by J. F. Penn
He bent over to walk down the low tunnel, scurrying away from the vault. He didn't know who had locked him in, but he couldn't go back to the ARKANE office now. He needed to get to Jake and Morgan. They would know what to do.
Delphi, Greece.
Morgan sat on the edge of the pool at the Delphi Palace Hotel. Her legs dangled in cool water as the sound of cicadas filled the balmy air. It smelled of lemon thyme and the coconut of spilled suntan lotion and she smiled, enjoying a moment of normality in the craziness of an ARKANE mission. Right now, there was nothing else to do but wait.
Jake walked out of the hotel room carrying two glasses, ice chinking against the side as he sat down next to her.
"Gin and tonic," he said. "Local gin but hey, it's better than nothing."
Morgan took the drink. "Cheers."
They touched glasses, eyes meeting in the semi-darkness. As ever, there was too much to say but Morgan understood Jake's relief at her recovery. She hadn't enjoyed seeing him in hospital, but thankfully this time, they had both escaped severe injury.
She took a sip, letting the aromatics fill her senses. She sighed. "That is so good."
They sat for a moment in silence, savoring the night air. Jake's leg brushed against hers in the water and Morgan entwined her ankle around his.
He turned to her. "Morgan, I–"
His phone buzzed in his pocket. The moment was broken. Jake pulled it out and answered.
"Martin, what's up?" His face paled and he stood up on the water's edge. "It's OK. Calm down. Here's what you need to do."
Jake paced up and down by the side of the pool as he explained an escape plan from London. When he finally hung up, his face was serious.
"Martin was almost killed in the ARKANE vault. Someone shut him in there."
Morgan frowned. "Someone on the inside."
"Exactly. I've sent him to one of my emergency drops so he'll be able to make it out."
Morgan raised an eyebrow. "Emergency drop?"
Jake hunkered down next to her, his face inches from hers, his eyes amused. "Oh, I expect you have several, Ms Sierra." He smiled, his corkscrew scar twisting with humor. "Perhaps I'll get to see them one day."
Morgan laughed. It was good to be here with Jake, just a pair of secret agents now apparently on the run. "Is Martin coming here?"
Jake walked back towards the hotel room. "Sorry, but we're going to have to break up the party. He saw something in the archives that he thinks might be important, so we're going to meet him in Rome."
Vatican City, Rome, Italy.
"This is terrible coffee." Jake grimaced as he gulped the black liquid down.
Morgan gestured at the grand entrance to the Vatican Museums in front of them. "But look at the view." She checked her watch. "Martin should be here by now. I hope he's alright."
"I supervised his mandatory field training. He'll be fine." Jake took a bite of his flaky cornetto pastry.
They had driven back to Athens and flown out on the last night flight to Rome. Jake had stayed in touch with Marietti, but neither had mentioned Martin's escape. ARKANE was clearly compromised and the Director would find out something was up soon enough. In the meantime, they would try to get ahead of whoever was trying to sabotage the mission.
Morgan's head had been pounding by the time they landed and found a hotel. Jake had insisted on sleeping on the couch in her room, worried about concussion. She had watched him in the dark, wanting him to hold her but saying nothing. She had slept soon after and woke in the morning light to find him sorting out tickets to the Vatican Museum. They had arranged to meet Martin in the closest cafe to the entrance, hence the bad coffee. Still, any coffee was better than no coffee at this point.
She looked across the road to the entrance, the marble door carved with the words Musei Vaticani. It was flanked either side by a towering wall and tourists snaked in a line away down the hill. Morgan knew from bitter experience that the queue could go on for several kilometers, which is why they had sorted tickets in advance using ARKANE connections.
Just then, Morgan saw a tall man with a shock of messy blonde hair scurrying up the hill towards them.
"Un altro caffè, per favore." She gestured to the waiter and he brought another espresso just as Martin reached their table. There were deep shadows under his eyes, barely concealed by his wire-rim glasses and he rubbed his hands together in an anxious, repetitive movement.
Jake pulled a chair out for him. "Sit down, Spooky. Take a breath. We can't go in yet. They haven't opened the gates."
Martin sat down with a pained expression. Morgan could see he was disturbed by his flight from the ARKANE offices. She didn't know where he called home, but he spent so much time under Trafalgar Square that it was likely he had a bed there. She knew what exile felt like, and she wanted to reach out a hand to comfort him. But Martin wasn't one for physical contact, so she just pushed the espresso over to him. He gave a half smile and a long exhalation, then leaned across the table towards them.
"I'm worried about going in there," he whispered. "I found things in the vault that suggest the Vatican is involved in this End Times conspiracy. Perhaps one of their own shut me in the vault."
Jake snorted with laughter. "Of course they're involved. That's not news. The Church has a vested interest in keeping people believing in the End Times. No doubt the fundamentalists within want to usher in that day of reckoning."
Morgan nodded. "Jake has a point there. The question is whether this is a move towards something more concrete."
Martin pulled out his smart phone. "I think this goes beyond eschatology in the academic sense." He swiped to find a picture and turned it to show them. "This is an inter-faith meeting. This man is Jewish, this one Muslim and these are Cardinals. Look where they're standing."
