by Rick Jones
“These Luminaries. Did they do this to you?”
“Do what?”
Kimball was becoming taxed by this line of questioning that brought more riddles instead of answers. “Phinehas, this Lost Cathedral, is that where the rest of the Knights are? Are they with the cardinals?”
“No. They’re close, though. The cardinals sit alone to worship the symbol at the altar.”
“The image of Christ?”
Phinehas nodded. “No. The symbol.”
“What symbol are you talking about?”
Phinehas looked at the stainless-steel tabletop. With the tip of his forefinger he began to draw an image, his finger smearing a design along the top. He drew lines at right angles, crossed them. When he was finished he eased back into his chair.
Kimball leaned forward, as did Leviticus, both recognizing the figure he had drawn along the surface.
It was the symbol of a swastika.
“I’m tired now,” Phinehas said. “I want to go back to my cell.” When he spoke he sounded as if he was heavily medicated, his words a slow drawl.
“Phinehas,” Kimball disregarded his statement. “Why did you try to kill Bonasero?”
Phinehas gave him a questioning look. “Who?”
“You heard me!”
“Heard you? We didn’t come here to kill anybody by the name of Bonasero,” he said.
Now it was Kimball’s turn to look inquisitively at him.
Then Phinehas looked at the Vatican Knights and said: “We came here to kill Franz Kleimer-Schmidt. One rule, one law, one religion.”
Neither Kimball nor Leviticus knew what he was talking about.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vatican City
Headquarters of the Servizio Informazioni del Vaticano, the SIV
The Servizio Informazioni del Vaticano is the Vatican’s intelligence agency that was created to counter early 19th century efforts to subvert the power of the Vatican. To counter the insurgency the Church saw the need to create an “unofficial” security agency to solve problems by conceiving a system of confidential communication and information gathering. And with the growing threat of extremist groups, the SIV had developed into a major organization that rivaled the Mossad and the CIA.
Working as an extension of the Holy See and under the guidance of the Jesuit Order, the SIV headquarters is located inside the lower levels of the Governato-ratspalast. Internal security needed to reach these chambers is state-of-the-art with voice print, retinal scans, and a card swipe with the card containing a special chip that could not be duplicated.
The walls to the computer chamber were made of three-inch Plexiglas, which gave full view of the massive screens along the far wall with each screen showing global hotspots around the world. The images were clean, crisp and came directly from the Geospatial Information System. The floor level was tiered like a cinema, with the rear row of computer stations higher than the row before it, giving the Jesuit operators full view without the obstruction of the back of someone else’s head. Lights winked intermittently. Computer screens appeared to show diagrams that were nearly holographic. And the linked images on the wall monitors had the ability of zooming in from lower-level space to within a few hundred feet above the surface of the Earth, with a few taps on the controller’s keyboard.
Kimball Hayden was standing on the lower tier looking up at the central screen alongside the dual directors of the SIV, Fathers Auciello and Essex. They were researching the disappearance of Shepherd One when it disappeared three years ago, the technology obviously having been antiquated since the pixels were impossible to sharpen. What was on the screen at the moment were the satellite photos that had been appropriated from a Brazilian orbital satellite three years earlier, showing Shepherd One in its fatal flight.
“What you see here,” Father Auciello stated without accent, “is Shepherd One suddenly banking to the west and taking them off course. Then the plane appears to descend at a sharp degree of at least forty-five degrees.” He clicked on the second image, the photo a poor quality still of the plane in a different location from the first image. “Here we have Shepherd One heading directly west, still in a decline.” Then he said: “Going.” He clicked a third photo of Shepherd One, which appeared smaller. “Going.” Then he clicked on the fourth image. “Gone.” The screen was clear with the exception of jungle canopy. Shepherd One had simply vanished. “There’s no smoke. No fire. No debris field. It’s just . . . gone.”
“Yeah. Now we know why,” said Kimball. “It never crashed.”
