God's Lions - House of Acerbi

by John Lyman

  Sarah grabbed Fredrick’s shirt and pointed. Quickly, they submerged their bodies up to their necks in the frigid water. The man walked by and stopped for a moment before continuing on his way.

  “We’ve got to get out of this water,” Sarah said. Rising up, she saw that the chateau was right in front of them. “Do you think we can get inside, Fredrick?”

  “There’s a door down below that was once used for water deliveries to the kitchen. It’s probably locked, but we can try.” He was shaking like a leaf.

  The sound of a helicopter’s engines suddenly filled their ears just as a small blue helicopter swooped overhead.

  “It’s them!” Sarah shouted. She watched as it turned and began flying back toward them along the bank of the river. Sarah rose up further to look for the man with the gun, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “It’s now or never.” Climbing up the bank of the river, she waved her hands in the air above her head just as the chopper passed by directly overhead. A wave of excitement warmed her shivering body when she saw the pilot wave back.

  “Hold it right there!”

  Sarah spun around to see the man in the suit pointing a gun right at her as he spoke quietly into his radio headset.

  The chopper had spun around and was now hovering directly overhead as the man with the gun looked upward. He raised the gun and pointed it right at the pilot.

  Instantly, the air around him turned red as he fell to the ground. Sarah looked up and saw a large man leaning out the side door with a smoking Uzi machine gun in his hands. It was Alon. Her friends had sent the right people!

  “There are more of them moving through the woods in this direction,” Nava shouted. “We need to get those people out of that water ... now!”

  She spun the helicopter around and set it down hard on the bank of the river. Alon jumped out and pointed his gun at the woods. Without looking back, he shouted over his shoulder to Sarah and her friends. “Run!”

  Immediately, Sarah and Fredrick were up running, but Martha slipped and slid back into the water.

  Alon could see movement in the trees and began advancing on the woods. Behind him, Sarah and Fredrick had returned to the river to help a struggling Martha up the slippery bank. Seconds seemed like hours until finally, the three of them were sprinting toward the open door of the helicopter. Keeping his eyes locked on the woods, Alon began to back away, his gun pointed at the trees. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Sarah, guiding him as he backed his way toward the door.

  Looking over her shoulder, Nava watched their progress. Her fingers gripped the throttle, and as soon as they were through the doorway, she powered up and began lifting off. The helicopter rose a few feet in the air but seemed to stall before settling back to the ground.

  “What’s wrong?” Alon shouted.

  “Damn! We’re too heavy.” Nava slammed the turbines beyond their safe power threshold and urged the little chopper a few feet into the air. The helicopter’s engines were still struggling when the men in suits burst from the woods and began running toward them, firing their weapons.

  In one of those moments, when a pilot has but a few seconds to make a life or death decision, Nava remembered the river behind them. She knew the air over the water was cooler, making it slightly denser than the warmer air blanketing the ground.

  “Hang on!” she screamed. Shoving the stick forward, she pointed the chopper down and disappeared over the steep riverbank. The two men in suits exchanged puzzled glances and froze, waiting for the sound of a crash.

  Inside the cockpit, Nava was busy trying to bring the aircraft to a hover above the water without letting it descend into the river. She worked the controls and increased the power even further into the danger zone before finally managing to bring the tiny chopper under control. Tilting the aircraft forward, she let the nose of the chopper skim the surface of the river as the whirling blades clawed at the air in a struggle to fly. The chopper shuddered, then dipped once more before picking up speed, slowly climbing away from the water until they were racing downstream at treetop level, leaving the surprised men standing on the riverbank with their mouths hanging open. Thirty seconds later, the little chopper had risen to five hundred feet, and within minutes, the village of Chenonceau was nothing more than a dot on the horizon behind them as Nava backed off on the power and tried to keep her feet from shaking on the foot pedals.

  Alon reached in back and wrapped his big arms around Sarah. “Thanks for the help ... it’s good to see you again, Sarah. Are you hurt anywhere?”

  “No ... thank you ... thank you both for getting here so quickly.” Sarah’s teeth were chattering so violently she was having trouble speaking. “We ... we wouldn’t have lasted much longer. I hate to think what those men would have done with us if they had caught us.”

  “You’re safe now. Sorry we don’t have any blankets for you. We had to throw everything out to make the chopper lighter.”

  Martha placed her arms around Sarah and frowned. “Smart thinking. Another pound and we would have sunk like a rock.”

  “This is Martha,” Sarah said, laying her head on the woman’s shoulder ... and this is her husband, Fredrick. If it wasn’t for these two, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

  Alon studied the shivering couple sitting side by side next to Sarah. “That was a very brave thing you two did back there. Do both of you work for the Acerbi Corporation?”

  “They’re a bunch of Nazi’s.” Martha practically spit the words out. “My husband and I have worked at the chateau for almost two years now, and things there are definitely not what they seem. Those people are up to no good.”

  “What do you mean ... no good?”

  “Let’s just say it’s not a place you would want to spend your vacation.” Martha reached into her blouse and pulled out a plastic bag containing a thin, white folder. “And I have some papers here that will prove everything I’m about to tell you.”

