Apocalypsis I

by Mario Giordano

  EPISODE 0

  SIGNS

  Lübbe Webnovel is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG

  Copyright © 2011 by Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany

  Written by Mario Giordano, Cologne

  Translated by Diana Beate Hellmann, Los Angeles

  English version edited by Charlotte Ryland, London

  Editors: Friederike Achilles/Jan F. Wielpütz

  Artwork: © Dino Franke, Hajo Müller

  E-Book-Production: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde

  ISBN 978-3-8387-1436-3

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  I

  April 28, 2011, Annapurna section, Himalayas

  She’d lost the rosary, too, quite a while ago. It was lying six hundred feet above her, somewhere in the snow next to the trail. But since then she’d also lost the trail. In fact, she’d lost just about everything: her gloves, her team, her crampons, her water and even the walkie-talkie. Everything except her life and her faith. The question was what she would lose next.

  Above her was the peak of Annapurna, glowing in the light of the afternoon sun. So close that it felt as if she could touch it. Yet they had not made it to the apex. Tracy, Laura, Betty and Susan were dead. They had fallen through a snow bridge over a crevasse and within a split second had disappeared from the face of the earth. Annapurna had simply swallowed them, leaving her desperately alone.

  Three weeks earlier, Anna had joined a group of female mountain climbers from the United States and Canada, and together they had started their ascent of Annapurna Himal, the tenth highest mountain in the world. Anna was an experienced climber – she was certainly no neophyte of climbing – and the Annapurna section was one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of Nepal. Two days ago, she and four other women from Camp V had set out to climb to the summit. It was early in the morning and the weather was clear. Everything seemed to be going fine, despite the pain and the struggle for each and every step. They had been confident, almost euphorically convinced that they would reach the summit by midday – then they crossed the snow bridge.

  When her companions fell into the crevasse, Anna’s backpack and the crampons fell with them. Only a second earlier, she had pulled the backpack off her shoulders because she needed a break. So she’d been lucky – if you didn’t count the fact that she had lost her gloves as she tried in vain to find her companions in the crevasse.

  Without her gloves, she had a serious problem: the bitter cold. Even in the afternoon, the maximum temperature at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet was minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit. The night would bring temperatures as low as minus forty degrees. Without gloves, Anna’s body temperature was dropping quickly. Her core temperature was already only ninety-one degrees Fahrenheit. She began to shiver uncontrollably, a natural response as her body tried to create additional heat. However, there was another problem: the thin air. Without knowing where she was and where she was going, Anna staggered downhill towards where she believed Camp V must be. Anna was dead on her feet, her movements were clumsy and she was staggering – the first symptoms of altitude sickness. All she wanted was sleep. But the last remnants of reason in her brain reminded her that this would be the end. She had to move on. She had to get downhill, to the camp. At this point, there were only two things left that were driving Anna: a survival instinct as old as time and her faith.

  She hadn’t told her climbing companions that she was a Catholic nun. She hadn’t told them her real reason for coming to Annapurna, either. She hadn’t told them anything, neither about her assignment, nor about her religious order. As far as the other women were concerned, she had simply been a dependable country bumpkin with plenty of mountain experience, who didn’t have much to contribute when it came to the nightly exchange of stories about men and parties. Anna had put her time to better use by enjoying the magnificent landscape, the friendly people and the monks in saffron robes who explained Buddha’s teachings to her.

  Anna stopped for a moment, tried to catch her breath and mumbled a prayer. The Lord would help her. The Virgin Mary would comfort her.

  After another three hundred feet, her core temperature had dropped to a mere eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit. The Nazi doctors in Dachau who experimented with ice water tanks had come to the conclusion that a human being could not survive with a core temperature of less than eighty-four degrees. On the other hand, there had been cases where children were found in the snow who had survived with a body temperature of fifty-seven degrees. However, altitude had its own laws. Anna began to cough up bloody phlegm. This, too, was a symptom of altitude sickness. After another one hundred and fifty feet, it was not her faith that was leaving her, but her strength. Anna passed out and slumped into the snow, mumbling the same prayers over and over again. She was ready to face the Virgin Mary – then she saw the monks.

  The twelve figures were moving uphill, in an orderly line and secured with ropes; they were moving directly towards her. The altitude sickness blurred Anna’s vision, so she didn’t immediately realize that these climbers did not belong to her expedition team. There was something particularly eerie about the fact that they were not wearing the usual garish high-tech protective suits, simply brown habits like those worn by Catholic monks.

  When the eerie monks reached her, Anna opened her eyes, one last time. She was surprised that they passed by without noticing that she was there. She wanted to shout something, but given the thin air, her voice failed her. Only the last two monks stopped by her side. One of them bent down and looked at her. Anna could see his face. A friendly and gentle face, even though a smile was absent. The two men examined her briefly and realized that Anna was still alive. After exchanging a few words in Latin, they grabbed Anna under her armpits as she thanked the Virgin Mary for her rescue.

