by Tom Fox
Heinrich remained motionless as he listened to the voice in his earpiece, then suddenly straightened and started moving towards Cardinal Giotto Forte.
‘Your Excellency, if you would please come with us, we need to get you to a meeting to which you’ve suddenly been called.’
Forte rose and Heinrich gently urged him towards Sergeant Wüthrich on the far side of the room. The Cardinal nodded politely first to Ben and then to Angelina, and without a further word turned and left the room with the other guard.
Heinrich swivelled back to them.
‘I’m sorry, but I must take my leave of you for the time being. If you will kindly remain here, Korporal Yoder just outside the door will look after you until I’m able to return.’
He didn’t wait for a response before marching towards the exit.
‘Hold on a minute!’ Angelina protested. ‘What’s all this about? What’s happened?’
Major Heinrich paused, considering whether or not to answer, but at last spoke without turning back to face her.
‘The river’s gone back to its normal colour.’ He resumed his course towards the door, which slid open for him. Before Angelina could even ask the question, Heinrich answered it.
‘The first “plague” is over. But there’s going to be another.’
20
Outside, throughout central Rome
It was 5.16 p.m. when the first observer noted the change. The water that had flowed red since earliest morning had kept its mysterious colour strong throughout the day, but as the sun began to set over Rome it was a young girl, fingers clenched through her grandfather’s protective grasp, who pointed with her other hand towards the river and said innocently, ‘Look, Grandad, I can see the bottom!’
Her glee had attracted the attention of others, though the numbers along the riverside had dwindled dramatically after reports of the two gun attacks earlier in the day had spread. But those who remained noticed that they, too, could begin to see through the waters as they lapped at the shore – though not in their depths, where the Tiber had not run clear for a long time – and gradually the redness of the water had faded before their eyes, until blood became rust, and rust became bark, and finally the Tiber’s flow was the same off-brown that it had been before the start of the day.
By then the bystanders had newspapers in their hands, and those that didn’t have papers had mobile phones open to web sites and apps that all reported the same story. A seemingly routine dig at an archaeological site a month ago had unearthed a stone, written in some obscure language, which spoke of a series of strange events. Most of the commentators, like most of the spectators, didn’t care what culture had produced it, or what language it had been written in, or really what the whole archaeological affair was all about. They were interested only in the fact that on one of the tablet’s lines was written, ‘the river shall run with blood’, and all day long they’d been able to snap photos of their river doing just that.
Church of St Paul of the Cross
Charismatic Catholic community headquarters
In a back room of the structure that housed both their sanctuary and offices, Thomás and two others were assembled together for what he considered one of the most important works of his life. The room was normally used for Sunday school – instructing the youngest of their members into the living faith the Charismatics knew fuelled every breath of their lives – and now he was using it for something that would fuel faith for countless others. Thousands. Maybe millions.
When God spoke, he spoke to the whole world.
‘Is the camera ready?’ Thomás was impatient. It seemed to take an inordinately long amount of time for his two associates to configure the tripod and small digital device. They were younger even than he, barely more than teenagers. This sort of thing was supposed to come as second nature to them.
‘Just another second, I want to make sure the resolution settings are right. This is an HD camera, but we don’t want the resolution too high or it’ll take us ages to upload. Seven hundred and twenty pixels will be more than enough.’
Thomás was in no mood to be concerned about such things, but he trusted they knew what they were doing.
Just as he trusted that God would help him with what Father Alberto had charged him to do.
Today, Thomás would be the messenger.
‘Okay,’ his cameraman finally announced. ‘All good to go. You ready?’
For all his eagerness, Thomás suddenly wasn’t sure whether he was. He slicked back his hair with two open palms – an act more ceremonial than functional, given the short cut he always sported – and ruffled the billows out of his shirt. He was as presentable as he could be. Yet he was terrified, and unsure whether he’d ever before shaken quite like this.
Remember, my child, the words of his beloved priest came back to him, spoken only a few hours before as Father Alberto had delivered Thomás his charge, be at peace with yourself. The words are not yours, but God’s. It is the Lord himself who will work his wonders.
Thomás closed his eyes and breathed in a long breath. The words soothed him, and the exhale seemed to waft away his anxiety.
‘Okay,’ he looked up to the camera, ‘let’s do this.’
A moment later, a small red light indicated that recording had begun.
‘My beloved brothers and sisters,’ Thomás announced solemnly into the digital lens, ‘the time of wonders is upon us.’
The words felt monumental, as if the whole world might shake in awe as he spoke them. But when silence reigned and the young cameraman waved his arms in a frantic keep talking gesture, Thomás continued.
‘The Holy Spirit has never ceased to talk to humanity through the centuries,’ he said, the words carefully measured, ‘and he has not ceased in our day. We have received prophetic utterances in the divine glory of prayer. We have been told of signs and wonders.’
The thrill shot through him again.
‘Today, the world saw a sign of the glory of God. The ancient river ran with blood, like the Nile of old, that God’s power might be known.’ He drew in another long breath. ‘We knew this would come. We had been prepared.’