“No,” said Father Essex, the man speaking with a British accent. “It most certainly did not.”
“Then were did it go? The landscape is absolutely thick with tropical rain forest,” said Kimball. “There’s nothing for miles from the point of their disappearance—no place to land.”
“That’s true,” returned Auciello. “Unless the pilot shut off the transponder and flew below radar, which is what most likely happened.”
Kimball shook his head. “The pilots that helm Shepherd One are all from the Aeronautica Milatare. All pilots from the Milatare are principled.”
“Unless someone got to one. Or both,” said Essex. “Look at Phinehas and Mordecai. They were Vatican Knights with deep-rooted principles. Yet they attempted to assassinate Bonasero with Mordecai committing suicide in an effort to do so, a mortal sin in the eyes of God.”
Kimball stepped closer to the screen and narrowed his eyes. All he could see was jungle. “You would think the Vatican Knights onboard would have intervened.”
“The cockpit door is armor-plated,” Auciello told Kimball. “Maybe they were sedated beforehand. There could be dozens of reasons why they didn’t respond. I doubt Phinehas even remembers since his mind’s been washed. In fact, I’m surprised he still remembers you.”
Kimball folded his arms across his chest and studied the screen. “So if they went under radar with the transponder off, the pilot could have flown at a low level for hundreds of miles without being detected.”
“That’s right.”
“Which means they could have landed anywhere in Brazil.”
“We looked for a hundred miles in every direction from the point of their disappearance for a debris field and for smoke,” said Father Essex. “We found nothing. The only thing that occurred to us at the time was that Shepherd One went down.”
“That’s what they wanted us to believe all along,” said Kimball.
“They?” asked Father Auciello.
“Phinehas keeps talking about the Luminaries. A Triad of Fallen Angels. And something about a lost cathedral. And everyone onboard, at least in Phinehas’s mind, is still there.” He looked at Fathers Essex and Auciello. “You have any idea what he’s talking about?”
“Not about the Luminaries or Fallen Angels,” Essex spoke out for both.
“But there are temples in the Brazilian jungle referred to as lost cathedrals, mostly in the northwest,” Auciello interjected. “But there are many sites with most of them having been reclaimed by the jungle. You’d never find them by satellite.”
Kimball nodded. “Phinehas also said that the cardinals paid homage on a daily basis to the symbol inside the cathedral, which tells me they’re still alive. He also says that the remaining Vatican Knights are there as well, but close by.”
“And the Knights could be a future threat to Bonasero, should he survive,” Auciello said evenly.
“That’s right.” Kimball recalled as much as he could with his session with Phinehas, bringing everything up that was pertinent, anything that could provide a lead no matter how miniscule.
“When I spoke to Phinehas, he drew a pattern on the tabletop. He said it was the symbol they all worshipped.”
“It could have been an ancient Indian codex,” said Father Essex. “Temple walls are filled with them. Images of ancient and pagan gods.”
“Not this symbol,” said Kimball. “He drew a swastika.”
“A swastika?” Esse
x sounded genuinely surprised.
“He said the cardinals worshipped the symbol every day inside this lost cathedral.”
Auciello, a Harvard graduate, recalled history. “When World War Two ended,” he began, “Nazi officers escaped to South America with most landing in countries like Argentina, who at the time were sympathetic to the Nazi cause, and especially in Brazil, where Mengele ended up. But they stayed in central areas. The lost cathedrals in the northwest are far from any civilized areas other than remote villages. In fact, they’re probably closer to the borders of Peru and Columbia.”
“So we have a place to start with. How long can these borders be?” Kimball asked.
“Well, Peru alone is about three thousand kilometers. Columbia, maybe another sixteen hundred. So it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, with the haystack as large as Manhattan.”
Kimball sighed and was becoming edgy. He knew he needed more information from Phinehas. But Phinehas was completely lost within himself, the man speaking more in terms of riddles than facts. When he told this to Father Auciello, Auciello informed him that every riddle possessed a true answer. Kimball just needed to listen, then use deductive reasoning to discover the hidden facts.
