The Delphi Agenda

by Rob Swigart

  She paused and smiled grimly. “Jailers came to silence him. This they did by holding his head and driving a spike through his left cheek, tongue, and right cheek. They drove a second spike up from his chin through both lips. Together these spikes formed the cross that silenced him at last.

  “He was tied to the stake with thick rope. The wood was piled to his chin, and the torch placed between his feet. The flames caught. He was not spared by the quick mercy of a broken neck, but was made to suffer to the full extent. His flesh crackled. They say his moans were pitiful to hear, though the crowd remained to watch just the same. One of the Brothers offered him the cross through the flames one last time, but he turned his head away, so it is said. His remains were smashed with a hammer and the ashes cast to the winds.”

  Silence followed this somewhat stilted recitation.

  Steve managed to ask what the point of the story was.

  “The point?” she asked. “Very funny.” She undid the clamp holding his head. His chin dropped onto the sharp points of the fork. He lifted it, blood dripping from the fresh wounds, and showed his teeth once more.

  Lisa said, “We don’t have the Document with us and he doesn’t know where it is.”

  “It will be here soon enough,” the Prior General said, now standing near the circular stair.

  Lisa smiled. “The Founding Document is not what’s coming.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Defago snapped.

  She shrugged. “I said you had become famous.”

  Sister Teresa removed the Glock from her robes and held it loosely in her hand. “I will tell you something else,” she said grimly. “About your friend Rossignol. He was here, you know.” She lifted the gun. “I used this to break bones in his hands and knees. He wept, he screamed, you may be sure. And in the end he confessed.”

  Lisa laughed. “And sent you chasing a phantom.”

  “And for that he was burned like Bruno, still alive.” The nun lifted her gun to strike at Steve’s hands.

  Lacatuchi commanded, “Stop.”

  Reluctantly she lowered it.

  Defago said, “What are you doing? They need persuading. They must undergo the Question.”

  “We’ll wait for word,” the Prior General said. “Time to think.”

  The nun stalked away, gun at her side, followed by the monk.

  Her whisper resonated around the vast chamber. Echoes scrambled the syllables. “What troubles you, my priest?”

  “That fat fool….” He broke off.

  “You don’t like to stop once started,” she said.

  He could only nod.

  She continued. “The people he sent won’t find the Document in Foix’s apartment. You see their confidence? They’ve hidden it, or left it with someone, or sent it somewhere. We’re never going to get it.”

  Again he nodded. “The Question is the only path to an answer.”

  “Yes, my priest, I know.”

  “You are my dark angel, my help, my weapon. I promised you they would beg, and so they will. If that fool interferes….” Again he couldn’t finish the thought, but she understood him well.

  He could only conclude, “Our turn will come.”

  56.

  The lock was a new type, more intricate than any Dupond had encountered before. In frustration he went back to the car for his jack and jimmied it open, certain the noise would attract attention.

  The passageway was narrow, cement-lined, and longer than he expected. At the end it turned right and climbed a short set of stairs. At the top another door opened into Lacatuchi’s office.

  The ceiling fixtures were off. A desk lamp and a standing floor lamp beside the sofa provided the only light. The enormous desk was a dark plain of polished wood.

  There had been no response to the noise he’d made. No rushing feet, no shouts. The abbey was silent. He closed the door carefully and walked around the room, stopping to take a handful of pistachios from the cloisonné dish on the coffee table. At the window he looked at the town across the river, cracking open the pistachios. He chewed absently, dropping the shells on the floor. His previous haste had deserted him, replaced by a terrible lethargy.

  It was already too late. The SUV had gotten lost. They were useless anyway. Besides, he was no longer certain of their mission: protect, abduct or destroy? They might prove to be in the way, or worse. For all he knew they had orders to shoot everyone.

  As for the religious people, Lacatuchi and the others, they certainly had Lisa and her friend by now, but where? He had no idea. They were simply gone.