Thomás leaned towards the camera. ‘But as for you, my brothers and sisters – were you ready? Had you heard the voice of the Lord, announcing he would come?’
He sat back, his face solemn.
‘Because what happened this morning is only the beginning.’
21
Torre Maura district
Eastern Rome
‘Did it come off as planned?’ Emil asked the question with urgency, not because he didn’t know perfectly well that the Tiber had run red for thirteen solid hours, just as had been intended, but because he wanted to know the details that really mattered to him. Those that fitted this day into the grander picture of what was yet to come.
‘There weren’t any problems,’ Bartolomeo answered. There was no look of satisfaction on his face, though there could easily have been. He was all business on this matter, just as he had been with that of Herrero’s execution.
‘It was fucking great,’ his partner added. Yiannis was almost precisely the same age as Bartolomeo – their birthdays fell within two days of each other – and though a man of equal skill in his own area of expertise, he was of a decidedly different temperament from the other man. Where Bartolomeo was calm, monosyllabic when possible, and formal in almost all his words and gestures, Yiannis was a typically demonstrative Greek with bushy eyebrows over an olive-skinned face that contorted into expressions of every emotion in a catalogue through which he seemed to cycle on a minute-by-minute basis.
Yet despite his tendency to disfavour emotional displays in men, Emil couldn’t fault the more boisterous of the pair his enthusiasm for their work. They’d done well, and once again Emil was reassured of his own wisdom in organising his teams into partnerships of complementary skill sets, specialised for just the areas of focus his project required.
‘I can’t imagine anyone in a
hundred-mile radius missed it,’ Yiannis continued. ‘And hell, for hundreds of miles beyond. It was on the news, on the Internet, everywhere.’ While Bartolomeo had been chiefly responsible for working out the technical where-and-how of the event, Yiannis had had his hands in the orchestration from the outset. He was clearly delighted at the effectiveness of his work.
Emil kept his expression unreadable. He was pleased, yet everything had to be held in proper perspective.
‘Don’t gloat,’ he said simply. ‘Of course people noticed. It wasn’t meant to be subtle.’
Yiannis kept his smile, but sat back in his seat. He didn’t expect warm or glowing words from his boss, but he sensed Emil was satisfied.
‘More important than what the general public noticed,’ Emil added, ‘is what they didn’t.’ He turned his gaze towards Bartolomeo. ‘Are there any reports out yet on the nature of the . . . incident?’ He put extra emphasis into the final word, a particularly pleasing descriptor he’d read in a blog post a few hours ago. The term was being used by most reporters, none of whom knew quite what to call a river changing colour.
‘None that are accurate. The Net’s awash with theories – a complete mayhem of guesswork and ideas – but none have been on the mark. Best they’ve been able to do is rule out iron or other mineral deposits on the bottom of the river, which was the reigning hypothesis for the first few hours.’
‘Their reason?’
‘Minerals like that are easy enough to test for, and the iron level in the red water wasn’t any higher than before or after.’
Emil nodded, satisfied. ‘And?’
‘The general trend now is to suspect some type of biochemical agent.’
This brought up one of Emil’s immaculately groomed eyebrows. It was precisely in this sort of detail that things could quickly go wrong. ‘Biochemical? Are there concerns of terrorism?’ It was what he wanted least of all.
‘There are always concerns of terrorism,’ Bartolomeo answered with a shrug of his shoulders, a little too flippantly for Emil’s liking.
Yiannis quickly took over. ‘This is the twenty-first century, boss. A handbag left on a park bench makes people scream terrorism. This was the transformation of an entire goddamned river.’
Emil glowered at him but said nothing.
‘The prevailing scientific response is that a terrorist act is unlikely, since the affected water is benign,’ Bartolomeo continued calmly. ‘No radioactive signatures, no toxins, no poisons. “Perfectly drinkable” was how one guy on the television put it.’
Emil’s features softened fractionally. ‘Good. God forbid it gets written off to a band of fanatics.’
A tremendous amount of effort had gone into finding a chemical compound that would change the water’s colour effectively without posing any health risks. A key to the whole charade was its harmlessness. Only that could allow for the response Emil wanted.
That, and no one being able to rip apart the tablet’s contents too thoroughly before they had a chance to reach their goal, which would risk throwing the whole project upside down. Dramatic events in Rome were either the work of miracles or of men, and so long as hype and superstition tended towards the former rather than the latter, he would have the time to get where he wanted to go.
It was the very reason they’d chosen to work with Akkadian. Other classical and ancient languages had far too many specialists out there. Latin might as well be a second language to half the clergy in Italy, and nobody made it into the academic world without at least a passing knowledge of ancient Greek – so both of those had obviously been ruled out. Hebrew would have been fitting, but it wasn’t just the Jews who spent time learning that ancient Semitic script. They shared their love of it with every two-bit biblical theologian in the world, so it, too, couldn’t possibly work.
But Akkadian. Hell, even with his own background, Emil knew no more than two or three symbols in the dead language. Which more or less made it perfect.
