by R D Shah
Harker and Chloe both froze and stared at each other in alarm. The only thing keeping them out of sight was the single red-tinged sheet hanging in front of them and concealing them from the unknown intruder. As both continued to remain absolutely still, the blurry shadow of a figure slowly began to creep across the surface of the sheet, until it paused halfway across and its head slowly began to rotate in their direction. Harker watched anxiously as the shadow raised its hand and the image became increasingly clearer as the person on the other side moved closer.
Harker glanced again at Chloe, whose face was full of uncertainty, and she was clearly waiting to follow his lead. He gave a slow nod of the head, then waited until the silhouette of the probing hand had come within inches of them, before he made his move. He hurled himself at the shadow, crashing into the sheet with both arms spread wide, ripping it free from the ceiling and wrapping it around the newcomer with such impact that he knocked the unknown person off its feet before landing on top of it with a heavy thud. Harker then leapt back up, and forcefully dragged the now shrouded mass struggling into the hallway, and then into the living room, before slamming the heavy linen bundle against the far wall as hard as he could.
A loud groan emerged from the heap as the intruder fell still, that sharp collision with the wall having done its job. Harker meanwhile bounded into the kitchen and began pulling out drawers until he came across a large carving knife.
Knife firmly in hand, Harker leapt back to confront his captive and, with his free hand, reached down and tore the twisted sheet away in one wrench before tossing it across the room, the steel blade still aimed at the figure on the floor.
Father John Strasser stared up at him blearily, his glasses cracked and dangling off one ear, with a bright red mark already developing across the cheek where it had connected with the wall. The priest’s eyes widened as he recognised Harker and he shrank back into himself. ‘Are you going to kill me?’ he croaked, and straightening his glasses with a shaking hand.
‘Kill you?’ Harker yelled unnecessarily loudly, a surge of adrenalin affecting his ability to stay calm.
‘Well, you’re holding a knife.’ Strasser gestured towards the sharp metal tip only inches from his face.
Harker glanced down at the weapon still held tightly in his hand, then instinctively loosened his grip as he began to regain control of himself. ‘Who the hell are you, Strasser, and why did you stick me in the middle of a terrorist attack?’
‘Terrorist attack?’ Strasser laughed. ‘What terrorist attack?’
Chloe rushed over to Harker’s side, and stared down at the odd little man. ‘The attack at Notre Dame – and the other thousand innocent people that were murdered.’
Strasser’s derisive smile was now replaced with a meaningful scowl. ‘There never was any terrorist attack.’
‘Try telling that to all the people who died.’ Harker seethed, his grip again tightening on the knife.
Strasser stared at them blankly for a few moments, then he shook his head from side to side. ‘You really have no idea what’s going on, do you – and for that matter, why would you?’
The response sounded genuine and served only to fuel Harker’s temper. ‘Then how about you tell us, Strasser … everything. Why get me involved in all this?’
Strasser sighed contemptuously and rested his head back against the wall. ‘You have your part to play in these events, as do I. And, as much as you may hate hearing this, I have no idea why you are involved,’ the priest continued, gesturing towards Chloe. ‘But I swear to you that it was no terrorist attack.’
‘Then what was it?’ Harker was becoming increasingly frustrated by the priest’s vague answers.
‘This is what you English would refer to as the real McCoy.’ Strasser slowly picked himself up off the floor and brushed himself down, all the while still facing the tip of the knife Harker was aiming at him. ‘This is merely just the prelude to the beginning of the end.’ The priest’s face began to turn an ashen colour and his lips widened in a smile. ‘Rejoice, Professor Harker, for the end of days is upon us, and your own day of judgement will come soon enough.’
Chapter 17
Michael McKinnon peered out from behind the curtain of the famed St Peter’s balcony and looked down onto the shifting tide of onlookers that had gathered in St Peter’s Square for the Pope’s address that evening. ‘There must be over one hundred thousand people down there,’ he decided enthusiastically, pulling away from the curtain. ‘That’s impressive for only a few hours’ heads-up.’
