The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020)

by Reilly, Matthew

  Mae Merriweather and Sister Lynda Fadel strode straight across that lawn and into the Archives, passing several security officers and Swiss Guards lying slumped at their posts.

  They took an elevator down to Sub-Level 4, the lowest level of the Archives.

  A single long corridor opened onto many vaults on both sides. The farthest vault was the most secure one, Vault XXII. It was equipped with airtight doors and high-tech locks to safeguard its treasures.

  Mae and Lynda didn’t have to go that far.

  They pushed through the doors of Vault IX, a lesser vault, the one that Bertie had mentioned in his text to Iolanthe.

  Mae said, ‘My memory of Francis Xavier is hazy. If this journal is so important, why isn’t it in Vault XXII?’

  Lynda said, ‘Pope Paul III was the one who sent Xavier on his secret mission. But by the time Xavier sent his journal back to Rome, Pope Paul had died. I’m guessing that the mission was so secret, Pope Paul hadn’t told anybody else about it. So when Xavier’s journal arrived back in Rome from the Indies, the two men who knew about its importance—Pope Paul and Xavier himself—were both dead. The journal, I suppose, was then just kept as a historical memento of a famous saint. This is how great knowledge dies, on bookshelves in plain sight.’

  It took them a few minutes, but soon they found the shelves devoted to St Francis Xavier and in an air-sealed container, they uncovered the journal.

  It was a battered 16th-century leather-bound book.

  It looked like it had seen all kinds of adventures: it was water-damaged, sun-damaged and salt-damaged. Its pages were dry and crisp. They looked like they had not been touched or read in five hundred years.

  ‘A forgotten book,’ Mae said. ‘Filled with priceless information.’

  Lynda flipped through the pages, turning them delicately, reading St Francis Xavier’s handwritten Latin text.

  ‘Here,’ she said suddenly.

  Mae leaned in close.

  Lynda translated the Latin:

  ‘Holy Father and First Son of Ra,

  I have confirmed the location of the third mount.

  It is indeed where we suspected: in the ancient city of Lhasa and not in Bhutan as others have thought from their studies of the Globe.

  In Lhasa there is a small hill that the heathen locals call Avalokitesvara—Lord of the World. It is a grand name for a rather simple hill. But then, this hill is the peak of a gigantic landform, the bulk of which lies under the earth.

  It is the summit of the Third Iron Mountain. I went inside this hill and saw the Falling Temple within it with my own eyes.

  The hill can be identified by the small wooden fort that sits atop it.

  You may add these to the two mountains we know already: the first on the tidal island of St Michael and the second at Poeninus Mons.’

  Sister Lynda gasped.

  ‘Avalokitesvara, in Lhasa, Tibet,’ she said. ‘I know that place. Only it’s not topped by a simple fort anymore. On top of that hill sits one of the greatest palaces in the world: Potala Palace.’

  ‘And I know what Poeninus Mons is,’ Mae said. ‘It’s the Roman name for the mountain pass that runs beside Mont Blanc in France. That makes Mont Blanc the second iron mountain while Potala Palace sits on the third.’

  Lynda was reading another page in the notebook.

  ‘Wait, there’s something here about the fourth mountain.’

  She read aloud:

  ‘In his secret report to the Pope, the great wandering monk, the Venerable Laurent of the Levant, wrote that “He who wields the blade of the archangel will find the fourth mountain.”

  Ignatius and I both believe this means that the fourth mount is either Sacra di San Michele in Turin or the Sanctuary to the Archangel at Mount Gargano near Foggia.’

  ‘The blade of the archangel,’ Lynda said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think that means—?’

  ‘Yes. The Sword of St Michael,’ Mae said. ‘We gotta call this in.’

  She yanked out her phone and called Jack.

  He answered immediately. ‘Mum. Talk to me.’

  Mae didn’t know it, but he had just emerged from the English tunnel at Tombelaine after encasing the bronzemen in stone.