Morgan took the phone and zoomed in. "That's the statue of Laocoon. That's why we're here." As she spoke, the massive gates opened in front of them and early-bird tourists began to file into the museum complex. "Let's go see what we can find."
"And try to get out again before anyone knows we're here," Martin said.
Together, they walked into the Museum. Morgan wished they had more time because it didn't matter how many times she visited, there was always more to see here. The Vatican Museums were a treasure trove of history, a place to delve into the magnificence of what humans could create in the name of God. The Jewish tradition she came from wasn't big on over-decoration but she appreciated the extravagant beauty of the Vatican, even though the current Pope deplored the wealth of the Church and wished to give it all away to the poor. Perhaps those who opposed his reforms were part of this End Times plan.
They walked on through the corridors, heading for the Museo Pio-Clementino, one of the sculpture museums surrounding the Cortile del Belvedere. They passed the porphyri sarcophagi of Constance and Saint Helen, a gilded bronze of Hercules, the sleeping Ariadne and a grouping of Apollo and the Muses. Morgan was grateful for the acceptance of these pagan images within the hallowed walls of the Vatican. After all, it was these classical statues that inspired Michelangelo to paint the figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the glorious male nudes that were the models for Adam and God himself.
They finally reached the courtyard where the Laocoon statue stood in a niche. Morgan walked around it slowly. Despite the number of significant classical figures within the museum, this one stood out in its portrayal of human agony. The marble sculpture immortalized the perfection of the male nude, outlining each straining muscle of the tortured priest. The classical themes of suffering and death pervaded the Vatican, but this statue was pagan, depicting a death that did not end in redemption. Thankfully the Christians of the modern era were not so threatened by these ancient gods that they had destroyed all mention of them.
Morgan bent closer to examine how the fangs of one snake sank into the priest's thigh, just as an official Vatican guide walked up, leading a group of tourists. A few keen photographers crowded near the front
and the usual bored teenagers trailed behind their parents, tapping away on their screens. Morgan wondered briefly if Pokémon Go had made it into the Vatican. Perhaps it would rejuvenate the interest of the young if they made it part of the experience.
"Laocoon was a Trojan priest of Poseidon who tried to stop the Trojan horse destroying the city by revealing what was inside." The guide's delivery was clipped, a practiced speech. "But the Gods had their own plans and he was punished for his attempt to disrupt the path of Fate. Poseidon sent sea serpents to devour the priest and his sons for daring to meddle with the divine plan."
She took a breath before continuing. "The style of the sculpture is known as Pergamene baroque from Greece and Asia Minor around two hundred years before Christ. The most famous example is demonstrated on the Pergamon Altar, reconstructed in the museum named after it in Berlin."
Morgan started at the mention of the Pergamon Museum and her eyes darted to Jake's. He looked as surprised as she did by the revelation. Could this be the link they were looking for?
16
Jerusalem, Israel.
The entrance to the vault was hidden at the back of a guesthouse run by the silent Sisters of Charity. It was used only by select members of the Vatican, those who were part of the greater plan, whose theology leaned towards the eschatological. Cardinal Eric Krotalia glanced at his watch as he stalked through the house. He was going to be a few minutes late after a hold-up at the airport and then the rigmarole of trying to lose any potential tail in the warren of the Old City.
But the precautions were important at this stage. They were so close now.
He hurried to one of the cupboards and pulled out a suitcase. He couldn't proceed without changing and removing all traces of his true identity. He took out the hooded robe of plain hessian and put it over his casual jeans and t-shirt attire, not what most would expect from a Cardinal in Jerusalem. His running shoes peeked out from below the robe, necessary for the unstable stairs and walk ahead. Despite his sixty-five years, the Cardinal felt fitter than ever.
More than ready for the times to come.
He paused as he reached for the snakeskin belt. He ran a finger along its length, reveling in the texture of raised scales. It was brilliant blue with a red stripe along the length, skin from a California red-sided garter snake, caught within a few miles of his own home in Monterey County. According to the ancient tradition of the Brotherhood, he had caught, skinned and treated it himself. He stroked the snakeskin and smiled with pride as he picked it up and tied it around his waist. It was thinner than the scarlet fascia he wore as part of his official choir dress, and he liked how the two were a line between his alternate worlds. One must walk in the darkness to fully appreciate the light. And to usher in the End Times was a crucial role indeed.
He took off his Cardinal's ecclesiastical ring and laid it by the bedside. As the final step, he picked up the matching snakeskin mask that would obscure the top half of his face, turning his eyes into serpent-like slits so as to protect his identity. He would put that on downstairs, just in case he surprised one of the nuns.
It was time to go.
He walked back downstairs and out towards a plain wooden door in the kitchen. It looked just like a pantry but behind it, stairs had been cut into the rock that wound down and under the city. They led to an ancient cistern, one of thirty mapped by Sir Charles Wilson in 1864, back when the Temple Mount was not such a flashpoint for religious extremism. It was forbidden to go down in the cisterns now.
At least officially.