Cardinal David Mythias watched the Vatican’s press director rub his hands together with all the zeal of a super-villain. ‘Indeed, Michael, your office has done a superb job of organising it all at such short notice, but you should never underestimate how such a terrible tragedy will draw the masses together,’ the Cardinal remarked. ‘People quite rightly need to feel that we are all united as one against such depravities.’
The excited smile on McKinnon’s face melted away at this comment and he folded his arms defensively. ‘I take, by that analysis, that you think people would have turned up anyway, regardless?’
The cardinal shook his head. ‘On the contrary, Michael, the press department has done a wonderful job. It was simply an observation.’ Cardinal Mythias continued woefully, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t take every word I say so personally.’
‘And I wish you weren’t so passive-aggressive. But such is life, hey, David.’
Mythias was about to refute this insult when a voice spoke softly behind them.
‘Please, gentlemen.’
Both men turned around to find Pope Gregory VII observing them with an attentive smile.
‘There are far more concerning events to deal with than our individual qualms, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Of course, your holiness,’ Cardinal Mythias replied for both of them. ‘Forgive us.’
The pontiff raised his hand courteously. ‘Forgiveness is not necessary. I only ask for your continuing strength in standing united during these awful events.’
As the two men offered him a respectful bow, Pope Gregory took a few steps towards the red curtain of the balcony and began to peruse the prepared speech he would deliver. ‘The speech is perfect, gentlemen,’ he declared at last, ‘and exactly how I wish to address the world.’
‘I’m happy you approve, your holiness,’ McKinnon offered respectfully, the Pope’s words mollifying any anger that had begun to fester only moments earlier, ‘and I’m sure people will respond positively.’
The Pope dropped his arms to his sides and raised his head towards the red curtain directly in front of him. ‘Then let us find out, shall we?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Mythias then turned his attention to the two young attendants standing on either side of the pontiff. ‘And three, two, one …’
The red curtains parted and Pope Gregory VII made his way out on to the famed balcony of St Peter’s basilica, as down below him two hundred thousand pairs of eyes all locked on to him. Rapturous cheers erupted throughout the square and thousands of welcoming hands were raised skywards, showing their support.
The Pontiff made his way to the waiting microphone and lifted a hand into the air, whereupon thousands of camera flashes from waiting photographers sparkled amongst the crowd below, bathing the balcony in a cascade of flickering light.
Pope Gregory waved to the crowd for a few moments more, then lowered his hand and gently picked up the microphone. In years past, the practice had always been for an altar boy to hold this instrument for the pontiff but, since taking office, Pope Gregory had elected to throw much of the established protocol to the wind. Many of the Vatican’s cardinals had disagreed with a lot of these changes, but the new Pope had expressed his wish to be seen by the people exactly as he felt himself to be … one of them, even if it meant some within the Vatican had likened his clutching of the microphone to a Vegas lounge bar singer.
As the euphoric and ear-blistering welcome from the crowd final
ly subsided, the pontiff raised the microphone to his lips and smiled. ‘Brothers and sisters, good evening.’
Once more the roar of the crowd exploded, and once again the pontiff allowed a moment for the square to calm, before continuing.
‘I come to you tonight not as Pope Gregory VII, the pontiff in Rome, but simply as the man I am: Salvatore Vincenzo. And I speak to you all now, not just as head of the Catholic Church but as a citizen of mankind. My reason for this is because these terrible and unjustifiable terror attacks have affected people of every race and creed, in that it has been an attack on the very moral fabric that binds us all.’
The crowd once more began to cheer, and Vincenzo raised his hand once more in support.
‘If this tragedy is truly the world’s first global terrorist attack, as has been reported, then its repercussions will only be resolved by all the people of the world working in solidarity, together. It is for this purpose that I intend to host a summit during the coming weeks, for all the heads of all world religions to convene in an attempt to find common ground that will better unite the population of the earth in a common goal. It is a goal we all wish for … a goal we have all prayed for … and that goal is peace. For I believe that our separate religions define who we are, not what we are – and that simple yet crucial distinction allows all of us hope for lasting global peace.’
