to emanate from them and radiate across the sky. Below, the vast ocean reflected the same crimson hues and took on a strange, blood-like quality as far as the eye could see.
Demetri Kairos was making his way down a long series of marble steps that led to the shore. Behind him was a palatial estate constructed from white marble. An astute observer would have immediately recognized the Greek Parthenon, except that this building was in a state of perfect repair. On a marble terrace two steps above him his eight-year-old son ran eagerly. Demos bore an uncanny likeness to his father except that his skin was tanned a few shades darker from a summer spent playing on the shores of Labyrinth. He had the same silvery gray eyes that shone like the sea reflecting the clouds and eagerly took in every sight. His dark hair fell in soft waves against his neck. In his crisp white cotton shorts and shirt he looked more like an aspiring actor o
r child model than the future master of an uncharted island.
Demetri paused and waited for his son. “Why do you walk so quickly Father? Wait for me.”
The father smiled at his son, “You must learn to keep up, Demos. The world moves quickly, and you must move even more quickly so that you can stay ahead of it.” Lifting the boy over the marble railing that still separated them, he brought Demos to his side. “Can you keep up with me now?” Demos nodded affirmatively and together they made their way down the steps until they had reached the shore.
The sun was sinking so low now that it seemed to be setting into the water. The sky was losing its light, but the setting orb made the water appear still redder and more foreboding.
“Would you like to see some magic, Demos?”
“Yes, Father,” Demos smiled broadly. Labyrinth was home to a great deal of magic, but Demos never tired of it.
“Then watch carefully,” and his father pointed toward the water.
As they watched, the water began to displace before them as massive gray steel began to rise from the ocean.
Demos jumped up and down with excitement and then looked expectantly at his father, who watched and smiled but said nothing. As he watched, Demos saw what he was waiting for; as the object became more and more visible he could see the familiar image painted on the side—a fearsome beast unlike anything in nature. Its hideous form combined that of many creatures; it had seven heads and ten horns and each horn bore a crown. “It’s our family crest!” Demos pointed at the image. Still his father said nothing.
The Force (The Kingdom Chronicles) Page 23