House of Acerbi (god's lions)

by John Lyman

  In a few hours he would be boarding a private jet in El Paso, Texas for his flight back to his chateau in France, where he would ascend to the throne of a global empire the likes of which the world had never before seen. He would be glorified by the masses as the one who had saved the world from a viral catastrophe-their savior, for he had left no witnesses to tell them otherwise.

  Soon after his return, he would travel to Rome, where he would exact his family’s revenge by abolishing the Catholic Church. A plan seven hundred years in the making would finally come to pass, and soon thereafter, Vatican City would be nothing more than an interesting museum to the superstitions of the past. The world truly would be his oyster. Life was good.

  CHAPTER 62

  It was just past midnight when the Boeing C-17 descended over the tops of the tall pine trees and touched down on the remote forest airstrip near the town of Foix. A sleepy-eyed Evita Vargas clung to Leo’s arm as they followed Diaz and Mendoza down the ramp at the back of the aircraft to a row of rental cars lined up alongside the runway.

  Limping behind them with a cast on one arm, Alon had his other arm draped around Nava’s shoulder as they walked next to John and Ariella past Lev at the back of the plane.

  Standing next to him, Ben Zamir watched the professor light his last Cuban cigar. “Are you sure you’ll be alright here, Professor?”

  “We’ll be fine, Ben … as long as our location remains a secret. We’re all international fugitives now, so I probably won’t be seeing you again anytime soon.”

  “I’m sorry for the way things turned out. My father said to tell you his people are working twenty-four hours a day to prove to the world that Acerbi orchestrated everything and that he’s the one behind the virus, but until then, you’ve got to lay low.”

  “Danny is a good friend to have at a time like this. What’s the latest word on Acerbi? Was he on that big jet that took off during the attack?”

  “No, he’s back at his chateau playing the part of the hero. It’s a good thing that fighter pilot held off, because that plane was full of Mexican families who lived in the area. It appears that Acerbi was treating them to a vacation in Cancun and had timed their departure to coincide with the attack he knew was coming. He must have loaded them all onboard and then ordered the pilots to wait for his permission to leave. As soon as the attack was underway, he gave the go ahead for them to take off. Apparently, he was counting on us to shoot them down thinking he was onboard, thus causing an even greater international outcry against us. It would have been disastrous.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They landed in Cancun only to find that no reservations had been made for them at local hotels. Acerbi never planned on them arriving, something we are bringing to the attention of anyone who will listen as proof of his intentions.”

  “And the American business woman … Dana Waters … what happened to her? She had some pretty interesting things to say about Acerbi when we questioned her the night of the attack.”

  “She’s in Israel, a guest of the Mossad. We’re keeping her existence a closely guarded secret. We’re pretty sure Acerbi believes that she died with the others in the hangar explosion, and we want him to keep thinking that. Understandably, she’s having a hard time trusting anyone, but I heard she started opening up to one of our female operatives after we offered her immunity. From what we’ve gathered, she knows all the inner workings of his organization. Apparently they had been friends since childhood. That kind of betrayal creates the worst kind of enemies. It looks like his plan wasn’t so perfect after all. I only wish we could take you all back to Israel with us.”

  “You and I both know Israel is the first place they’ll come looking for us. We’ll be safe here. Mendoza and his Cathar friends have made arrangements for us to stay in some old cabins that were built in the Pyrenees during World War II. The French Resistance used them to hide downed Allied airmen from the Nazis during the war.”

  “Don’t tell me anything else, Professor. Operational security, remember.” Ben winked.

  “If I can’t trust Danny Zamir’s son, then who can I trust?” Lev laughed and clapped the young soldier on the shoulder. “Tell your father that I said hello and that I’ll be seeing him again someday soon. We’ll defeat this Acerbi guy somehow … even if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Ben turned and walked back up into the aircraft. He was waving as the ramp lifted into place and the big jet trundled into position before its shrieking engines pushed it down the runway and into a dark sky.

  The little group shivered in the early morning darkness as they stood beside the cars.

  “Has anyone spoken with Eduardo?” Mendoza asked.

  “No, I didn’t think it would be a good idea,” Lev said. “I’m still not sure about him.”

  “I hate to say it, Professor, but you’re probably right. When you think about it, we can’t afford to trust anyone right now. If they find us we’ll be locked away, and Acerbi’s people would undoubtedly be the ones holding the key. I have a feeling none of us would live long in jail.”

  Mendoza turned to Leo. “What about your friend Morelli?”

  “I used the satellite phone to speak with him before we left the states. He said that, publicly, I’ve been stripped of my title. I’m no longer a cardinal, but at least the pope is refusing to excommunicate me until a full investigation is completed. For now, it appears that I’m even cut off from my own church.”

  Evita saw the lines of sadness etching Leo’s face. Here was a man who had always done the right thing at great cost to his personal life, and now he was being shunned and degraded by his own church. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.