The crowd’s eruption into cheers signified their obvious approval of the pontiff’s olive branch to all diverse people, and once again the balcony was illuminated by a blinding series of camera flashes, even as Pope Gregory VII continued his address, obviously encouraged by the reaction.
‘And so I say to my brothers and sisters of the Catholic Church, your Church stands united with all the rest of humanity against such despicable atrocities that have no place in this twenty-first century. And to the peoples of the world, whatever your faiths may be, I say that if we stand together in this darkest of hours there is nothing that we cannot endure … nothing that we cannot protect … and nothing we cannot aspire to.’
Vincenzo placed the microphone back into its holder and raised both his hands into the air as the crowd began to sway with hands joined together in a show of solidarity, and as roars of support boomed across the square. Vincenzo continued to hold his hands aloft as he waited for the cheering to subside, but after sixty seconds and realising the outburst was unlikely to cease he lowered them and reached for the microphone again in preparation for the rest of his speech. It was then that he felt a mild tremor beneath his feet. The curious sensation caused him to look down as that gentle trembling began to intensify, rapidly spreading up his legs and then expanding throughout his entire upper body. Vincenzo instinctively reached out for the balcony ledge in a bid to steady himself, only to find it vibrating to the same rhythm.
Down below, the sounds of elated cheers suddenly tailed of into an eerie silence, as the entire assembled crowd began to notice the tremors for themselves. Many of them began exchanging nervous glances as a succession of powerful quakes started to spread throughout the entire square.
Above them Salvatore Vincenzo, both hands now clinging to the balcony ledge, glanced back to see Mythias clutching onto one red curtain with such strength that its fittings broke away from the rail, sending the cardinal hurtling backwards on to the tiled floor with a painful-sounding thud. Next to him, McKinnon also lost his balance as an intensified wave rippled across the floor tiles which were in turn thrust upwards, flipping the press director head first into the nearest wall with a sharp crack, whereupon he dropped to the floor with a trickle of blood oozing from one ear.
Still with a firm grip on the quivering balcony ledge, Vincenzo returned his attention to the chaos of St Peter’s Square just as high above them a tremendous flash of light lit up the sky to reveal swirling dark clouds gathering overhead, followed by a clap of thunder so deafening that it sent most of the panicking crowd underneath down onto their knees in shock. Thick bolts of blue lightning began to erupt in the skies above, revealing more of these looming clouds unlike any Vincenzo had ever witnessed before. They swirled in a clockwise direction, like some gigantic vortex threatening to suck up anything below it and, stranger still, they appeared to hang directly above Vatican City, and nowhere else.
The tremors now began to peak in ferocity and Vincenzo watched in horror as the entire square below him started undulating up and down in waves, causing the ground itself to tear apart and creating deep gaping chasms into which thousands of people instantly plunged to their deaths. Wailing and screams of pain and fear could be heard all over as the ground continued to shake ever more violently. Then the pillars of surrounding colonnades began to twist and crumble under their own weight. Massive blocks of stone fell to the ground, crushing anyone underneath and leaving large spatterings of red, before disappearing into the darkening abyss below.
A hand grabbed Vincenzo by the shoulder and he turned to see one of the pontifical guard attempting to pull him away from the weakening balcony. But the man was stopped cold as a large piece of white masonry struck him from above, crushing the unfortunate would-be protector in a twitching mass of scarlet pulp. Overhead, the basilica’s east façade also began to ripple and sway, the bone-shattering tremors now intensifying in ferocity. As jagged lumps of stone crashed all around him and the entire front of St Peter’s gave way underneath him, a single question entered the mind of Pope Gregory VII. It was a question that would go unanswered: ‘Oh, my lord, why have you forsaken us?’
Chapter 18
‘The end of the world! Here we go again and how original of you,’ Harker muttered sceptically as he stared at John Strasser with a weary shake of his head. ‘That’s the third time I’ve heard that rubbish in the past couple of days.’
‘Then perhaps it is time you stopped taking it for rubbish,’ Strasser replied resolutely, his face exuding new confidence.
