by John Lyman
Mendoza smiled as he raised his glass in Leo’s direction. “Now I know why Pope Michael made you a Prince of the Church, my friend.”
“A mistake that I’m sure he regrets every waking moment, Javier.”
The others laughed nervously, but Mendoza had one final point to make. “You know, Cardinal, as an anthropologist, I’m well aware that we are all descended from a species of hunter-killer apes, so it’s not much of a stretch to see how the human race has evolved into a species where one tribe constantly provokes war with another. On the one hand, you have the brilliant and artistic minds that have created all that is good in a civilization, while on the other hand you have those who just want to tear civilization down. It’s almost as if the earth were inhabited by two completely different types of humans.”
“Three types,” Leo said. “We haven’t quite figured out what Alon is yet.”
Alon almost choked on his wine, while Nava practically fell from her chair laughing.
Mendoza couldn’t help but smile at Leo’s humorous attempt to prevent him from delving further into another philosophical discussion that might drag well into the early hours of the morning. It was the Spanish way, of course, and according to their timetable, the night had just begun. The Spanish had invented the institution of the afternoon siesta just so they could stay up into the wee hours of the morning, drinking their excellent wine and enjoying good conversation.
“Well,” Lev said, standing, “I’m sure I can speak for all of us when I say that we’ve thoroughly enjoyed your hospitality this evening, but I’m afraid we really must be getting back to the yacht. The next time we come to Spain, you’re all invited onboard for dinner.”
“Maybe you should think about starting a Spanish chapter of the Bible Code Team,” Mendoza said.
“That’s not such a bad idea, Javier, considering the fact that we’re going to need all the help we can get in the days ahead, especially from scientists such as yourselves. We’ll stay in touch.”
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Mendoza pulled a small plastic bag from his pocket and handed it to Lev. “It’s probably nothing, Professor, but Alon asked earlier if we had found any papers at the crash site. This is all there was … a few napkins we found blowing around in the field.”
Lev gingerly pulled a white paper napkin from the bag and turned it over in his hand. There, right in front of his widening eyes, he saw the words Acerbi Corporation-Agricultural Division spelled out in red script. Above that was the company’s logo-a golden stalk of wheat.
CHAPTER 21
It was shortly after nine o’clock at night when the helicopter touched down on the rear deck of the Carmela. Climbing from the tight confines of the small chopper, the group that had gone ashore immediately headed for the yacht’s communications room.
Ariella was the first to greet them when they walked into the room.
“What did you find, Father?”
Lev held up the plastic bag in his hand for all to see.
“What is it?”
“Napkins.”
“Napkins?”
“Yes. Napkins with a specific company logo printed on them. They were found at the crash site. Evidently, the cardinal was flying back to Rome onboard a jet owned by the Acerbi Corporation.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure yet. Normally, I would brush it off with the fact that a corporation was trying to gain favor with the Church by allowing the cardinal to use one of their private jets. At least that would have been my first instinct until I saw this.”
Lev pointed to the company logo on the napkin.
“It’s just a stalk of wheat,” Ariella said. “What’s so special about that? I mean, it says Acerbi Agricultural Division on it.”
“Yes, but the logo is an exact match in every detail with the ancient painting we found on the chapel wall.”
Ariella looked closer. “How is this possible?”
“Right now I have no idea, but I’m going to scan this napkin into an onboard computer and send it to Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. Like everyone else, the only thing I know about this Acerbi Corporation is that it’s big and headed by a very wealthy family, but this is definitely a lead we need to follow up on.”
Lev handed one of the napkins to the communications officer. “We need to make a copy of that and send it to Tel Aviv. Also, send a copy to Bishop Morelli at the Vatican and one to Daniel at the villa.”
Five minutes later, Morelli’s face filled their computer screens. “A golden stalk of wheat! Are you kidding me? Where did you find those napkins?”
“Evidently, our Spanish friends found them in the field where Orsini’s plane crashed. In one of those strange little twists of fate, these little paper cocktail napkins survived the crash when they drifted out over the field after the impact. We also found this.” Lev held the cardinal’s ring in front of the computer’s camera. “This belonged to Cardinal Orsini.”
Everyone could see Morelli’s eyebrows arch. “Are you sure it’s his?”
“No question about it,” Leo said, crowding in next to the console. “It’s his.”
“I guess there’s no doubt then. That pretty much confirms the fact that the cardinal is no longer with us.”
“I think we need to focus our attention on the Acerbi Agricultural Corporation now,” Lev said. “Have you ever heard Orsini talk about them, Anthony?”
“No, I can’t remember anything specific. I only know about them from my dealings in the stock market. Their stock price took a nice jump last week for no apparent reason.”
Leo and Lev traded looks but said nothing.
“I’ll bet you guys almost fainted when you saw that napkin,” Morelli continued. “This is just too weird. How could a modern corporate logo match perfectly with a two-thousand-year-old painting that was just discovered on an ancient chapel wall? There’s obviously a connection somewhere. What did the Spanish guys say?”
