by Jon Land
“And that’s where we all go wrong, because the scales keep shifting.” He remembered something Peet had told him. “The mistake we too often make is to try to escape from our prisons instead of making do with them. Everybody is searching for something, and when they find it, they search for something else. I used to drive myself crazy trying to put a number on how many paybacks it would take before I had fulfilled my purpose. I’d gone from being the prisoner of one sort of morality to being the prisoner of another. My actions have been basically the same; only the justifications have changed. And even though I realize all that, I can’t lie here and tell you I have any regrets, because at least I can sleep straight through the night now without waking up in a sweat like a kid out of a nightmare. But it was worse for me, because I could never remember the last thing that had been in my mind. It was buried so deep, I kept losing it.”
“Charon was never this philosophical when he ferried people across the River Styx.”
“He was seldom as busy as I’ve been lately.”
The Mind had been torn. The problem, it realized, lay indeed with the first life. But not just its own. The instant of blinding heat had birthed the second life and the truths of a new level of consciousness. Yet the pain had remained, so more than another instant of blinding heat must be required to accomplish what it had to in order to find the peace it sought.
So simple! So obvious!
Civilization’s first life had failed and desperately required a second one for the whole of it. The Mind looked to fate, and fate looked back. Just as clear as the necessary ends were the means, drawn from the shadows of the Mind’s memories from the first life. How fitting that such a marvel of the first life should hold the means for giving birth to civilization’s second. Indeed, in the Mind’s perspective this was a birth more than a death, or birth out of death.
At last the relentless, raging pain of its thoughts were soothed. The faces no longer haunted the dreamlike state it called sleep. They had shown it the way, and the Mind understood that fate was not only looking but smiling.
Finally the Mind rested.
The Seventh Trumpet
The Knights of St. John
Monday, November 23; 8:00 A.M.
Chapter 27
THE FLIGHT BY SMALL private jet from London to Luqa Airport outside Malta’s capital of Valletta took three hours, proving as uneventful as their post-dawn trek to Gatwick had been. Kimberlain had by then resigned himself to not learning the final details of Benbasset’s plan—the connection between the hijacked sub and Spiderweb—until they reached their final destination,
The explanation came a half hour later, after a drive through the comfortably cool Maltese air. A car had been left for Danielle at a prearranged spot at the airport. She pulled it into a space just beyond the courtyard of St. John’s Cathedral and led Kimberlain toward the steps fronting the building. The cathedral had been built in 1577 as a testament to the great siege of the Knights of St. John and to this day retained all of its simple yet majestic elegance. A pair of bell towers, one adorned with a huge clock, rose over the facade on either side. The entrance was between a pair of bronze cannons Kimberlain wouldn’t mind restoring to add to his armaments collection. The bizarre mixture of the military and the religious, he supposed, was part and parcel of the Maltese culture.
Danielle led the way up the marble steps, beneath a portico supporting a balcony, and into the cathedral itself. Its depth and beauty struck the Ferryman instantly. The cathedral’s high, narrow vaults towered over the nave’s floor, which was covered entirely with multicolored marble atop the tombs of the Knights of St. John, their individual, distinctive coats of arms creating the effect of a massive stone carpet. The ceiling was rounded and equally glorious, separate ribbed sections extending like a tunnel toward the choir. The nave was virtually deserted, but Kimberlain watched Danielle eye the few apparent tourists warily.
Running down both sides of the nave were carved archways leading into the cathedral’s separate chapels. The third bay led to a flanking passage connecting with the building’s south wing and the Oratory of St. John. The oratory wasn’t as long as the nave, but it was just as wide, with pews on both sides and an aisle running down the middle toward the altar. Several people were seated, some in positions of prayer. Danielle walked straight down the aisle until she came to a monk in brown robes kneeling half out of the pew and half in it. She signaled the Ferryman into the row behind him, and seconds later the monk crossed himself and slid backward until he was occupying the aisle seat next to Kimberlain, with Danielle on the other side.
“Hello, Ferryman,” he said softly. “Know me as Brother Valette.”
The monk had taken the name of Jean de la Valette, who had led the original Knights of Malta in battle back in 1565, and Kimberlain wondered if he might be an actual descendant.
“We must be quick about this,” the monk said. “There is little time, and as Danielle has no doubt explained, our order has been compromised. Trust no longer exists. It is, must be, just the three of us.”
“You’re the leader of the Knights,” Kimberlain concluded.
“And you are a warrior of legend, Ferryman.”
A group of choirboys, dressed in white robes, made their way down the center aisle. Brother Valette was silent as they passed on their way to the choir stalls near the altar, and Kimberlain used the opportunity to study him where his monk’s cowl allowed inspection. His was an old face, but tanned and vital, the eyes a piercing green. It was a face that showed none of the desperation present in his words.
“I assume Danielle has informed you of the scope of what we are up against,” Brother Valette resumed.
“Pieces. Fragments.”
“All she was made privy to, I’m afraid. She passed on the information. The conclusions were left to us.”
“Concerning the connection between a stolen nuclear submarine and a secret network of oil installations.”