The comment received a disbelieving smile from Harker. ‘Considering the first time was from a patient in an insane asylum, you’ll forgive me for not taking all your gloom and doom too seriously.’
‘Ahh,’ Strasser considered. ‘So Marcus Eckard had a similar viewpoint, I take it?’
Harker said nothing, simply offering an apathetic nod of his head.
‘One man’s delusion is another man’s vision.’
‘Oh, he’s deluded all right.’
‘I was talking about you, Professor.’
‘I’m deluded?’ Harker gasped, the response catching him by surprise. ‘I’m not the one with a taste for eyeballs but, that aside, what the hell has any of this got to do with the Secrets of Fatima?’
Strasser’s eyes widened at the mention of the three Secrets. ‘That is not for me to say, but I wasn’t lying to you when I said that finding all three will determine the world’s destiny.’
‘Well, that’s good, because I have no idea where the third Secret is,’ Harker fumed. ‘And what about the fourth?’
‘A fourth? I haven’t ever heard of a fourth but I do know where the third is.’ Strasser was now smiling like a maniac. ‘It’s to be found at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the north under the protection of the old man of the rock.’
Harker was stunned at the ease of Strasser’s admission. ‘If you already knew the locations of the Secrets, why the hell didn’t you tell me in the first place?’
‘As I already told you, Professor, we all have our parts to play.’
‘Enough, both of you!’
Harker turned to find Chloe glaring furiously, her cheeks flushed red with impatience.
‘At this very moment there are only three questions I want answered,’ Chloe demanded and she raised a finger and began to reel off each one. ‘Firstly, what have you got to do with the Notre Dame terrorist attack? Secondly, where did you obtain those human appendages in the other room? And thirdly,’ she pointed to the far corner of the room and wrinkled her nose, ‘what on earth made you take a poo in your living room?’
Chloe’s determined out
burst shook Harker out of his own stupidity. The stupidity of allowing himself to be drawn into an argument with a man who was clearly not of sound mind.
‘Thank you, Chloe. That needed to be said.’ Harker turned his attention back to Strasser, whose gaze had lost none of its intensity. ‘So tell me then, Strasser, what’s with the poo in the corner and the penis in the pot?’ The words came out sounding far more comical than Harker intended, and he swiftly moved on to his next query as an attempt to suppress his own feeling of morbid amusement. ‘More importantly, I want to know how you’re involved in all this.’
Strasser stared at his interrogators condescendingly, his eyes filled with self-importance. ‘There is one word that offers truth for the world and which blinds the eyes of every heretic on God’s earth. It is the beginning of the new, and will stand at the end, when all others fall and are incinerated in hell’s fiery depths.’
‘Very poetic,’ Harker declared, already tired of the bravado, ‘and that word is?’
‘Skoptsy,’ Strasser said, his body bristling with self-belief and pride. ‘The word is Skoptsy.’
The ever-widening stare from the priest seemed to create an invisible force pushing at Harker’s chest, and he felt an unpleasant surge of queasiness that quickly spread through his stomach.
‘Skoptsy?’ Chloe looked confused by the answer. ‘Is that Polish?’
Harker ignored her question and instead glanced back towards the bedroom containing the collection of unpleasant jars, as suddenly everything began to make a disturbing kind of sense. ‘You’re lying, Strasser. The Skoptsy died out over half a century ago.’
‘Did they, now?’ Strasser hissed. ‘Then I am just a crazy man and you have nothing to worry about, do you, Professor?’
Seconds ticked by as Harker silently considered this latest revelation, his eyes never leaving the darkly robed figure who returned his stare stubbornly. Could he be telling the truth? Was this really possible, or just the latest lie that Harker had come to expect from the shadowy and deceptive world of the Magi – if indeed Strasser was even affiliated to that organisation. Theirs was a world where subterfuge and deception were more of a science than a tool, and common sense and logic were utilised to ensnare the mind rather than set it free. Harker was still pondering this question when he felt a light prod in the ribs and turned to find Chloe at his side, with her face still full of questions.