“They don’t know about the painting on the chapel wall, and for now we’re keeping a tight lid on it. We’ve also asked them not to mention the napkins for now … even to their own government. Let us know if you find out anything about this Acerbi guy, Anthony. We may be on to something or nothing at all, but it’s worth looking into.”
“No problem. I’ll put our people to work researching that corporation.”
A yellow light began blinking on the console in front of the communications officer. “Flash traffic from the villa in Israel.”
Lev picked up the phone and listened intently as the others watched the color drain from his face. Slowly, he laid the receiver down and turned to face the others.
“The pathogen … it just hit Pakistan.”
“I guess that kind of rules out the theory of radical Islamic terrorists being behind all of this,” Nava said, squeezing Alon’s shoulder.
Leo sat down beside Lev and leaned back in the chair. “Just when you think you’re onto something, the mystery deepens. It’s beginning to look like entire sections of the human race are being exterminated, and there’s no common thread.”
CHAPTER 22
Sinking into the west, the pastel vestiges of the setting sun painted the snow-capped mountains of the French Alps in tones of pale orange, while wisps of fog curled over the moist bed of pine needles layering the floor of the forest below. Hidden among the trees, subdued yellow light radiated from the windows of a massive log structure, reflecting against the polished black finish of the limousines parked in front.
If it weren’t for all the trappings of luxury that had been integrated into the enormous mountain lodge and the campsites surrounding it, the entire setting could have been mistaken for a rustic summer camp for kids-but this camp was far from rustic, and it was definitely not a place for children.
In a room upstairs, Rene Acerbi pulled on a white shirt and peered through the window at the fog covered grounds outside. He smiled. The thick fog seemed to give the surrounding forest a foreboding, medieval look. H
ow appropriate, he thought.
The phone on the bedside table rang. “Yes?”
“We’re ready sir. Everyone is here.”
“I’ll be right down.” Acerbi grabbed a black leather jacket from the back of a chair and stepped out into the red-carpeted hallway. Checking his watch, he made his way down a rustic stairway lined with animal carvings into a towering wood-beamed room decorated to recreate the ambiance of an old hunting lodge. Entering the room, he was greeted by the faces of some of the most powerful men and women in the world. They were all seated around a massive river-stone fireplace, talking and laughing as they plucked hors d’oeuvres from circulating silver trays and washed them down with imported wines that had been specially chosen for the occasion.
Acerbi smoothed his thick, black hair straight back and took a seat in one of the oversized brown leather chairs next to a tall young woman with short blonde hair. Her name was Dana Waters, and she had just taken over the helm of the largest chemical company in America. His gaze then shifted to a short, slightly overweight Texas oilman by the name of Alan Thorn. Loathed by most of his contemporaries, he had a short temper and a well-known inability to hold his tongue in social situations, especially after a few drinks.
Rene tried to ignore the fact that it looked like Thorn had already had a few too many. Instead, Acerbi focused his black eyes on the other members of the group. They all nodded their heads in his direction in an obvious acknowledgement to the fact that he was the guest of honor, destined on this night to take his place among the twelve leaders who governed their faith.
The gathering was permeated by the casual familiarity shared by the ruling elite who traveled in the same social circles. Like the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts and Morgans before them, they reveled in the intricate and elusive connections that assured their continued prosperity as they waited for the evening’s festivities to begin.
Although very few people were aware of its existence, this select club had been around longer than most of the present-day governments currently in power around the world. In fact, its roots reached all the way back to the Middle Ages, to one of Acerbi’s distant ancestors, a female warrior by the name of Catherine Acerbi.
A Joan of Arc-like figure, Catherine had led a small band of former Templar Knights in hit and run battles against a French nobility loyal to the Catholic Church, a nobility whose northern army had swarmed across her ancestral lands in a holy crusade against the people of her faith-people the Church had labeled as heretics.
Her struggle to assure the survival of her kind had enmeshed itself within every fiber of her being, and as she embarked upon her own crusade of rebellion, all of her waking moments were dedicated to revenge as her small force nipped at the heels of the great army from the north. For a few brief years, she had seemed invincible, until that fateful day when she was finally betrayed by a spy and burned at the stake as a heretic.
However, before she died, Catherine had gone to great lengths to assure the Acerbi bloodline. Along the way she had given birth to a son, the product of a brief interlude with a Templar Knight who had left on the last crusade to the Holy Land shortly before the birth of his child. In his absence, she had denied the knight his right and given the child her own family name, for continuing the Acerbi bloodline had been the sole purpose of her union with the knight all along.
But at the moment of Catherine Acerbi’s death, in the pain-induced delirium brought on by the searing flames enveloping her fair skin, she had made a horrible mistake. She had called out to the wrong god. She had called out the name of the evil one, asking him to make the Acerbi clan powerful enough to destroy the institution responsible for the deaths of her parents and the other members of her faith who had died by the thousands at the hands of a holy army cloaked in the vestments of righteousness as they swept across their lands.