  ‘Jack, we just hit paydirt here at the Vatican regarding two of the iron mountains. The second is Mont Blanc and the third is under Potala Palace in Tibet. We’ve got a lead on the fourth, but nothing on the fifth. I’m going to send you a couple of photos of pages from Javier’s Journal, one regarding Potala Palace and another about the fourth mountain.’

  She quickly took two photos of the journal’s pages with her phone and texted them to Jack. ‘How did you go at Mont Saint-Michel?’

  ‘We got out alive but otherwise, not well at all. Great work, Mum. Get out of there and follow up those leads.’

  ‘You got it,’ Mae said.

  She hung up and smiled at Sister Lynda. ‘Our work here is done. Now let’s—’

  ‘Hey!’

  A man’s voice, loud and sharp, came from behind them.

  Mae and Lynda whirled, their hearts stopping—

  —only to see a man rush past Vault IX’s open door and continue at a sprint down the long corridor outside.

  ‘It’s down here!’ he added as he sped off.

  He hadn’t seen them.

  He was calling to someone else.

  Mae exhaled with relief.

  She and Lynda quickly hid behind a bookshelf as three more men raced down the corridor after the first fellow. All four were heading in the direction of Vault XXII.

  ‘We’re not the only ones who want information from this place,’ Lynda whispered.

  Mae peered out after the four men, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘I wonder who they are and what they’re after. Let’s find out.’

  While most of the Vatican Secret Archives have remained largely unchanged for five hundred years—with its many miles of shelves in its many vaults, it resembles the underground stack of a large city library—Vault XXII is different.

  It is exceptionally modern.

  It is part laboratory, part airtight chamber. Its temperature is always maintained at a cool sixteen degrees Celsius and its humidity at zero.

  One wall of the vault contains large metal drawers fitted with glass doors that show their contents.

  The other side of the vault looks like a surgery in a teaching hospital: it has a glassed-in viewing balcony so that observers—like the Pope—can watch as experts inside the vault handle delicate treasures with extreme care. This balcony is accessed by a separate door from the long corridor.

  Mae and Lynda crept silently into the viewing balcony and peered out from it to see the four men who had rushed past their vault now standing inside Vault XXII, gathered around a large object in its centre.

  ‘Whoa, baby . . .’ Mae gasped.

  She wasn’t sure what she had expected to see inside Vault XXII, the innermost sanctum of the Catholic Church.

  Christ’s cross, maybe, or perhaps the chalice from the Last Supper, or maybe some ancient text written by Jesus of Nazareth himself.

  But nothing had prepared her for this.

  On one wall, encased in glass cabinets, were two large stone slabs marked with similar images. Both were a mix of interconnected circles:

  Mae said, ‘That one on the right is the Sephirot from the Kabbalah. The Tree of Life.’

  ‘And the one on the left is Norse,’ Lynda said. ‘It’s Yggdrasil, the tree from which Odin was hanged, also known as the Tree of Death.’

  In any other room, the two slabs would have dominated. But not in this one.

  Taking pride of place in the centre of the sterile vault was something even more striking: an enormous sandstone statue of a rearing cobra.

  It was huge, easily eight feet tall.

/>   It took up most of the space.

  And it was scary, too: the big stone snake appeared frozen in mid-pounce, up on its tail, jaws bared in a furious snarl.

  ‘What . . . the actual . . . hell?’ Sister Lynda said. ‘A big snake statue?’

  ‘The statue of the serpent,’ Mae whispered, remembering the notes written in Romanian that Jack and Zoe had found at the home of the Order of the Omega in Venice. ‘This is what the Omega monks were searching for. And it’s not just any old statue. It’s a uraeus.’

  Lynda frowned. ‘But here? In the Vatican?’

  As a historian, Sister Lynda knew what a uraeus was: it was the upright cobra that was affixed to the brow of an Egyptian pharaoh’s crown or nemes. It was the ultimate symbol of royalty and authority in ancient Egypt. Statues or busts of pharaohs would always include the uraeus on the pharaoh’s crown.