  Then, he thought ruefully, there was Captain Hugo. He, too, could be on his way by now.

  He needed to do some triage, sort out his options.

  Do nothing.

  Get out.

  Find the girl, nab her, find out where the object was, learn the secret. If he did that, he would auction it off.

  All the options seemed increasingly unlikely.

  Finally he shook himself, popped the last pistachio into his mouth and strode purposefully to the main office door. He might as well be moving as doing nothing in here. Even if the girl was already dead maybe he could salvage something from this mess.

  He went into the hallway between the office and the abbey. The desk with its computer was deserted, the computer turned off. A large playing card from a modern reproduction of the famous fifteenth century Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck lay beside the keyboard. Something about the image on the card attracted his attention and he picked it up.

  It was a large card, about seven inches tall. One side was blank red. The other depicted a collapsing tower. There was lighting, fire and smoke all around it, and two figures falling.

  He felt a shiver of apprehension. The image foretold disaster, the release of madness and despair, the upsetting of the order of the world.

  He hoped it wasn’t prophetic.

  The small antechamber between the hallway and the abbey contained only the door to the elevator. He shrugged. What, at this point, did he have to lose? There was no one around. Perhaps he would discover something interesting. He pressed the call button.

  * * *

  Lacatuchi, halfway between the staircase and the light, saw the nun and her monk move away into the darkness near the north wall. Their enthusiasm for the Question troubled him.

  But he had not become the Prior General by being weak. He had maneuvered his way through the dark and twisted passages of the Order, an Order that was itself nearly invisible even to the knowing eye. It was small, well-organized, fiercely dedicated, and he had risen to run it. So despite his doubts and occasional hesitations, he was not weak.

  His predecessor had recruited Defago, who had in turn brought in the nun. They had served well until the death of Foix. He admitted that. They had discovered the identity of the Pythos, defeated his defenses. They had eliminated him.

  Just a few days ago it had seemed his triumph would culminate sixteen hundred years of history.

  Since they had killed Foix, though, they had become increasingly intractable, and now, after the afternoon at the Basilica, impossible to control.

  The Prior General knew torturing the man would gain them nothing and would only waste time, time they didn’t have. They must get the Founding Document safely stored away deep in the Vatican archives. There would be no resolution without it.

  Diplomacy. Emmer and her friend still had not seen Alain on the other side of the room, unconscious and chained to a wall. He would talk to them, make an exchange. Even if she were the Pythia, without the Founding Document she would lose legitimacy. The Struggle would be over.

  He came to a decision.

  “Release him,” he commanded.

  Defago turned. “What?”

  “You heard me. Release him.”

  The nun watched Defago consider this order. She watched him stroke his cheek with the pad of his thumb, tugging down at his eyelid.

  Finally the monk said, “No.”

  Lacatuchi controlle
d his astonishment at this insubordination with an effort. “Do as I say.”

  “I ask an explanation, Eminence.”

  The emphasis was so insolent Lacatuchi knew in that moment that if he had a weapon he would shoot the monk.

  But he had no weapon and so he walked evenly to the chair, removed the heretics’ fork from Steve’s neck and began undoing the restraining straps.

  The next events happened simultaneously in a series of strobe-lit flashes.

  Sister Teresa began toward the light at the same time Defago screamed, “What are you doing?” and lunged toward his superior. He knocked against the Judas Chair, toppling it. Three more steps and he had seized his superior’s neck with both hands.

  The nun backed up in order to detour around the fallen chair.

  Dupond stepped from the elevator, turned to his left and froze in place.

  Lisa lunged to the end of the chain and was yanked to a halt.

  The two SWAT members, weapons drawn, descended the last turn of the stair. The hanging light flared in their night vision gear and washed out most of the middle of the room. They stopped, momentarily disoriented.

  The Prior General toppled backward with Defago on top of him, screaming incoherently with rage.

