“How can I help?” he asked. None of the “my son” crap. Good.
“I’m not a Catholic,” said Valen.
“Not sure I care,” said the priest. “I’m Father Steve. Steven Archer.”
“Andy,” lied Valen, and they shook hands. “Can we, um, talk for a minute?”
“Did you want to make a confession?”
“No,” said Valen. “Just talk.”
They sat at one end of a pew far away from the few other people there. Father Steve was patient and let Valen get to it on his own.
“This isn’t a church thing,” said Valen. “Not exactly.”
The priest nodded.
Valen considered the cover story he’d prepared, and then gave it a try. “I’m in the military. JSOC. You know what that is?”
“Sure. Special operations. I was a chaplain in Afghanistan ten years ago.”
Valen almost fled right then, but did not; instead he tweaked his approach.
“I can’t tell you what unit I’m with. You understand?”
“I do.”
“And I can’t disclose any details of what I do.”
“Sure. Nor would I ask.”
“I want to continue with what I do,” said Valen slowly. “I mean, I feel I have to. It’s important work, and a lot of people are counting on me.” He didn’t need to fake being troubled. It all bubbled just below the surface. “But at the same time … the kind of work I do is bad. People get hurt. People die. You say you were a chaplain, then you’ve talked to guys like me. Guys who want to be good people, guys who don’t want to be defined by the work they do, and yet because they’re good at it, they have to keep doing it. Is any of this making sense?”
Father Steve exhaled through his nose and nodded. “Yes, it is, Andy. And you’re right, I’ve talked with a lot of soldiers who are people of faith, often very strong faith, and yet who have to go against the precepts of that faith every day.”
“How do they stay sane, Father?”
Valen heard the desperation in his own voice. There was too much of it, more than he wanted to share. But Father Steve leaned close.
“The pat answer is that ol’ Fifth Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ But the reality is that the Old Testament was filled wall to wall with incidences in which God ordered his chosen people to wage war, and there are all manner of crimes for which public execution is not only permitted but endorsed. It was the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus, where he taught nonviolence and turning the other cheek. This, of course, is often cited as contradictory because in those same teachings he said that he did not come to abolish the old laws, but to complete them. By inference, the traditional forms of public execution were upheld—even if he interceded at times in this, as with the attempted stoning of the prostitute—and by extension the wars in God’s name waged by and for the people of His faith.” He stopped and smiled. “From your face I don’t think that’s what you wanted to hear.”
“Where does sin play into this?”
“Sin is something we have never fully defined. Not in any inarguable way, and yes, that sounds heretical to say. It’s not.” The priest smiled. “The laws of the church have changed and been interpreted more times than I can count. We can’t stand fast and say that we adhere without fluctuation from the pacifistic teachings of Jesus. Especially not us Catholics. The Crusades alone fly in the face of that, and those were authorized by papal bull.” Father Steve shook his head and offered a rueful grin. “The truth is that the commandment doesn’t actually say ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Most scholars agree that it says ‘Thou shalt not murder.’”
“How is that different from what a soldier does? Innocent people are killed all the time in war.”
“And that is unfortunate. The truth is that divine forgiveness is what we have to offer when a soldier pulls a trigger. We know there is no animus between the soldier and the enemy he kills. Not really. In basic training all soldiers are taught to step outside of their morality and civilized values and trust that the enemy they are ordered to kill is truly worthy of being killed. It is a kind of brainwashing, and all of us who have served have gone through some part of it.”
The church seemed vast and dark and oppressive.
“So, you’re saying that no matter how many people a soldier kills, as long as it’s for the good of their country, then all they have to do is ask for forgiveness and that’s it? The soul is whitewashed?”
Father Steve looked pained as he shook his head. “No, Andy, it isn’t that easy, though quite a lot of people think it’s like flipping a switch.”
“What’s the secret, then?”
“Faith,” said the priest. “You have to believe that God will forgive you, and you have to genuinely repent of your sins.”
Valen turned away and stared at the statues of dead prophets and martyrs. Then, without another word, he got heavily to his feet and walked out of the church.
CHAPTER SIX
THE SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
TWENTY-TWO MONTHS AGO
The generals and advisors left, singly or in pairs. The administration was still young enough that even old friends did not know where their colleagues’ loyalties lay. It was an ugly and awkward part of any change in administration. They’d seen it in different ways during their individual paths upward through their own careers, and doubly so once those careers became more intensely political. Now there were wild cards in the old deck, and that skewed the odds and made card counting a failing proposition.
Jennifer VanOwen understood this and watched each of them as they left, noting who glanced at whom. Making mental tick marks when she saw small, hidden smiles or flicked glances; gauging the tightness of compressed lips, and assigning possible meaning to the degree of compression. Much of what she saw lined up nicely with her own assessments.
She lingered, as did the chief of staff, until they were the only ones left in the room, with even the military and Secret Service banished. Then the president tapped his chief of staff’s wrist.
“Give us the room, Lucas.”
Admiral Lucas Murphy’s eyes clicked over to VanOwen and back. “Mr. President, I—”
“Now.”