  * *

  Above the small blue chopper, an unmarked Blackhawk helicopter remained out of sight as it followed behind at a distance.

  Inside the spacious cockpit, the co-pilot reached above his head and flicked a switch before looking over at the pilot. “Should we take them out now, sir?”

  “No,” the pilot responded in a tone that was measured and calm. “Our orders are only to follow them and see where they go ... nothing else. Mr. Acerbi wants to know where they land.”

  CHAPTER 35

  It was late afternoon when the small blue chopper emerged from the clouds and descended over the castle for a landing at the base of the hill. All through the day, several members of the Bible Code Team had been staring up at a large screen on the wall in the castle’s underground communications center, where they had been watching events unfold in real time from a tiny, forward-looking camera mounted on Nava’s helmet.

  The room had broken into applause after Nava had pulled off one of the greatest feats of flying any of them had ever witnessed. After the rescue, she had decided to maintain radio silence until they were five minutes out from the castle. Everyone in the communications room could hear the concern in her voice when she told them her passengers were showing signs of hypothermia and that the chopper was running dangerously low on fuel.

  Grabbing some warm blankets and a thermos full of hot coffee, the team rushed from the castle and down to the landing pad, where they all waited anxiously until the chopper was safely on the ground and the engines had whined to a stop. Sarah was the first to step out as Ariella ran to her and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

  “You feel cold, honey.”

  “I’ll be ok. It’s good to see you, Ariella!”

  John and Moshe threw blankets over the other two passengers, while Evita began shoving cups of steaming hot coffee into their shaking hands.

  “We have a doctor here on the compound,” Lev said to the shivering trio. “He’s waiting for you up at the castle.”

  Sarah waved him off. “I think we
just need to warm up a little. I’ve had enough of doctors for a while.”

  “How did they treat you back at the chateau?”

  “Great ... until I climbed out a window and ran away.”

  “Yeah, that really seemed to piss them off for some reason,” Alon said, climbing from the chopper with a machine gun in his hands. He pointed to Martha and Fredrick. “These are the brave people who helped her escape. They have something interesting they want to show you.”

  “Ya ... interesting.” It was all Martha could mutter in her frozen state.

  “Let’s get everyone into some warm clothes first,” Lev said. “We’ll talk later.”

  With the sun now beginning to drift down behind the surrounding hills to the west, they began making made their way up the winding path in a diffuse light reflected off the white limestone walls of the castle. It was a peaceful end to a day that had been fraught with doubt and fear, but for now Sarah and her rescuers were basking in the afterglow of a mission that had seemingly gone off without a hitch.

  Passing through the castle’s main entrance, Alon could hear the rattle of a helicopter in the distance. Probably just a French military chopper ... scouting the area, he thought to himself. Looking back out at the sunset, he slowly closed the door behind him.

  * *

  An hour later, after Ephraim had finally fixed the plumbing, the new arrivals had taken hot showers and changed into dry clothes just as the smell of cooking infused with garlic and white wine began to drift up through the castle. It didn’t take long for the three Spanish scientists to migrate down to the large, candle-lit dining hall, where the rest of the team had already taken seats at a long wooden table.

  With an unknown virus ravaging the world outside the castle’s doors, the cooks had been working all afternoon preparing a French feast in an effort to lessen the stress on the team of weary scientists. With the first course of the evening, Hadar and her assistants flowed into the dining hall with trays full of steaming bowls of Bouillabaisse, the famous seafood dish that had originated in Marseille. Once a seafood stew enjoyed only by working-class fisherman who had prepared it from their catch-of-the-day leftovers, this culinary delight had risen over time to the top of the list of luxurious French cuisine. On this evening, the cooks had started with a base of tomatoes, saffron, garlic, and olive oil. To that, they added the usual assortment of seafood, including monkfish, mullet, snapper, scorpion fish, conger eel, and mussels. Many of the customers who dined at Hadar’s four-star restaurant in Tel Aviv had been known to shed tears when they tasted her version of the dish.

  Since Europeans always served salad after the main course to cleanse the palate, the Bouillabaisse was followed by Salade Nicoise, a simple and traditional southern French salad consisting of lettuce, green beans, tomatoes, black olives, eggs, and anchovies.

  Picking at her food, Martha cast suspicious glances around the table. After emerging from the oppressing environment of constant surveillance at Acerbi’s chateau, where every move she and her co-workers made had been observed by security men watching from hidden cameras, her trust level was at an all-time low. Looking at her husband, she saw that he was oblivious to everything around him as he devoured his second helping of Bouillabaisse. No help there. She thought for a moment. Could these people be trusted? Clearing her throat, she laid her spoon on the table and made eye contact with Sarah, who in turn nodded in Leo’s direction.

  Her decision made, Martha reached inside her blouse and produced a thin white folder before shoving it across the table to Leo.

  “What’s this, Martha?”

  “It’s from the chateau, Cardinal. Most of what’s in there is just scientific stuff that I don’t understand, but there is enough spelled out in plain English for me to see that those people are up to no good. I mean, just take a look at the title on the cover page.”