  As they examined the giant stone uraeus, the men in the vault consulted some old leather-bound folios in the drawers around it. Inside those folios, Mae caught sight of two images she had seen before.

  Both showed the Great Sphinx at Giza.

  The first was a very famous sketch of the Sphinx’s head. It had been drawn by Vivant Denon in 1798, when Denon had accompanied Napoleon on his well-known expedition to Egypt.

  It showed the Sphinx almost fully buried by the desert sands with French scientists standing on its head, taking measurements:

  The second image also depicted the Sphinx and it, too, was well known in historical circles. It was a blurry black-and-white aerial photo taken in the 1920s from a hot-air balloon that showed the Great Sphinx half buried in sand:

  Mae’s breath caught in her throat as she suddenly realised the source of the giant uraeus in the vault below her.

  Of course, she thought. The Catholic Church is the Cult of Amon-Ra, a sun cult born at the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. It would keep its most important treasure in its most secure vault.

  ‘Lynda,’ she said softly. ‘That isn’t any old uraeus from some random Egyptian statue. That’s the most famous missing uraeus of them all. It’s the one from the Great Sphinx at Giza.’

  The four men who had hurried past Mae and Lynda’s vault to Vault XXII gathered around the huge stone cobra statue. They peered at it closely, examining it with cameras and studying its hieroglyphs.

  Mae and Lynda could hear their voices, muffled through the glass:

  ‘—Brother Ezekiel said the multiple is to be found carved somewhere on the uraeus—’

  Mae glanced at Lynda. ‘Ezekiel. These guys are from the Order of the Omega.’

  ‘The women-hating monks,’ Lynda said. ‘This could get awkward.’

  As the other three expertly examined the cobra, a fourth monk watched a radar-scanner closely.

  Suddenly he said to one of his companions, ‘Brother Enoch! I’ve got an incoming aerial signal, coming in fast from the direction of Malta.’

  ‘Malta? Helicopter or plane?’ the leader of the group of monks said. Mae guessed he was Brother Enoch.

  ‘A large aeroplane.’

  ‘We have time. Whoever it is will have to land at the airport before they can come to the Vatican,’ Enoch said. ‘Here! Got it!’

  He leaned in close to the cobra’s bared fangs, reading some hieroglyphs carved into them.

  As he did, Mae took some quick photos of the lab, including the giant uraeus, the four monks and the folio images they were consulting. Then she fired off those photos to Jack and the rest of the team.

  As she did, she thought about the source of this uraeus.

  The Great Sphinx at Giza has long been one of the most mysterious statues in the world.

  It is the world’s largest monolithic statue, carved from the rock of the Giza plateau in front of the second pyramid there, that of the pharaoh Khafre.

  And it is huge: 240 feet long, 70 feet high.

  To this day, no-one really knows when it was carved. Estimates range from 4500 years ago to 10,000 B.C.E., but no-one is certain.

  Adding to this genuine sense of mystery is the Sphinx’s infamously vandalised face.

  Most people are aware of the great statue’s missing nose and beard—which were not shot off by Napoleon during artillery training; ancient writers had remarked on the missing facial features centuries before then—but fewer people are aware of its missing uraeus.

  But the evidence is there for all to see: a large shattered segment of rough stone just above the Sphinx’s unblinking eyes shows the spot where a uraeus was once mounted.

  Given the size of the Sphinx, the rearing cobra would have been huge, easily eight feet tall.

  Like this one, Mae thought.

  The lead monk, Brother Enoch, was translating the glyphs: ‘Sixteen schoinos from my eyes.’ He smiled broadly. ‘Sixteen! The multiple is sixteen! We got it. Call Brother Ezekiel at Potala and let him know.’

  Mae frowned and turned to Lynda. ‘Do you know what this multiple is?’

  Lynda said, ‘No. It must be connected to—’

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ a low voice said from behind them. ‘Vile whores.’

  This time the comment was definitely directed at them.

  Mae and Lynda turned.

  Two additional Omega monks stood in the doorway behind them, blocking the exit and gripping Glock pistols in their hands.