To add to her torment, the man who had condemned her to the stake had forced her only child to witness her death. Upon hearing her screams, Catherine’s young son had instinctively run toward the pyre. Those who had witnessed the last moments of her life had seen her look directly at her son. As the flames rose higher, their eyes met for a brief moment, the same moment when she uttered her terrible last words-words that Catherine Acerbi could never recant, because as soon as she had spoken them, her spirit passed from her body.
As he was being led away from the grisly scene by Catherine’s aunt, the child spotted a man in the distance. He was dressed in finery and sitting atop a white horse. And he was smiling.
Although his mother’s last words had been an aberration, it was too late to undo what had been said. The words, along with the images of her fiery death and the smiling man on the horse, would remain with the boy for the rest of his life and fill him with great hatred, for a dark hitchhiker had just attached itself to his soul.
Taking the young boy into her home, Catherine’s aunt had raised him as her own. It was she who now guarded the scrolls her sister Marie had sent with Catherine on the day when their castle had been attacked by the army of the north. All along, she had planned on passing the scrolls to Catherine’s son on the day when he came of age, however, once again fate had intervened, and before she could tell the boy where she had hidden them, she died suddenly from a fever, thus denying succeeding generations of Acerbi’s their message of salvation.
After being passed from one family to the next, the boy grew cold, and at the tender age of fourteen, he went looking for the smiling man on the horse, only to find that he had already died at the hands of a mysterious Templar Knight who had just returned from the Holy Land. As he grew into manhood, Catherine’s son wandered the land, learning the ways of a hard world. He grew to be powerful, but his power was tinged with ruthlessness as he remembered his mother’s last words, words that had been etched into his memory, words that would alter the destiny of the Acerbi family forever, for unbeknownst to the coldhearted young man, his mother had unwittingly made a lasting pact with the devil.
Over the years, the wealth and power of the Acerbi clan grew stronger with each succeeding generation, until finally, backed by a dark force they barely understood themselves, they had become almost as powerful as the institution they sought to destroy.
Acerbi inhaled deeply as he fixed Alan Thorn with an icy stare. “That little oil well fire of yours in the Gulf of Mexico attracted a lot of attention … attention we don’t need at a time like this.”
Returning Acerbi’s stare, Thorn brushed some cigar ashes from his flannel shirt. “Such is the oil business, Rene. Drilling at that depth has its rewards, but also its risks. Besides, the incident in the Gulf is the last thing on people’s minds right now.”
“We all understand that, but we must be extra vigilant when it comes to bringing unwanted attention to any company we own, especially now that the first stage of our plan has gone into effect.”
“What about the girl?” Dana Waters asked.
“We’re keeping her at my chateau for now. She’s being treated like royalty. We’ve reinforced our story about how the doctors at the CDC planned to use her as a guinea pig, so she believes we are protecting her. After she heard that the virus had struck in Italy, she was more than happy to remain in France rather than going on to Rome.”
“Taking her from the hospital in New York attracted as much attention as my little oil well fire … if not more,” Thorn said, slurring his words. The smirk on his face revealed his obvious distain for Acerbi.
“A calculated risk, I admit, but necessary.”
Dana ran her hand across the back of Acerbi’s chair. “What have you learned so far, Rene?”
“We told her that we hired a private physician to look after her because of her recent illness, so she allowed him to take some blood samples. All of our tests to date have shown nothing out of the ordinary. To be honest, our scientific team is mystified. There was nothing unusual about her DNA profile, and she had been primed like the other victims. Her only medical problem was a previously undiagnosed alle
rgy to wheat that she was unaware of. But the question still remains-how did she survive the unsurvivable?”
An elderly gentleman picked up a faceted crystal decanter from the table beside him and poured an inch of brandy into his snifter. “Could the pathogen have mutated in any way?”
“Look,” Acerbi said, the color rising in his face. “The possibility of a random mutation has been a concern from the beginning, but I’ve been assured by some of the top people in the field that this will not happen. We will continue our testing of the girl … it may even take a full autopsy, but we will get to the bottom of this. The pathogens we have developed have all been rigorously tested time and time again, and not once has one mutated in the lab.”
“That is exactly our point, Rene. It is no longer in the lab, and random events occur all the time in nature.”
Acerbi looked around the room. The eyes of a very powerful group of men and women were all staring directly at him. Their questioning expressions of doubt were barely concealed beneath their stoic facades, and unlike the lackeys who worked for him, it was obvious that these people had no fear of throwing hard questions in his direction.
A cold fury rose up within him. Were they really that stupid? Couldn’t they see it? The result of untold years of research and planning was coming down to the wire, and now was not the time for weakness and second-guessing. Besides, there was no possibility for mutation, for Rene Acerbi knew a secreta secret he would reveal to the world when the time was right.
Acerbi swallowed and put on his biggest smile. “Come now, people. This should be a time to celebrate. The world will be a much better place to live in a year from now. Please, join me in a toast, a toast to the future and a new world order … may we finally live in a world that is truly ours and ours alone.”
Together they all stood and held their glasses high before drinking down the last burning gulp of the thick, golden liquid.
“Now,” Acerbi said proudly, scanning the room for further dissention. “I believe the ceremony is about to begin. I want to extend my sincere gratitude to all of you for being here with me tonight.”