  Ariella watched her father standing alone, staring off into the distance at the dark outlines of the mountains ringing their position. She was acutely aware that Lev was probably the one who was suffering the most. Cut off from his homeland and his beloved seaside villa, he was unable to sit by his wife’s gravesite every evening, something he had done every day for the past ten years when he was home. Behind her large brown eyes, a fire burned deep inside. Why had God deserted them? Weren’t they supposed to be the chosen-his lions-sent by Him to destroy this monster Acerbi?

  “Let’s get moving,” Mendoza said. “The cabins are in a remote location, and we have to get there before the sun comes up.”

  Slowly, the group spread out and divided themselves among the rental cars before heading up a nearby mountain road. An hour later, they turned off onto a little-used dirt road covered in moss that wound its way up a steep hillside beneath a grove of giant pines until they came to a clearing overlooking an isolated mountain gorge. There, in the middle of a peaceful glen, invisible to the outside world, they saw three rustic cabins built from thick logs. They had just arrived at their new home.

  Their next few weeks would be spent going about the daily routine of cooking, cleaning, chopping wood-even making rudimentary tools from raw materials. Their lives had taken on a comfortable routine broken only by occasional forays deep into the forest to hunt for deer or fish for trout. Without the ability to use even a radio for communication, they had taken a giant step back in time to a simpler place, where the hours of the day were spent in idle talk around a fireplace instead of sitting in front of a computer screen that held the promise of instant response from a frantic world.

  This must have been the way the Cathars had lived, Leo thought, after they had been persecuted by the Church and were in hiding from the evil men of the material world who had descended on their lands in search of even greater wealth. Apparently, life really hadn’t changed all that much in the past seven-hundred years. The only difference, it seemed, was that mankind had found quicker, more efficient means of killing large numbers of people, while employing more subtle ways for governments dominated by the rich to rob from the poor. The robbing and pillaging once conducted on horseback by men brandishing swords was now conducted in corporate boardrooms by men armed with noth
ing more fearsome than a Smartphone.

  It was quickly becoming obvious to the others that Leo was beginning to enjoy their rustic existence. He had begun to reevaluate his life and his role in the world. Who needed a title to deliver God’s message of love to others? In the past year, he had actually found that the title of cardinal had separated him from the common man. He yearned for the days when he could rub elbows at the local watering hole with the working-class men and women of his hometown, hard-working people who sometimes worked two jobs just to pay their mortgages and send their kids to an overpriced college that offered no guarantee of a job after graduation.

  Even the prospect of returning to the classroom as a professor of history no longer appealed to Leo. To him, the modern university had become nothing more than a scam perpetuated by a growing education industry that handed out PhD’s like they were Halloween candy to those who yearned for a better life. With profit now the driving force behind higher education, the validity of the degrees it bestowed on its graduates was seriously in doubt. A culture spawned by MBAs who lacked the historical perspective to go with their newfound knowledge of number-crunching had led the country down the rosy corporate path of outsourcing jobs that once went to those who were perfectly happy punching an industrial time clock every day if it gave them the ability to buy a home and put food on the table for their families. Leo knew that one day the country would have to start making things again, or the middle class, or what was left of it, would disappear completely.

  For some of the others, especially the scientists and those who found themselves separated from family and friends, life was decidedly more difficult in their forest retreat. Through no fault of their own, they now found themselves outcasts from the world, a world that believed what Acerbi told them to believe, and some were beginning to doubt if things would ever be the same again. Obviously, the military option had been a complete failure and had only played into his hands, creating in him the image of the heroic victim who was only trying to save the world from a deadly disease. His plan had been so diabolically elegant and complex in its execution that it would take years to unravel his lies and prove to the world that the people who had tried to stop him were the true heroes.

  On the morning of the tenth day of their third month in hiding, Leo and Evita were walking through the forest looking for mushrooms when they spotted a man wearing a black overcoat with a black fedora pulled low over his eyes. He was walking up the rocky trail that ran from the road below to the cabins in the grove above, and he seemed to know exactly where he was going.

  Immediately they backed behind some overgrown brush and froze. Was he some kind of policeman, or worse, someone who worked for Acerbi who was following up on a lead?

  By now, the man had closed to within a few yards of their hiding place. Evita slid her hand under her coat and pulled out a pistol, but Leo quickly covered the gun with his hand and lowered it. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just in case.”

  Leo watched the figure come closer. He could tell by the way the man moved that he was no outdoorsman. There was something vaguely familiar about the way he carried himself as he stopped to catch his breath and removed his hat to wipe the sweat of exertion from his brow.

  Leo let out a gasp. “Anthony?”

  The red-headed priest looked up and smiled. “Leo?”

  CHAPTER 63

  Anthony Morelli warmed himself by the fire as he tried to answer the barrage of non-stop questions coming at him all at once about what was happening in the world outside.

  Leo handed Morelli a glass of wine and ushered him to a worn leather couch.

  “The virus, Anthony … what’s happening?”

  “Completely died out.”

  A unified sigh of relief could be heard throughout the room.