“Yes, sir.” Admiral Murphy stood, back stiff, face wooden.
When the door was closed, VanOwen leaned toward the president. “First, sir, let me tell you how courageous and bold this decision is.”
“Thank you. It’s what needs to be done to insure that this country is second to none.”
“And history will remember you for that.”
He smiled, pleased with the compliment. Thinking that it was a compliment. VanOwen was very happy that she had spent so much time with theater coaches over the years.
“There is something to consider, however, as we move forward,” she said. “We can’t ignore the possibility of pushback from the Department of Military Sciences.”
“Those clowns,” grumped the president.
“Yes,” she said, “those clowns. Despite their many flaws, they did manage to bring down the original Majestic Three program. They are reckless and dangerous, and it’s very uncertain as to where their loyalties lie. After all, they worked for the previous administrations, and there is a clear pattern of assuming control of matters without first clearing it with your office.”
The phrasing was precise, implying the failings of previous administrations to control the actions, and then reminding the president that it was now his office. VanOwen had practiced the right pace and inflection in her bathroom mirror that morning.
“No one has been able to keep them on a short enough leash,” she continued.
“Why not? And don’t give me that crap about Church having blackmail material on everyone, because I don’t believe it.”
“Church is a very large, very aggressive dog,” said VanOwen. “Not everyone who has sat in the Oval Office has had the physical strength or the strength of will to jerk back o
n his leash.”
“To hell with that. I’m not afraid of him.”
“No, sir, you are not.” She paused. “Mr. Church isn’t the only barking dog, though. There is Aunt Sallie.”
“Who? That black woman? The one that looks like Whoopi Goldberg? Who cares about her?”
“Exactly right, sir. She’s nothing,” lied VanOwen. “And there is Church’s number-one hotshot. Captain Joe Ledger. I gave you a briefing on him, too.”
“Right, right. He’s the one who killed Howard Shelton. I liked Howard. Howard was a good guy. Golfer. Decent handicap.”
“Howard Shelton was an American patriot. At most he should have been called to explain his actions. Instead Joe Ledger executed him and later claimed it was justified.”
The president sipped his soda and seemed to stare through the middle of nowhere for a few moments.
VanOwen leaned a little closer. “Mr. Church, Aunt Sallie, and Joe Ledger destroyed M3. They prevented America from benefitting from these new advances in defense technologies. The DMS is still in operation and operates under a charter established by executive order.”
“But not my order.”
“No, Mr. President. Not your order.”
He turned to meet her eyes. “Can we cancel their charter?”
“Not easily,” she said. “And if we did, there’s too good a chance it would draw congressional attention to your plan to rebuild the Majestic program.”
“Can we defund them?”
“Not as such, sir.”
“Then what?”
“Mr. President,” she said, “there are other ways to handle this situation.”
“Do I need to know what that means?” he asked.
“You know the phrase ‘plausible deniability’?”
“Of course.”
VanOwen gave him a radiant smile and said nothing else.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CITADEL OF SALAH ED-DIN
SEVEN KILOMETERS EAST OF AL-HAFFAH, SYRIA
TWO DAYS AGO
They hung like spiders from the ceiling. Both of them dressed all in black, armed with guns and knives, dangling from silk threads. Silent as the death they had brought with them.
The castle had stood for more than a thousand years, perched on a ridge between deep ravines and skirted by dense forests. Wars had raged around it and in it and past it, but the citadel endured and the memory of clashing steel and the screams of men seemed to be trapped like ghosts within its walls. Maybe more so down here, far below the grand halls. There were secrets built into the walls. Hidden rooms, concealed corridors and passages, vaults and tombs that even the historians and the UNESCO custodians had never found. Some were so skillfully built that it would take the outright destruction of the fortress for anyone to find them.
That had nearly happened, and still might. The fighters of ISIL had destroyed so many places like this. So had President Assad, who indiscriminately bombed historic sites with the same abandon with which he rained down death on rebel camps and civilian towns. The fact that Saladin’s Castle survived for so long had nothing to do with any respect for history or the memory of the warrior of Allah who had fought back with such intelligence and ferocity against the Crusaders. No, this place survived because it was never important enough to destroy, and its position in this remote part of northwest Syria made it of little value to anyone in the current war. Some refugees found shelter there, thinking themselves safe within the partially collapsed walls.
They were wrong. They were not safe here.
“They’re not coming,” whispered one of the silent invaders. Although male, he was the shorter of the two.
“They’re coming, Harry,” soothed his companion. She spoke quietly rather than whispering, because whispers carried farther.
“This harness is cutting into my nuts,” complained Harry Bolt.
“Stop squirming,” suggested the woman, Violin, without much sympathy. “And be quiet. Listen.”
There was a sound; a clink of metal. Then the careful steps of rubber soles on stone. The soft whisk of clothing. More clinks and clanks. The sounds of people who thought they were alone.
Violin reached out a hand and gave her partner’s arm a small, reassuring squeeze. Be ready, it said, and she felt Harry tense. He was often nervous, which made him clumsy despite the months of intense training she had given him. Training that was superior to what he had gotten during his years in the Central Intelligence Agency.