“Such fragments are joining to form a cataclysm such as no man has ever seen. Are you familiar with the Book of Revelation, Ferryman? The Apocalypse?”
“A little.”
“Before each of the seven great woes, a trumpet blast was heard. The eighth is about to sound now.” He shifted to face Kimberlain more directly. “Something called Outpost 10 forms the heart of Spiderweb eight hundred miles from McMurdo Base beyond the Transantarctic Mountains. Pipelines five to ten feet in diameter lead in and out of the complex, worming and weaving their way across much of Antarctica.”
“Crisscrossing the continent like veins,” Kimberlain elaborated.
In one of the choir stalls by the altar, beneath a huge red tapestry combining an ornate crucifix with the Knights of Malta coat of arms suspended from a chain, the boys’ choir had begun warming up their voices.
“But the continent is fragile,” Brother Valette was saying. “The many levels of ice, some as thick as three miles, account for its vast weight and mass. Only Dr. Mendelson’s water jet system made it possible to lay the Spiderweb pipeline without disturbing the delicate environmental balance, but it also created a deadly vulnerability.”
“To be exploited through the submarine. But how?”
“I’m not sure, but it must be the missiles.”
“Procedure on board any Trident requires four men to use their codes before firing can take place. I can’t envision how the hijackers’ plan could assure that.”
“You miss my point. If they simply wanted to fire the missiles they could have done so from the sea, perhaps already. The key must lie with Outpost 10 itself. Utilize its status as the central control station to somehow destroy the pipeline—and the continent along with it. Imagine Antarctica fracturing along the lines of Spiderweb the way porcelain breaks on ancient fracture lines when dropped. The Eighth Trumpet, Ferryman, at the very least.”
On the choir platform, the boys were fishing through their robes for their music sheets.
“I know a man who can get the entire 82nd
Airborne to Outpost 10 overnight,” Kimberlain said, thinking of Zeus. “We’ve got three days, assuming Benbasset sticks to his progression.”
The man dressed as a monk looked almost relieved. “You can see now why it was crucial for us to make contact with you. The more we uncovered, the more it became obvious that we lacked the resources to stop the enemy, because suddenly that enemy seemed to wield limitless power. Obviously there was something we were missing—the unholy alliance you describe between Benbasset and the faceless Hashi leader we know only as Quintanna. The direction may have come from Benbasset, but the men behind the killings and those on board the submarine are unquestionably Quintanna’s. Each of them has goals which require the resources of the other to be achieved. Yes, an alliance forged in hell and one we—”
Brother Valette’s words were cut short as the first burst of automatic fire sliced across their pew, followed by a half dozen more. His body jumped horribly, was caught by another series of bullets, then crumbled as the wood around him splintered into the air.
Kimberlain and Danielle had hit the floor by this time, struggling for their pistols and searching out each other’s eyes as if to confirm the impossible sight each was trying to respond to.
The bullets were coming from the altar, fired by members of the boys’ choir! A boys’ choir with weapons tucked beneath their robes instead of music sheets.
“Hashi!” Danielle gasped in realization, covering her head as more wood splinters flew dangerously about, with the children’s automatic fire homing in on them.
Kimberlain accepted her words incredulously. He could believe her story about children trained to be killers, but to see them actually as killers …
Danielle gazed over at the still corpse of Brother Valette, her eyes filled with rage. Her pistol was a fourteen-shot FN Highpower, and the one she’d given Kimberlain was similar. There were eighteen boys to use the bullets on at most, and time was on their side because the few tourists who’d managed to flee at the first sign of fire would certainly summon help. Young figures danced about the altar from the choir platform to better their positions and angles.
Danielle raised her pistol.
“No,” Kimberlain told her firmly, hand latched onto her wrist.
“They’ll kill us otherwise!”
“We’ll find another way.”
He looked forward and up beyond the altar. Danielle began firing shots very near the boys to ensure they would remain behind what cover there was on the altar and not venture down for a rush. Kimberlain was focusing his eyes on the brilliant Caravaggio painting, the Beheading of St. John, which hung behind the altar and overshadowed all else, except …
Stretching down from the ceiling across virtually the entire length and width of the altar and choir stalls was the ancient tapestry featuring the Knights’ coat of arms with accompanying cross. It was held in place by beautifully braided rope strung to each of the four corners, the ropes joining together over the center and suspended from a chain which began at the ceiling thirty feet above the altar. If he could shoot out the chain, the tapestry would tumble and temporarily entomb all who lay beneath its weight. But he needed to get close enough to assure himself of the perfect aim and angle required to pull off such a feat.
Kimberlain’s hand eased over to the bloodied robes of Brother Valette. Bullets flailed the air around him as he pulled the dead man’s pistol free and handed it to Danielle.
“Keep firing up at them,” he instructed her. “Not to kill. Just to keep them pinned down. Use both guns, different angles. Make them think it’s still the two of us returning the fire.”