But Kimball didn’t want to think too hard for the answers, was never one for riddles or cryptic puzzles. He was a straight-liner who wanted direct answers at the snap of the finger.
“You need to be patient with Phinehas,” Auciello told Kimball. “The man has been stripped of all conscience and morality.”
“We haven’t got much time,” Kimball returned. “There are four Vatican Knights out there who may be on the move.”
“Kimball,” Father Auciello hesitated, searching for the right words. “All I’m saying is to be careful. Phinehas is not the same man. And please remember your past when you worked as a government assassin. You said yourself that you worked with the cold fortitude of a machine, having been stripped of your humanity and your conscience. You were in a dark place. Now Phinehas sits in the same dark area as you once did. He’s lost, Kimball. Remember that. He remembers you. Use that to your advantage. Communicate with him. Help him be the man he once was.”
Kimball stared at him. Auciello was right, he considered. But Kimball was a man without patience, a virtue that was never bestowed upon him or acquired over time.
Whether he would be kind and just, or prove to be abusive enough to pound the information out of Phinehas, Kimball was going to get his answers one way or the other.
Without saying another word, the Vatican Knight left the chamber.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Lost Cathedral
When the aged man swung his legs off the bed, his right thigh was throbbing. At the age of sixteen he had taken a bullet to the leg, the round scoring the bone which didn’t heal properly. At first he didn’t feel the discomfort, a child of sixteen always resilient and capable of bouncing back from pain. But when he hit his mid-seventies the aching grew to such a point that it hobbled him.
When he lifted the hem of his cowl he noted the ugly star-like configuration of the wound. It had healed over looking like melted wax, the scar tissue much lighter than the unblemished tissue surrounding it. After lowering his garment the old man stood, maintained his balance, and slowly walked to the oval-shaped mirror on the dresser. The glass was cracked, a fissure dividing the glass which gave his image a distorted reflection. He was bald with a badly liver-spotted pate. His eyes were gray, the once deep blue having faded and losing its luster. And his skin had somewhat of a Shar-Pei appearance with numerous folds.
On the dresser was a wound-up clock. In less than ten minutes he had a sermon to perform, something he did religiously on a daily basis with the topic always routine and the words spoken verbatim—always one rule, one law, one religion.
After gathering a leather pouch roughly the size of a pillow, the old man grabbed a staff and made his way down the corridors that were lit by stone vats filled with oils. With pain in his leg he shuffled toward the cathedral. And with the aid of his staff it sounded like a third footfall: chuff, chuff, thunk . . . chuff, chuff, thunk . . . chuff, chuff, thunk.
For over sixty years he had called the lost cathedral his home, since the day Germany had fallen to Allied Forces and the Nazi’s were forced to flee. People like Josef Mengele, Adolf Eichmann, Martin Bormann and many others who took refuge in South America kept the dream of the Reich alive, resuscitating the belief that the regime could once again rise and conquer.
It was a dream more than sixty years in the making.
And the old man was in the twilight of his life.
In truth, they were no closer to resurrecting the Reich since the day Hitler put an end to his life.
Chuff, chuff, thunk . . . chuff, chuff, thunk . . . chuff, chuff, thunk.
At the end of the subterranean corridor, an arched-shaped doorway led to a vast chamber capped by a large dome that was veined by creeping vines. Holes bored into the dome’s top allowed for natural lighting that filtered down in shafts. At one end stood an elevated altar, an ancient table that bore the ornate carvings of pagan gods and demons who were at war with one another. And before the altar stood rows of stone pews, the benches nearly as ancient. Scattered about the pews sat the fourteen cardinals in full dress, waiting as they always did day after day for the past three years.