  When Xavier tried to drag Defago off of his boss, Sister Teresa took aim and with perfect efficiency shot him in the leg. One arm flew up and hit the bulb overhead, sending chaotic shadows leaping. He fell with a scream, clutching his knee.

  One of the SWAT team, hearing the muffled shot, turned toward it and fired reflexively. His weapon was not equipped with a silencer and made a horrific bang that reverberated around the room. The bullet ricocheted off the paving and sent sparks flying toward her skirts. Teresa began batting at them with her gloved hand.

  Steve shook off the last of his restraints and raced to Lisa and began undoing the chain holding her to the post.

  Defago pressed his thumbs deep into the fat on either side of the Prior General’s windpipe. Strange gargling sounds came from the Rumanian’s throat. His eyes bulged. The monk lifted Lacatuchi’s head and pounded on the stone, over and over. Blood began seeping out in a spreading crimson stain.

  The nun turned toward Defago but Lisa, now free, had taken a step toward her.

  Steve hissed, “Don’t.” Before he could pull her back the SWAT team had a moment of arbitrary decision-making and seized him by the arms. “You better come with us,” one said. They dragged him away toward the circular stair.

  Sister Teresa’s prosthetic foot caught in a crack between paving stones and twisted. In fury she turned toward Lisa, but her veil caught on a spike in the question chair and pulled away. Her hand flew up to too late it. Her yellow-tinted shooting glasses flew to the floor and her gray-blond hair spread in half a dirty halo behind her head. She cupped her free hand over the gaping hole in the ghastly, puckered scar. Her eyes reflected an implacable hatred. She snarled something inarticulate. Her other hand held the pistol.

  With the next faltering step her prosthetic foot caught on the edge of a paving stone, disconnected, and clattered away. The blunt stump of her leg fell heavily onto the stone floor and she fell with a scream of pain. Almost immediately she began clawing at the slick floor with her free hand, raising the pistol with the other.

  What Lisa saw was an obscene distortion of a human being, half grub, half mammal, pulling itself painfully toward her over the uneven stone floor alternately lit by the swinging lamp and plunged into phantasmagoric shadow.

  This image abruptly faded and she saw a swollen sun of a dark and angry red squatting over a sheet of flat black water. With great difficulty she lifted her own foot and put it down. The next step was as difficult. Where was she going? Why was she making this terrific effort?

  Who was she?

  People around her, lines of people, men, women, small children, shuffled toward her, reaching with arms that were too long. Their faces were blank and unhappy, mouths open in silent screams or pressed tightly shut. A staccato rhythm of blood dinned in her ears, too fast, too fast, red like the sun. She turned but could not run. The people were breathing behind her now, long, rasping breaths. It was very hot. Sweat stung her eyes.

  She closed them. The red sun remained but the breathing of the crowd faded away. Somewhere a man groaned, a deep-pitched wordless sound, infinitely weary, infinitely despairing.

  The heat increased.

  The groan rose in her throat. She was the suffering man. Her name was William Emmer and he was looking at an infant girl curled in a crib, pink fingers, pink toes, eyes closed. She made nursing sounds that sounded like clicks.

  He/she was her father, who lived in a tower of light in a city of light. From the top of the tower he looked down on streets clogged with evening traffic. Heat wavered, smearing the lines. Across the broad twinkling grid points of light grew intolerably bright and winked out, leaving columns of dark smoke. A tide of sound rose, a great collective lamentation of grief and rage. The lights were explosions, swift endings. Their sounds dwindled under the tide of despair. She was empty, dead, a husk, but he could not turn away from the dying city.

  Cloud moved overhead, impossibly fast, twisting and devouring itself. Hailstones fell with a loud, continuous rattle.

  A woman walked toward him, her arms outstretched. Wind caught her flimsy garment and it fell away. Seeing her was a shock of the erotic. She walked past him, unseeing. A jagged fork of light struck the tower with a deafening crash. The floor tilted and he fell, turning over and over in air rushing upward, heated by the speed of his fall, by flames below, by fear and pain.