Since they’d begun traveling together, Harry Bolt—born Harcourt Bolton, Junior—had grown as a fighter, deepened his knowledge of espionage tradecraft, and gained in practical experience. Even so, he was a liability in almost every crisis situation. Violin accepted that and never took him into a situation where his shortcomings would tip the odds too far the wrong way. Until today. She’d intended to do this job with a full Arklight team, but the timing did not work and Harry was the only one available.
The intruders below were a mixed bag of ex-military working for the Turkish black marketer Ohan, and experts brought here to solve the mystery of this place. What unified them all was that they were thieves of time. Of antiquities. Of history. It was possible they were merely corrupt; but Violin’s intelligence reports suggested they were looking for something truly and deeply dangerous. If that was the case, then this reconnaissance would have to turn into something else.
“Here,” said a voice, speaking Arabic with an Iraqi accent. “Come on, give me some light.”
Several flashlight beams flicked on, chasing the shadows back but a little. The light didn’t illuminate very much, and certainly didn’t reach all the way to the vaulted ceiling. A dozen men came hurrying through the darkness. She recognized their leader, a fierce man known as Ghul, who was Ohan’s trusted lieutenant.
“I don’t see anything,” complained one of the experts, a geologist from Saudi Arabia.
Ghul laughed. “That’s what you’re supposed to see.”
“We’ve scoured this place half a dozen times,” said another of the research team, a structural engineer. He spoke bad Arabic with a heavy Irish accent. “There’s nothing left to find, mate. Anything of value here is either already in museums or it’s been destroyed by the ISIL madmen.”
But Ghul shook his head. “No. This is something that was not meant to be found.” He tapped the fourth researcher, a birdlike man with a pointed beard and professorial glasses perched on the end of a beaky nose. “It’s time. Tell them.”
Violin knew this man, too, and he was why she had been sent here. Professor Ali Nasser, formerly of the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, where he had spearheaded several important research expeditions in the Middle East, including four in Syria. Before the war, Nasser had been one of the world’s most respected scholars on the Crusades in general, and the related artifacts of this region in particular. His book on the relics of Antioch was still required reading in universities around the world, and it retained its validity even though Ali’s personal reputation had crumbled when he was first arrested for selling artifacts to the black market. His fellow academics had banished him, treating him like a heretic for sins against scholarship. Violin thought it sad that such a man would have descended to this level. On the other hand, it might make what she had to do so much easier. Contempt was a weak barrier to violence and was more often a firm shove in the direction of action.
“Here,” said Nasser, waving the others toward a spot by the base of the pillar. “Shine your lights there. No, there. Good. Do you see that writing?”
“Writing?” said the geologist. “It’s nothing. Tool marks, maybe.”
“No, no, no,” insisted Nasser, his voice and face flushed with excitement, “it’s been scuffed, but it is certainly writing.”
Ghul placed a heavy hand on Nasser’s shoulder. “Mr. Oruraka and Mr. Kostas said you could read it. Prove them right.” The threat was unspoken, but eloquent.
Nasser unslung his pack and removed a few small vials and a sponge. As
the others watched, he poured a little liquid from two of the vials into a plastic cup, used a coffee stirrer to blend them, and dabbed the corner of the sponge into the mixture. The geologist watched him do it and began to nod; however, Nasser explained his process to the others.
“Everything ages,” he said, “even rock. And, as forensic science tells us, all contact leaves a trace. This solution will react only to microscopic trace elements of iron, and the older and more oxidized the iron, the more it will react to the solution.”
“Brilliant,” murmured the geologist.
Nasser used the sponge to dab the solution onto the marks in the rock. High above, Violin tapped the controls of the goggles she wore and the zoom function brought what the professor was doing into sharp focus. Beside her, Harry watched and repeated the action. On the pillar the rough scratches changed as the oxidized flecks of ancient iron turned to the color of blood, revealing the original markings made by some unknown hand many centuries ago. Violin felt her heart begin to hammer as she recognized the marks.
“What does it say?” asked Ghul, and the excitement was evident in his gruff voice. “That’s not Arabic.”
“No,” said the professor, “nor is it the language of the Europeans who possessed this castle.”
The Irishman grunted. “I saw something like this when I was doing a mining assessment in Greece near an old Minoan ruin. Is it Linear A?”
“Not exactly,” said Nasser. “This is a very rare protolanguage used by a group within the Minoan culture. Linear A was their main language, and it has never been deciphered. This is older. Incredibly ancient, actually. It was only used by a secret sect of Minoan priests.”
“Then how can you translate it?” demanded the Irishman.
Nasser smiled and did not explain.
Ghul growled in irritation. “What the hell does it say?”
“It is both a warning and a set of instructions,” said the professor. “Something I’ve seen before in a translation in Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten … a very rare book, gentlemen. Yes, very rare. One passage spoke of the writing in the oldest of languages on a stone believed to be a lintel from a forgotten temple excavated from off the shores of Santorini. The passage was a warning not to touch that which is untouchable, or attempt to learn what is unlearnable.”
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