Without waiting for a response, the Ferryman crawled to the far side of the pew, toward a narrow aisle that ran between it and the wall. Once there he pushed himself forward toward the head of the oratory, relying purely on his sense of direction to get him close enough to the altar to make the shots he needed. He would have to expose himself to fire, and it would in all probability take at least three hits on the chain to bring the tapestry down.
His ears rang with the echoing volleys of automatic fire, intermixed with the purposely errant shots fired by Danielle to keep the boy killers where they were. The approaching din of sirens joined the chaos, and Kimberlain knew help was coming fast, but would it really be “help”? The children would discard their guns with the arrival of the authorities, killers turned into apparent victims; as simple as that. He and Danielle would be cast as the offenders here, and even if they lived to tell their side of the story and witnesses corroborated it, valuable time would be lost in the process, while the Hashi would be able to reach them at their leisure. Under either scenario, the society of assassins would come out victorious.
The Ferryman reached the third row from the front and rose to a crouch. He could see the overhanging tapestry clearly now, as well as the chain supporting it. To obtain the firing angle required he would indeed have to chance standing up. His only hope for survival at that moment was Danielle: she had to intensify her fire at that very instant to provide him with the time he needed.
He had barely cleared the pews concealing him when Danielle’s gunfire became more rapid and her bullets closer to the mark, both pistols firing away. He reached a full standing position with aim already locked on, pulling the trigger just as the first of the boy killers spotted him. He managed to get off five shots before the expected onslaught of their fire forced him back down, but not before three of his bullets had done the job. It must have been the fifth and final shot that did the trick, for the steel chain snapped and the tapestry slid into a floating fall. Descending, descending, it seemed to move in slow motion as the first of the children gazed up helplessly.
It landed upon them with a plunk, followed by the sounds of the altar’s rostrums and pedestal ornaments toppling under its weight. The children were taken down as well, encased in the weighted darkness, struggling against the heavy material, in search of a way out.
Kimberlain charged back to Danielle, and together they rushed down the center aisle of the oratory past the trembling, prostrate forms of tourists who had dived for cover at the first sign of trouble instead of chancing flight. Passing into the small entryway, they caught the sound of footsteps pounding toward them from the cathedral nave beyond.
“This way!” signaled Danielle, directing him to a set of stairs that led up to the church museum and an alternative exit from the building. She had realized, as had Kimberlain, that with the wail of sirens still approaching, the footsteps could belong only to Hashi who’d been lying in wait to serve as backup, perhaps even dressed as Maltese police in cool-weather khaki uniforms.
Halfway up the staircase, Kimberlain grabbed her when his ears detected similar pounding coming from the museum above. More backup! They were surrounded, the enemy charging from both directions!
Kimberlain could see the results clearly in his mind. Maltese security police would shoot and slay the gunmen who had killed a monk and fired on innocent children in the sanctuary in an obvious act of terrorism. After the Egypt Air fiasco that had left a planeful of corpses, the Maltese people would embrace such a response. The police involved would be hailed as heroes—if they were ever found.
With no other choice, the two of them fled back down the steps. Just past the bottom, Kimberlain threw open another door, only to find a narrow closet. No help at all until he saw what was hanging within.
The pounding steps were closing on them from both directions.
“Quick!” he said, tearing the first of the robes from its hanger and thrusting it at Danielle, then reaching back in for a second. He had it on, its hood covering his head, when the doors at the top of the staircase crashed open.
Danielle was pulling her robe tight when Kimberlain yanked her down. She caught his intention instantly, and in the next instant a sea of khaki-clothed figures converged upon them from the steps. Danielle rested her head on his lap, hair tucked beneath the robe’s hood, feigning serious injury.
“They shot h
im!” the Ferryman screamed as if these were really the police. “Holy Lord Jesus, they shot him!”
The men in uniforms looked at the downed pair of clergy and then at each other. “Where did they go?” one demanded.
“Back into the oratory. A door behind the choir. An exit corridor. Stop them! You must stop them!”
The uniformed figures responded as if to do precisely that. They charged toward the door leading back into the narthex just as the second set from the cathedral nave crashed through it. The two groups joined up, numbering nine in all, and rushed off down the aisle in the direction of the altar with guns drawn.
Kimberlain and Danielle rose together with the awareness that they had to continue their ruse until safely out of the cathedral. He feigned sobbing as he passed back into the third bay off the nave and swung left toward the main cathedral doors, never even looking at the group of children just now emerging behind him, who had by now freed themselves from the fallen tapestry.
“A doctor! I must get the father to a doctor!”
By this time the real Maltese police were inside the cathedral and did not challenge or accost Kimberlain but simply moved aside. The children, meanwhile, were all crying, their weapons miraculously gone. The truth was so impossible to believe that no sense could be made from it, and a more rational explanation would be created in its place by the authorities. The murder of the nameless monk would be pinned on the pair of escaped strangers to fill at least part of the scenario.
They were nearly to the open cathedral doors now, the courtyard in view and their steps clacking against the stone. People were rushing past at each second, several stopping to offer assistance. One of these blocked their way in the process. “May I help, Father?”
“Yes,” Kimberlain told him. “Make sure the call has been made for an ambulance and help clear a path for me down the steps.”