His attention fell back to the matter at hand. ‘Our first endeavour went well, but it’s important not to get cocky. This was the easy one. The next plague will be much more difficult, and will require more of you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Bartolomeo answered for them both, standing and dragging up Yiannis by the shoulder.
Emil signalled them out of the room without another word, then listened as the door clicked closed behind them.
The next plague. He’d brought in an industrial engineer for this stage, and Emil was as confident as he could be that their preparations had been undertaken properly. But he was still nervous.
A river, after all, was one thing. Night and day were quite another.
22
Beneath the Apostolic Palace
The sudden silence that followed Major Hans Heinrich’s departure from the concrete room, only moments after Cardinal Forte had been escorted out by his colleague, hung heavy in the well-lit subterranean space. Neither Angelina nor Ben seemed to know what to make of the spontaneous departure, any more than they were able to make sense of the strange discussion that had preceded it.
Eventually, Angelina wandered over to Ben’s chair. He still hadn’t risen, and apart from his hands being unbound and on his lap, folded over the photograph they’d been given rather than tied behind his back, he was in an identical position to that Angelina had first seen him in when their hoods were removed. Bloodstains still marked his coat and face.
For a moment, she was drawn back to her impressions of him when they’d first met. His kindness had been matched by his shyness, and Angelina imagined his reclusive social skills left him particularly ill prepared for the type of confrontation this day had brought them both.
‘I always feel more comfortable alone,’ he’d confessed to her then, as he’d led her through a few of the public stacks of the Vatican Secret Archives on her interview tour of the facility, ‘here where it’s just history I have to deal with. Always found it easier than with . . . real people.’
And he’d hesitated, even then, recognising that it was a ‘real person’ to whom he was speaking. ‘Sorry,’ he’d added, ‘it’s not that you’re particularly hard to deal with. It’s just that I, as a general rule, I—’
‘It’s okay,’ Angelina had interrupted, ‘I know how you feel, Dr Verdyx. I can relate to it.’ Angelina had never been shy, never been even marginally reclusive. A girl wanting to make her own way in a world of boys learned, even at a young age, how to be bold and confident. But she could entirely relate to the draw of slipping away into the world of the past, finding comfort in stories that were written in stone, reassuringly constant and knowable. A world like Ben had in the Archives, in which an ordinary morning didn’t suddenly change into something with gunfire, kidnap and revelations of murder suspicions.
It was that thought that wove a new spark of electricity through Angelina’s body.
‘Listen,’ she said to Ben, taking another step towards him and kneeling down to his eye level, ‘I have an idea.’
His gaze remained distant, stuck somewhere in memory.
‘Ben,’ she said again, and reached forward a hand to lay it on his. She felt a tremble in his fingers, and wondered for a moment whether this all had simply thrown him over the edge.
If she could keep him from falling off it, she would.
‘Ben, do you want to get out of here?’
The words finally drew him out of his reverie. ‘Out?’ A shift of colour returned to his features. His eyes met hers. ‘How?’
Angelina smiled tensely. ‘Leave that to me. But I do have one condition.’ Ben screwed up his face in curiosity.
‘Once we’re out,’ Angelina said, ‘you have to take me where I want to go.’
Moments later, Angelina had taken Ben by the hand and led them both to the door on the far side of the concrete room. She’d observed before that it appeared to be automatic, and was relieved as it began to slide open at their approach. But as she’d been equally certain would be the case, the third guar
dsman immediately became visible beyond it. He began to turn towards them even before the door had completed its motion.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, sir,’ he nodded politely at both in turn as he swivelled his step to gently block the exit, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to remain here until Major Heinrich returns.’
The man was enormous, far bigger in both height and bulk than his superior, and seemed to stretch the fabric of his suit nearly to its seam-bursting point. For an instant, Angelina wondered whether this was as wise a plan as she’d first thought, but they were here, and she wasn’t about to let the moment pass.
‘We politely decline,’ she said, as courteously as she could. She even mustered a smile, which brought a rush of satisfaction.
It seemed to be just about the only response the guard had not been expecting. You see, spoke her inner monologue, much more effective than your insults.
‘Excuse me?’
‘We. Politely. Decline,’ Angelina repeated.
‘Decline?’
‘To remain,’ she answered. ‘Here.’ She motioned to the space behind them. ‘We were brought here, we heard what your colleague had to say, and now we would like to leave.’
The enormous guard shifted his weight in his boots. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. Now, if you would please return to your seats and—’
‘Are we under arrest?’ Angelina persisted. The man squirmed again.
‘Well, no, I don’t suppose that you technically are, but—’
‘If we’re not under arrest, then we’re leaving,’ Angelina repeated, matter-of-factly. ‘I’m quite certain that you’ll be able to find us again if you need us.’ She wasn’t sure if the guard caught her sarcasm, but she heard a muffled snort from Ben that indicated her fellow spied-upon captive had.
‘I’m going to have to phone up and ask about this,’ the guardsman finally said, but Angelina sensed the time for movement had come.