  He neared the ground and there, looking upward, mouth open, was the woman. She was Sister Teresa, known as Tisiphone, the Fury, avenger, punisher of murderers, herself a murderer. She stood over the body of Raimond Foix and pointed at him, at William Emmer, father of Elizabeth Sybilla, falling toward her. What she was pointing was a gun. She fired and Lisa knew she had to turn and step a little sideways.

  The bullet whined past her and struck the arch above the opening to the spiral stair, showering chips onto Steve and his captors.

  The nun still crawled toward Lisa. Foam had gathered at the corner of her mouth and her breath rasped like metal on stone. She stopped and arched her back and looked into Lisa’s eyes with her own pitiless black orbs, depthless and opaque.

  * * *

  Philippe Dupond, still under the spell of broken tower, the falling men, death behind his own eyes, blinked. Two men had seized Viginaire and were dragging him past. In the center of the room Defago was killing the Prior General, and the nun was raising her pistol toward the Emmer girl.

  In that moment he had to decide. Could he let the girl die and with her all his hopes? Lisa Emmer held the secret to everything, to what these people wanted, to what Hugo said he didn’t want but did, to what those two grim men in black were told to do, dragging Steve Viginaire toward the spiral stair. They would wind him up and away.

  She was the secret and he had to protect her, so he started forward, drawing his gun. At the last moment the nun looked at him and swiveled her Glock toward this new threat. “Stop,” she tried to say, but the word was a croak, clogged and strangled in her throat.

  Dupond kept coming.

  She fired and Dupond’s head snapped back, his feet stepped out from under him, and he fell heavily onto his back and lay still.

  Somewhere in the silence that followed a man did groan, a real man in pain, in despair, in grief.

  Brother Armand Defago let go of the Prior General’s neck, leaving dark purple bruises. The crimson stain still spread from under Lacatuchi’s battered head. The monk dipped his finger in it and drew a cross on the fat Rumanian’s forehead, a kind of blessing, a last rite. Then he sat back on his heels and let out his breath, rubbing his eyes wearily, leaving a set of red streaks across his face.

  The nun aimed her weapon at Lisa. Her finger tightened repeatedly on the trigger and she strained to pull it. Sweat started on her forehead and
ran in rivulets through the furrows and channels of scar tissue. She lifted the gun, lying half on her side. The barrel wavered, dipped and wobbled. She reached with her other hand and with both hands on the grip aimed carefully. Again she strained to shoot. Her body shook with fury.

  Lisa was gazing at the grotesque creature with an expression of almost transcendent compassion.

  * * *

  Ted and Marianne had been listening to the sounds of struggle, threats, and now gunshots. Wordlessly they decided in an exchange of looks that it was time, so Ted called the local gendarmerie and reported gunfire at the Abbey of St. Théophile.

  His call was forwarded to Captain Hugo, already headed in their direction west of Mantes-La-Jolie. Hugo urged Mathieu to go faster.

  The junior SWAT touched the communications bud in his ear. “Orders,” he said to the other. “We leave. Now.”

  “A total fuckup,” his superior muttered. He dropped Steve’s arm with a hurried apology and started up the circular stair. The first hesitated for a quick glance back at the room before following.

  Sister Teresa dragged herself, pulling with one hand, pushing with her good foot. The shattered stump of her amputation had left a zigzag red line like a trail of slime. She stopped before Lisa, standing quietly beside the toppled Judas Chair.

  The nun rolled onto her side and once more tried to fire, this time at point blank range.

  Brother Defago sat on the floor a few paces away, his legs splayed before him. He rolled his eyes toward the darkness clinging to the ceiling and worked his mouth a few times. When he began to speak Sister Teresa froze.

  He said, “You summoned me, oh Lord, and I did Your bidding. You tried me and I endured. I did not fail You.”