  Zoe was still in the Pope’s study, now reading from his personal computer with Sister Agnes by her side.

  They were scanning an email the Pope had sent to Cardinal Mendoza earlier that day.

  It read: The surface-point of the Labyrinth lies directly below the fourth red horizon star. See you in a few hours in Rome. You have done fine work, Cardinal.

  ‘The surface-point of the Labyrinth,’ Zoe said.

  ‘And what’s the fourth red horizon star?’ Agnes said.

  ‘We’ll have to find out. The Pope also arranged to meet Cardinal Mendoza in Rome today. I think we can safely say that meeting didn’t go well for the Pope—’

  BOOM!

  The walls around them shuddered.

  The two women rushed to the nearest window and looked out.

  ‘Oh my God . . .’ Agnes gasped.

  Zoe just stared at the shocking sight before her.

  The dome of St Peter’s Basilica was cracked and smoking, struck by a missile of some kind.

  Then, as they watched, another missile came shooming out of the sky and hit the damaged dome.

  The whole dome blew apart, blasting outward in a spectacular explosion before . . .

  . . . it crumpled in on itself and dropped into the body of the basilica, leaving a giant gaping hole in the roof of the church.

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘Someone is making a big entrance,’ Zoe said.

  Down in the Archives, Mae and Lynda were being shoved out into the long main corridor when the leader of the team of monks, Brother Enoch, emerged from Vault XXII to look at them.

  He turned up his nose in outright disgust.

  ‘Women are not permitted here. You have desecrated this place with your presence.’

  Sister Lynda snorted. ‘The presence of our vaginas, you mean. Do they offend you?’

  Enoch glared at her. He was a bulky man with small dark pits for eyes. ‘The last woman I met, I strangled to death.’

  ‘Fuck you, you misogynist asshole,’ Lynda spat. ‘Do your worst—’

  BOOM!

  The walls shook. Dust fluttered from the ceiling.

  The first explosion was muffled down here in the Archives.

  Brother Enoch looked up at the noise, as if he could see through the four levels between him and the world outside.

  Then came the second missile impact—the one that destroyed the dome of the basilica—and one of his monks came rushing up. />
  ‘Brother Enoch! Someone just fired on the basilica!’

  Enoch paused for a second as he took in the situation.

  ‘It can’t be . . .’ he said softly. ‘If it is who I think it is, we have to flee now if we want to escape this place with our lives. Bring the women, but if they slow us down for a moment, shoot them both in the head and leave them.’

  They hurried for the elevator—the six monks, Mae and Lynda.

  They bustled inside it and rose skyward.

  The elevator doors opened at ground level . . .

  . . . to be met by a barrage of machine-gun fire.

  Two of the monks immediately exploded all over with bloody bullet holes and were slammed into the back wall of the elevator.

  Mae ducked, covering her head, shielding her face from the gunfire.

  When she turned to look again, all four of her remaining captors had their hands raised, as did Sister Lynda.

  Standing before them, with Steyr AUG assault rifles trained on them, were six armed grey-clad soldiers, their faces masked by opaque visors, their ears covered with high-tech protective headphones.

  Brother Enoch held up his hands. ‘Please! We are not your enemies. Please don’t—’

  ‘Be silent, monk!’ the lead soldier barked through his mask. ‘You live for now. General Rastor would like a word with you.’

  Mae and Lynda were marched at gunpoint with the four surviving Omega monks from the Secret Archives into the nave of St Peter’s Basilica, or at least what was left of it.

  The remains of its enormous dome lay in ruins on the floor of the cathedral: giant chunks of concrete and glass lay in huge piles around the wreckage of the baldacchino, which itself had been crushed by the cataclysmic collapse of the dome.

  The night sky could be seen through the massive new hole in the basilica’s roof.

  When they first encounter St Peter’s, dazzled by its awesome scale, visitors often miss the most important object in the cathedral. For it is not the main altar or the baldacchino covering that altar. Rather it is a gigantic golden throne at the very back of the space.