Reformation

by Henrikson, Mark

  Another lackluster feature of the pyramid was an intrusive trail of steep stone steps that cut a path straight up the middle of the sloped side. With tall evergreen trees covering the rest of the slope except for the middle strip, it almost looked like the pyramid was having a bad hair day where the barber lost control of his clippers and ran the tool down the middle resulting in a reverse Mohawk.

  Along the drive toward the pyramid they passed a long, narrow structure with a curved roof that looked almost like the wing of a giant airplane.

  “That covers the burial pits where the Terracotta Army is being unearthed,” Chin narrated as if he were a tour guide. “If time permits, I think you would enjoy a tour of the facility.”

  “You think,” Alex repeated in disbelief. “Of course we want to see them.”

  “In due time,” Chin responded with his tone now turning serious once more. They drove past the tourist visitor center which was closed for the night. They roared right past a set of barriers and drove across the surrounding gardens until coming to a stop along the far right-hand side of the shriveled earthen pyramid where a large tent with covered sides stood.

  When everyone was out of the vehicle, Chin pointed toward the burial mound. “Recorded history through the writings of Sima Qian tells us that automatic crossbows and falling stones guard the burial chamber which is supposed to contain treasures and an ocean of mercury.”

  “I have my doubts about the former, but the limited testing we have done makes us think the latter may be accurate,” Chin went on. “There are high levels of mercury in the surrounding soil, and a magnetic scan of the site revealed that a large number of coins are lying in the unopened tomb.”

  “If you know all of this already, then why do you need the two of us?” Professor Russell asked as he looked on while the six wooden crates were offloaded from the truck.

  Chin once again pointed to the towering mound to their left, “As you can plainly see, the pyramid is quite large. There is plenty of room for other chambers inside, and if the technology exists to accurately map the voluminous interior, why not employ it?”

  Accepting the logic, Professor Russell walked back to the wooden crates to oversee their opening. Three already had the lids removed, and the familiar sight of his tripod mounted ground receptors greeted him. Two more crates were pried open to reveal the helicopter mounted emitter disassembled into two halves.

  He looked expectantly at the last crate as the workers employed their crowbars. To Brian’s surprise, the lid came loose with almost no effort from the workers. He looked over the wooden edge inside to make sure nothing happened to the sensitive equipment during transport. To his great relief, the fourth ground emitter inside looked to be in perfect working order.

  Professor Russell looked back at Chin and Alex standing next to each other. “Let’s get to work. I need the ground receptors positioned at the cardinal points of the compass around the base of the pyramid and a helicopter to mount the emitter onto. Alex, can you set up the computers inside the tent while that’s all happening?”

  **********

  As he hugged the undercarriage of the transport truck with his belt looped around the small of his back and anchored to the truck’s frame, Frank counted his blessings. He had the foresight to get out of the crate while on the road to the pyramid. Climbing out the back and underneath the truck while it drove down the road at fifty miles per hour had been tenuous, but in the end, well worth the risk.

  Not only did he avoid early detection, but he also was privy to an informative conversation between the archeologists and their handler named Chin – like that was his real name. Nothing of their experience in Egypt was mentioned which was encouraging. The other piece of good news was that Brian and Alex were working under the impression that this was a genuine archeological research project rather than working with the Chinese out of spite to their own nation.

  They were being manipulated by Chin, of course, but they could not possibly know that. Short of stealing classified NSA papers, they had no way of knowing the Chinese Ministry of State Security had also detected strong radiation readings during their testing.

  When they first read the reports, Mark and Frank gave it a secondary level of importance. The radiation frequency was close, but not an exact match to frequency Alpha so it was deemed a coincidence. Now seeing the lengths the Chinese were willing to go in order to investigate those readings made Frank reassess the level of importance.

  Frank patiently waited for everyone to go about their work before he let himself down and slunk his way into the background scenery to keep a covert eye on things, and perhaps extricate Professor Russell and Alex from the extremely dangerous situation they now found themselves in. He would have liked nothing better than to call Mark and report in, but he knew all too well the signal would be a dead giveaway of his presence to the Chinese. Instead, he remained incommunicado until something more profound occurred or was revealed.

  Chapter 47: Reading the Man

  From the moment Mark sat back down on the couch across from Hastelloy, his line of vision never wavered. He bore down on the man with his scrutinizing stare to evaluate anything and everything the man’s body language unknowingly revealed. Tragically, it wasn’t much.

  Hastelloy had no difficulty maintaining eye contact while reciting his story. As a result, that usually reliable indicator of a subject telling the truth or not was unrevealing. The fact that Hastelloy carried on his story so well while a man aimed a gun and an intense stare his direction was actually quite impressive. It took a level of focus and discipline that Mark rarely encountered.