The old man, after bowing his head and greeting his audience in German, took to the stage behind the altar, set the staff aside, placed the leather bag on the altar’s top, opened it, and withdrew a Nazi flag which he draped around his shoulders like a shawl. In this case, he used it as a priestly robe.
Within minutes he was joined by the other two Luminaries who took their rightful places on the stone thrones that flanked the altar. Moments thereafter the supporters, the league of Fallen Angels, flocked to the cathedral wearing hooded cowls. Hands were hidden beneath sleeves, faces were obscured by the length of the overlapping hoods, and the hems of their robes trailed along the floor behind them.
The room was filled to capacity. The pews were uncomfortable. And many more stood in the aisles and against the walls. The followers were many. The rules were simple. And the faction was growing not only in the ancient cathedral, but globally.
Promoting ideas, prejudices, weaknesses—the ability to recruit and transform minds to believe in certain causes and in certain religions without tolerance—was the old man’s gift. He had watched Hitler, had revered him and learned his mannerisms, his pitch of voice, and he mimicked the man and delivered hype that was actually dark hope. Minds would follow, people would sacrifice themselves without fear of consequence, the cause of one rule, one law, and one religion was attainable.
The old man wore the flag like a robe as he labored across the altar’s stage to exhibit it. In reverence, the League of Fallen Angels bowed their heads in homage, prayed, their chants more Gregorian in sound than a comingling of spoken words.
When the old man returned to the altar, and when he had everyone’s undivided attention, he began the sermon in German, becoming animated with fist pumps and loud speech, hitting the high notes on verbs with enthusiasm. The League of Fallen Angels listened, as they did since the day they enlisted to follow.
The cardinals sat idle, as they did for the past three years.
And the two Luminaries nodded, as if in full agreement to the words that had never changed since they had banded together more than sixty years ago when the old man, once a boy, first took to the altar.
They listened.
They all listened.
As the old man continued to warp youthful minds.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gendarmerie Headquarters
Vatican City
This time when Kimball met with Phinehas they were alone inside the chamber. Phinehas, like before, was secured by chain to the stainless-steel table.
“I told you everything you wanted to know,” said Phinehas.
“You told me Jack.” Kimball
leaned forward and placed the points of his elbows on the table, then tented his hands. “How did you get here?”
Phinehas started to raise his eyes toward the ceiling. When he did Kimball lashed out and slapped the man’s hand, the action bringing Phinehas back to the present. “How did you get here?” Kimball repeated.
Phinehas cocked his head questioningly. “Airport,” he said.
“What airport?”
“In Peru.”
“The name?”
Phinehas nodded. “The Padre Aldamiz International Airport,” he said.
“Very good, Phinehas. Stay with me.” Kimball edged back into his seat. “When did you and Mordecai board?”
“Three days ago.”
“I assume under fictitious names?”
“Of course.”
“Why there?”
“It’s close.”
“To what?”
“The cathedral.”
Kimball hesitated, his mind drawing additional questions. “The cathedral where these Luminaries reside?”
Phinehas stared at him with a hard edge. Then: “You’ll never find them, Kimball. Do you have any idea how thick that jungle is? How dense?”
“Phinehas, you’ve been washed. You came here to kill a good man.”
“A good man? Franz Kleimer-Schmidt is a coward. An enemy to the cause.”
“There is no Franz Kleimer-Schmidt. Whatever cause you’re supporting has been implanted in your mind to destroy a threat that is not your own. Don’t you see that? You’ve been programmed to respond to something that’s against your nature to do so.”
“Why?”
“Why what? Why were you washed?”
“No. Why get me to destroy a threat that’s not my own?”
Kimball clenched his teeth, causing the muscles in the back of his jaw to work. He felt like he was talking to a kid: Why? Why? Why?
“Because you would never knowingly kill Bonasero. So they stripped him from your mind and imbedded the image of someone else to achieve the means. You had the skills to pull it off. I just need to know who did this to you. I need to know if the other four Knights are alive. And if so, are they in play?”