  After fumbling for his glasses, Leo reached for the papers. Right away he saw the title centered on the cover page: Plan #322 for the genetically engineered viral extermination of a species.

  The cardinal breathed in deeply before lifting his wine glass and taking a long sip. “Where exactly did you get this, Martha?”

  “It came down the chute.”

  “Excuse me ... the what?”

  “The laundry chute ... the one that comes from the second floor living quarters at the chateau. It was mixed up in a pile of sheets. The only thing I can figure out is that one of the upstairs maids was changing the linen and didn’t see this little paper folder tucked in among the rumpled bed sheets. Whoever was staying in that room the night before was probably lying in bed when they were reading. My guess is they just left it lying there the next morning. The maid obviously didn’t see it when she gathered up the sheets and sent them down the chute. I discovered it when I was sorting through a pile of dirty laundry as I always do before I put it into the machine.”

  Leo began thumbing through the pages as Javier and Evita leaned over in an effort to read along with him.

  “What first grabbed your attention?” Leo asked without looking up.

  “The word extermination jumped out at me right away. I’m German, Cardinal Leo. I was born there, but I’m also a Jew. Many of my family members were exterminated during the Holocaust. So you see, that word holds a special meaning for me.”

  Martha was struck by the way the Cardinal’s green eyes blazed at the mention of the Holocaust.

  “Yes, of course,” Leo said softly. “I can see how that word would tend to stand out.”

  “After I read the cover page, I waited until no one was looking and stuffed the papers down my shirt. I had to wait until I got home that night to read the rest of it.”

  “When did all this occur?”

  “It was right around the time when Sarah showed up ... about a week ago. There had been a lot of activity around the chateau ... a lot more than usual.”

  Leo continued to scan through the pages while Martha talked. He paused to push his glasses back up on his head and looked directly at the couple. The possibility that these two still worked for Acerbi was driving him to probe deeper. “Have you two shown this to anyone else?”

  Martha laughed. “Are you crazy? If we had, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now. We’ve been listening to the news about the virus just like everyone else. The Acerbi Corporation owns a big drug company, so I just thought they were doing some kind of research on it. I was beginning to think that some of the research was going on right there at the chateau, because there’s a lab on the third floor that’s off limits to the regular staff. There was also a sudden increase in people coming and going from that area of the chateau, and we saw a lot of new faces arriving at all hours of the day and night in vehicles that had the words Acerbi Pharmaceutical painted on the doors. They were always talking about the pathogen, or the virus. They didn’t pay any attention to us. You know how it is—servants always seem to be like pieces of furniture, we’re invisible, and that’s a good thing. The kitchen staff told us they were serving twice the normal number of meals in the dining room.”

  “What made you suspicious?”

  “When I read through that folder, it was obvious they were describing how to spread a virus, not stop one. You might think I’m crazy for saying this, Cardinal, but when I read all that stuff it didn’t surprise me at all.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean those men guarding the chateau reminded me of a bunch of Nazi’s. You could see the hate in their eyes. They were some very tough and cold men. I never once saw any of them smile. The only time they talked to us was when they needed something. Other than that, they just patrolled the grounds with their dogs and their guns ... watching everyone and everything. Sometimes it felt like we were working in a prison instead of a home. Everyone there was extremely suspicious of strangers.”

  Leo handed the folder to Evita as he continued to probe Martha for more information. “What about Acerbi himself?”

  “Oh, you mean
Rene? I never trusted him. None of the staff liked him. I know I didn’t. He’s a hard man to figure out. I mean ... he’s moody. One minute he would be walking around, smiling and saying ‘Hello’ to everyone, then suddenly his mood would change for no apparent reason. He would be yelling at people ... threatening them. I always had a bad feeling when he was around.”

  Leo heard Evita gasp and turned to see her staring back at him, her eyes filled with fear.

  “I think we just found our smoking gun, Cardinal.”

  Leo took the folder and looked down at the page Evita had just been reading.

  The Executive Committee

  Executive Order #322 - Eyes Only Communication – Incinerate after reading

  Phase one of our plan to disseminate the genetically engineered pathogen has been a spectacular success. Our scientists have created a fertile breeding ground for an otherwise harmless virus by altering the DNA of unsuspecting populations through the use of genetically engineered wheat distributed in the form of cereal and free samples of baked goods.

  Once a target population has ingested food made with our genetically altered wheat, a silent chain-reaction occurs within the DNA makeup of their cells, thus making them susceptible to the effects of the airborne form of the virus. In other words, they have no immunity to this new, artificially engineered pathogen and will die a quick and merciful death within hours of exposure. Those who have not eaten the modified wheat will suffer no ill effects whatsoever, and as a precaution against the possibility of mutation, the pathogen has also been engineered to die within 48 hours of being introduced into the atmosphere.

  In a tribute to our scientific team, this ability to control the spread of the virus has been the true genius of our plan. By managing the dissemination of our genetically altered wheat products, along with the failsafe mechanism within the virus itself, we now have a means of containing the pathogen. As predicted, this random pattern of inexplicable life and death will breed fear and panic around the world, thus giving us the upper hand over the world’s governments as we enter phase two of our plan.