  Until, that is, she noticed that the monks were not carrying her downhill – but uphill! At first, Anna thought she was hallucinating. This simply could not be happening – not uphill! But it seemed that it caused the two men in their monks’ garb no great strain to haul the nun, who was half unconscious and half frozen to death, further and further uphill until finally reaching the crevasse into which Anna’s companions had disappeared. Anna recognized the spot instantly. The red safety rope was still dangling over the edge; the two men dragged her to that precise point. The last thing Anna felt was a fierce blow and a piercingly cold wind in her face. Then everything around her transformed into a magnificent blend of blue and white.

  II

  April 29, 2011, International Space Station ISS

  The problem could not have been any more serious. It could threaten the entire mission, possibly even their own lives if they didn’t get it under control as soon as possible: the space toilet was defective. At 8:14 CET, the vacuum pump that collected the liquid and solid waste of the ISS crew (who had to be able to aim precisely while sitting firmly and in a particular position on the small toilet seat) broke. One hundred and ninety miles above the earth, a broken toilet is a dire problem, as rising particles of human waste represent a danger to the delicate electronic equipment on board. This was reason enough for Pawel Borowski to confront the problem. Apart from conducting a variety of biological experiments, the Jesuit priest didn’t have many duties aboard the space station and was glad that he was able to use his manual dexterity to be of service to the rest of the crew.

  Pawel was the first priest in space, his childhood drea
m had come true. In light of the planned Mars missions, and at the insistence of the Pope, NASA had finally realized that it was time to send clergy on the long journey to the Red Planet. This meant training priests to become astronauts. As soon as he heard about it, the Polish Jesuit priest with a Ph.D. in biology had immediately applied for the position and had passed the tough selection procedure, along with four other priests. Now he was in space, he of all people, Pawel Borowski, the little red-haired boy from Poznan. It’s not that Pawel indulged in any illusion that here in space he was closer to his Creator than he was on earth. But before he decided to become a servant of the Lord, he had always wanted to become an astronaut, now he was both.

  The problem was that there were only a limited number of specialist tasks for priests aboard the space station. Pawel felt almost relieved that he could save the mission by repairing the toilet.

  In actual fact, Pawel had a very specific task on board, but it was an assignment that he had not received from NASA; in fact, the United States Space Administration didn’t even know about it. His assignment was nothing less than to protect the world against evil, just like the Archangel Michael. Pawel would never have compared himself to the Archangel Michael, even though he was well aware of the significance of his assignment on the ISS, and no one in the Church was better trained and better suited to this task than he was. Only yesterday he had used the station’s sensitive antennae and electronic radar equipment, and had intercepted a signal that confirmed his worst fears. Even though the signal was weak, Pawel was able to pinpoint it on earth as the station passed over it. Right now, the computer was still analyzing the data. Pawel figured that in approximately two hours he would be able to send a compressed file through an encrypted network. This would mean that he really had saved the world, he of all people, little Pawel from Poznan. So there was no harm in using the interval to take care of a malfunctioning toilet.

  Pawel was in cheerful spirits, and right in the middle of disassembling the stubborn pump in zero gravity, when the disaster occurred.

  A small meteorological satellite, which had left its orbit for unknown reasons and begun spinning through space, apparently out of control, hit the space station without warning. The satellite was no bigger than a garbage can but it slammed into the space station at a speed of almost sixteen thousand miles per hour. It crashed through the wing panels of the solar arrays that spread like huge angel wings alongside the station, shredding radial arms two through six and tearing off the Columbus Module. The force of the impact was so violent that it broke off the crew module where two crew members were sleeping. The entire station toppled to one side and began to spin, resulting in an enormous centrifugal force, which put more and more pressure on the structure of the station, so that further modules broke off. Within a few seconds, all the oxygen in the station was discharged into space and the moisture within it formed a brilliant white cloud of ice crystals around the devastated space station. Pawel didn’t get the chance to marvel at the transcendental beauty of this sight. As he had not been wearing his space suit, he died instantaneously from a severe form of divers’ disease. The hard vacuum in outer space made his lungs burst, and the gases that had been dissolved in his blood returned to their original gaseous condition. Abruptly, all the blood running through his veins began to bubble and foam. Every single blood vessel ruptured, with death coming almost instantly. The embolism made his brain start to swell, pushing the brainstem into the spinal canal. Simultaneously, Pawel’s body was shock-frosted by the rapid drop in temperature. Only a few seconds after the impact, not a single crew member remained alive. The shattered station was spinning through space like a ghost ship, somewhere over the Indian Ocean, orbiting the earth while losing height, slowly but inexorably. In a few weeks, it would enter the atmosphere of the earth, explode into a thousand tiny pieces, and burn up like a brief meteor shower.

  The electronics on board continued to work for a whopping three more days. The computer that Pawel had fed with the data to be analyzed was right on time. It produced a compressed file, but there was no one to send it down to earth. Not even the Archangel Michael.

  III

  Courier Online, May 1, 2011

  POPE JOHN PAUL III RESIGNS!

  Author: Peter Adam

  Rome. During a last-minute press conference at 11:00 AM today, Vatican speaker Franco Russo announced that Pope John Paul III had resigned, effective immediately, as leader of the Catholic Church.