But the old maps had been useful to locate this particular cistern, and it served the Brotherhood's purpose well. The houses were closely packed here in the Old City and this corner of the Jewish Quarter backed almost directly onto the Temple Mount, one of the holiest Islamic shrines and controlled by Muslim authorities. Armed guards walked the perimeter, automatic weapons at the ready. At the same time, Israeli soldiers patrolled the site of the Western Wall, both sides preventing extremists from either religion from doing anything that might disturb the fragile knife-edge of peace in this city.
But the time was coming when the commonalities of the great religions would matter far more than the differences.
The tunnel had taken many years to form, the rock dissolved by special acids and then chiseled away so as to be almost silently constructed. The price for being discovered would be instantaneous and catastrophic but so far they had avoided detection. The status quo of the Holy Land site remained untouched, put in place by the Ottoman Sultan in 1757 to protect freedom of worship. The Cardinal knew that the Christian emperors and kings would never have allowed such a ruling, but the current Israeli administration enforced respect for the status quo and as such, the Temple Mount was under the protection of the King of Jordan.
But the status quo would not stand for much longer.
The Cardinal opened the door and clicked on the lights inside. Dim bulbs hung on metal brackets illuminating stone steps, a dull yellow light casting a sulfur glow. Water dripped down the walls and he walked slowly down, holding onto the lumps in the stone to prevent himself from slipping in the wet patches.
He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow as he descended. There was so little time left and much more to do. He worried more about discovery after what had happened at ARKANE. After Marietti had somehow gotten hold of that tablet, he had tried to direct their agents away from the truth. But now their archivist had escaped his trap and would be investigating further. He couldn't be seen around there anymore. It was imperative that Samael focused on retrieving the seals.
The air smelled musty, like an animal lair where half-digested carcasses lay in the corners. He had tried to direct fresh air into the cistern below, but it still held the scent of death and decay. Perhaps that was only natural. After all, this particular spot in Jerusalem had been the site of thousands of years of conflict, of blood spilled on all sides. It was only right that it absorb the scent of death. And there was much more blood to come, if their plans proceeded on track.
The Cardinal finally reached the bottom and hurried as much as he could down the tunnel. He didn't like to be late. There was enough jostling for position in the Brotherhood as it was and he didn't like to leave the others alone for too long.
Raised voices echoed in the tunnel and his pulse raced at the thought of the sound filtering up to the Temple Mount above. Sometimes he wondered whether his trust in them was even justified. The other two had their own entrances and he didn't even know where they emerged, so secret were the details of their construction. Each understood the consequences of discovery, but tensions were rising between them.
He put his mask on as he turned the final corner and pulled up the hood of his tunic to cover his head as he entered the main chamber. The cistern had been used in the time of the First Temple, later buried by the double destruction of the city above. It lay directly under the Dome of the Rock and to the east of the Western Wall, a secret compartment only meters from two of the most contested sacred sites in the world.
The Cardinal stood silently for a moment as the other two men turned at his entrance.
"Brothers, be calm," he said quietly. "We're so close now. What could be more important than ushering in the climactic battle between Good and Evil at the apotheosis of history? We must work together in these final days."
The two men fell silent and shuffled to the center of the chamber to meet him.
The Cardinal glanced around. The three of them were the highest ranking of the Roshites, the Brotherhood of the Serpent. Each wore a snake around his waist and covered his face. Although they were meant to be anonymous, the Cardinal knew enough about each man. As they likely knew the truth of his own double life within the Vatican. But together, they had a more important mission.
The End of Days.
"It is true. Our differences are nothing." The man known as Cerastes wore a desert horned viper and spoke with an Iraqi accent. He was bent with age but his grip was still iron hard. He
controlled a vast army of devotees under the auspices of what some called freedom fighters, and others called terrorists. Cerastes believed he was living in the era of the return of the Mahdi, a messianic figure prophesied in the hadith, a collection of the Prophet's deeds and sayings.
Some days, the Cardinal was jealous of Cerastes. It was easy for him to incite his followers to violence and decisive action, whereas the American congregations he was responsible for were much happier giving money than their lives to the cause.
But that would change soon enough because there would be something to unite against.
"What news, brother?" The third man, Echis, was tall and lithe and moved like a soldier with barely restrained violence. He wore a saw-scaled viper, the dark and lighter brown stripes tied almost double around his waist, evidence of how big the creature had been in life. The Cardinal imagined Echis crushing it with those meaty hands in the desert sand, his dark eyes showing no compassion as he broke its skull. Echis was an extremist Jew and a Zionist, the final side to their triangle.
Between the three of them, they represented the great monotheistic religions, the faiths that believed in an end time and together they would usher it in.
Each believed the others to be wrong about the details of the coming apocalypse, but they had enough in common to begin the countdown together. God would know his own once the slaughter began.
"There have been a few setbacks." The Cardinal dipped his head in a slight apology.
Cerastes coughed, a wet sound that echoed in the chamber. "Where is the sarcophagus?"
"In a safe place."
"In America, you mean."
The Cardinal nodded. "But it will be transferred in the next few days. The details for shipping are being finalized. It will travel with objects for an exhibition at Hebrew University. Don't worry. It will be here in time for the alignment."