  About the only read Mark got from Hastelloy was when the man paused in his storytelling. Mark watched his eyes very closely to see where they moved during those brief breaks in conversation. Typically, the right side of the brain housed the ability to recall memory while the left side served the more creative functions of the mind to generate fictional tales. Hastelloy’s eyes always glanced up and to the right, toward his memory recall. The man was either reciting a story he memorized before, or he was telling the truth. In either case, he was not making the story up on the fly or else his eyes would have moved left.

  Mark’s instinct was to take control of the room, dictate the conversation and get answers from Hastelloy. Instead, he forced himself to sit there quietly while Hastelloy rambled on about his supposed exploits back in the Middle Ages. There was likely a lot of truth in the story considering Mark’s own personal experience with their Nexus device. It was entirely possible Hastelloy and his crew were on earth four thousand years ago to place the gravity manipulation equipment inside the Egyptian pyramid while it was under construction. Was it really so far-fetched that they also tinkered with things only five hundred years ago?

  The specific circumstance of the story being told was not particularly important to Mark. He was far more interested in the behaviors shown toward the situations described. Mark found it encouraging that Hastelloy was clearly distraught about the carnage the black plague unleashed upon the world. Then again, Hastelloy bragged about sabotaging levees that drowned potentially millions of Chinese farmers. In the next breath he boasted about poisoning revolutionary leaders to unite their forces under one leader. Next his subordinate engineered a weapon that leveled the walls of Constantinople, unleashing three days of rape, murder, and theft upon that wealthy city. The man had a distinctly ruthless side to him which made the power he held over the entire planet with his gravity weapon absolutely terrifying to Mark.

  For the first time in over an hour, Mark looked away from Hastelloy toward his older brother. Jeff just sat in his chair, legs crossed with a note pad in his lap as if this were just another therapy session. Mark knew he had to tread lightly. Jeff did not know the backstory going on here. He knew nothing about the radiation frequencies, or the deep space communications probe tampered with and launched last week, or the gravity weapon. To Jeff, this was just another day at the office with the added shock of his brot
her barging in holding a gun.

  Brotherly love and trust went a long way, but if anything, Mark was sitting on the wrong side of things right now. The visible evidence to this fact was Jeff and Hastelloy seated near each other while Mark sat opposite the coffee table, alone on the couch. Jeff clearly had a strong, trusting rapport with Hastelloy, while the trust he bore his little brother was now shaken by Mark’s shockingly aggressive behavior.

  Mark may have held the gun, but Hastelloy had masterfully manipulated the circumstance to the extent that he ultimately controlled the situation. A sideways glance from Jeff sent Mark’s eyes back to Hastelloy as the man continued on with his story about humanity’s past. In the back of his mind, Mark mulled over his options to turn things with his brother back around to his favor.

  Chapter 48: Diet of Worms

  Tonwen found himself seated at the center of a long rectangular table. Joining him at this table facing the main gathering hall were six bishops, three sitting on either side. The cavernous hall was filled wall to wall with several hundred onlookers on the main floor and surrounding balcony. The clergy elite sat wearing all the regalia of their position and contrasted against Tonwen’s plain brown monastic robe.

  The clear mismatch of social and political standing would cause most men to shrink from their responsibility, but this was Tonwen’s moment. Once again he had the privilege to be an advocate for the faith his friend Jesus gave his life for all those years ago in Jerusalem.

  Despite his lower standing, Tonwen was designated by Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach to lead the heresy case against Tomal. Tonwen expected the Archbishop himself to lead the proceedings, but the man’s paranoia would not allow him to leave the safety of his fortress in Salzburg and travel to the tiny town of Worms resting idly along the shores of the Rhine River. So it fell to Tonwen.

  Typically the assembly of estates still considered part of the Holy Roman Empire was not well attended, but this year was another matter. This year the Diet drew great interest as the technically secular meeting now served as a de facto trial of Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses against the church practice of selling indulgences. Both supporters and detractors traveled from all over the land to witness the outcome.

  As Tonwen told Archbishop Leonhard would be the case, once granted safe conduct to and from a neutral location, Tomal came out of hiding and agreed to stand under examination of his challenge to papal authority.

  Tonwen banged the heavy gavel in his hand three times to render all side conversations in the large chamber silent. “Bring in the accused.”

  The words were rewarded by the heavy chamber door swinging open allowing Tomal and two armed guards escorting him to enter. The brisk cadence of footfalls echoed around the silent room until Tomal finally took his seat in the middle of the chamber at a small table facing Tonwen and the six bishops.

  The two former crewmates of the Lazarus exchanged fiery glares that electrified the air between them. Both men were determined to stand tall and argue the righteousness of their cause to the bitter end. Tonwen was determined to win the staring contest, but was pulled away by his duties as lead inquisitor before either man proved the victor.

  “Martin Luther,” Tonwen began. “You have been summoned before this assembly to defend your writings entitled The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences against examination for heresy.”

  Tonwen slid back his chair, causing a teeth wiggling screech, and rose to his feet. He deliberately paced around to the front of the judiciary table, picked up a thin leather bound book and dropped it with a clap onto the small table in front of Tomal. “Is this book an accurate portrayal of your writing?”