  This extremely terse statement came as a complete surprise. Even the experienced Vatican Press Secretary was visibly struggling to maintain his composure, as it appeared he had only recently been informed of the Pope’s decision.

  The resignation of one of the most important religious leaders in the world is deeply unsettling, not just for the one billion plus Catholics worldwide. It will certainly result in another shake-up of the entire world order – with incalculable global consequences.

  At this point, one can only speculate as to the reasons for this shocking abdication. Despite repeated and multiple questions from the assembled journalists, Russo refused to make any further comments. There were no previous indications to suggest that the Pope had tired of holding office or suffered any health issues. But Rome loves intrigue and cover-ups. Time and again there have been hushed whispers and in recent months rumors about signs of »mental weakness« in the otherwise strong and resilient Pope.

  However, the succinct official statement merely stated that the Pope made his decision for »personal reasons« and that it is irrevocable. It further mentioned that the Pope will not be available for any additional comments or interviews of any kind. As prescribed by the Law of the Apostolic Constitution, Cardinal Secretary of State Menendez, the second man in the hierarchy of the Church, also resigned immediately afterwards. The College of Cardinals – in this case, the body of Cardinals who are currently in Rome – will convene within the next few hours. During the sede vacante – until the election of a new pope – the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church will serve as acting head of the Vatican.

  For centuries, this process has been regulated by the Apostolic Constitution, the Universi Dominici Gregi. This Apostolic decree also stipulates precisely how all further proceedings are to be conducted. In principle, there is no difference between the death of a pope and his resignation. The papal seal is broken, the papal apartment is sealed, and within twenty days the conclave must begin the process of electing a new pope.

  And when does it become imperative for a pope to resign? In fact, it never does. Even a pope who is seriously ill and can no longer adequately perform his official duties is not forced to resign, although it would be »a canonical nightmare«, as pointed out by Vatican expert Padre Luigi Gattuso.

  Papal resignations are rare in the two-thousand-year history of the Church. Pope Gregory XII resigned in 1415 under pressure from an antipope. The only voluntary resignation was the abdication of Pope Celestine V in 1294.

  One of the reasons that papal abdications are so rare may be that the role of the »former pope«, especially his role towards his successor, is not at all regulated. In general, it is assumed that a pope who has resigned will seclude himself in a monastery. Making it even more exciting to ponder what Pope John Paul III will do and whether he will distance himself completely from ecclesiastical politics.

  Franz Laurenz, son of a working class family from Duisburg, Germany, was a pope who was as divisive as he was popular. His resignation comes at the worst imaginable time. Next spring, during the Third Vatican Council, he intended to introduce far-reaching reforms to the Church. Church hardliners had long regarded the »Red Pope« as much too liberal. They applauded his »Dialogue with Islam« with gritted teeth, and behind closed doors criticized his close personal relationships with high-ranking mullahs and imams. Last year, during his celebrated visit to Africa, when the athletic German Pope declared that the use of condoms would not be contradictory to Catholic beliefs, he came close to causing a major schism. At th
e same time, he threatened to excommunicate the Bishop of Vancouver if he continued to demand that the celibacy rule be relaxed.

  Since his election to the See of Saint Peter in 2005, Franz Laurenz has polarized the factions of the Church. Nonetheless, he became a beacon of hope for many Catholics and for a renewal of the Church. At the age of sixty-two, he was one of the youngest popes ever, and he even dared to appoint Antonio Menendez his Cardinal Secretary of State, although Menendez was known to be one of his strongest critics and an ultra-conservative with close ties to Opus Dei. Despite that Menendez was also forced to resign according to Canon Law, many observers regard him as a favorite for the upcoming papal election.

  It seems obvious that the true reasons for the resignation of John Paul III are far more complex than any alleged dementia. Clearly, a substantial power struggle is raging behind the closed doors of the Apostolic Palace.

  It remains to be seen whether or not the combative »former Pope«, Laurenz, will still play a role in this struggle, and if so, to what extent. At least he still owns an apartment in Rome, the place where he used to live during his time as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

  IV

  May 1, 2011, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace

  The folded hands on the dark wood of the prayer kneeler were well manicured. But they were not fine hands, quite the contrary. Rough, rugged and used to hard work – the hands of a laborer. In youth, they had done heavy manual labor and often had packed a punch. These hands had boxed, welded, bled and offered blessings. Hands that never seemed to rest, only in prayer. Franz Laurenz was a huge man with a masculine appearance. But when people met the Pope for the first time, invariably his hands were what impressed them the most, seeming to have a life of their own. These hands accompanied and amplified the Pope’s words, grabbing and shaking them, plucking arguments like ripe pieces of fruit, squeezing them and tossing them at his interlocutors, or letting them float with unexpected grace. However, they could become wrathful, these hands. There had been instances when even the most seasoned cardinals and government leaders had winced because these hands had suddenly clenched into fists, driven by passionate outrage, and the index finger of the Pope had come down on his interlocutor like the sword of the Archangel Michael.