  “So the failsafe mechanism they included in the virus worked?” Diaz asked.

  “That helped. At least it kept the virus from mutating in the first few outbreaks, but the main reason it hasn’t reappeared is the fact that Acerbi has taken credit for wiping out the virus with his vaccine … a vaccine that is totally worthless by the way. But people believe his vaccine is protecting them, and that makes him the most popular man on the planet right now. However, his fame has also placed him under the microscope of public scrutiny. As long as people look to him as the savior of the world, he doesn’t dare let his little demon out of the box again.”

  “What about those governments his organization controls from behind the scenes? Surely someone on the inside knows about the stockpiles of the virus he threatened to release if they didn’t bow down to his demands.”

  “Apparently, he’s insulated himself from outside suspicion. No one has any idea who’s really pulling the strings. Everything is done through intermediaries. It’s like dealing with a ghost, and those close to him know that if they try to expose him they will join the ranks of the disappeared. It’s much easier to just obey and grow rich.”

  “But the wheat fields … we destroyed them, didn’t we? Without the genetically modified wheat to prime his victims, the pathogen is harmless.”

  “That’s true. All the wheat fields we knew about were destroyed, but there is a high probability that there are others out there somewhere that we are unaware of. Besides, it doesn’t take all that long to grow a field of wheat. We all know from past experience that we’re dealing with a highly intelligent sociopath.”

  “What about us?” Ariella asked. “When can we go home?”

  “You’re still wanted fugitives, but with time we’ll come up with a solution.” Morelli sipped his wine and looked around the room. “I’m working on an especially interesting one that’s just come to my attention.”

  “How did you find us, Anthony?” Leo asked.

  “Your Cathar friends. They knew you needed to know what was happening in the outside world. They’ll be bringing you a shortwave radio later today.” Morelli raised an eyebrow. “I realize the longer you stay here the more anxious you are to take another swipe at Acerbi, but my suggestion to you would be to lay low for now. As I said before, there are plans in the works, but we’re dealing with a very cunning sociopath who’s capable of anything, so our next assault on him must be foolproof. I doubt very much we’ll get another chance if we fail again. Don’t do anything rash that could interfere with something that’s already in the works.”

  “Has anyone talked to Eduardo yet?” Leo asked.

  Morelli smiled. “I have.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Eduardo Acerbi stared out the window and watched as a line of black SUVs turned off the highway and headed toward his house. As soon as they crunched to a stop on the gravel driveway, several armed men jumped from the lead SUV and began fanning out over the surrounding field as a dark-haired man stepped from the back seat and looked up at the windows on the second floor. The time for a long overdue meeting between father and son was at hand.

  Stepping up onto the front porch, Rene Acerbi brushed some field dust from his cashmere overcoat and removed a pair of dark sunglasses while he waited. Slowly, the door opened, and a frail Eduardo Acerbi gazed up into the dark eyes of his son. After a long, uncomfortable silence, the old man turned and motioned for Rene to enter.

  Once inside, Rene immediately noticed the rustic simplicity of his father’s home. “I can’t believe you gave it all up for this.”

  Eduardo’s eyes remained neutral as he smiled. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Tea? How quaint, Father. Yes, tea would be nice if that’s all you have to offer me after all these years.”

  “Oh, I have much more to offer, my son. Please, why don’t you take off your coat and join me upstairs in the library?”

  Rene threw his coat over the back of a worn fabric couch and nodded to the security men standing behind him before following his father up the stairs. The old man pointed to a table by the window before walking into his small kitchen to gather cups and plates.

  Rene made no att
empt to conceal the smirk on his face as he watched Eduardo reach for the teapot on the stove. “So, Father, what led you to finally reveal yourself to me after all this time?”

  Eduardo moved out of the kitchen with the tea and a box of freshly-baked croissants. “Time? Time is irrelevant to people of our faith, my son. In the grand scheme of things, the time we spend in the world is but a flash. We are like flames on a match that suddenly blaze forth and end just as quickly in a wisp of smoke, extinguished by a single breath, but it’s what we do during that brief flash of existence that shapes our eternal destiny.”

  “Please, Father, spare me your philosophic sermons about our so-called faith. We both know that faith is only a means to an end, a way to control the masses so that there can be some semblance of order in a world full of those who have barely evolved from their animal ancestors. Without the illusion of an afterlife, people would run amuck. Wiser men than us have known this for thousands of years. Promise the people an afterlife full of peace and joy and you can make them do anything. Religion has been the world’s biggest con since the day man shaped his first idol. Marx called it the opiate of the masses, but religion today is far from being a benign zone of comfort. It’s more like an amphetamine.”

  The old man took a seat by the window and began to pour the tea with trembling hands. “So, I take it you never read the scrolls I gave you.”

  Rene threw his head back in laughter. “There is so much you don’t know about me, Father. Actually, I read a copy of the scrolls when I was still a teenager. Quite amusing, actually. There are other scrolls you know … actually a book, a book with a much different message.”

  Eduardo’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard rumors.”