  Tomal took a few minutes to calmly thumb through the pages and eventually placed the book back down on the table and continued looking Tonwen dead in the eyes. “Yes it is.”

  “Do you stand by the contents?” Tonwen insisted.

  “I am the author, but I require time to reexamine the work in order to answer your question,” Tomal deflected.

  Tonwen snatched the book up in a blur and shook it profusely in Tomal’s face. “Nonsense. You admittedly authored the words months ago. In fact, you held confidence enough in their content to publish and distribute them to all of Europe. One does not write such inflammatory nonsense unless you are either possessed by the devil, touched by lunacy, or stand behind your allegations with certainty. Which is the case, Martin Luther?”

  Tomal casually reached underneath his plain black robe to produce a copy of the Holy Bible. He placed it on the table and rested his right hand upon it. “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures, or by clear reason, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I do not trust either in the Pope or in council’s interpretation of these words, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves to suit the given situation.”

  “In these writings you claim the sale of indulgences by the Vatican to its faithful is amoral and unjustified,” Tonwen accused with a slightly calmer tone. “Where in the Bible do you pretend to draw this conclusion?”

  “The Bible teaches us that salvation or redemption is a gift of God’s grace,” Tomal said as though he were a guest lecturer at a university. “This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification, is the chief article of the whole Christian faith.”

  “Through my studies I have come to understand justification as entirely the work of God. This of course goes against the current teachings of the Catholic Church that the righteous acts of believers are performed in cooperation with God. It is my comprehension that Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not only comes from Christ, but actually is the righteousness of Christ imputed to Christians through faith.”

  “So you claim that faith alone makes someone just and therefore fulfills the law?” Tonwen interrupted.

  “It is not I, but the Bible in Romans 1:17 that states the just person lives by faith,” Tomal answered. “Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ. Faith is a gift from God. Since forgiveness is God’s alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolve buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation are in error.”

  “One verse?” Tonwen objected and then snatched the Bible out from under Tomal’s hand. “One verse out of this entire text is the basis for your position? Martin Luther, there is not one heresy which has torn at the bosom of the church, which has not derived its origin from the various interpretations of the Scripture. The Bible itself is the arsenal whence each innovator has drawn his deceptive arguments.”

  “Our theology states that faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man,” Tonwen went on. “Justification rather depends only on such faith as is active in charity and good works. The benefits of good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.”

  Tomal stared back at Tonwen with vacant wonder and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Errors in my past long ago caused me to seek the introspective healing of monastic life. I devoted myself to long hours of fasting, prayer, pilgrimage and confession. If anyone could have gained heaven through good and holy activities, then I would indeed have been among them. Yet all I came away with from that time of self-reflection was that true repentance does not involve self-inflicted penances and punishments, but rather a change of heart. Now here I sit accused of heresy by the ones I so desperately sought to serve and redeem my soul before. It would seem my good works have not bought me much in the church’s eyes.”

  “Martin Luther, I must warn you. I and the rest of this panel see no biblical support for your assertions. If you recant, then you can work to rebuild your standing with God and possibly still see salvation in the next life. If you do not, then I fear your soul will be lost to the devil forever,” Tonwen stated more as a threat than a plea.

  “I cannot and will not recant anything, sinc
e it is neither safe nor right to go against one’s conscience,” Tomal answered. “I am a firm believer in Christ and that faith alone is my salvation. So here I sit, I can do no other.”

  Tonwen paused long enough to look back at the panel of bishops. An affirmative nod from each gave him leave to declare, “It is the determination of this panel that the teachings of Martin Luther are a product of the devil. His literature and teachings are hereby banned and his immediate arrest is ordered.”

  An explosion of cheers and protests rang out from the audience. The most adamant objections came from a block of spectators seated immediately behind Tomal. The repeated shouts that he was granted safe passage to and from the Diet were impossible to miss or ignore.

  Tonwen raised his arms to quiet the chamber. Gradually the shouts and shoving among the audience gave way to silence, allowing Tonwen to be heard. He then turned to face Tomal once more. “You have been granted safe conduct away from this city. That promise will be honored, but know this. The moment you leave these borders you will be alone in the world. You are branded a notorious heretic, and the act of anyone giving you food or shelter will be considered an act of heresy as well.”

  “Furthermore,” Tonwen shouted while raising his head to be heard over the growing anger of those intent on Tomal’s immediate arrest. “This council’s decree allows anyone to kill this servant of evil without legal or spiritual consequence.”

  Tonwen looked back toward Tomal to gauge his reaction, but found himself staring at the back of Tomal’s robes as he left the chamber with his faithful followers in tow.

  Chapter 49: Snatch and Run

  Tomal stormed away from the main gathering hall of Heylshof Garden castle with such pace that his black robes flowed in the wind behind him like a cape. Feeling his supporters fall in line behind him to join his exit caused Tomal to picture himself as an ocean wave gaining speed and power as it approached the shore.